A Taste of “Apologetics”

    The word “apologetics” has been coming up more and more in Christian discussions, not the least being the recent RZIM seminars. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as “reasoned arguments or writings in justification of something, typically a theory or religious doctrine.”

     So, to give us a taste of apologetics, let’s look at our Lord’s cursing of the fig tree in Matthew 21:18-22 and in Mark 11:12-25. When Jesus saw the fig tree, it had leaves, but when He walked up to it He found no figs, “because the time of figs was not yet.” In his essay Why I Am Not a Christian, the philosopher/ mathematician/ atheist Bertrand Russell comments, “This is a very curious story, because it was not the right time of year for figs, and you really could not blame the tree.” He then goes on to blame the Lord.

     F.F.Bruce, in his book Hard Sayings in the Bible, indicates that there really was something wrong with the tree. He quotes a missionary from Palestine, W.M.Christie: “Now the facts connected with the fig tree are these. Towards the end of March the leaves begin to appear, and in about a week the foliage coating is complete. Coincident with this, sometimes even before, there appears quite a crop of small knobs, not the real figs, but a kind of early forerunner. They grow to the size of green almonds, in which condition they are eaten by peasants and others when hungry. When they come to their own indefinite maturity they drop off.” These precursors of the true fig are called taqsh. Their appearance is a harbinger of the fully formed appearance of the true fig some six weeks later. So, as Mark says, the time for figs had not yet come. But if the leaves appear without any taqsh, that is a sign that there will be no figs. Since Jesus found “nothing but leaves”—leaves without any taqsh—he knew that “it was an absolutely hopeless, fruitless fig tree” and said as much.

     A botanical study of the fig tree in Wikipedia says, “Two crops of figs are potentially produced each year. The first or breva crop develops in the spring on last year’s shoot growth. In contrast, the main fig crop develops on the current year’s shoot growth and ripens in the late summer or fall. The main crop is generally superior in both quantity and quality to the breva crop.”      

     So, these few paragraphs are no “apology” for what the Bible reports; they are an attempt at a reasonable, logical explanation of some of the details.                       Ì