to you, perhaps, but that is just an opinion, and you cannot quote Christ saying it, He called Himself Son of Man, etc., so while that is the cover story, it is not "fruit," because Jesus' divinity is what it is regardless of your belief, right. "Fruit" is the produce of the doctrine; what does the doctrine produce iow. And you already said it, @ "it speaks." It is a speech, made by some guys, not Scripture. What is the fruit of this speech? But division?
So regardless of the validity of the doctrine--which is questionable--in practice it is revealed as a method to discredit other interpretations, and a way to insist that (your) understanding of Jesus as God be enforced. It is a way to justify drone-bombing Muslims, that goes hand in hand with the doctrine of Original Sin (as opposed to the Law of sin and death) to make it ok for "Christians," who anyone must admit runs the world right now, to oppress everyone else.
- "The harm that has been done to souls during the centuries of Christianity, first by the literal interpretation of the story of Adam, and then by the confusion of this myth, treated as history, with later speculations, principally Augustinian, about Original Sin, will never be adequately told."
Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil
- "Throughout Christian history the conviction that man's birthright is sin has encouraged an unrealistic acceptance of remediable social evils, or even a callousness about human suffering. It helps to explain the easy acceptance of slavery and serfdom, and a record of religious atrocity unmatched by any other religion."
- Professor Herbert J. Muller