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BY THEIR FRUITS YE SHALL KNOW THEM For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh (Luke 6:43-45).
The theocentric focus of this passage is God's standards of productivity. He evaluates men's output in this life. We are to do the same. We must estimate the value of our own output as well as the output of others. We are to compare the value of this output with what the Bible says is truly valuable and also with what men say of themselves. We can do this because there is consistency between what a man does and the true status of his heart.
The parallel passage in Matthew 7:15-20 reveals the context: false prophets. False prophecy was a judicial matter under the Mosaic Covenant. But there is no mention of this judicial context in Luke's account. Luke's account seems to be broader: men in general. There is a consistency between the heart and external actions.
Luke's account speaks of treasure, good and evil, not the office of prophet. Jesus said that the treasure in a person's heart reflects both his confession and his character. Readers of Luke's account would have been motivated to examine their own actions and the actions of others in terms of biblical standards. If they were gentiles, then they would have had to learn more about the Mosaic Covenant. Under the Mosaic Covenant, there was a corporate cause-and-effect relationship between covenantal roots and fruits (Deut. 28). Obedience to righteous laws promoted corporate economic blessings. Luke's account indicates that this cause-and-effect relationship applies to individuals. Jesus uses "treasure" in the broadest sense: that which is loved or treasured by the possessor. Instead of economic wealth, Luke's account focuses on men's tongues. Their tongues reflect who they are and what they treasure.
Ethical Cause and Effect(1) What of fruits other than prosperity? "Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts" (Gal. 5:19-24). These are individual fruits.
Economic Effects of Greed
What are the economic effects of these rival lists of fruits? Does evil consistently produce wealth? Does righteousness consistently produce poverty? Or are the outcomes random? If they are random, then no expressly biblical economic theory is possible. If the outcomes are perverse, then we must search for institutional means of converting evil personal motives into positive effects. This is what most versions of free market theory have sought to do, from Bernard Mandeville's Fable of the Bees (1714)(2) until the present. The profit motive, coupled with private ownership, produces incentives for serving others. Men's greed becomes their motivation to meet the demands of other men. Free market economic theory has this great advantage over socialist theory: it recognizes the effects of original sin. It does not assume, as socialism assumes, that concentrated political power -- legalized force -- makes those who wield it either wiser or kinder. On the contrary, free market theory assumes the opposite: power tends to corrupt men, and absolute power corrupts them absolutely.(3)
Free market economic theory is self-consciously agnostic with regard to God. The supernatural realm is ignored. Cause and effect in every realm is seen as exclusively natural. If we accept either the covenantal randomness of corporate effects of common confessions, or the covenantal perversity of individual results, then we cannot construct biblical economic theory. We must then appeal to this or that humanistic theory of human action. But if righteous roots produce positive fruits in history, and if unrighteous roots produce undesirable fruits, then biblical social theory becomes possible.
Jesus did not cite Leviticus 26 or Deuteronomy 28, which deal with God's corporate covenantal sanctions in history. There is no indication that Jesus abandoned the Mosaic law's principle of corporate covenant sanctions. He did offer a supplemental principle of covenant sanctions: by the results, we can know the truth of men's covenantal confessions.
Individual and Corporate Fruitfulness In another context, the parable of the fig tree, Jesus was referring to Old Covenant Israel (Luke 13:6-9). So, the concept of fruit as a sign of spiritual roots applies to both individuals and corporate entities.
Applying this principle to societies, we conclude that there are standards of productivity that we can apply to assess the rightness or wrongness of that society. There also has to be human discernment of these standards and their proper application in history. "Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit." This statement is an extension to individuals of the corporate principles of Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. The theologian who argues that Jesus substituted individual predictability for corporate predictability has to assume that the covenant's continuity applies only to individuals. But then what of families? What of churches? Does this principle apply only to individuals? Doesn't it also apply to movements based on the teachings of individuals?
Pietism denies this principle's applicability to the world outside a Trinitarian covenant, and then seeks to deny the legitimacy of this covenant in civil government. Christian self-government under biblical law, yes. Christian family government under biblical law, yes. Christian church government under biblical law, yes. But not Christian civil government. Pietists say, "There can be no such thing as Christian civil government. What existed in Mosaic Israel before the captivity has been annulled in principle."
