EPILOGUE

ABRAHAMIC FAITH AND ETHNICITY

In Lieu of a Conclusion

PAUL PEACHEY

Rolling Ridge Study Retreat Community

Indeed, I would suggest that Diaspora, and not mo-notheism, may be the important contribution that Judaism has to make to the world, although I would not deny the positive role that monotheism has played in making Diaspora possible.

                                                -Daniel Boyarin1

            This symposium addressed an enigma that has plagued the three Abrahamic faiths, namely their occasional complicity in the very human violence that they are called to obviate or surmount. But, while all three Abrahamic faiths have experienced difficulty in realizing the universality that is implicit in their particular claim or vocation, and the problem thus appears as common to them, at this stage it appeared important to address it in the particularity of each tradition. Greater respective clarity in this regard can strengthen those conversations that do explore common ground or seek to re-duce disrupting differences among the three faith communities.

            What has this enterprise yielded? Even a mere glance at the foregoing papers reveals a rich exuberance of perspectives emerg-ing from the lived experiences and histories of the Abrahamic faith communities. Already the occasional nature of this gathering (not to say "irregular" -- without established base or resources) reflects the vitality and creative energy persisting in the Abrahamic legacy. Time and space permitting, an inventorying and assessment of per-spectives and paradigms appearing in these papers would have been undertaken. Writers, while speaking responsibly out of their respective traditions, spoke only for themselves. Numerous hints appear, of promising new horizons, but occasionally but ancient seductions as well.

            The genesis of this symposium was the dialectic in the Christian odyssey between the "establishment" and the "free church" paradigms, as experienced by the editors, and resulting in the decision to compare notes, as it were, with Jewish and Muslim colleagues. How would an event take shape if fashioned by a representative from each faith similarly linked by long-time shared journeys? That, too, will come.

            Meanwhile, consistent with my opening essay (Introduction), I conclude with reflections on the proceedings in a continuing vein. My esteemed co-editing colleagues, to whom I am profoundly indebited in many ways, offered their substantial essays elsewhere in the volume. The above-noted dialectic is readily evident in these several papers. Given the LORD’s "unsearchable greatness (Psalm 143:3)," it would be presumptous indeed to pretend that we have reached the conclusion of the matter here addressed.

            Focusing on the initial call of Abraham (Genesis 12) offered a common framework for this conversation. First, it underscored a common primordiality, direct in the first instance (Judaism), indirect in the second (Christianity) and third (Islam). Second, while the originating theophanies of each of these faiths have been mediated through many centuries of cumulative experience and commentary, these accumulations remain secondary. Like the genetic legacy of the biological organism, the originating theophanies are the germ plasm from which the life of faith unfolds. Hence the foundational importance of the canonical accounts and of the focus of the present dialogue. The Divine summons to Abram to leave country, kindred and father’s house for a new but unknown destiny is a metaphor of unsurpassed profundity, an informing theme that runs throughout the entire saga.

            Each of the three Abrahamic stories presumes finality for it-self, and hence entails a propensity for exclusivity. Actually, canonically, there are intimations to the contrary, namely that God spoke/is speaking in other venues, though these intimations often are "conveniently" ignored. In any event, as history has wended its way, the exclusivity claims have been increasingly difficult to maintain. With the increasing globalization of human experience, the reality is ever more forced upon us: the authenticity of the Abrahamic vocation does not mean God’s withdrawal from other streams of human history. "How unsearchable are his judgements and His ways past finding out." The uniqueness and finality of the Abrahamic call does not mean triumphalist exclusivity.

God’s Search for the Human

            That said, the claim of the Abrahamic paradigm nonetheless stands or falls with its presumed uniqueness. A few writers describe the Abrahamic saga as God’s search for the human in contrast to the religiosity that represents the human search for God. That distinction, though valid at a certain level, must be carefully qua-lified. As just noted, the claim that God called Abraham entails no reference to other possible theophanies.

