Today's Reading

The Golden Apples of the Hesperides

When a sieve is shaken, the husks appear;
so do one's faults when one speaks.
As the test of what the potter molds is in the furnace,
so in tribulation is the test of the just.
The fruit of a tree shows the care it has had;
so too does one's speech disclose the bent of one's mind.
Praise no one before he speaks,
for it is then that people are tested.

- Sirach 27

Jesus told his disciples a parable,
"Can a blind person guide a blind person?
Will not both fall into a pit?
No disciple is superior to the teacher;
but when fully trained,
every disciple will be like his teacher.
Why do you notice the splinter in your brother's eye,
but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?
How can you say to your brother,
'Brother, let me remove that splinter in your eye,'
when you do not even notice the wooden beam in your own eye?
You hypocrite! Remove the wooden beam from your eye first;
then you will see clearly
to remove the splinter in your brother's eye.
"A good tree does not bear rotten fruit,
nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit.
For every tree is known by its own fruit.
For people do not pick figs from thorn bushes,
nor do they gather grapes from brambles.
A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good,
but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil;
for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks."

- Luke 6


Today’s readings raise an interesting issue.

We often quote the gospel passage “by their fruits you shall know them,” especially in reference to discerning false prophets. We generally interpret this as meaning good deeds. A good guide is known by his good deeds.

But both these passages are actually explicitly saying that one’s fruits are what one says, and not what one does. Words, not deeds.

St. Thomas Aquinas ends up advancing the “deeds” interpretation, but while doing so, he raises a problem with it: fruits imply an end product. Deeds themselves generally bear fruits; so that with this interpretation we are making an infinite regression. It is at best a less than perfect analogy. “It would seem that the fruits of the Holy Ghost, enumerated by the Apostle (Galatians 5:22-23), are not acts. For that which bears fruit, should not itself be called a fruit, else we should go on indefinitely. (Summa Theologiae, First Part of the Second Part, Question 70, Article 1).

And now we see that speech is literally referred to, not deeds.

Now we have a practical problem when we apply this principle to prophets. No doubt this is at least one reason why the “deeds” interpretation has come to be assumed. On what grounds can we declare one prophecy, one speech, morally good, and another morally bad?

Because the one advocates morality, and the next advocates sin?

That seems to make obvious sense. The second reading, if it is taken as a complete and linked passage, suggests that good speech would be speech that justly corrects a sinner; that calls for morality.

But hypocrites can certainly do that much, and Jesus has just reproved hypocrites in the same passage. Jesus himself points out that the hypocrites are generally correct in their speech and in giving verbal guidance: “obey everything they teach you, but don’t do as they do. After all, they say one thing and do something else.” (Matthew 23:3).

Moreover, if we are speaking of words that themselves have consequences, as reproving the sinner would, we are caught again in the infinite regression that troubles Aquinas.

But what if “good” speech here means “beautiful” speech? This is indeed what we would most likely mean if we said, of someone, “he have a good speech.” Then it works. Beauty has no obvious goal beyond itself, and so it is most aptly described as a fruit. The analogy fruit = beauty also has an ancient pedigree. The apple was sacred to Aphrodite, for example, as goddess of beauty. Eve observes of the fruit of Eden that it “was a delight to the eyes.”

The argument would be, then, that the ability to produce beauty of a spiritual sort—intellectual beauty, that is, art—is a reliable measure of the goodness of one’s heart. Note that “logos,” “word” can represent here as elsewhere in the Bible all intellectual activity; from it, for example, we derive “logic.” So all spiritual activity is in this sense “speech.” We speak, after all, of “artistic expression.”

And Jesus perhaps also suggests why this is so. The sinful man cannot see clearly. He has a beam in his eye. It is the ability to see clearly, to have a clear imaginative vision, that makes art possible. William Blake wrote “One Power alone makes a Poet: Imagination. The Divine Vision.” “If you cannot imagine with the mind's eye much more than you can see with the mortal eye, you have a very poor imagination indeed.”

We are commonly inclined, of course, to see the typical artist as something of an amoral rapscallion. If this reading is right, that notion is wrong. We have missed it; to the extent that we suppose so, either our understanding of artistic beauty, or of morality, is upside down and inside out. We are swept up in the wake of some false prophet.