A major problem with pietism is that it openly surrenders to covenant-breakers a supposedly God-given New Covenant right to establish their civil covenant over covenant-keepers. Somehow, we are expected to believe that a Trinitarian civil covenant will not produce the positive fruit that a non-Christian civil covenant will produce. For the pietist, the realm of the civil covenant is governed by a reverse covenantal system of sanctions: biblical law produces tyranny, while "neutral" civil law produces good.(4) Pietists rarely say this openly, but this really is what they believe. They may say that they do not believe in neutrality, but in the realm of civil law, they do believe in neutrality. They much prefer humanism's supposed judicial neutrality to Old Testament civil laws and sanctions. They believe there can be equal time for Satan and Jesus in matters of civil law. Even when humanists shove Jesus out of the civil realm, the pietist still affirms his faith in neutrality. I call this blind faith.
Jesus' words here create an enormous exegetical problem for pietism, one which pietists for over three centuries have dealt with by ignoring the problem. Jesus' words, if they were ever dealt with exegetically by pietistic social theorists, would force them to declare the existence of a realm of government in which a false confession produces good fruit, and where a true confession -- faith in the Trinity -- produces bad fruit. What they admit not to be true for the other three oath-bound covenants -- individual, ecclesiastical, and familistic -- they say is somehow true for the civil covenant. This worldview was surely never taught in the Old Covenant. The opposite was taught. It is never formally taught in the New Covenant, either. Covenantal cause and effect applies to individuals and to their movements, Jesus taught. What He taught was consistent with the Mosaic system of corporate sanctions, even though He did not cite these passages directly.
The pietist claims to have discovered a principle in natural law theory or democratic theory which supersedes both the Mosaic law and Jesus' teaching on roots and fruits. This political principle, articulated in the mid-seventeenth century by Rhode Island's Roger Williams, and elaborated in the eighteenth century by deists and unitarians, teaches the reverse of what Jesus taught here, yet it has to be true, pietists assure us. It has to be true because modern democratic theory teaches it. To oppose it would be theocratic, and we all know how bad theocracy is, meaning Trinitarian theocracy. A humanistic theocracy -- the reign of democratic man -- is what we need, pietists assume. This is what God wants. Why, we are not told.
Free Market Theory If Jesus' words are true, then modern free market theory labors under an enormous burden: Mandeville's curse. Free market theory promotes a view of society that says that supernatural ethics is irrelevant. Evil men, if they live under a private property system, will produce good things. Compared to what evil men produce under socialism, this statement has been proven true in both theory and practice, i.e., roots and fruits. But the ultimate test of free market theory is not its success over socialism. The ultimate test is its success over God's corporate sanctions in history.
The free market is not autonomous, for man is not autonomous. The free market can produce, and has produced, unprecedented tangible wealth for hundreds of millions of people. But it has also placed urban men in great peril. The division of labor has been extended to such a degree that men are cut off from the soil. They cannot feed themselves. They live in highly interdependent environments that can sustain life only through extensive exchange -- an exchange system that rests on fractional reserve banking and computerization. Everything that sustains life for most urban people is in some way dependent on public utility systems, banks, trains, and traffic control systems. This is only one example of the risks facing modern man. Modern biological warfare is another. So is the proliferation of small-scale nuclear weapons. Our cities are vulnerable. The free market has made possible the creation of vast interdependent production systems that have sustained a huge growth of population. The free market has done this irrespective of men's confessions of faith. This supposedly neutral system of universal blessings has allowed the evolution of a society that is vulnerable to any number of universal curses. Yet men do not repent. They do not see how vulnerable they are. They do not see the looming sanctions of God. "And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth. But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day. And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the LORD thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish. As the nations which the LORD destroyeth before your face, so shall ye perish; because ye would not be obedient unto the voice of the LORD your God" (Deut. 8:17-20).
