Today’s guest post is by Cody Hatch.
Angela C. wrote a thought-provoking essay at By Common Consent titled, “If Gender is Essential, Why Are We Pushing It?” The essay brought up something that I have long struggled to wrap my mind around. Part of the
argument I hear is that there are just some things fundamentally different between the two genders and, since gender is eternal, there must be some reason for a man and a woman to be married eternally (and thus gay marriage is bad). However, isn’t this argument problematic when viewed through the lens of the traditional teachings regarding Jesus’ atonement? I was taught that Jesus suffered and experienced all things in order to fully understand how to judge and comfort us. The Book of Mormon teaches that Jesus took upon himself the infirmities and struggles of all people:
And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that
the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of
his people.And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his
people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy,
according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people
according to their infirmities. [Emphasis mine]Alma 7:11-12
If we take that teaching seriously, it seems to me that, in order for Jesus to adequately judge and succor all people, he must perfectly understand their experiences, ailments, struggles, etc. In order to succor women he needs to precisely understand all that it means to be a woman. The same is true for men, black people, white people, Americans, Indonesians, gay people, straight people, Catholics, Mormons – you get the idea. In order for Jesus to adequately succor all people he must perfectly understand what it means to be that person. In short, all labels are swallowed up in Jesus.
This idea seems to be a problem for the gender essentialism arguments I hear bandied about. Or is there some other way to understand those verses? I’ve been taught my entire life that Jesus experienced all things as part of his atonement, but no doubt there are those who view his experiences as somehow limited. He couldn’t possibly have known what it would be like to be an iPhone toting teenager in 2017’s America, right? That argument brings up several questions for me:
- Is there some limitation to Jesus’ experience? If so, what is that limitation?
- If he did not actually experience all things, how does Jesus properly comfort and succor us? Is
it just through working at empathy? Doesn’t that severely limit him? - Do we believe that same limitation extends to God?
- Is Jesus godlike? How far does that extend?
It seems that there are two, incompatible positions:
- Jesus experienced all things and he is fully able to understand and empathize with all
experiences, including all that being both genders entails. If so, gender seems to be
unimportant to exaltation (unless, of course, the Church no longer holds the idea that
exalted beings are like God). - There is some limitation to Jesus’ ability to understand our experiences, so he only
understands what it is like to be a marginal, male, Jew in 1st century Palestine, thus having
both genders represented in the afterlife is critical to obtaining godhood. A male exalted
being requires a female exalted being in order to, together, be like God. But if we’re limiting
things at gender, don’t we also require someone in that relationship who has experienced
every possible permutation of experience in order to overcome our limitations? Is that what
polygamy is for? [Just kidding!]
So, it seems to me that our understanding of eternal gender has implications for our understanding
of God, and the two seem to be at odds with one another in the current theology generally accepted
within the Church.
As for me, I subscribe to the idea that Jesus, either at Gethsemane or via the Holy Spirit, understands
all things and is fully capable of succoring/understanding all people, which, to me, implies that
gender is not essential to eternity. I would love to hear your thoughts on this conundrum and why, if
you so believe, I am wrong.
- How does Jesus (or God even) adequately succor all people?
- What are the limits, if any, for Jesus (or God) to be able to do so?
- Is there some limitation upon Jesus that is not imposed upon God? What are the implications of such
limits? - How does this affect the concept of eternal gender and why is it (or isn’t it) necessary?
- What are the implications for eternal marriage?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
This takes me back to those old RS manuals before we a went over to “Teachings of the Presidents..”. I was frequently involved in robust discussions about how actually Jesus was the most compassionate etc person who has ever lived, and he was a man!
All those gender essentialist quotes (most frequently from men) in the manuals about women’s natural/innate god-given gifts would drive me wild, not least because they weren’t my gifts. T he teachings series might have a lot of problems, but for me they came as a relief from all the gender essentialist nonsense I’d had to put up with week in week out in RS.