            Moreover, all religious activity entails the human search for the Divine. And all religious formulations, Abrahamic or other, are humanly constructed. Meanwhile the tools whereby we analyze human activity otherwise permit or enable no direct assessment of the transcendentally ineffable. Jesus says to Thomas, known as the doubter, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe" (John 20:29). "And he (Abraham) believed the LORD; and he reckoned it to him as righteousness" (Gen. 15:6).

            Nonetheless, the Abrahamic saga rests on the claim that God thereby spoke and speaks uniquely and definitively, a claim that to those beyond its pale must appear as scandalous. The waters are further muddied, as it were, by the fact that after many centuries a second version of the Abrahamic project arose, and still later a third. Further complexities appear in the competing tendencies, schools and denominations that appear internally within each of the three traditions.

            Additional difficulties arise in the wake of exclusivist pro-pensity, that were this possible, may appear even more aporetic. Such is the seeming dichotomy within the Divine itself, namely between God’s manifestation in Creation and His overture in the mandate invested in Abraham. Whereas the former is universal in its effective scope, the latter, despite its universal intention, is limited at the outset to one man and those who follow in his train. Moreover the former, Creation, is in no way rescinded by the latter, the Abrahamic Call.

            The differentiation between the two modes of Divine action and communication is dramatized in the distinction made in the Jewish tradition, cited by Schwarz above, between the seven commandments in the covenant with Noah, binding on all humanity including Jews, and the 613 commandments binding on Jews alone.

            The distinction between Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic dis-pensations, though troublesome in some respects, is analytically simple. After the catastrophe in Eden (Kogan’s "something has gone wrong") God intervenes in a limited corrective manner. But the mingling of the two dispensations, Creation and Correction, in the internal life of the Abrahamic communities, is rather more com-plex, particularly insofar as it intersects in confusing ways with the prior distinction between the Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic peoples.

            A simple familiar diagram may be of assistance. Two sepa-rate circles may represent the two modes of Divine action: Creation and Correction, below "Salvific Intervention". The unconnected circles signify the uniqueness of each of the two Divine initiatives. Occasional spiritualizing movements such as forms of gnosticism have interpreted that uniqueness as total discontinuity. At the opposite end of the continuum one may place those instances where community of faith ostensibly coincides with the natural community as in ancient Israel and in medieval Christendom. Yet only in the Eschaton or epiphany is such harmony fully realized. Midpoint between the two poles one may locate the great variety of mixed or pluralist modes variously described as Diaspora.

            It seems fair to say that all three of the Abrahamic traditions have been powerfully drawn to the "folk" paradigm, a fulfillment wherein the natural and the faith community coincide. At the same time, the respective dynamics of creation (or nature), though over-lapping, nonetheless, as it were, keep each other at bay. Neither is fully reducible into the other. Only individuals repent and believe; natural groups do not and cannot. It may well be, however, that most practitioners of Abrahamic faith live contentedly in the shaded area of the Diaspora mode sketched above, scarcely aware of the distinctive modes of Divine utterance.

            In any event, the Abrahamic histories manifest a tension be-tween the folk and dispersion modes, and that tension runs through the proceedings of this symposium. All three of the Abrahamic faiths developed as civilizing energies and accordingly enveloped whole societies, such as the Hebrew monarchies and medieval Christendom. Yet historically the center of gravity has shifted in-creasingly toward Diaspora, in no small measure, it must be added, due to the growing inwardness and personalizing that the Abra-hamic legacy nurtured. While the Apocalypse, the Restoration of all things, is awaited and intended, short of that the fusion of the two Covenants is not afforded.

Confusing the Covenants

            Human existence over time, as we know, has grown increas-ingly complex, a transformation that has quickened in recent cen-turies. The Abrahamic project has been deeply implicated in that transformation, both by directly stimulating that development, and as we have just seen, by introducing additional "variables." Indeed, members of these faith communities must carry a double regimen -- life in the world and life in the Kingdom (or whatever).

             Tension -- and confusion -- result as we try to cope. On the one hand, we endow our natural life in the world with Divine (Abra-hamic) sanction. We claim America for Christ. We fight wars for "God and country." And why not? Surely we don’t want a godless society, a godless public arena, a "naked public square." After all, by you, Abraham, all the nations will "bless themselves."

