The Forest of Syntax

It was an old forest, older than anything Inquirer had come across on the road yet. The trees were enormous, with trunks wider than houses and roots running over the ground in great humps and coils. The canopy was so high and thick that the light came down green, and there was no undergrowth, only moss and dead leaves. The road wound in and out among the trunks, and it was hard to keep to, because the roots had shoved its stones up in a good many places.

And up in the branches all round them the chattering went on.

It wasn’t birds. When Inquirer looked up he saw small quick figures jumping from bough to bough, peering down and whispering to each other. Some were squirrel-sized and some as big as children, in coats of bark and caps of leaves. Every so often one of them would call something out in a high, clever voice and the rest would laugh.

“What are they saying?”

Analogy listened, with a slight frown. “Grammar. Greek grammar, mostly, and some Hebrew. They’re arguing about tenses.”

The next thing Inquirer noticed was the trees themselves. They weren’t like trees in any wood he knew. They grew in odd, exact shapes, each with one great trunk, branches growing from the trunk, smaller branches from those, and smaller still from those. And on every branch, cut into the bark, there were words.

He went up to the nearest tree and read the trunk. God so loved the world. He followed the first big branch out from it. That he gave his only begotten Son. And from that branch a smaller one grew. That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

“It’s a sentence. The whole tree’s a sentence. The trunk’s the main part and the branches hang off it.”

“That’s right,” said a voice over his head.

He looked up. On a low bough with his back against the trunk sat a lean, brown, elderly man in a forester’s leather jerkin, with a pipe in his mouth and a long knife at his belt. He had been sitting so still that Inquirer had taken him for part of the tree.

“You’re reading the trunk first. Good. Most people start at the leaves. I’m the Woodward. I keep this forest.” He dropped lightly to the ground. He was taller than he’d looked, and he moved like a man who’d walked in woods his whole life. “Some call me Grammar. You’ll be wanting to get through to the far side, I expect.”

“We do,” said Plain-Sense. “I came through once before, but I took a wrong turn near the middle and it cost me a week.”

“Most do. The road’s plain enough. It’s the guides that lead you off it.” He glanced up at the chattering. “Those guides. They’ll offer you short cuts. Don’t take any. Walk with me and I’ll show you how to read the trees.”

He walked them along the road, puffing his pipe and talking as they went.

“Every sentence in the Book’s a tree, and grammar is how it grows. The trunk’s the main clause, subject and main verb. The branches are the clauses that hang off it. Some tell you why, some when, some how, some so that. The twigs are the phrases and the leaves are the single words. You learned words at the Schoolhouse. Master Context taught you to see a sentence in its paragraph, and Mistress Shape taught you to see the shape of a whole passage. My job’s in between. I teach you how one sentence is put together. Which word’s doing what to which.”

He stopped by a tree and put his hand on a branch.

“Grammar matters. Never let anybody tell you it doesn’t. The apostles argued from it. Paul built a whole argument on one word being singular instead of plural: He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. The Lord Himself argued from a single tense. I am the God of Abraham, not I was, and so Abraham lives. Grammar matters a very great deal.”

He knocked his pipe out against the trunk.

“But grammar’s a range, not a key. A Greek tense or a Hebrew form can mean several things. It narrows down what’s possible, but it seldom picks among them on its own. Context picks. Grammar tells you which roads are open, and context tells you which one the author took. Those creatures up there,” he jerked his head at the branches, “have each learned one true thing about grammar and turned it into a key that opens every door. That’s how they lead people off. Not by lying about grammar. By making it say more than it can.”

The first of them came down before they had gone another hundred yards.

He was small and sharp, with a long nose and a very loud voice, and he dropped off a branch straight onto the road in front of them, landed on his feet, and struck a pose.

“Pilgrims! Allow me to introduce myself. Mr. Once-For-All, at your service. Expert in the Greek aorist tense. You’ve heard of the aorist? The great tense of the Greek language! I can show you a short cut through this whole forest if you’ll only learn my secret. The aorist means once for all! A single, decisive, never-to-be-repeated act!”

He snatched a twig off a low branch and waved it. “Look here. Romans six, verse thirteen. Yield yourselves unto God. It’s an aorist! So it means once for all, in a single decisive act, yield yourselves. One great crisis moment of surrender and it’s done forever! And here,” another twig, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations. There’s an aorist in it! Once for all! Go once, decisively!”

Inquirer looked at the Woodward, who was relighting his pipe and didn’t seem in any hurry.

