The Living God and Our Own Echo

What the Vines–Robertson debate revealed about revelation and moral authority.

Jul 06, 2026

TL;DR: Reading the recent exchange between Matthew Vines and Brandan Robertson convinced me that the real disagreement isn't ultimately about sexuality or queer theory. It's about a much older theological question: Where does moral authority come from? Do we receive Christianity as God's revelation, or do we continually reconstruct it according to our own moral reasoning?

I was reading the online responses and debate after the New York Times published an essay by gay Christian author Matthew Vines titled “I’m Gay, Not Queer. It Matters.” Vines’ article has elicited a significant amount of pushback in both Christian and non-Christian progressive circles. But as I read Vines’ essay and several of the responses to it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something deeper going on beneath the surface than language, inclusion, or social norms.

A brief note: This isn't my attempt to settle the debate over sexuality or queer theology. Others have written far more thoughtfully on those questions than I could. What interested me as I read Matthew Vines and Brandan Robertson wasn't ultimately where they disagreed about sexuality, but why they seemed to disagree so fundamentally in the first place. This essay is an attempt to think through that deeper theological question.

To begin, in the New York Times, Vines briefly reviews the history of marriage equality, his own journey toward accepting his sexuality and reconciling it with his Christian faith, and eventually his marriage to his husband. But as grateful as Vines is for the freedom to marry the person he loves, he argues that the LGBTQ movement has drifted from the message that made marriage equality possible. In particular, he highlights not simply the word queer itself, but the broader assumptions of queer theory, arguing that its anti-normative posture undermines the case that being gay is simply one natural variation of human sexuality deserving the same dignity and legal protections as heterosexuality.1

As I mentioned, the responses were fast and fierce, including one from another notable Christian LGBTQ advocate and progressive pastor, Brandan Robertson, who responded with a few Substack essays of his own, including one titled “How Should I Engage with Traditionalist LGBTQ+ Christians?”—adapted from a chapter of his book Queer & Christian: Reclaiming the Bible, Our Faith, and Our Place at the Table. The problem, he argues, isn’t queer theory. It’s that Christianity itself has long been captive to a moral framework built on patriarchy, hierarchy, and exclusion. Rather than defending existing norms, Christianity should continually question them in pursuit of greater justice and inclusion.

Robertson notes that there are “two of the ways that queer people and our allies can reconcile queer identity with Christianity.”2 The first is what he calls the “apologist-affirmative approach,” which seeks to use the traditional tools of historical criticism to argue that, when we explore the culture, context, history, and language of Scripture, it becomes clear that the Bible says nothing explicitly about loving, same-sex relationships. The second, he says, is a “queer hermeneutic,” which reads the Bible through the lens of a queer person’s experience, seeking to find parallels in the characters of Scripture that help queer people see themselves in the Bible and reclaim their place within the broader Christian tradition.

Robertson then notes a third approach, the “queerly-resistant approach,” which “explicitly uses the tools and methods of modern queer theory to intentionally trouble the texts of Scripture,” exploring the way power emerges within both the Bible and its formation, while encouraging active resistance to texts that promote anti-queer perspectives “without much concern for what the tradition has said or what the historical context suggests.”3

As I read both pieces—and admittedly spent a few hours using ChatGPT as a conversation partner to help clarify my own thinking—I realized they weren’t really arguing about language, inclusion, or even sexual diversity.

They were arguing about revelation.

Or perhaps, more fundamentally:

Where does morality authority come from?

Two very different projects

At first glance, both authors are affirming Christians.

Both affirm LGBTQ inclusion.

Both appeal to Jesus.

Both reject traditional evangelical interpretations of the so-called “clobber passages.”

But beneath those similarities are two very different theological projects.

Vines writes that the campaign for marriage equality succeeded because it presented same-sex relationships as faithful, covenantal relationships consistent with “a core biblical idea about marriage.” His argument isn’t that Christianity needs a new morality. It’s that the church misunderstood the morality it had already received.

Robertson, on the other hand, writes that “the problem wasn’t a disagreement over six verses. It was a broader paradigm.” He argues that the problem is “the entire paradigm of ‘traditional’ or ‘orthodox’ Christianity.” He suggests the goal is to “deconstruct the Bible’s many ways to promote problematic ethics and ideas”4 and argues that much of “traditional Christian” theology has become morally questionable—even toxic. More strikingly still, he goes so far as to suggest that “Christianity today is not reflective of the actual teachings of Christ or the beliefs of the authors of the Bible.”5

To be sure—these are markedly different claims.

Vines is asking whether we’ve misunderstood Christian revelation.

Robertson is asking whether the framework of historic Christianity itself should continue to function as our norm.

The question underneath the question

The more I reflected on these two essays, the more convinced I became that the real disagreement isn’t over queer theory. I mean, it kind of is—but only on the surface. Vines isn’t ultimately arguing against queer theory itself. He’s arguing against the deeper question it raises or unsettles: the question of authority.

