Some pray for gold, others for boundless land.
I pray to delight my fellow citizens
Until my limbs are wrapped in earth — a man
Who praised what deserves praise
And sowed blame for wrong-doers.
But human excellence
Grows like a vine tree
Fed by the green dew
Raised up, among wise men and just,
To the liquid sky.
We have all kinds of needs for those we love —
Most of all in hardships, but joy, too,
Strains to track down eyes that it can trust.

                                            [Pindar. Nemean VIII. 37-44]

All important arguments are old. One of the oldest concerns this question: Is character dependent on conditions? Is human excellence — virtue, areté — dependent, subject to conditions, as the Greek tragedians, Socrates, Aristotle and Pindar believed? Is it “like a vine tree / Fed by the green dew / Raised up among wise men and just, / To the liquid sky”? Or is character independent, impervious to conditions, as believed by Epictetus, Seneca, Spinoza, and Bertrand Russell?

In the gospel lesson we heard yesterday, Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing.” One could say that Jesus takes a side in the argument. That would be accurate, and it would miss the point. For what he claims, actually — it is unnerving, the quiet, unassuming way in which he makes his stupendous claims — is that he is the end of the argument. What matters most isn’t where we are in relation to the question. What matters is where we are in relation to him.