I don’t think it’s a problem at all. Jesus took on Himself the effects of the limitations of mortality. It’s a limited scope, to those who are part of this world and submit to Him as their Lord. It doesn’t apply to those who did not accept this mortality, nor to those who are not part of “his people”.
A fair comparison that occurred to me is High School. To the system, it doesn’t really matter your gender. You do the best you can with what time you have there, learning and growing. Graduation depends on your acceptance of the system being able to judge your worthiness to graduate. I think in the previous life, gender mattered even less than it does now. But in the next life, it will matter even more. Some never have a relationship in High School, some marry their High School love, and some have a relationship that lasts just as long as High School, but all will be able to find their eternal mate(s) from the array of people who have graduated from all High Schools in all graduating years.
The creation of worlds and spirit children requires one of each gender. No idea why, but it does. It’s like we’re going through High School with no education on how to create children but also no ability to do so. Maybe mortal bodies get in the way. I don’t believe it will be anything like mortal creation. But I digress.
I don’t think it mattered the gender of Christ (as I don’t think it mattered what choice Adam and Eve made). Imagine the differences if we lived on a world where the Christ was female. Aside from affinities of how Christ is like us, the job is the same, to be the God of that world and to take on the infirmities of those who accept it.
I don’t believe in an omniscient God, and our theology is divided on this one. We say God is an exalted human, but then sometimes we say he’s all-knowing. I remember as a missionary thinking “No, we don’t believe that” when the first discussion said God was all knowing. That’s what other faiths believe. We preach “exalted man.” But then the church has begun to dial back on that in recent years, making becoming a “god” something more akin to strumming a harp on a cloud. I blame Prop 8. Lie down with evangelicals, get evangelical doctrine. The act of the atonement was when Jesus was in the process of becoming a God, right? Not that he was fully God before that. Well, that is one interpretation anyway. The ultimate question underlying this is how human vs. how divine Jesus was.
Yet another problem is that the phrase “sweat great drops of blood” is hotly disputed. In the Bible, it only appears in Luke, but in the LDS church we have it popping up again in the D&C, doubling down on it. The problem is that it is not found in the earliest manuscripts of Luke that we have found. Some scholars, including Bart Ehrman, believe that a scribe inserted it during the 2nd century to combat doceticism (people who believed Jesus was ONLY divine, not human at all), and that having him sweat blood demonstrated that he was also human and suffered as a human. They cite as evidence that it’s not found elsewhere, not found in earlier texts, and it breaks the chiasmus of the verse it’s in. But the problem is that there it is in our own D&C, doubling down on the idea that it belongs and is theologically important, and it lends itself to the opposite interpretation–that only a God could bear that much physical suffering. So much for that theoretical scribe’s anti-doceticism! Ehrman’s case isn’t open and shut, although it’s plausible.
One problem I have with the idea of Jesus literally feeling all the feels is that some things are mutually exclusive: the pain of infertility vs. the pain of childbirth for example. I kind of think of pain as a big bucket of physical unpleasantness that is not unique to what causes it. Bodies hurt sometimes. Maybe his whole body hurt all over to a godly level, and also his heart hurt to godly sorrow. I just don’t take it too literally or specifically.
As for the gender essentialism we hear at church, 90% of it is unscientific crap. Men of a certain era in particular like to imagine that women are completely different creatures from them, but there is no “female brain” vs. “male brain.” Yes, our reproductive organs may differ, but the rest of our minds are pretty much homo sapien brains encased in human bodies. We are all more than the product of our reproductive organs.
I grew up interpreting these verses very similarly to the OP. I sincerely believed that in Christ all labels are swallowed up.
I had a much different reaction reading them today. I think my perspective shifted, in part, because I read this in the head space of critiquing gender essentialism, and it was suddenly heartbreakingly clear how a gender essentialist gospel interprets those verses and the idea of exaltation. According to the theology in our temples, men become gods and women become their accessories (in the handbag sense more than the criminal sense). Masculinity is an integral part of godhood, so understanding all permutations of the male experience is necessary, but the female experience is superfluous.
