“You knit me together in my mother’s womb”: a theology of creation and divine action in light of intersex

ABSTRACT

Some Christian theologians and intersex Christians maintain that intersex is part of God’s good and intended creation, in contrast to those who view intersex as a pathological result of fallen nature. The former claim that intersex bodies “are how God made them” and that “God does not make mistakes;” however, these statements risk implying a belief in special creation or divine intervention, two theological positions which have been challenged by evolutionary theory and contemporary natural sciences. This paper provides a more nuanced theology of creation and divine action as a foundation for a positive theology of intersex. Drawing from the work of Thomas Aquinas on primary and secondary causality, the author argues that God, as primary cause, creates the intersex person through the free interplay of secondary causes, in the same way and to the same extent that God acts in the creation of every other person.

KEYWORDS:

• Intersex
• theology of creation
• theology and science
• Thomas Aquinas
• Elizabeth Johnson
• Susannah Cornwall

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Elyse J. Raby is a doctoral candidate and presidential fellow in systematic theology at Boston College. She specializes in theological anthropology and ecclesiology.

ORCID

Elyse J. Raby http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5583-4625

Notes

1 The three responses sketched here are derived in part from Susannah Cornwall’s excellent literature review in her introduction to Sex and Uncertainty, although naming them as such is primarily my own work. See also the section entitled “Pathology or Benign Variation?” in her chapter “Intersex and Transgender People,” 665.

2 Hollinger, The Meaning of Sex, 84. See also Colson, “Blurred Biology.”

3 Lebacqz, “Difference or Defect,” 224–5. See also Looy and Bouma, “The Nature of Gender,” 175–6.

4 Cornwall, “Intersex and Transgender People,” 666.

5 Ibid., 671.

6 DeFranza, Sex Difference in Christian Theology.

7 Mollenkott, Omnigender, 5.

8 Cornwall, “Intersex and Transgender People,” 666.

9 Ibid., 667.

10 Cornwall, Sex and Uncertainty, 35.

11 A full defense of the “goodness” reading of intersex would require deeper consideration of the norms of human flourishing as well as any potentially life-threatening medical conditions that can accompany intersex (such as salt-wasting in some cases of congenital adrenal hyperplasia). The majority of intersex conditions do not pose such health risks. Moreover, as others and I suggest, experiences of psychological and spiritual suffering among intersex persons are arguably due to current social and religious reactions to intersex. Therefore, in this paper, I assume that intersex does not inhibit human flourishing, understood as the capacity to give and receive love and live in human community, and therefore can be said to be part of the goodness of creation. I will not devote attention to the “pathology” response because I find its theological notion of a prelapsarian original perfection to be historically and scientifically untenable. However, I grant that as a medical term, the language of “pathology” might be appropriate in a limited sense, insofar as it denotes statistical frequency and may signal other co-occurring medical conditions in some cases.

12 The terms “intersex” and “DSD” are contested within the intersex/DSD community. Moreover, “DSD” also sometimes stands for “difference” rather than “disorder” of sex development, as in the case of the AIS-DSD Support Group (www.aisdsd.org). On these debates, especially the use of “Disorder of Sex Development” by the medical community to assert its authority and jurisdiction over intersex, see Davis, Contesting Intersex. In this paper, I use the term “intersex” (and “intersex traits” or “intersex conditions”) in keeping with the current academic norm.

13 DeFranza, Sex Difference in Christian Theology, 24.

14 Consortium on the Management of Disorders of Sex Development, Clinical Guidelines for the Management of Disorders of Sex Development in Childhood, 2.

15 Messer, “Contributions from Biology,” 83.

16 Kemp, “The Role of Genes,” 8–10.

17 Messer, “Contributions from Biology,” 83.

18 Of course, some Christian traditions still subscribe to special creation accounts. My concern, however, is with theological traditions that hope to integrate knowledge of the natural world as provided by scientific inquiry with the claims and knowledge provided by faith and revelation.

