Jesus is the Vine

John 15:1-11 - "I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete." (NIV)

Another wonderful metaphor from the lips of the Savior. I am currently leading a small group through a Bible study based on this passage so I thought I'd write up a quick tidbit. In this passage, Jesus teaches us about Himself, about His Father and about us. Namely He teaches that (1) He and the Father are to be distinguished from each other, (2) that they both are working to grow the good branches and dispose of the bad, and (3) what good branches and bad branches look like.

(1) Vine and Gardener

This is pretty straightforward, Jesus is the Vine and the Father is the Gardener. The metaphor beautifully illustrates the relationship between Father and Son as the vine does not sustain itself apart from the gardener and the garndener isn't a gardener if there is no vine to tend. It also gets at the intimacy of their relationship as the gardener cares for the vine (by pruning and cutting) and the vine produces branches with fruit accordingly. We want to be careful, here, not to take the metaphor beyond it's means. Because Jesus describes Himself as the Vine and His Father as the Gardener, this does not mean that Jesus is less than the Father as a real vine is less than its gardener. It is equally true that Jesus is a not a created being as a real vine is a part of creation. Whence the Holy Spirit in this metaphor? It is quite possible that Jesus does not explicitly include the presence of the Holy Spirit in this passage because He had just finished describing the Spirit's role as a Counselor. The Spirit would fit into this metaphor implicitly, then, by being the pruning shears used by the Gardener and by being the life-giving substance that flows from the Vine into the branches.

(2) Good Branches, Bad Branches

How do you know whether you're a good branch or a bad branch? This question was raised during the small group meeting on Sunday (we were focusing on v. 2) and I offered the following take. First, and foremost, the particulars of your relationship with God are between you and God. I am in no place to question whether or not you are a Christian, especially if you've been breaking bread with me at the Lord's table; God is the final judge of your heart. However, we are called to hold one another accountable and this can be used as sort of a litmus test. If you are a Christian then your life will look a certain way as you continue to bear the fruit of genuine salvation. When you cease to bear fruit your brothers and sisters will (hopefully) call you out and set you straight. This is what the pruning process looks like: you sin, God cuts the sin out and you grow stronger. Bad branches come in just as wide a variety as good branches but, like good branches, they have common characteristics (another sort of litmus test). They don't find their identity in the vine and some even try to grow fruit apart from it. These Christians are motivated primarily by self and they are stubbornly against reproach and being held accountable. They are comfortable living in sin and guilt does not drive them to repentance and when it does they are still reluctant (rather than relieved).

(3) The Gardener Gardening and the Vine Vining

Here is where we start digging into the metaphor a bit deeper. The Father as Gardener tends the Vine by either pruning the branches that are producing fruit or by cutting off those branches that don't produce fruit. The purpose of pruning a vine's branches is so that those branches will grow stronger and produce a greater yield come harvest time. Keep in mind that this is something the gardener does to the branches based on his own judgment and assessment of the branch's condition. The branch is either producing fruit or it's not and the pruning shears are utilized respectively. Likewise, the vine continues to grow and produce branches; it gives life and support to those branches that produce fruit and to those branches which are grafted on where non-producing branches were cut off.

An interesting quandary is brought up by this passage. We know that ultimately there are only two kinds of people: saved and unsaved. It would be easy to make the analogy of "saved = Christian" while "unsaved = non-Christian" but we see in this passage (and others) that this is not the case. From passages like these we get the distinction between what is called the "visible" Church and the "invisible" Church. So, the term "Christian" refers to anyone who is a member of the visible Church regardless of whether they are also members of the invisible Church. Let's translate this over to the vine metaphor for a bit more clarity. Jesus is the Vine (the visible/invisible Church and the branches are Christians (members of the visible/invisible Church) . The Father, then, is the one who either prunes those abiding in the Vine and producing fruit (Christians that are members of the visible and invisible Church) or He cuts off those not abiding and not producing fruit (Christians that are are members of the visible Church only). Much more can be discussed here but I'm trying to keep this brief; suffice it to say that this doesn't change the truth of there only being two kinds of people. Rather, this view enables a more nuanced understanding of the term "Christian" from within a covenantal framework.

