Arboreal Anthropology

A Guest Post from Evan at The Ruminatrix

The Ash Yggdrasil (1886) by Friedrich Wilhelm Heine

One of these days I’d like to have one of the articles I write on a particular Bible verse align with the day of the Lectionary it appears on. For today’s, Mark 8:24, that would be the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, but, alas, I didn’t get around to even thinking of this article by then. So, maybe I’ll just republish this next February. In any case! The reason I want to talk about Mark 8:24 today is because I want to make small nuggets in Scripture turn into mountains, and Mark’s narrative is pregnant with that. The relevant verse, in its context, reads as follows:

And [Jesus] cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto Him, and besought Him to touch him. And He took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when He had spit on his eyes, and put His hands upon him, He asked him if he saw ought. And he looked up, and said, “I see men as trees, walking.” After that He put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly. And He sent him away to his house, saying, “Neither go into the town, nor tell it to any in the town.”

What’s significant about this? Well, when the blind man says that his partial vision of the world causes him to “see men as trees” this is very interesting. Why is this so? Is it just something one-off that the blind man believed appropriate in the moment to describe the large, blurry shapes he saw men as? Well, this is Holy Writ, I think such a simplistic take is unbecoming of it.

First, let us note that the word δένδρον (dendron) is rarely used in the New Testament without theological significance. The occurrences in Revelation (Rev. 7:1, 3; 8:7; 9:4) are the only exceptions, though they are not entirely bereft of symbolism. In every other occurrence, however, it’s clear that the tree is being used to signify a human being, such as how Christ proclaims in Luke 3:9 that “now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: every tree therefore which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.” Even the Parable of the Mustard Tree is such, as I explored in my earlier article “The Cosmic Imagery of the Mustard Seed.” Clearly, the Bible’s association of arboreal imagery with the human is not one-off. So, what does the blind man of Bethsaida reveal? Well, other than being a parable or moral tale, as might be argued with the other instances, the blind man is more “historical,” he is a real person observing real things, and really states that he sees men as trees. So, given this, there seems to be some deeper truth in that humans are in some way “arboreal.”

What is that truth? Well, let’s think about trees in themselves first. They have thick, sturdy trunks that are protected by bark and keep the whole structure stable. They rise up tall and proud heavenward, and shoot out hundreds, thousands of branches that glimmer with the sun-kissed verdure of their crowns. Likewise, they sink deep into the soil, forging deep roots that secure them. The tree is a beautiful, proud, strong, and long-lived being, that is harmonious with nature and serves nature, letting animals rest in its shade and birds nest in its branches.

Considering all this, is it any wonder that humans are likened to trees? While the ancients wouldn’t have known this as well as we do, there are many parts of the body that recapitulate the imagery of trees. But, moreover, there are other more obvious ways that ancients could’ve seen similarities between the tree and the human. First off, the ancients knew that trees needed the Sun to thrive, it’s observationally self-evident, and perhaps the most universal symbol of Heaven is the Sun: “For the LORD God is a sun and shield” (Ps. 84:11). Humans rise up toward Heaven in adoration of God: “Thus will I bless thee while I live: I will lift up my hands in Thy Name” (Ps. 63:4), and the Bible sees trees, too, as having hands that laud God: “the trees of the field will clap their hands…the cypress will grow, and instead of the brier, the myrtle will spring up; this will make a name for the LORD, an everlasting sign, never to be destroyed” (Isa. 55:12-13). Just as trees bask in the glory of the Sun, humans bask in the glory of Heaven, and just as trees take in that sunlight to live, we take in the light of God to live, “the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (Jn. 1:9), “Thou art [אוֹר: luminous as the Sun] and excellent than the mountains of prey” (Ps. 76:4); we shall all be like the disciples, who basked in the radiance of the Son, Whose “face did shine as the sun, and His raiment was white as the light” (Mt. 17:2). Further, “every good tree bringeth forth good fruit” (Mt. 7:17) and the Christian tree filled with the radiant glory of the Holy Spirit brings forth the “fruit of the Spirit [which] is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Gal. 5:22-23).

