Gay & Christian, No Contradiction
Robertson, Brandan. Gay & Christian, No Contradiction. Morrisville, NC: Lulu, 2017. 56 pages. $5.24. ISBN: 9781387057573.
Reviewed by: Anonymous
Brandan Robertson’s book entitled Gay & Christian, No Contradiction offers a brief introduction into one way of reconciling Christian faith and LGBTQ+ identity. Many books on the topic focus on the “clobber passages,” five passages of Scripture that have been used against LGBTQ+ people throughout history. But Robertson thinks that these texts do not provide a good entry point into the conversation about Christian faith and LGBTQ+ identity because their meanings are unclear and the cultural assumptions of their authors are drastically different from readers today. So instead of starting there, Robertson starts with the teachings of Jesus. He explains that Jesus’ core message was the arrival of the kingdom of God. But Jesus didn’t just teach that God’s kingdom has arrived in its fullness; his parables reveal that God’s kingdom unfolds progressively over time. This idea of “progressive revelation”—that God chooses to reveal God’s truth over time—is the way Robertson reconciles Christian faith and LGBTQ+ identity. In regard to Scripture, progressive revelation means that there are two movements happening in the Bible: first, a movement toward lived experience becoming a valid reason to change one’s mind about old truths; and second, a movement toward the full acceptance of LGBTQ+ people. Robertson relies especially on the first movement to say that the “witness” of LGBTQ+ Christians—their experiences of faithful living—demonstrates that the Spirit of God has moved toward inclusion.
I want to affirm Robertson’s pivot from the clobber passages toward the life and teachings of Jesus. As he points out, it doesn’t particularly matter whether we can be sure what these passages might mean. The distance between our world and the world(s) of the Bible raises critical questions about how much authority these texts have in determining a sexual ethic, and these questions are not easily answered. However, grounding the conversation in the person of Jesus allows us to start the conversation by agreeing on a hermeneutic, a principle of interpretation that will not only guide our reading of Scripture but also the way we “read” our lives and the lives of LGBTQ+ people. I also affirm the way Robertson advocates for experience as a legitimate form of evidence. He points to Peter’s experience of his vision (Acts 10) and also to his experience of seeing Gentiles proclaim Christ (Acts 11) as the primary reasons for the early church’s endorsement of the mission to the Gentiles. Based on this narrative, Robertson suggests that we can trust the experiences of faithful LGBTQ+ Christians as valid evidence for God’s full embrace of LGBTQ+ identity. He also points to an interesting demographic shift: while mainline denominations in the United States experience decline, the number of LGBTQ+ Christians in the United States has increased from 42% in 2012 to 50% in 2015! To him, this is evidence of a new direction for the United States church.
But…
However, Robertson’s presentation of Jesus’ teachings is too selective. He focuses exclusively on the teachings of Jesus that seem to support his hermeneutic of progressive revelation. He uses two parables—the parable of the mustard seed (Mt 13:31-32) and the parable of the leaven (Mt 13:33)—and Jesus’ reflections on the law in Matthew 5, where he seems to replace old commandments with new commandments. There are two main problems with this strategy. First, the two parables Robertson uses are not representative of the parables Jesus tells about the kingdom of God. In fact, there are some parables that suggest that God’s kingdom can be grasped immediately, like the parable of the hidden treasure (Mt 13:44) or the parable of the pearl of great price (Mt 13:45-46). But, more importantly, these two parables do not necessarily say anything about progressive revelation. In fact, both parables can be read as statements about the surprising hidden expansiveness of God’s kingdom; progressive revelation isn’t the only way of giving these parables a liberating reading.
The second problem with Robertson’s strategy is his claim that Jesus “cancels out the old versions of Scriptural commandments and gives more progressive commands.” But Jesus himself says that he has not come to cancel (“abolish”) anything, but rather to “fulfill the law” (Mt 5:17). Jesus’ re-interpretations of these old commandments are not cancellations, but distillations: Jesus gets to the heart of what the old commandments are about. Jesus isn’t revealing a new truth, as Robertson’s hermeneutic of progressive revelation claims. He is taking an old truth and re-telling it for his context. Just as with the parables, we do not need to turn to progressive revelation to understand what Jesus is doing. In fact, interpreting these texts through the lens of progressive revelation might limit our ability to imagine what they mean.
An argument against progressive revelation
There are two reasons why I am pushing back against progressive revelation. First, progressive revelation diminishes the revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. The central claim of progressive revelation is that God is always revealing more of God’s truth and God’s kingdom as we move forward in history. But if that is true, then progressive revelation also implies that Jesus is an incomplete revelation of God’s character. This is not only contrary to the biblical witness (John 1:1, 8:19; Col 1:19; Heb 1:3) but also to what Christians have confessed about Jesus throughout history. This has far-reaching implications for Christian theology which Robertson does not address; and even if Robertson believes that Jesus is indeed a complete revelation of God’s character, he needs to explain how Jesus’ life and teachings are somehow exempt from the process of progressive revelation.
The second weakness I find with Robertson’s version of progressive revelation is that it implies that biblical statements can be “true” at one time and then become “false” or “cancelled” at a later time. If that is the case, then progressive revelation implies that it was once true that LGBTQ+ people were not acceptable to God, but now God has cancelled out that previous truth and replaced it with a full embrace. Robertson doesn’t make this claim, and he would almost certainly deny it, but this is nevertheless one of the unintentional implications of his progressive revelation hermeneutic.
When it comes to reconciling Christian faith and LGBTQ+ identity, I believe that it is important to emphasize that the historical exclusion and mistreatment of LGBTQ+ is not God’s fault. It is the fault of those who have failed to grasp the radical love that has always been the center of God’s character. In fact, the experiences of LGBTQ+ Christians today do not simply reveal a new thing that God is doing. They reveal that LGBTQ+ people have always been fully capable of living faithful and fruitful lives. This truth has never been hidden; the Church has simply missed it.
It’s not so simple
Brevity is not always a good thing. For the non-LGBTQ+ identifying person who is trying to move toward adopting and living out an LGBTQ+-affirming theology, reconciling Christian faith and LGBTQ+ identity is not a simple project, nor is it one that can be accomplished satisfactorily in a brief guide like Robertson’s. His progressive revelation hermeneutic is also a major problem. It is not only questionable as a biblical hermeneutic, but it is also insufficient as a way of understanding God’s attitude toward LGBTQ+ people. As a result, it is hard for me to endorse this book as an effective entry point for someone into the conversation about Christian faith and LGBTQ+ identity. I also want to acknowledge that I read this book from a cisgender heterosexual male perspective, and it also seems that Robertson’s imagined reader is a non-LGBTQ+ identifying Christian. Furthermore, the reasons I find it deficient for a non-LGBTQ+ identifying person—particularly my second critique of progressive revelation—might only be amplified for someone who does identify as LGBTQ+, and therefore I could not recommend this book to them either.
On a personal note, reading this forced me to think about the idea of progressive revelation and its relationship to LGBTQ+ inclusion, which I had not previously considered. It also pressed me to reflect on our desires for quick and easy answers (or brief guides) to difficult questions. Here I turn back to an example that Robertson himself uses—Peter’s vision in Acts 10. Peter saw the sheet descend from heaven not once, but three times before his vision ended; and even after these three times, he still didn’t grasp the meaning of his vision until a few days later when he was in Cornelius’ house. In this story we see not only the validity and significance of experience but also how long it can take for us to understand and internalize an experience. This means that the experiences we draw on in this conversation—whether they are found in books or in our lives—cannot be taken lightly or examined briefly. Perhaps it is in slowing down and taking our time that we will realize what God has been up to all along.