Dead trees will fruit again (an aesthetic truth)

“There is hope for a tree: if is cut down, it will sprout again, and its roots will not fail. Its roots may grow old in the ground and its stump die … but at the scent of water it will bud and put forth shoots like a plant…”

If the Word of God is indeed inspired, and hence true not only for Job who uttered these words but also true for all people in all places for all time, then its aesthetic-propositional depths should be plumbed.

When its aesthetic truth is grasped, then we see that this passage is a window into resurrection life! Not just resurrection life as an abstract propositional concept; but what resurrection life looks like: a life of putting forth shoots, of flowering; a life of a fulsome plant; and no doubt situated in a garden of unimaginable beauty.

Our culture determines meaning by scientifically classifying certain things as “scientific truth,” and other things as “literary illustration.” The scientific truth is certain truth, or propositional truth. The literary illustrations are just that: they are pictures. And pictures may be worth a thousand words, but in our culture they don’t have much cash value, because they don’t deal in certainty. An old stump of a tree budding again because of “the scent of water” is clearly such picture. It may be a pretty picture, but it has little certainty. Or does it?

The theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar says that fundamental theology must deal with “the question of perceiving form – an aesthetic problem.” By this he means that by coming in embodied form as a man, the truth of Jesus, which is to say, that truth of the Word of God, cannot ever just be concept, but also subsume the full-orbed experience that includes the sensed dimensions. God created the heavens and the earth, and saw that all of it was good. And in Christ all of that goodness has been recovered.

And so Balthasar says: “Here we encounter a man who claims to be God and who, on the basis of this claim, demands that we should believe many truths he utters which cannot be verified by reason…” To be with Jesus is to be, not only with the perfect man, but also to be with the recovered creation in all of its beauty.

And in the recovered creation, dead stumps shoot forth and blossom again, because of the scent of water. This is not “just” a picture. It must be a picture, because it would talk a thousand words to capture the truth of it – and even then the words would not be enough.

And so it says elsewhere in the Word: the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

Logos2Go:

Job 14.7-9 At least there is hope for a tree: If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail. Its roots may grow old in the ground and its stump die in the soil, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth shoots like a plant.

1 Corinthians15.52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.