An Embodied View of Time

"Try to think about time without any of the metaphors we have discussed. Try to think about time without motion and space--without a landscape you move over and without objects or substances moving toward you or away from you. Try to think about time without thinking about whether it will run out or if you can budget it or are wasting it... What, after all, would time be without flow, without time going by, without the future approaching? What would time be if there were no lengths of time? Would we still be experiencing time if time could not creep or fly by us? Would time still be time for us if we could not waste it or budget it?" - George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh

I am sympathetic to the authors' view that the majority of our understanding of truth comes from conceptual metaphors. Indeed, it is my contention that such a view fits harmoniously well with an Incarnational approach to epistemology (and philosophy in general) in which the Word becoming Flesh is the paradigmatic metaphor for understanding truth, for grasping truth. We tend to think of metaphor as an embelishment of language from which truth must be extracted; nothing could be further from the, ah, truth. A brief look at how we understand time is enough to demonstrate the validity of metaphor as a clear venue for the expression of truth.

In the English language the structure for our understanding (and experience) of time occurs within the context of what the authors identify as the "Time Orientation" metaphor. In this schema the observer is the marker for the present, everything in front of the marker/observer is the future and anything behind the marker/observer is the past. This is why we can make sense of sentences like "Let's put the past behind us" and "I look forward to our date on Friday." The Time Orientation metaphor reflects our everyday use of the concept of time. Even our words about the past and future are oriented in this manner: "yesterday" is past because it refers to the day behind (or before) today and "tomorrow" is future because it refers to the day in front of (or after) today. There are other metaphors that work in conjunction with this one and that help shed more light on our conception of time.

The authors note, "The Time Orientation metaphor has a spatial source domain, but it says nothing about motion." What they mean by saying the Time Orientation metaphor has a spatial source domain is that the metaphor functions within the context of location relative to the observer. The observer is present (here/now) and the future is in front (spatial relation) of the observer and the past is in back (spatial relation) of the observer, thus time is spatially oriented with the observer. But is the observer stationary or or moving, and does this affect the metaphor? If we view the observer as stationary then we get the Moving Time metaphor and if we view the observer as moving then we get the Moving Observer metaphor. Both of these schemas contain the orientation metaphor and both are used frequently in framing our understanding of time.

"There is a lone, stationary observer facing in a fixed direction. There is an indefinitely long sequence of objects moving past the observer from front to back. The moving objects are conceptualized as having fronts in their direction of motion." This is the Moving Time metaphor in which the observer is stationary and time moves from the future toward the past (or toward the observer). It accounts for sentences like "Time flies [passes quickly] when you're having fun" and "Valentine's Day will be here [will arrive] soon." In these examples we seen the role of the orientation metaphor as well. The observer is still the marker for the present and the future are those events/times moving towards the marker and the past are those events/times which move away from the marker. It is important to note that the events/times have a front-back orientation like the observer does and that this orientation, like the obeserver's, is fixed. Events/times are always moving towards us from the future and away from us as they pass.

The Moving Observer metaphor is a role reversal of the Moving Time metaphor so that time is stationary and the observer is moving. To further clarify, "Here the observer, instead of being fixed in one location, is moving. Each location in the observer's path is a time. The observer's location is the present." This metaphor accounts for sentences like "We've already been through the month of January" and "The deadline for entry is coming up soon." The Time Orientation metaphor remains our spatial reference and on this schema it is the observer's progression forward that constitutes the passage of time. From this metaphor we get conceptions of closeness and farness relative to events. Because the events are stationary and we are moving towards (or away) from them, our perception of them is constantly changing. I've been married for less than a year, so my wedding is an event/time that is relatively close in proximity to my location in the presnt. But in ten years I will have moved farther away from it and this metaphor provides the conceptual basis for my interpretation of the perceived chronological distance.