This is why we have to excise gender essentialism from our doctrine — because when general essentialism and the infinite Atonement of Christ himself are at odds in Mormonism, Mormonism chooses gender. Christ becomes a vehicle for achieving a 1950s family and not vice versa.
As recently as May, I heard over the pulpit a speaker claiming that women are already saviors through childbirth and therefore don’t need to atone to become Gods as men do. I mean, really! Don’t we all love the idea that women don’t have to do anything because we’re just so doggone special? But I see this for what it is–a placating head-pat to sideline women.
This is an outstanding post. Interestingly, I’ve just been talking with my students about how Renaissance artists often feminized Jesus (see Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus (London), e.g.) and so your post is timely for me. I do think that Elizabeth has a point about Mormonism making the wrong choice and I believe that’s in part because of things like correlation and the culture wars. I think it’s quite obvious that while we’ve been busy making sure that young women believe themselves to be chewed gum if they act less than chastely and that young men know that they need to choose a good homemaker for a partner, the core teachings of Christ have simply fallen by the wayside. I can’t remember, for instance, the last time I heard a talk that truly focused on Christ, whether his doctrine, a parable, whatever. I think we’ve become a church of shame rather than a church of love and I think our outmoded (and as hawk points out, simply wrong) notions of gender essentialism have driven much of what we’ve become, including our rhetoric of shame.
It’s my own belief that Christ is able to feel everything that we feel and experienced every emotion that we experience. I don’t know how I believe that, but I tend to see Christ as the great empathizer more than anything else, which I suppose means that that’s why I believe the POX, stances against gay marriage, pro-polygamy stances and even just pro-marriage stances (what’s really “wrong” with being single? Why on earth would a loving god punish people who’d prefer that state to a wedded one?) are not of Christ, but of humanity. We (humans), have a long history of name-dropping God/Christ as a way to enact and legitimate our own prejudices and we are extremely reluctant to let those prejudices go once we feel they’ve been ratified by God. So no, I don’t believe traditional gender binaries are necessary to be maintained if one has any hope of exaltation. I just don’t believe it. It does, as you point out, seem to fly in the face of Christ being able to understand and empathize with all human experience/emotions. There are laws/commandments against certain behaviors, yes. But there is also the greatest commandment, to love and to gather to ourselves and create a loving, kind and nurturing community. And a loving, kind and nurturing community sadly hasn’t been truly in evidence in any ward or branch I’ve ever been in.
Angela, you mentioned that you think Jesus’ heart “hurt to godly sorrow.” Do you mind defining that a bit more? What does it mean?
Human emotions are universal even though our experiences are not the same. This is were empathy comes in. Christ could understand all people’s struggles by being from an outcast group in a marginalized religion in one of the worst times in human history. He had experienced all the ranges of emotion while on Earth at an extreme level. Being crucified on a cross certainly makes him able to understand the physical trials of childbirth.
Personally, I find a non-descript, genderless God both illogical and abhorrent. I like being a woman and would like to continue to be one forever. There is no need for me to give up this part of me to be equal. We can still have differences and treat others like full human beings. Isn’t this the example Christ was setting for us?
The concept of an anonymous, formless god that just is gets many non-religious people riled up for good reason. It doesn’t make sense. But, a being that through a serious of stages (including a mortal life) gain enough knowledge to create a universe with life does make sense. Obviously, there is a reason for Earth and for life in general. Obviously, the knowledge we gain here personally and collectively lead somewhere…eventual exaltation. Family and gender definitely tie into this or why else have them?
While it makes intellectual sense, I think the idea that Jesus would understand what it’s like to be gay, many people would find offensive. Isn’t that what people found offensive with the movie, The Last Temptation?
Cody: Well, I got stung by a scorpion once, and that hurt like a mother. So, something a little worse than that?
