A former member of my (pre-retirement) church would sometimes write a lengthy critique of a sermon or parish magazine article and send it to me for comment. It was rather gratifying to realise that at least one person had actually listened to what I said, so I would do my best to respond, and over the years an irregular correspondence built up.
In the final couple of years before my retirement the topic was almost invariably around issues of sexuality and gender. I found this rather depressing, and still do. The Church of England has recently published (another) resource for discussion, Living in Love and Faith, the result of several years of wrestling with a topic which for most people is pretty much settled. From outside, the church seems obsessed with sex, and claiming the authority to regulate it for its members. We have to wait and see what will come of LLF but I hold out no great hope. Positions are entrenched. The Bishop of Blackburn, for instance, seems to think it’s a great idea as long as it results in affirmation of his conservative position. I doubt that many holders of a liberal stance feel more flexible.
My friend’s other, and related, issue was about what in evangelical circles is known as “male headship” - in short, the notion that leadership in church and marriage belongs essentially to the male partner (though partner is, obviously, not quite the right word).
These issues have become such a touchstone of orthodoxy in some circles that I find I’m writing as a former evangelical. I would prefer to say, “As an evangelical,” but that’s difficult to do. More than one evangelical friend has informed me that my notion of my brand of Christianity is outdated. I still cling to the idea that concepts like the primacy of grace, justification by faith and the authority of scripture are what matters. However, I find that evangelicalism is now about with whom it is OK to have sex, and whether I subscribe to the correct tradition of interpretation of a few short passages of the Bible - a tradition that I find has little to commend it.
Anyway, in the course of our correspondence, I suggested that Jesus’ statement that false prophets can be known by their fruit might well be a good way of judging the rightness of doctrines. I was immediately misunderstood, and it was pointed out that no doubt LGBTQI+ people (and women) could well be blessed in their ministry, but that did not mean their lifestyle, orientation or whatever was other than sinful. After all, God sends his rain on the just and the unjust. And indeed, if I had been arguing that, say, gay priests are fine because many do a good job (which is true, by the way) I would have been on a sticky wicket. Success, however one may measure it, is not necessarily an indicator either of doctrinal soundness or moral rectitude.
On the other hand, Jesus presumably meant something by his saying. Look at the passage, from Matthew 7.15-20.
15 ‘Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? 17 In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus you will know them by their fruits. (New Revised Standard Version. See also Luke 6.43-45)
Jesus seems to be saying here that what the false prophets produce is undesirable. He doesn’t say what it is, whether actions or teaching, but the result is apparently something harmful. The false prophets are apparently out for what they can get – like wolves looking for prey. The product of this behaviour is bad fruit, or “evil” fruit as the Greek would have it. What these people teach, what they offer to the church, has bad results.
The Didache, a handbook for Christian faith and living which probably comes from around the same time and place as Matthew’s gospel, says that prophets should be judged on whether they do indeed seek to profit from their ministry (Didache 11.7-12). In the New Testament, there’s a similar standard of judgement in the parallel passage from Luke 6.45.
Elsewhere, it is the doctrinal content which gives the game away: St. Paul tells the Corinthians that the acid test of true prophecy is whether it acknowledges that Jesus is Lord (1 Corinthians 12.1-3) while the writer of 1 John 4.2 sees acceptance of the incarnation as vital.
It seems to me, then, that it might be quite reasonable to put these two ideas together. Perhaps the test of a good (we evangelical types used to say “sound”) teaching is what it results in. For instance, in Genesis 9.25, Noah curses Canaan, the son of Ham, for Ham’s impropriety, and condemns him/his descendants to be the slaves of his uncle Shem (and/or his descendants). From this it has been argued that the curse on one child of Ham applies to all his children, who might be interpreted as including the ancestors of Africans. It follows that Africans are condemned by God himself to be fit for slavery, and it becomes OK to kidnap them and transport them in vast numbers to be slaves in New World colonies. This, I would argue, is a poor outcome from a doctrine, and casts a question over whether the doctrine has got it right. Most Christians today would agree with that, I think.
Or again, the Bible is quite (well, Matthew’s gospel is) clear that the crowd which brought Jesus to Pilate were happy to take responsibility for the saviour’s death, and to pass that guilt on to their descendants (Matthew 27.25). This led to the doctrine that Jews as a whole were guilty of the sin of "deicide" and were worthy of some sort of continual punishment – at least until its repudiation in the twentieth century.
I do not claim that the African slave trade depended on the doctrine of Noah’s curse – but the doctrine certainly provided a convenient pretext, and perhaps impetus, to a financially lucrative aspect of imperialism which brought misery to millions. Meanwhile, the collective guilt of the Jews provided an excuse and impetus for the persecution and exploitation of Jews which found its culmination in the horrors of Nazism.
So, in dialogue with my friend from church, I suggested, and still suggest, that it is worth looking at the outcome of our doctrines in other areas, such as issues of gender and identity.
In the wake of the dreadful murder of Sarah Everard, the societal gulf between men and women in the UK (and, of course, world-wide) has once again been highlighted. Men are still better paid, more likely to rise in their professions, and to see public spaces and other places of gathering as fundamentally male possessions. Women continue to experience a day to day low level harassment which is damaging to self-esteem and mental health. Against this background, many Christians still promote a theology of so-called “complementarity” which majors on a perceived difference of calling and function between men and women. At its core lies an issue of authority. Men have it. Women, not so much.
I do not purely blame Christian doctrines of wifely submission, male headship, or innate female weakness for millennia of patriarchy. Those doctrines grew out of the prevailing patriarchal culture, but at the same time, as Christianity gained influence, they helped to reinforce it. And centuries of oppression of women, domestic and societal abuse and disempowering of women are have surely been reinforced by it.
I submit that this doctrinal approach ultimately leads to suffering, injustice, inequality, oppression and death. Ergo, it is not good theology.
For LGBTQI+ people the case is even clearer. In our culture there is a long history of persecution, oppression and denigration of gay people. I am of a generation which learnt about homosexuality through school playground jokes and whispers about “queers” while the skinheads of my youth entertained themselves with gaybashing. Transgender and intersex people were essentially unheard of.
Our society has moved a long way since my schooldays, with the decriminalising of gay sex and the eventual acceptance of marriage for people of the same gender, though it seems that we are currently seeing a widespread attack on trans people.
The church, however, has hardly moved at all. There are still many who, armed with half a dozen contested passages of scripture, oppose gay sex, deny the right of people to express their conviction of their own nature, and claim thereby that they are being faithful to scripture and the Christian tradition. So what has come of that tradition? Where does that doctrine lead us? It seems to me that it leads to persecution, murder, imprisonment and suicide. At its very best it leads to enforced celibacy for those who have no particular charisma for it.
There are gay Christians who are convinced of the rightness of this doctrinal stance and who accept celibacy or heterosexual marriage as a corollary of their desire for faithful discipleship. That’s fine with me, and they have my admiration. They are not, however, a proof of the truth of their doctrine. Their experience is far outweighed by the sense of rejection, frustration and suffering of many other LGBTQI+ people. And that, I think means it is bad theology.
Don’t misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that all doctine must result in happiness and good cheer. It doesn’t. But when it results in near universal misery, I cannot help but think that there is a problem.
So that’s my notion. You will know good doctrine by its fruits, just as you will know good people by theirs.