            Meanwhile, on the other hand, we may busy ourselves with our religious empires. Within the covenant of Creation, humans are in some measure self-creating. We are mandated and destined to construct the stuff, the social and cultural reality, by which our own creation as humans is consummated. Rather gleefully, in the same manner, we build alternative "religious" institutions, blithely ig-noring the "metaphysical" nature of faith and the faith community. Long before we are aware of the resulting debasement, faith has sedimented into ethnicity -- and Bosnia, or Northern Ireland, or . . . follows.

            Baptizing natural (ethnic) groups or ethnicizing our faith -- these are ways whereby we consciously or unconsciously seek to reduce the tension inherent in the Abrahamic vocation. The late Yale church historian, Roland Bainton, identified two modes of Christian promulgation. In the European case, Christianity entered by way of "mass conversion;" that is, princes adopted the faith as part of the political package. Subjects became "Christian" without choice or decision. The result, said Bainton, was the "paganization of the faith" (Christendom. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1964 Vol. I:147).

            The alternative? Again, Bainton -- individual conversion, following a period of interning. The result, the cultural "deracina-tion" of the convert, pulled away from family, kin and ethnos, in a word, from the sustaining culture. If, as noted above, Abrahamic faith, variously in its three forms, was one of the "variables" in the gradual individualization of the Western ethos, does this suggest that the atomization that we now deplore in the USA stems in some measure from this source as well?

            The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century has been widely interpreted as ending the synthesis that was medieval Christendom. It was only gradually and later that the individualism implicit in Luther’s proclamation permeated the culture, coupled with the concept of the "citizen isolate" of Anglo-Saxon democracy, to an important degree along with the "free church" tradition.

Where Does This Leave Us?

            The accent placed here on the distinction between God’s Creative and Salvific action is not put forward as a new idea. To the contrary, the relationship between the "general" revelation of God in nature and the "special" revelation, whether initiated in the call to Abram or elsewhere, has invoked endless reflection and discourse. Though this was not the place to summarize or assess that dis-course, much can be learned from it. The fact remains, however, that in the real world of lived Abrahamic faith and the surrounding non-Abrahamic world, the delineation of the difference and relation of the two Covenants remains badly muddled.

            These issues bear directly on the enigma here at hand: ethni-city is a "natural" phenomenon. It is rooted in creation, hence both predating the Call to Abram and continuing independently beyond that call. According to Jewish interpretation, the general revelation is embodied in Noahide covenant as the law to which non-Jewish peoples are held.

            The resulting and corresponding tensions between "folk" or "mass church" and the individual conversion-based "free church" runs mutatis mutandis (necessary translation into Judaic and Islamic idioms having been made) through the essays here col-lected. It appears most strikingly, in the Christian instance, in the contrast between Alex F. C. Webster’s essay in Part I and Miroslav Volf’s in Part IV, "folk" or "mass" church, in the former instance, "free church," in the latter. Vigen Guroian, writing in Part V within one of the former traditions, illustrates the problem of introducing the latter idiom into the context of the former.

            As implied above, it is my impression that the same tension appears in the other two traditions, but I will leave specification to others. The tension thus identified suggests that in applying Abra-hamic labels to natural (Creation-grounded) communities, whether ethnic or national, we over-extend its scope, and that in cultural sedimentation of the Abrahamic faith in historical institution we superficialize. The implication is thus that the scope of any Abra-hamic claim must be narrowed while its thrust must be deepened.

            There is, however, no blue-printable or programmatic alter-native to this tension, and in that sense, no "conclusion" to this volume. This tension is rather a process through which we who are summoned in the Abrahamic vocation, must always live, now this way, now that, depending on circumstances. "Realists," or rather the "realist" impulse in all of us, bridles at this conclusion. Give us a better plan or be quiet! Abram was told to go without knowing where. Had he been a realist he would have staid back to inherit his father’s house. Without mixing or confusing categories we must become more "worldly," more affirmatively planted in the covenant of Creation, but simultaneously more radically grounded in the Abrahamic deliverance, always recognizing and respecting which is which.

NOTE