My point is that you don’t have to experience every single circumstance (i.e. being gay) to have a full understanding and therefore compassion for others.
I think I fall more in line with Brother Sky’s “great empathizer” thinking. Saying Christ was incapable of feeling everything is like saying Heavenly Father (or Heavenly Mother) or the Holy Ghost is incapable of it as well. To me, it’s a godhood thing unrelated to gender. Praying to a God who doesn’t understand every particular of what a person is going through is unappealing.
“Isn’t that what people found offensive with the movie, The Last Temptation?” I think Mormons found it offensive that it was rated R. Evangelicals might have disliked the humanizing of Jesus. And then some might not like the Green Goblin playing Christ.
The best way to understand Godliness and the atonement is to go to the source–the scriptures. Why go to other sources when the primary sources are available?
Mosiah 4:9 is easy to understand.
Believe in God; believe that he is, and that he created all things, both in heaven and in earth; believe that he has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth; believe that man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend.
2 Nephi 9:20
For he knoweth all things, and there is not anything save he knows it.
Regarding the atonement: D&C 88:6
He that ascended up on high, as also he descended below all things, in that he comprehended all things, that he might be in all and through all things, the light of truth;
These verses are clear. There is anything God doesn’t know or hasn’t experienced. There are not lose ends.
Some Gnostic thinkers felt that Christ experienced everything because in the garden he named and encompassed all the ills of the world as embodied in the evil eons or demons and by mastering them, suffered each of them, overcame them and knew them at an essential level.
An interesting theology there.
Ever since I learned that slime molds have over 40 genders, I haven’t looked at things quite the same way.
I think gender is essential, but in a slime mold sense, that was is essential is that we are different, but not the nature of the differences, which vary wildly.
My two bits.
In my experience, the more someone harps on about how the genders are different, the more they see each gender as a mass of homogenous people. And the less likely they are to understand anything about reproductive biology, whether it’s intersex humans or gender diversity and expression in the rest of the animal kingdom.
I also feel that Mormon Jesus doesn’t know anything about what it like to be transgender, because I can count on one hand the number of Mormons I know of who do. Mormonism has nothing, literally nothing, that speaks to my experience as a trans woman or even acknowledges that I exist. And that my needs, concerns, and experiences are very different, from those of a white Mormon man who was assigned male at birth and has never considered stabbing himself in the heart because of that.
The god who saved me from that fate is the diametrical opposite of the Mormon church god of shame.
I remember in a religion class at BYU George Pace gave a very specific example of a couple knocking boots at lovers’ lane, and that the atonement meant the lovers would have to watch that event reenacted with Jesus at their side, knowing the pain it has cost Him during the atonement. I’m not really sure that was doctrine, but it was his perspective.
Some very strange euphemism I’m assuming hawkgrrrl…
So basically, extrapolating, we’re all of us going to have to replay pretty much everything we ever did wrong with Christ at our sides? Because that’s going to take a very long time… Are we to assume the process has already started for those now deceased? Or is time immaterial?
A typical CES soundbite, short on source material…
Hawk, that scenario doesn’t make sense to me. Maybe the assumption is that neither of the lovers repented in this life? Because if they had, God has promised he’d forgive and forget the infraction. Reliving the sin in front of God would be painful, but the scriptures always phrase it in terms of recognizing our own unworthiness or uncleanness before a divine being – NOT focusing on the guilt of what our actions did to Jesus. I balk at attempts to inspire goodness by making them focus on the pain they caused Jesus – “You just made Jesus cry.” It reminds me of a manipulative mother who goes into the story of the hard delivery and all the work she did to raise her child when that child acts in a way she doesn’t like.
Jewelfox, thanks for your comment, which I think strikes to the heart of the matter. So long as the LDS Church insists on fixed, eternal genders, they are limiting God and His Son.