Based on my reading, Vines sounds pretty adamant that moral authority comes from God.

Robertson, on the other hand, seems to locate moral authority in our ongoing willingness to question and reconstruct both the Bible and the historic Christian faith.

I think that’s the real question Vines and Robertson are answering differently.

Because I think every moral system eventually has to answer the same question:

Who or what has the authority to define what is true and good?

For Vines, the answer seems relatively straightforward:

God has revealed himself. Scripture, rightly interpreted, remains authoritative.

The Christian tradition, while certainly capable of error, is fundamentally attempting to preserve that revelation.

Our task is to reform ourselves according to what God has already spoken.

Robertson’s project seems different.

He rightly points to history, psychology, lived experience, marginalized voices, and the pursuit of justice as essential conversation partners for theology. But as I read him, I found myself asking a different question:

What is the thing that doesn’t get rethought?

If orthodoxy can be reconstructed, if the creeds can be questioned, and if traditional doctrine can be revised, what remains the final authority?

Reading Robertson, I couldn’t escape the question of whether our own moral discernment has become that final authority.

That isn’t meant as a criticism so much as the question I found myself unable to shake.

Of course, Andrew Root

As all of this was bouncing around in my head, I came back, of course, to theologian Andrew Root, especially his book Churches and the Crisis of Decline.

Reading back through my highlights, several passages suddenly seemed remarkably relevant.

“To find God, if it is the wholly other God we seek, begins with the confession that we have no way of knowing this God.”6

Then, only a few pages later:

“Only in confessing that we have no way to find God are we assured that we seek God and not just our own echo.”7

Root is, of course, deeply influenced by Karl Barth, especially in this book. At the heart of Barth’s theology is the conviction that if God is truly God, then we don’t begin with ourselves. We don’t begin with our moral intuitions. We don’t begin with our politics. We don’t even begin with our experiences.

We begin with the confession that if we are to know God at all, God must first make himself known.

Christianity begins not with discovery, but with revelation. That’s foundational Barth.

And that struck me as the deepest difference between Vines and Robertson.

Vines begins by asking, What has God revealed?

Robertson seems to begin by asking, What best promotes justice, liberation, and flourishing?

Those aren’t the same question.

Our own echo

Another Root passage sharpened the point even further.

“Religion does not want a living God—who is alive in speaking both a yes and a no—it wants an object to use for its own individual meaning making.”8

Or, as he puts it in his more recent book Baal and the Gods of More:

“So many... Protestant leaders today think the Word is a fine idea but not something that can save us.”9

Quotes like these are why I can’t stop reading Root.

Because at the heart of this issue isn’t language, inclusion, or sexual ethics. It’s a much deeper question:

Where does truth come from? Us, or God?

And, to be sure, this isn’t simply a temptation for progressive Christians. It’s a temptation for all of us.

The “God” of MAGA politics doesn’t want a living God who acts and speaks. It wants an object that blesses nationalism, capitalism, or its preferred political vision.

Likewise, my concern is that some forms of progressive theology risk reducing Jesus to just another marginalized voice—someone we admire, appreciate, and emulate, but no longer the living Lord whom we worship and who speaks with authority into our lives.

In both cases, Jesus exists not to confront us, forgive us, and save us, but simply to affirm and inspire us.

Root’s point—and Barth’s before him—is that the living God refuses to become our projection.

As a slight aside, I also think of another Root passage:

“Modern theologies that concede to the immanent frame’s planting of God in religion tend toward a theology without the church. For Barth, attending to a God who is God is impossible outside the church. The church is the context for knowing and reflecting on a God who acts as God.”

If our own moral discernment becomes the final authority, then it’s not hard to see why the church eventually becomes unnecessary. While I’ve been critical in the past of the ways progressive Christianity can make church feel optional, conservative Christianity can do precisely the same thing.

But Christianity has never been merely an individual search for meaning.

The church is a people continually gathered around a God who still acts, still speaks, and still surprises us.

A living God

So, for all the disagreement and dissension surrounding the words gay and queer, I don’t think this is ultimately an essay about language, inclusion, or even sexual ethics.

Rather, I think those debates expose a much deeper theological question:

Where does moral authority come from?

Or perhaps even more fundamentally:

What has the authority to tell us we’re wrong?

Is Christianity something we receive as God’s self-disclosure, continually reforming ourselves in light of it?

Or is Christianity something we continually reconstruct according to our best moral reasoning?

I find myself much closer to Vines—not because I agree with everything he writes, nor because I think his essay settles the debate—but because I still believe Christianity begins with a God who acts before we do.

A God who reveals himself before we discover him.

A God who sometimes says “yes.”

And sometimes says “no.”

If Christianity loses that God, I worry we’re left with something far less demanding—and far less interesting.

Not the living God.

Only our own echo.

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