“Well?”

“Mr. Once-For-All,” said the Woodward patiently, “is right that the aorist is the great tense of Greek. He’s right that it often describes an action as one whole, a snapshot rather than a moving picture. But a snapshot of what depends on the context. The aorist doesn’t tell you whether a thing happened once, or how often, or how decisively. It only tells you the writer’s looking at it whole, from outside, without describing it as going on. He’ll use it for a sneeze or for a hundred years. Forty and six years was this temple in building. That’s an aorist, little fellow. Forty-six years, once for all?”

Mr. Once-For-All went red. “Exceptions,” he muttered.

“No. That’s the rule. You’ve taken the rule’s commonest case and made it the whole rule. Yield yourselves unto God might be a call to one decisive act, or to a whole life looked at as one thing. The context has to tell you. The tense can’t.”

Mr. Once-For-All glared at them and sprang back up into the branches, and as they went on they could hear him far off among the trees shouting once for all, once for all! at some other pilgrims.

The second came down more gracefully, a tall slender creature like a heron, all legs and neck, with a slow, drawn-out, soothing voice.

“Oh, don’t listen to him. He’s so abrupt. I’m Madam Continuous. I specialize in the present tense. The present tense means keep on, keep on, keep on. Every present tense in the Book is a continuous, ongoing, never-ceasing action. Look. Ask, and it shall be given you. That means keep on asking, keep on asking! Whosoever believeth in him: whosoever keeps on believing, and keeps on, and keeps on! So much more spiritual, don’t you think? Everything ongoing.”

This time it was Analogy who answered her.

“Madam, I’ve spent forty years putting cross-references in margins, and I’ve seen what your doctrine does to a frightened soul. A man reads whosoever believeth, and you tell him it means whosoever keeps on believing without a break. So he looks inside himself and finds a day last week when his faith was weak, and he thinks, I didn’t keep on. So I’m not saved.”

“But the present tense…”

“The present tense often does describe something as going on,” said the Woodward. “In a lot of places that’s exactly right and worth noticing. But not every present tense is a long one. The Greeks used it for a thing happening now, for a thing that’s generally true, for a thing about to happen, for a habit, for telling a story vividly. Again: the tense opens a range. The context chooses.”

“There’s one place where it really matters,” said Plain-Sense, thinking. “First John. Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin. I’ve heard men say that means a real Christian never sins at all. And I’ve heard it said that because it’s the present tense, it means doesn’t keep on sinning, doesn’t live in sin as a way of life. Which is it?”

“What does John say two chapters before?” said Analogy.

Plain-Sense opened his Book. “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”

“Then John doesn’t mean a Christian never sins. He’s already said anyone who claims that is fooling himself. So in chapter three he must mean something else, and the present tense there fits well with doesn’t go on in sin as his way of life. It supports that reading. But look what settled it. Not the tense on its own. The tense and the rest of the letter. That’s the right way round. Grammar suggests, and context and the rest of Scripture confirm.”

Madam Continuous looked faintly offended, as though someone had been contradicting her for a very long time, and stalked off among the trees on her long legs.

The third was a stout, solemn creature in spectacles, sitting on a stump with a heavy book in his lap.

“Ahem. I am Mr. Since-Condition. Allow me to correct a common error. Greek has several kinds of if. One of them, which the grammarians call the first class condition, assumes the if to be true for the sake of argument. Therefore! Every first class if should be translated since. If thou be the Son of God, said the devil to the Lord. First class! So the devil was saying, Since thou art the Son of God. He knew! He admitted it!”

“That one’s interesting,” the Woodward allowed. “There’s a grain of truth in it. The devil may well have known.”

“There!” said Mr. Since-Condition, triumphant.

“But look at this one.” The Woodward pointed to a nearby tree, where one branch was carved: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain. “First class condition, little fellow. Does Paul mean since Christ be not raised?”

Mr. Since-Condition stared at the branch. His spectacles slid down his nose.

“A first class condition puts the if forward as true for the sake of the argument. It doesn’t say the speaker believes it’s true. Paul’s saying, suppose, just for argument’s sake, Christ isn’t raised. Now see what follows. And the whole point is that it’s monstrous, because Christ is raised. Since would turn his argument on its head. You’ve mixed up how the sentence is built with what the writer thinks.”

Mr. Since-Condition shut his book with a snap and didn’t say another word.