Why do we experience and interpret time with these various metaphors? The authors explain, "The answer is that these metaphors arise from our most common everyday embodied experience of functioning in the world." In other words, we are involved in "motion-situations"(i.e. situations that involve movement in relation to ourselves where we are moving towards/away from an object or an object is moving towards/away from us) which are then mapped onto our conception of time. What's fascinating about the variant metaphors above (Moving Observer, Moving Time) is that they are actually inconsistent with each other. An example sentence is given, "Let's move the meeting ahead a week.":

In the Moving Time metaphor, the times are moving. If the meeting had been scheduled for some future time and that time is facing forward toward the present, then moving the meeting ahead means to move it ahead of the time at which it is scheduled, namely, closer to the present. By contrast, In the Moving Observer metaphor, the observer is moving and facing toward the future. If the meeting has been scheduled for a future time, then moving the meeting ahead means moving the meeting ahead of where the observer will be at that time, namely, farther into the future.

Another example they use is the come of "Christmas is coming" and the come of "We're coming up on Christmas." Even though the same word is used, our interpretation of it is shaped by the respective time metaphors. This is true of our experience as well. Some people experience the coming of Christmas; they wait for it, anticipate it and are eager for it's arrival. On the other hand, some people experience the going-to of Christmas; they can't wait for it, they make plans about where they will be on it and they are excited about passing the days until they arrive at it. Even though these two metaphoric schemas are incompatible with one another, it doesn't prevent us from using them consistently and coherently. They are both true and provide true ways of understanding the place of time in our everyday lives. Now, go back up and try the thought experiment I quoted at the beginning of the post. Still think metaphor has no place in discussions about truth and knowledge? I didn't even present the other metaphors we use for time: Time-as-Substance, Space-Time, Time-as-Resource, and Time-as-Money. As the authors might greet you, welcome to the practical implications and implimentation of a philosophy in the flesh.

The Cognitive Unconscious

"Consider, for example, all that is going on below the level of conscious awareness when you are in a conversation. Here is only a small part of what you are doing, second by second:

Acessing memories relevant to what is being said
Comprehending a stream of sound as being language, dividing it into distinctive phonetic features and segments, identifying phonemes, and grouping them into morphemes
Assigning a structure to the sentence in accord with the vast number of grammatical constructions in your native language
Picking out words and giving them meanings appropriate to context
Making semantic and pragmatic sense of the sentences as a whole
Framing what is said in terms relevant to the discussion
Peforming inferences relevant to what is being discussed
Constructing mental images where relevant and inspecting them
Filling in gaps in the discourse
Noticing and interpreting your interlocutor's body language
Anticipating where the conversation is going
Planning what to say in response

Cognitive scientists have shown experimentally that to understand even the simplest utterance, we must perform these and other incredibly complex forms of thought automatically and without noticeable effort below the level of consiousness. It is not merely that we occasionally do not notice these processes; rather, they are inaccessible to consious awareness and control." - George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh

I can agree with Lakoff and Johnson that the majority of our thought processes occur below the level of conscious awareness. And I don't mean things like breathing and heartbeating, those activities don't [normally] have anything to do with thought at all (it's autonomic nervous function). How many of those things in the list above are we conciously aware of during a discussion with someone? It doesn't even have to be a discussion, these processes take place during everyday conversing as well. There are a few items in the list that are suspect (e.g. I am usually consciously aware of planning responses) but, for the most part, these activities along with countless others are being accomplished automatically. It is these neural happenings that cognitive scientists are dubbing the cognitive unconcious (CU hereafter).

The CU is largely shaped by our interactions with the external world. For example, physical environments give rise to spatial-relation concepts which provide a basis for conceptual metaphors that, in turn, affect how we interpret our experience of reality. The same is true of socio-cultural environments. From the moment we emerge as infants our brains begin the process of encoding our neural networks with the CU (it actually starts before exiting the womb, but I'm not much into developmental psychology). This is why it seems that children have an innate ability to acquire language and moral concepts. They learn early on that certain vocalizations result in particular responses and this continual process develops into what becomes their native language. They learn early on that up means good and down means bad, that close is warm and intimate, and far is cold and impersonal. I'm sure you can see other conceptual metaphors forming just from these few examples, and this is only one part of the CU's activity. Since this is a blog entry and not an academic journal submission, I don't feel the need to explain this in much more detail at this time. Needless to say, coming to terms with the CU can bring a new bag of philosophy toys to play with when talking about what it means to know something. I'll interact with this in more detail in future posts as I work throught Lakoff and Johnson's book.