WASHINGTON (BP) — Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler called on the audience at the National Conservatism Conference to embrace the restraints imposed by reality.

“The bottom line is that we have a place to stand. We’re not standing on nothing. … And that something primarily, is, first of all, not what we have built, but what we have been given,” Mohler told the group.

Mohler was among dozens of speakers at the three-day conference. He argued that even conservatives need to embrace the ontological and teleological truths of the universe.

“Creation order realities include marriage and family and eventually tribe and nation,” he said, “Ontological categories are necessary in order to ground human dignity, human identity, even again, male and female, man and woman.”

In the speech, lasting around 20 minutes, Mohler said the truth of reality points to a “foundational reality beneath,” which points to principles and vision for human life.

If there is no reality, Mohler said, “There are no fixed truths and no fixed realities, and everything is plastic right down to human nature.”

He connected the dots of ontology (the nature of being) to teleology (the purpose of being), which he referred to as a “final resting point.

“When I speak of ontology, I’m speaking about Genesis 1. The Creator’s creation out of nothing of the entire cosmos, this planet, this earth. Human beings … made in God’s image,” he said.

“I speak for the fact that male and female are ontological realities.”

Denial of this truth — that there are limitations to the created order — explains why some are willing to push the boundaries of humanity itself, Mohler said.

“It really explains that their math requires the plus sign after LGBTQ. It’s just ever-unfolding,” he said.

Mohler delivered his remarks Sept. 3. Hours earlier, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., told the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations “that he was appalled by and scared by one of the (Trump) nominees” assuming that individual rights are given by God, Mohler paraphrased.

Kaine, according to Mohler, went on to say he was “absolutely scared by a notion of human rights that did not ground those rights in government and in law.”

The seminary president said his personal foundation rests on transcendent truth based on theism, not in government, as he pointed to the words of the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”

He told the crowd this foundation is stronger than conservatism alone.

“It’s (conservatism void of eternal truth) no match for the whirlwinds of the left, but a conservatism that acknowledges eternal truths, fixed and revealed by a transcendent God, can survive, has survived, will survive. We honor conservative principles, not just because they are ours, but because we believe they’re true,” he said.

He said this theistic foundation proves to be stronger when it comes to human dignity and human rights than something humans have created for themselves.

“We’re not talking about contrivances that have been developed in order to meet our expectation and demands and our definition of liberty and personal autonomy and freedom,” he said.

Instead, an ontological and teleological view of the world grounds itself in reality, Mohler said.

“We’re here because actually we do affirm that being is real,” he said. “Truth is real. Beauty is real. Good is real. Love is real. Human dignity is real. Moral truth is real. Male and female: real. The family: real. Mother and father: real. Sons and daughters: real. Principles based upon truth revealed in creation and revealed in God’s law: real. The nation: real. …

“We actually believe that truth is true. And that, brothers and sisters, constrains us. But boy does it liberate us.”

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Brandon Porter serves as vice president for communications at the SBC Executive Committee.)