Can a trans-identified person also be Christian? New Testament scholar NT Wright weighs in

stevevw said:

I think I started to listen to Wrights audio if thats what you mean. It was a podcast but not a video. He was mentioning how the Greco Roman world seen homosexuality and how some women took on female roles. Not too different from today.

He has some good insights on trans. Likens the modern need to find the inner self as the true souce of enlightenment and truth to Gnostism which was popping up around the end of the 2nd century.

So in this sense its like social constructionism and more a ideology. Everything is socially created and the true source of reality. So then the physical body is like a vessel that can change. A skin you can take off. So long as the inner self is fullfilled.

The problem is as Wright points out is that Gods natural laws and reality, bodily reality cannot be easily done away with.

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Wright’s is video, usually two windows with the host, Bird, in the other window. The audio is from the Christian Post, and doesn’t have Wright speaking. The audio does not express the same thing as Wright's video.

Wright doesn't criticize transgender identity in this podcast. That's why the Post's audio is not consistent with Wright's.

In fact Wright did criticize transgender identity in a letter to the Times a few years ago. But this podcast was about pastoral implications. How do we pastor to a transgender person? That's not the same question. It's possible that Wright has changed his views on transgender identity, but it's likely that they simply aren't an issue when you're looking at how to pastor someone who has already transitioned.

At any rate, it's not helpful for the article to be about Wright but point people to a podcast by someone else saying something else. (They do also point to Wright's podcast, but it's easy to see why people would be confused.) The articloe starts by quoting Wright, but about halfway through, moves to the Post's own editorial viewpoint, supported by their own podcast.

hedrick said:

Wright’s is video, usually two windows with the host, Bird, in the other window. The audio is from the Christian Post, and doesn’t have Wright speaking. The audio does not express the same thing as Wright's video.

Wright doesn't criticize transgender identity in this podcast. That's why the Post's audio is not consistent with Wright's.

In fact Wright did criticize transgender identity in a letter to the Times a few years ago. But this podcast was about pastoral implications. How do we pastor to a transgender person? That's not the same question. It's possible that Wright has changed his views on transgender identity, but it's likely that they simply aren't an issue when you're looking at how to pastor someone who has already transitioned.

At any rate, it's not helpful for the article to be about Wright but point people to a podcast by someone else saying something else. (They do also point to Wright's podcast, but it's easy to see why people would be confused.) The articloe starts by quoting Wright, but about halfway through, moves to the Post's own editorial viewpoint, supported by their own podcast.

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Ok I think I found the right one about Wright lol (pun intended). There are two big windows with Bird and Wright but its a longer video with a couple of other topics one being about deconstruction and whether Jesus was wrong about the end of the world.

I don't think Wright has changed his position but rather was being more sympathetic towards pastoring trans people. I actually agree with his approach. He is not just focusing on trans but on how we can become more like Chriust regardless of whether its trans or transhumanism or addiction or personality disorder or any issue that we are struggling with today.

Not essentialising and being open to having a pastoral relationship built on trust and meeting the person where they are at without judgement. Allowing the holy spirit to do the work however that may be.

Like everyone we are being transformed from the old self to the new self in Christ regardless of who we are. We are all aiming for the same person in Christ.

Wright believes that its within this relationship that God will transform and gradually help someone become more like Christ and when you think about it we all will be giving up something of our old self. But its not really giving up as God will not give us anything beyond what we cannot handle.

The person in the videa who had transitioned was already well down the process and could not see how they could ever detransition. They also wanted to marry which technically would be a breach of Gods creation law and order. In marriage the man and women become one flesh.

But Wright did not touch on this issue. I would imagine because he was saying that it will be up to God and that we just created a situation where a person can feel safe and comfortable as much as possible to be able to be open to the spirit and he will do the rest.

Assuming that God will not breach His own law and order and will help someone to be more like Christ. That may include chasticy which really most Christians should be following of not married. Which when in Christ is actually a greater service as Paul says.

I like how Bird touched on Transhumanism which is really the underlying basis for much of the rise of identity as a reality. The governing bodies of the world such as the UN but also the ideology of most secular States has devalued human worth by removing the prinicple truth that we are made in Gods image man and women.

So now what constitutes a human and human worth is determined by ideologies like humanism and trans ideology or identity politics. Human worth is now human created and no God created. Wrights message in all this was we need to determine human worth which is based of Gods creation. How Gods creation is embodied in the real world.

Pastoral care is one thing, doctrine and christian ethics are another. They aren't necessarily the same. And in Anglicanism, ethics is a developing field, it isn't set in stone.

Disrespect of actual human persons is gravely offensive to Christian ethics. We should never put ideology, however noble or pious, above caring for people.

hedrick said:

He seems to stop short of any absolute statements about what

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As his legal team will advice...

Michie said:

New Testament scholar N.T. Wright responded to a complex question about transgender identity and Christian faith during a recent episode of his “Ask N.T. Wright Anything” podcast.

The episode, co-hosted by fellow theologian Michael F. Bird, featured a female listener who identifies as a man and described herself as a “lover of Christ.” The listener had undergone an elective hysterectomy and lived as a man for a decade.

“I came to Christ after having gone through all the hormone surgery and living as a man for 10 years,” the listener explained. “Often when I hear people who were transgender then became a Christian, it’s a story of them de-transitioning to be their natural born gender.”

Continued below.

Can a trans-identified person also be Christian? New Testament scholar NT Wright weighs in

New Testament scholar N T Wright responded to a complex question about transgender identity and Christian faith during a recent episode of his Ask N T Wright Anything podcast

www.christianpost.com

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I feel God calls all sorts of people to his Church, "the Good, the Bad and the Ugly". There is a twofold effect that happens when a person feels called to the Church but has some really incorrect views of what is right and what is wrong in God's eye. The first effect (the obvious one) is God will eventually change the heart of the misguided person so that they know the Truth about how God wants them to live their lives.

The not-so-obvious effect is that God is teaching other in the Church already to be patient and tolerant of those with learning God's ways.

Anglicans, like all magisterial Protestants, generally believe in the principle of the bound conscience. Expecting everyone to understand or agree with your point of view, just because it's "biblical", isn't how responsible Protestantism operates, and using power or coercion against others with whom you disagree also isn't an appropriate response . That may fly in some sectarian churches that think they alone are the one true faith, but that simply isn't how large Protestant bodies understand Christian ethics. Excommunication and ecclessiatic censure is only reserved for the most serious offenses, and it isn't done for punitive purposes (to uphold an abstract principle alone), or the purposes of upholding respectability.

I just ran into this podcast in a different setting. In the Ask NTWright anything series it is labeled as a question about whether a transgender person can marry someone of the opposite sex (using the sex that they transitioned to). That is in fact what they asked Tom. It strikes me that he is really evading the question. Instead he seems to deal with whether a transgender person is welcome in the church, whether they would be required to change. These weren’t questions, because the person is clearly welcome in his church and is not feeling a need to detransition.

I agree with Tom that you can’t give pastoral care via the Internet. So referring to his pastor makes some sense. But independent of specific pastoral issues, whether that kind of marriage would be permissible would be considered by many people to be a doctrinal issue. Wright pretty much ignores that. I think by implication we can conclude that he doesn’t have a doctrinal objection to what some people would consider a homosexual martiage, considering it entirely a pastoral judgement. But it would have been helpful for him to have been a bit clearer on that.

RileyG said:

Does that also apply to all mainline Protestant denominations? At least here in the US?

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Yes, more or less. Occasionally you get a church that doesn't live up to those ideals, but it's more then exception than the rule.