I see two, incompatible theologies. Either Jesus knows all, thus rendering gender distinctions irrelevant, or gender distinction is relevant and Jesus (as male) is somehow limited in his understanding and experience. Church leaders, by focusing on gender, have thus limited God’s nature in their theology. They seem to prefer a limited God so as to continue fighting the Culture Wars.
Hedgehog and Mary Ann: Oh, I totally agree with you that his scenario was on some very theologically shaky ground. It doesn’t take a lot of thinking about it to realize that it doesn’t really make sense. I blame the proliferation of VCRs in the 1980s. We were all obsessed with the idea that you could watch and rewatch recordings. Of course, nowadays maybe BYU professors are talking about having to binge-watch your sins on Netflix while baby Jesus cries. Who knows?
Point number 1 in the OP states that Jesus experiencing all things that mortal man and woman can implies a lack of eternal gender. I think that the mainstream answer would be that the nature of the atonement is infinite and that it covers space, time, and gender. The atonement does not replace these things, but allows human progression within these. The failings and shortcomings of all people can be encompassed by the Savior. I would be loathe to put a limit on the efficacy of the atonement of our Lord.
el oso said: “I think that the mainstream answer would be that the nature of the atonement is infinite and that it covers space, time, and gender. The atonement does not replace these things, but allows human progression within these.”
I think you are correctly stating the mainstream view, but if Jesus’ atonement covers space, time and gender, then it covers a woman and lets her progress within that space, right? If so, then does it also reason that the same atonement covers a man to the same degree? Doesn’t it then stand to reason that Jesus perfectly understands both genders? If so, what is the relevance of eternal gender?
Either gender is eternally relevant or the atonement is infinite. We must pick one.
“Doesn’t it then stand to reason that Jesus perfectly understands both genders? If so, what is the relevance of eternal gender?” So if you understand all genders, suddenly it makes your own preferred gender expression meaningless? That line of logic doesn’t make sense to me.
[QUOTE]
“Doesn’t it then stand to reason that Jesus perfectly understands both genders? If so, what is the relevance of eternal gender?” So if you understand all genders, suddenly it makes your own preferred gender expression meaningless? That line of logic doesn’t make sense to me.
[/QUOTE]
I thought the same thing.
Understanding things doesn’t make them irrelevant in my world.
Mary Ann and Stephen, perhaps the word “irrelevant” is too strong, however if one were to accept the theory that Jesus knows perfectly what it means to be either gender, then what is the relevance of his own gender? At what point does his “maleness” become no more meaningful than his “femaleness”?
I think the place where Cody’s argument makes the most sense is in proxy ordinances. Only women can stand in for women and only men can stand in for men. Further I’ve very often heard the argument that the temple covenants that are problematic to women aren’t really for women/men, but instead for the church/Christ. When probed further about why we split it by women/men if the symbols have nothing to do with gender I have often been told that only men can stand in for the savior since he was a man. I have also heard this argument often regarding the priesthood. Only men can have the priesthood because they are standing in for Christ when performing priesthood functions. Women, because they are women, cannot stand in for Christ who was a man. Cody’s argument I think makes all of these claims illogical. If Christ can stand in for both women and men, then clearly there is no eternal law stating that the “stand in” must be the same gender. So why can’t women stand in for Christ? Why can’t proxy ordinances be done by someone of a different gender?
Baptisms for the Dead under JS were done by different genders. BY changed it once they were all in Utah. I don’t know about temple ordinances though.
“Either gender is eternally relevant or the atonement is infinite. We must pick one.”
The atonement being infinite doesn’t make gender eternally irrelevant. It just means that the Atonement could have been done by any gender and applies to all gender. Just because gender is absolutely relevant for a few things doesn’t mean it’s absolutely relevant for everything. That’s the thinking that gets people thinking that since gender is required for one thing (you need one of each kind of gamete to create a human), that it’s applicable to every thing.
EBK, the idea that men have priesthood because Christ is male is pure speculation.