Below, in the roots, we have another inventory of poignant imagery. The godly man “shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper” (Ps. 1:3). To be rooted has a self-evident significance, which is to be study, resilient, unmoved by the gales of life. As the inspiring lines of J.R.R. Tolkien put it, “The old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost.” Roots draw life from the earth, providing nutrients to the tree which the energy from the Sun powers the processes necessary to put these nutrients to use toward the life of the tree. In this sense, the solar power actualizes the life-giving potency in the soil-drawn nutrients, and this makes the Sun antecedently and ultimately life-giving, yet not to the entire dismissal but mere subordination of the soil. Why do I clarify this? Because I believe the biblical symbolism of soil is deep (pun intended?). First, we know Scripture has a “proto-Francsican” view of Creation, extending to the soil, which Joel addresses: “Fear not, O land [אֲדָמָה, soil or earth]; be glad and rejoice: for the LORD will do great things” (Jl. 2:21). The Francsican view itself, too, is consonant: “Praised be Thou, my Lord, through Mother Earth, who sustaineth us and governeth us and who produceth varied fruits with coloured flowers and herbs.” There is life in the soul. But the particular life I want to focus on is intimated by the name of man: אֲדָמָה, adamah. This name, however, is the exact same name as the soil; man and soil are the same. When men die, they return to the earth (Gen. 3:19), but their “life” in a mystical sense is not absolutely deprived, “For He is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto Him” (Lk. 20:38). Because we derive our life from the soil, which is mixed with the breath of God, in a sense the Earth is our mother, and God is of course our Father. Actually, let me quickly state, since I don’t know where else to put this, that another arboreal image of man is how he is conceived by “seed,” “planted” in the womb of his mother, which may be described as “fruitful” like the soil (Ps. 127:3; Deut 7:12-14; Num. 13:23-27; Lev. 26:3-5, 9-12), and then springs forth from her and grows up. Because of our arboreal biology, our close connection to the soil, how we return to the ground when did, but still partake of a “life,” and that our death is a “return to” or “gathering with our fathers” (Gen. 15:15; 25:8; 49:29; Num. 20:24; 2 Sam. 7:12; 1 Kgs. 2:10; 11:43; 2 Chron. 21:1), I believe the soil also represents “tradition,” the enduring life of our ancestors. Humans lift up toward the glory of God, but we also establish ourselves firmly in the ground laid by our forefathers, and can use that as a basis by which to reach up toward Heaven. This deepens the act-potency model I gave earlier, that may be parsed now this way: “the divine power actualizes the life-giving potency in the ancestral nutrients,” and the subordination I make mention of complements how we aren’t involved in ancestor worship, but in veneration of the august legacies of who’ve gone before, those who’ve (per a very apropos proverb) planted trees in whose shade they shall never sit. As J.M. Robinson says, “Become a man who is rooted in the ancient past, but who towers with strength towards the infinite future of heaven.”

The third and final part is the sturdy trunk of a tree, which is the human person proper, who holds together the heavenward and the earthward and brings their powers into himself and makes something of them. As a “learning guide” of the British “Tree Council” which I browsed for this article puts it, “The trunk, branches and stems of the tree give the tree height so the leaves can capture as much light energy as possible. They form the structure that connects the roots to the leaves and the system which transports water and nutrients from the root system to the leaves, and vice versa.” Now, if any of you have seen my article on the mustard seed already (if not, find it here), you’d know the basic idea behind that is that Christ in particular is the world-tree, the true Yggdrasil, Who holds the Creation together (“And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist” - Col. 1:17). If any of you have happened upon my friend Johnathan’s blog as well, you’ll know a big theme he incorporates into the Christian cosmology is fractality, that the world is a top-to-bottom recapitulation of themes and structures, “all things bear their eternal significance both as unique expressions of the fullness of Divine Life to all other things and, at the same time, as a multiplicity of interdependent tesserae comprising the fractal mosaic of creation unified in Christ.” So, Christ is not a tree to the exclusion of man, but this is a fractal image that inheres all of Creation, especially insofar as man is a microcosm, the crown jewel of Creation, the sixth-day marvel, for “Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands; Thou hast put all things under his feet” (Ps. 8:5-6). All that to say what Christ (the Man) is so are all men fractally, and thus if Christ is a tree Who holds Creation together, we like Him make creation consist by our own divinely-mandated authority. As J.R.R. Tolkien put it, “Indeed only by myth-making, only becoming a ‘sub-creator’ and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection he knew before the Fall.” In our sub-creation we fractally instantiate what God does over the whole Creation, pulling its parts together, bringing the earth up by our roots and the heavens in by our branches, and holding them together, and it’s precisely this that begets our aspiration “to the state of perfection he knew before the Fall” because it intimates the cosmic viceregency we were being readied for. When Scripture looks to the world-tree under which “the wild animals used to seek shade, and in its branches the birds of the sky used to nest,” and all the animals “used to feed themselves from it” (Dan. 4:12), it imagines the human being, providing stewardship and dominion to Creation, giving care for a “righteous man regardeth the life of his beast” (Prov. 12:10). When Scripture envisions how “they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid” (Mic. 4:4; cf. 1 Kgs. 4:25) it imagines the perfect care and love men will show to each other, the sacred order they will inhabit, in the day of the Lord. And, for us Christians, let us remember that “the hour cometh, and now is” (Jn. 4:23). Insofar as it’s the trunk which holds together the whole, and the human person is that into which the symbols of crown and root are conducted, this is the meaning of the trunk in the tree-man.

In this symbolism, then, we see that man is understood by Scripture, and indeed a broad catalogue of human mythologies, to be alike to a tree. In man’s rootedness, we are not isolated beings but are bound to the earth underneath, man to man, and draw our strength from the soil fertilized by the bones of our ancestors. In man’s loftiness, we are not the Creator but derive our strength and glory from the Most High and His radiant splendor. In man’s strength, we are not the arbiters of truth but put things into order under ourselves in obedience to the eternal Law which we ourselves are subjects of. Christ, then, didn’t actually unblind the eyes of the blind man, but rather the eye of the soul, what the patristic wisdom attributes to the nous, and the blind man’s first sight wasn’t of the physical world, which the eye of the body sees, but of the “mythical” word, the world of God’s eternal plans and patterns, and he actually saw things fuller than he saw them when Christ finally restored his physical sight. In the blind man’s true sight, we see the fullness of human nature captured, intimated by how just before this Christ chastises the disciples for their ignorance, “Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? and do ye not remember?” Seeing things fully, by the light of God which fills our bodies (Mt. 6:22-24), we see things as they truly are. If man’s a tree, will you be planted by the river flowing with living water and bask in the radiance of the Morning Star?