I helped Nancy make a fruit salad for a luncheon today. It tasted good but it wasn’t quite like the fruit salad I used to make with home grown melons and grapes and nectarines. No matter how good the produce section is in the supermarket, you can never get a grape or a tomato as tasty as one fresh from the vine. (As an amateur botanist, I include tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, peppers and even okra as fruits.). I enjoy gardening, at least in part for the fruits. And I think like a horticulturalist, even in other areas of my life.
The Sunday before last I preached a sermon on the fruits of the spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). Then later that week I led a Bible study group to look at the passage in greater depth. I mentioned how Paul’s talk about fruit fit into his larger argument in this letter. It is part of his attempt to get the Galatian Christians to listen to him instead of some other preachers who are “troubling” them. Paul is making a similar argument to the one Jesus makes in the Sermon on the Mount: “Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. … You will know them by their fruits.” (Matthew 7:15 & 20)
As part of that study, one woman asked me, “So who did the Galatians believe, Paul or those other guys?” That question encouraged me. It showed that she was beginning to think about the context of these words of Scripture as part of a real conversation. True, we only hear one side, but we can infer some of the conversation of the Christians in Galatia and even some of that of the troublers. So did the Galatians buy the arguments and theology presented by Paul in this letter?
I turned her question back to her, “What evidence do we have which could answer that question?” That may have been pushing the questioner a little too far. It is one thing to begin to think about this letter in the context of a congregation that has to choose between two competing presentations of the gospel, to think about the Bible as a document written by a real person to other real people in a distant time and culture. It is another thing to think about how that letter came to be included in the Holy Bible.
So I had to present the evidence myself. It was right in front of us; we were reading it. The very fact that the letter to the Galatians survived is evidence that those early Christians believed Paul and not his opponents.
Here is the way I was thinking: If a plant produces good fruit then the gardener saves the seed and plants them and helps the plants with good fruit to reproduce. If the new plants continue also produce good fruit then the gardener shares those plants, or seeds, or cuttings, with other gardeners, he propagates the plants out into the larger community. The fruits we enjoy today have all gone through this process of selection, reproduction and propagation. Plants strains which didn’t go through this process have not survived.
Thinking like a horticulturalist, the letter to the Galatians has survived because those Christians shared it with other congregations (propagation); they were able to propagate it because they had carefully copied it over and over again (reproduction); they reproduced it because they chose Paul’s arguments and theology over that of the troublers (selection). Question answered by thinking like a gardener.
Well … almost.
The question remains, “Why did they select this letter and its presentation of the gospel over the presentation of the gospel they had received from the troublers?” In a gardeners terms, “Why did one taste better than the other?”
- Did they accept Paul’s apostolic credentials and, trusting his authority, believe what he had to say?
- Were they convinced by the scriptures quoted in the letter and by the interpretation given to them?
- Were they moved by a special word of the Spirit that they should believe this gospel?
There are no apparent answers to these questions. A Catholic might gravitate toward (1.); a Protestant might favor (2.); a Pentecostal might like (3.) best.
So lets try approaching this question like a horticulturalist.
No variety of fruit producing plant survives simply because the first person to taste its fruit thought it was delicious. The seeds from a delicious fruit often reproduce plants whose fruit is not nearly a good as the original. Only when succeeding generations of a variety continue to produce good fruit, does that variety survive; varieties can die out in the process of reproduction. Then again varieties can die out in the process of propagation. Differences in climate and soil and even cultural likes and dislikes can keep a variety of fruit from surviving in the larger community. Fruit producing plant varieties survive only when they continue to produce good fruit across generations and across environmental and cultural borders.
So the question is not really “Why did this particular letter taste good?”; “Why did those Galatian Christians believe Paul over the troublers?” The question is, “Why did this letter survive across generations and across cultural borders?” And the answer is simply: it continued to produce good fruit.
If you are willing to jump into this circle, it continued to produce good fruit because the Spirit was at work through these words, bearing fruit such as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faith, gentleness and self control. When we consistently seek to know things by their fruit our efforts continue to bear fruit.