We speak of the market as an impersonal mechanism. We think of mechanisms as tools. Then we insist that tools are neutral. By this, we mean that they can be used for good or evil. But tools are not morally neutral. Nothing is morally neutral. Tools are the products of particular social systems, and social systems are not morally neutral. Tools extend the social systems that promote their production. Tools make us dependent on particular social systems. If we rely on our tools, we thereby rely on the social system that created them and sustains them. But what if this social system is founded on a false oath? Has it not become the corporate equivalent of a false prophet? Was it not built in terms of false prophecies, such as the promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to quote a well-known document written mainly by a well-known deist who later became a unitarian?
Common grace is a great blessing, but it cannot be extended indefinitely apart from special grace.(5) A society built on some version of common grace theology -- the common confession of autonomous men -- rests on a fragile foundation. If God withdraws His special grace, leaving only the economic fruits of abandoned confessional roots, the tree will eventually cease bearing fruit. Surely Europe is now in such a spiritual condition. Asia has never even had the covenantal roots. Asians have imported the free market and its technology in the hope of escaping poverty. But Asians are now trapped by their tools, copied from the West and mass produced, and also by the fractional reserve banking system.
Social systems are package deals because they are based on specific worldviews. Worldviews are themselves package deals.(6) The dependence of free market ideas and practices on a specifically Western, biblical-covenantal view of the world, the free market economist is loathe to admit. Such an admission undercuts his claims of autonomy and universality: of economics as a science, of capitalism as a social system, and of man as a product of impersonal biological evolution.
A secular economist might ask rhetorically, "Isn't a demand curve universal?" I am not saying that demand curves do not slope downward and to the right in Asia, just as they do in the West. I am saying that there is no such thing as a demand curve outside of the economist's conceptual tool kit. Demand curves are abstractions based on assumptions that can never be true in the real world.(7) They are teaching tools that illustrate abstract truths of economic theory. I am not saying that people do not respond predictably to incentives. I am saying that humanistic capitalism's incentives are being sold to millions of people at low prices that do not reflect the true risk of subsequent transactions. Godless Communism was murderous in its atheism, but Godless capitalism is equaly committed analytically to the autonomy of man. Godless capitalism is being sold almost as an addictive drug is sold. "There's no risk. Try it. You'll like it." No doubt they will. They will also become addicted to the division of labor that comes with it -- a division of labor based on a confession: "My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth."
Conclusion The treasure in a person's heart defines him. It determines what he wants and what he says. "A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh" (v. 45). The abundance in a person's heart can be good or evil.
There is a predictable connection that joins faith, confession, and visible results. There is a predictable connection between invisible roots and visible fruits. This connection takes longer to manifest itself in the New Covenant, for prophetic sanctions have been transferred to Christ. Jesus warned His followers to examine the fruits whenever they are not sure of the roots. While the context in Matthew's Gospel indicates that Jesus was discussing the office of prophet, the general principle is universal: a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
Wise judgment begins with a confession of faith in the God of the Bible. It matures through a careful study of God's law (Ps. 119) and obedience, i.e., applying the written law to our decisions. As we develop wise judgment, we can better assess the claims of those who come to us in God's name, as Old Covenant prophets used to come. We can hear their confessions and see the results of these confessions. On the basis of what we see, we can assess the truth of what we hear.
Footnotes:
1. The following passage is adapted from Chapter 18 the second half of Gary North, Priorities and Dominion: An Economic Commentary on Matthew, electronic edition (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 2000).
2. Introduction, above.
3. Lord Acton, letter to Bishop Creighton (1887).
4. Except, dispensationalists say, in the State of Israel. There, we are told, the State may lawfully and profitably impose Talmudic law, which sometimes is applied Mosaic law, on recalcitrant Arabs and Christians, as well as on recalcitrant secular Jews.
5. Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace: The Biblical Basis of Progress (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), ch. 6.
6. Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til's Apologetics: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R, 1998), pp. 102-103.
7. These impossible assumptions include: 1) men respond to price changes that are infinitesimal, i.e., unobservable; 2) a curve exists at one instant in time, yet men's decisions are made over time; 3) other things remain equal in a world in which we cannot change just one thing; 4) men's tastes do not change as prices change. There are no doubt lots of others, but my expected cost of recalling them is higher than my expected gain.
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