19 Johnson, Ask the Beasts, 155.

20 Ibid.

21 The problem of suffering and death as necessary to evolution is undoubtedly a challenge for theology as well. Because this paper seeks only to offer an account of the divine creation of intersex as good, the problem of suffering in creation is tangential to this paper. For further reading on divine solidarity with creation’s suffering, see ibid., 181–210; on divine self-limitation for the sake of creation’s autonomy, see Edwards, How God Acts, 50–52.

22 The six-volume series Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action (Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory and Berkeley, CA: Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, 1993–2008) provides detailed engagement by scientists and theologians with fields such as chaos theory, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience.

23 Dodds, Unlocking Divine Action. See also Shanley, “Divine Causation.”

24 Johnson, Ask the Beasts, 168.

25 On the problem of seeking a “causal joint” “where [divine] causality intersects with that of the creature,” see Dodds, Unlocking Divine Action, 107–9.

26 Aquinas, ST, I.8.1.

27 McCabe, God, Christ, and Us, 103, in Johnson, Ask the Beasts, 123.

28 Aquinas, ST, I.9.1. See also Tracy, “Evolutionary Theologies and Divine Action,” 109–110, as well as Edwards, How God Acts, 38. Edwards maintains that ontologically, God’s action is always a unity, but a unity that “affects creation in specific, historical, and finite ways” and so is experienced by us as differentiated.

29 Shanley, “Divine Causation,” 102, 105.

30 Aquinas, ST, I.22.3.

31 Shanley, “Divine Causation,” 111.

32 An instrumental cause has no intrinsic power to act on its own (e.g. a pencil which is used by a student to take notes), whereas secondary causes have their own causal agency which is enabled and sustained by the primary cause (as in an orchestra which produces music “under the influence of the conductor as primary cause”). See Dodds, Unlocking Divine Action, 29–30.

33 See Aquinas, ST, I.105.5.

34 This theme suffuses Johnson’s work; see, for example, Ask the Beasts, 158–60, 165–6, 178–9.

35 Ibid., 168.

36 Aquinas does allow that God can also act as a secondary cause, and can produce the effects of secondary causes without a secondary cause and apart from the order of secondary causes, as in the case of miracles (I.105.6–7; cf. I.19.5 ad 2–3). This manner of divine action is not the norm but rather is an exceptional (theo)logical possibility within the normative context of divine action through created causality. Aquinas admits of this possibility in order to maintain that God “is not subject to the order of secondary causes, but on the contrary, this order is subject to Him, as proceeding from Him.” Cf. Edwards, who argues that miracles also occur through secondary causes (How God Acts, 80–90).

37 Johnson, Ask the Beasts, 166.

38 Johnson, “Does God Play Dice,” 12.

39 Aquinas, SCG, 3.70.5.

40 Aquinas, ST, I.105.5.

41 Ibid.

42 Johnson, Ask the Beasts, 168–9.

43 Shanley, “Divine Causation,” 105.

44 The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics suggests that this is not merely “epistemic chance” but “ontological chance” (Tracy, “Scientific Vetoes and the Hands-off God,” 64).

45 Aquinas, SCG, 3.74.4, 3.74.6.

46 Johnson, “Does God Play Dice,” 17.

47 “The will of God is the universal cause of all things” (Aquinas, ST, I.19.6).

48 Aquinas’ distinction between natural and moral evil (ST I.19.9) suggests that any suffering endured by intersex persons must be examined not only as possibly resulting from the lack of a good but also in its social, cultural, and structural dimensions. Moral evil, that is, the evil of human sin, is never willed by God. Thus, any suffering endured by intersex persons that is caused by social structures of exclusion and violence can never be said to be willed by God. For further consideration of the socially inflicted suffering of intersex people and its corollary in disability studies, see Cornwall, Sex and Uncertainty, chapter five and Cornwall, “Theologies of Resistance.”

49 Johnson, Ask the Beasts, 173.