His first serious attempt (1513-15) involved reading the Psalter as a living oracle. This was not an easy task given the obscure, vindictive, lament-like nature of many Psalms. Luther filtered his reading of the Psalms through his understanding of Christ. He read them christologically. He also applied the tropological or moral method of reading the Psalms to the lives of his students. Luther later refined this early method and spoke of reading Scripture within the categories of spirit and letter or grace and law.
The parable of the infertile fig tree in Luke 13 has a rough-hewn edge similar to many of the Psalms. The infertility of a fig tree, the apparent impatience of the vineyard owner, and the long-suffering strategy of the gardener are its main features. The vineyard owner thrusts down the rock hard fist of the Law. The sad but very objective fact was that the tree was a useless waste of space. The landlord owned the field and had every right to expect productivity from what he planted. He was no sentimentalist; other trees were waiting in the wings ready to take up this valued spot in the yard. The landlord's gardener, however, had experience with infertile trees and what impeded their growth. The gardener had plans to correct the malady. He did not argue with the owner trying to deny the observable fact of impotence but he did have a strategy to kick start the fig tree's growth. Convinced, the owner acquiesced to the gardener and allotted the tree a year of grace.
I didn't like the story when I first read it. I knew well enough that the fig tree and I are spiritual analogues. I wondered how Luther might approach this passage with his categories of spirit and letter, grace and law. Luther had a dialectical way of reading Scripture where he sought to allow the tension between two apparently opposite truths to become the standard for his interpretations.
–One and the same word can be 'letter', thus divine judgment.
Spiritually interpreted, it can also be a word of grace for 'the Spirit
is concealed in the letter'” (Lohse 52).
How can we hear the letter and the spirit in a Luther-like manner while reading the passage? The letter of the text, the law or letter paradigm, says that God planted me to bear fruit and that I wasn't doing this. Maybe I couldn't. God has complete and absolute sovereignty over me: he can dispose of me, leave me, tend me, or clear-cut me. Strictly speaking, I am his. He has the deed on this piece of land that is me. He is the potter, I am the clay (Jeremiah 18:1-10; Romans 9:20-23). He is the creator, I the creation. This bumps right up against my demand for autonomy, for self-ownership. Am I God's in the way that the fig tree is? Have I got his stamp on me?
The temptation is to negotiate ownership, to quibble about fine definitions of the rights of the tree to self-existence. –Hey, I am not a commodity - a fig tree. I am a person!” I could coerce the text; get it to mean something else kinder, more suited to my self-invested interpretation. Luther knew that trick and countered it by quoting and elaborating Augustine:
Äthe strength of Scripture is this, that it is not changed
into him who studies it, but that it transforms its lover into itself
and its strengths... because you will not change me into what you are...
but you will be changed into what I am. (52)
Luther urges me to allow the letter of the text to have its full effect on me rather than inserting my self-protecting desires between myself and its message. I don't want to be chopped up into kindling; nevertheless, I recognize that I stand condemned as an unproductive tree owned by a sovereign God who has the right to do anything to me. I can't wiggle out of this situation. I can't self-improve and I can't make God merciful by my slight of hand interpretation of the parable. I am condemned under the law or letter of Scripture, a letter that kills me. No matter how hard I strain, any attempt to make myself a productive tree is futile; even worse, self-effort gnarls me and makes me a similitude of a tree, not a natural tree at all.
Until I acknowledge this, says Luther, I am not ready to hear the word of the Spirit.
Statements of the knowledge and a confession of sin, or the
acceptance of divine judgment, determine the ideas about Grace... The
more we condemn, confound, and curse ourselves, the more richly the
grace of God flows into us (Lohse 56).
The spirit of the word begins to flow with the arrival of the gardener, one who can solve my infertility and who intercedes with my owner for mercy (Romans 8:26-28). The gardener does not question the owner's observations of me. He makes the case that left in his care I will be fruitful in a year's time. The gardener will aerate the ground around the tree and spread fertilizer on it.
The image that comes to my mind is that the gardener will poke holes in my life and throw some shit on me, a very Luther-like metaphor. The gardener will make me productive, fertile and alive. The constriction of my self-contained environment will be opened up through the gardener's prodding pitchfork. This will hurt. I will squirm and resist, I will also remember why it is being done, to save me and incorporate me into a living vineyard.
Part of my resistance will be to pit my experience of the gardener against the declaration of the owner. I will love the gardener and trust him-though his efforts on my account cause me pain. I will be tempted to hate the owner and his threat. I cannot accept that he is treating me as a thing. That is how I see the situation. Until I listen and examine the gardener very carefully. How can the gardener work for such an apparent fiend I wonder?
One day in between all the hole poking and spreading shit at the base of my trunk, I might ask the gardener how he can stand his employer. I trust that his answer will be true. I rely on his word: after all I have placed my life in his hands. I imagine that the gardener will smile and tell me that he and the owner are one; they are of one mind, heart and essence. They are also one hundred percent for me - both of them. Without the hard words of the owner, I would never submit myself to the process of aeration or the ignoble situation of having shit thrown at me. The owner, while speaking the letter of the law, placed me in the gardener's care. All along it was he who provided the gardener; together they are a team.
Lohse, my Luther commentator, explains how they work together:
In faith the Christian accepts the judgment of God in order
thus to share the righteousness of God. Broadly, but not at all completely,
humility and faith can be viewed synonymously. In the light of Christ's
suffering we become aware of our sinfulness. With the Christian's acceptance
of the divine judgment on sin comes recognition of sinfulness before
God and thus agreement with the divine sentence of judgment. In precisely
this manner, the Christian is at the same time justified. Whoever denies
being a sinner before God, or whoever does not make confession of sin,
or justifies oneself before God, denies God the justification and honor
due him. 'Therefore God is not justified by anyone except the one who
accuses and condemns and judges himself.' ... only those who humble
themselves honor God, while those who would exalt themselves deny God's
honor (Lohse 60).
The year is up; we are going to meet with the owner. The gardener had persuaded the owner to wait and he had persuaded me to give up my mistrust. Just as the letter and spirit of his word seeped their way into my mind and soul, I notice a luscious bud exploding from my left bow. I have been made fruitful and I recognize it as a gift from the owner and the gardener. I start a new life today - at last at home with the letter and the spirit - in the word.