Cody, “At what point does his “maleness” become no more meaningful than his “femaleness”?” You are suggesting that him understanding what it is to be female makes him, in a sense, female. That’s the premise I reject. Heavenly Mother understands the experiences of her sons without being male. Heavenly Father understands the experiences of his daughters without being female. I see Christ the same way – that’s why I say it’s a godhood thing.
Mary Ann, I apologize but that doesn’t make sense to me. If, as you say, Heavenly Mother understands the experiences of her sons without being male, and Heavenly Father understands the experiences of his daughters without being female, of what relevance is the gender of HF and HM? I fail to see why their gender matters at all.
“I fail to see why their gender matters at all.”
I’m not sure I like this answer, but the obvious one is procreation.
Frank Pellett
gender eternally irrelevant. It just means that the Atonement could have been done by any gender and applies to all gender.
Are you kidding? No one but Christ was qualified to work out the Atonement.
Maelstrom – Nope, not kidding. In short, the Endowment says that the Adam & Eve setup happened on other worlds, where they were given their choice, eventually fell, and were provided a savior. To me, that means there is one per world. Since the atonement is genderless, it makes sense to me that half of those who became Christ on their world were female.
Cody, “I fail to see why their gender matters at all.” Right. Gender in a god does not limit whether or not he (or she) can empathize with their kids. Women in this church pray to HF every day with the expectation that he knows what they are going through. Why would a God choose to be a particular gender? It could be procreation, but it also could be just one of the many ways that individual is unique. What I’m saying is Christ’s ability (or disability) to understand female experiences does not necessarily put a wrench in the idea of eternal gender identity.
Only a Sith deals in absolutes.
But see http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jnr.v95.1-2/issuetoc, with many, many dozens of peer-reviewed articles demonstrating to the contrary.
Even the NIH disagrees with you; since early 2016 , sex must be accounted for as a biological variable in any NIH-funded study. https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-15-102.html
it’s still a series of tubes:
“Only a Sith deals in absolutes.”
Isn’t that, itself, an absolute? 😉
The heart of the question seems to be whether or not someone (or a God) can truly understand something if they have not experienced it themselves. I wonder about this question within the context of the Garden of Eden and the Trees.
A year or two ago I went to Sunstone Borderlands and heard Patrick Mason, Mica, & Samy Galvez speak. Samy was about as a gay man he came to understand that the atonement was for queers, too. That it was a queer atonement – all inclusive. That Christ knew what it was like growing up to be filled w self-loathing/suicidal bc of ones queerness. It was really powerful for me.
I’ve had quite the journey as I’ve pondered on the eternal nature of sex/gender. One, I don’t believe that in our state as intelligences before we were “organized” into spirits that there were blue and pink intelligences. This seems to jam with the fact that my brain and parts of my testimony are stereotypically masculine. I just am me, an individual. My body for the most part feels hetero-female, but my spirit? it’s just my brain & personality. Also part of my current sense of self comes from de-essentializing motherhood from womanhood (even though I am a mother.). What is a woman? whatever I am. So what is the purpose of eternal gender?? Do people think eternal women’s bodies are really popping out millions of spirits the way we do here? Esp when the scriptures describe creating spirits as “organizing” ? In addition it feels like our leaders return to belief in Heavenly Parents has an underlying purpose to reinforce heteronormativity. Essentially I’ve found myself more comfortable embracing agnosticism on the matter (eternal nature of Gods/gender): I don’t believe any human can fully understand of grasp the nature of God or eternity. I can’t know for certain and neither can anyone else.
Frank
The only atonement we know of is Christ and it seems to me that that’s all that should concern us. Too many members are listening to the politically correct voices of this world.
Maelstrom – “A Bible, we have got a Bible, and we need no more Bible”
to which I say
“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free”
The last thing we need for understanding the world(s) around us is to decide that what little we know is “all that should concern us”. It’s not “political correctness”, but trying to understand even a tiny part of the vastness of what we’ll need to become like our Heavenly Parents.
Another test post from work