The afternoon was wearing on by now. The road had gone narrow and twisty, the trees older and closer together and the green light dimmer, and the Woodward walked ahead, slow and steady. The chattering overhead got louder the further they went, and there were more of the creatures now, and they started following along above the pilgrims and calling down to them.

“This way, this way! Short cut to the City! Learn the secret of the article!”

“No, this way! The secret of prepositions! Eis means into, always into, never anything else!”

“This way! The secret of word order! The first word in a Greek sentence is always the most important!”

“This way! The genitive! I’ll show you the genitive!”

It was very hard to think in all that racket, and Inquirer found himself wanting, more and more, to go after one of the voices. They sounded so sure, and they were offering a key. And the road was long and dim and confusing, and the Woodward was so slow, and kept saying it depends on the context. Inquirer was sick of contexts. He wanted a key.

He glanced at Analogy and saw the same weariness in the bookbinder’s face.

It happened very fast after that. One of the creatures dropped down in front of Analogy, a small, bright, darting thing with a voice like a little bell, carrying a tiny golden lamp.

“You!” it chimed. “You’re the bookbinder! The one who loves cross-references! I’ve got a secret just for you. Follow my lamp and I’ll show you a rule that links every verse in the Book to every other verse by its grammar alone! A perfect concordance of syntax! You’ll never need context again!”

And before Inquirer could stop him, Analogy had stepped off the road after the little golden lamp, into the trees.

“Analogy!”

He went after him without a second thought. He heard Plain-Sense shout behind him, and the Woodward’s voice, sharp for the first time, “Stay on the road!” But he didn’t stay. He plunged into the dim wood after the bookbinder’s grey coat and the bobbing golden light.

He ran a long way. The golden lamp darted on ahead, and Analogy stumbled after it, and Inquirer stumbled after Analogy. The trees crowded in and the roots kept tripping him and the green light faded until it was nearly dark. The chattering had stopped. There was nothing but their own breathing and their feet on the moss.

Then the golden lamp went out.

Analogy cried out. There was a crash, and a sliding rush of earth, and a thud. When Inquirer got to the spot he nearly went over himself. There was a pit there, a deep one, cleverly hidden under a lattice of branches and moss, and at the bottom of it, a long way down, Analogy lay in a heap with one leg twisted under him.

“Analogy!”

“I’m here,” came the bookbinder’s voice, faint. “I think my leg’s broken. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m an old fool.”

Inquirer knelt at the edge and fumbled for his lantern and got the Book open in front of it. The white flame came up, and its light fell down into the pit.

The walls of the pit were covered in writing scratched into the earth in a cramped, spidery hand, rule after rule after rule. The article always means definiteness. The absence of the article always means indefiniteness. A noun without an article before the verb is always qualitative. The genitive is always possessive. The middle voice always means the subject acts upon himself. Hundreds of them, all the way down, every one starting with always.

And at the bottom, carved bigger than the rest, was the rule that held all the others together: Grammar Alone Determines Meaning.

A high giggle came out of the dark beyond the pit. Inquirer swung the lantern round and caught a small thin creature in a tattered gown crouched on a root. It had huge eyes, and in its hands was the golden lamp, dark now.

“Mine,” it whispered. “Mine now. All the clever ones fall in my pit. The ones who want a rule for everything. I’m Misrule. I dug this pit a thousand years ago and I’ve been catching scholars in it ever since. Professors. Bishops. Bookbinders.” It giggled. “They sit at the bottom and read my walls and write learned books about them, and they never get out.”

Inquirer looked down at Analogy in the pit, and up at the giggling creature, and round at the dark forest. He didn’t know the way back to the road. He didn’t know how to get Analogy out. His lantern showed him one step, the way it always did, and there wasn’t a next step. There was only the pit.

So he did the one thing he knew how to do. He knelt on the edge of the pit and prayed.

He told me he didn’t say anything clever. What he said was, I’ve left the road. I followed a voice because I was tired. My friend’s hurt. I don’t know the way. Help us.

When he opened his eyes the Woodward was standing beside him.

The old forester didn’t say I told you so. He looked down into the pit for a moment. Then he drew the long knife from his belt, knelt, and started to cut.

He didn’t cut the walls. He cut the rules. With quick sure strokes he went down the walls cutting one word out of each rule, and Inquirer, watching, saw that the word was always always. As each always dropped away, the rule underneath it changed. The article always means definiteness became The article often marks definiteness. The genitive is always possessive became The genitive can be possessive. And so on all the way down, and the earth of the pit began to slope and soften until it wasn’t a sheer wall any more but a bank, steep but climbable.

