Matthew 7:15-20 (NAB)
15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves. 16 By their fruits you will know them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit. 18A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 So by their fruits you will know them.
The purpose of this study is to explore this pericope and make sense of it.
Is the tree to be taken as figurative for a prophet and the fruit as figurative for teaching?
Who is Jesus referring to here? Scripture says false prophets (figuratively bad tree). The natural assumption would be to understand Jesus to be, by implication, referring to false teaching with the view that the “bad fruit” is the false teaching and the "bad tree" is the false teacher. The logic goes something like this: You can recognize a false teacher by his false teaching. But is this the best way to understand this pericope? If it were then, it would pose problems with verses 17 and 18 in effect saying: Every good prophet teaches true teaching and cannot teach false teaching. Likewise the inverse would be true that every false prophet must teach false teaching and cannot teach true teaching. But from experience I think we can agree that good folks don't always teach true teaching, sometimes they are in error.
Perhaps we must distinguish between true doctrine versus true intention? A true prophet would not intentionally teach false doctrine? But then again this is problematic as well since the focus of Jesus words is on recognizing a good/bad tree by its fruit. If he, by good tree, only meant one who had good intentions but still may produce bad fruit, then it certainly makes no sense to tell us how to recognize a bad tree since bad fruit could all the same indicate a good tree.
One protestant take on this would be to, in a sense, view Judas as the poster boy for this pericope. But that not seem to work since scripture nowhere indicates that Judas, if he were a bad tree, was teaching false doctrine. This may seem like an argument from silence, but I think it is one that actually speaks volumes. It would seem to me that, in light of Jesus teaching on the matter, that someone, i.e., the other disciples would have pointed Judas out as a false teacher. Yet scripture says nothing about this. Didn't Judas go out with the others two by two?
Is this bad tree a reference to an "unsaved person" as some protestants understand it? I would say no. Even if I were to grant that protestantism was right concerning how it understood salvation, i.e., Once Saved Always Saved (OSAS) I would have to then argue that that view is even more problematic when trying to understand the above pericope in light of it. OSAS would have to read this pericope as: Judas was never saved, therefore he could never produce good fruit but could only produce bad fruit, that is, only teach false doctrine.
In light of OSAS there would be three possible approaches to this pericope.
- Judas was saved hence the reason for his fruit being good instead of bad.
- Good/bad tree is not a figure to indicate wether a person is saved or not.
- Or Jesus was just plain wrong.
Some of course would counter me as being too wooden or literal in my use of Jesus words, but am I?
This is a study in progress. More to come....