At the bottom the Woodward came to the last great rule, Grammar Alone Determines Meaning, and cut out the word alone.

The whole pit groaned and settled. Its sides fell in gently all round, and it wasn’t a pit any more, only a hollow in the forest floor with an old man in a grey coat sitting at the bottom of it holding his broken leg.

Misrule shrieked and ran off into the dark with its golden lamp.

“There,” said the Woodward, putting his knife away. “That’s all it ever was. A true rule with always stuck on it, and alone. Cut those out and there’s no pit, only a bank you can get up with a bit of help. Now let’s get him out.”

Between them they carried Analogy up out of the hollow. The Woodward cut two straight branches and splinted the leg with strips torn off his own jerkin, and Analogy bore it without a sound, white in the face.

“I’m sorry,” he kept saying. “I’m a bookbinder. I ought to have known better. Forty years of cross-references, and I went off after a golden lamp because it promised me a rule.”

“It’s the clever ones fall in that pit. Never the simple ones,” said the Woodward. “You wanted the Book tidy, so you could tie the whole thing up with grammar. It isn’t tidy. It’s alive.” He knotted off the last strip. “There. You’ll be on a stick for a while.”

They found Plain-Sense waiting on the road where they’d left him, pale and anxious, with his surveyor’s chain in his hand. He hadn’t left the road. He’d stood there, he said, calling and calling, and praying. When he saw them coming he ran to meet them and took Analogy’s other arm.

That night they camped under the great trees, and the Woodward sat up late with them by the fire.

“I’ll tell you what you learned today, so you don’t forget it.” He held his fingers up one at a time, the way Mistress Shape had.

“One. Grammar matters. The apostles argued from it, and so must you. Don’t let anybody tell you the details don’t count.

“Two. Grammar’s a range. A tense, a case, a mood, a voice, a preposition: each one opens up several possibilities. It narrows the field, but it seldom picks the winner on its own.

“Three. Context chooses. The sentence, the paragraph, the book, the whole of Scripture. When the grammar could go two ways, look at what’s round it.

“Four. Watch out for always. Every one of those creatures in the branches has got a true rule with always stuck on the front. Mr. Once-For-All with his aorist. Madam Continuous with her present. Mr. Since-Condition. The one who says eis is always into. The one who says the first word’s always the loudest. All of them a little bit right and a great deal too sure.

“Five. Be humble where the grammarians themselves disagree. There are places where good, careful, learned men read the grammar two ways and both have their reasons. The faith of Christ, or faith in Christ? The faithfulness Christ showed, or the faith we put in Him? The Greek will go either way, and good men argue it to this day. In places like that, hold your view with an open hand. Look for what the rest of the Book plainly teaches. Don’t build a doctrine on a genitive. Build it on the places where the meaning’s clear, and let those guide you where it isn’t.”

He knocked his pipe out for the last time.

“And six. Stay on the road. When you’re tired and the voices are loud and somebody offers you a key, stay on the road. The road’s slow because reading’s slow. That’s not a fault. That’s just what it is.”

Inquirer sat staring into the fire long after the others had gone to sleep. He thought about the pit and the golden lamp, and the Exchange, and the dinner, and the clapping. And he saw that every time he’d gone wrong on the road it had been the same thing in a different coat. He had wanted something to spare him the slowness. A key. A short cut. A way to be done with reading without having to read.

In the morning they went on, Analogy with a stick and one arm over Plain-Sense’s shoulder. It was slow going. The Woodward came with them as far as the edge of the forest, where the trees thinned out and the green light turned to gold and the road ran out into open country under a big sky.

“Past here it’s words,” he said. “Single words. You’ve learned to read a sentence. Now you’ll go down into the smallest thing there is, the word itself. There’s a building out there you’ll pass, a museum.” His face went grim. “Don’t go in.”

“What’s in it?”

“Roots. And a giant who collects them.” He looked at the three of them, and longest at Analogy leaning on his stick. “You’ll go in, of course. Everybody does. But remember what I cut out of the walls of that pit. It’ll stand you in good stead there.”

They thanked him. He raised a hand and turned and went back into the forest, and in a moment he was gone, standing so still among the trees that they couldn’t tell him from them.

The three pilgrims went on out into the sunlight. Far off ahead on the plain a great dark building stood on its own, with columns and a dome and one long banner hanging down its front. Even from there they could read the single word on it, in letters ten feet high:

Originally.