INTRODUCTION

CONFLICTS AND APORIAS IN ABRAHAMIC MONOTHEISM

PAUL PEACHEY

Rolling Ridge Study Retreat Community

Yahweh said to Abram, ‘Leave your country, your kindred and your father’s house for a country which I shall show you; and I shall make you a great nation, I shall bless you and make your name famous; you are to be a blessing!

                        I shall bless those who bless you,

                        and shall curse those who curse you,

                        and all clans on earth

                        will bless themselves by you.’

                                    Genesis 12:1-3 (New Jerusalem Bible)

            The Call of Abraham, taken in its own terms, broke the silence of the universe. Thereby the Deity intervened in the previously-created cosmos, a cosmos already endowed with its own charter. And while, as became evident, the God who creates and later calls is seen as identical, creating and calling are humanly experienced as differing though related divine modi operandi. Hence the ques-tion: is this special Call to be understood as an intervention in the created order, either to remodel or complete or, to invoke a con-temporary metaphor, rather more as an in-flight correction of an errant species? Had the original creation been incomplete or de-fective, needing only one more component to make it work -- a temple, a cathedral, or a mosque -- or did the Call of Abraham move on a different plane?

            According to the above text, this enigma was built into the initial Call. What appeared otherwise as primordial (order of creation), and hence inviolable, namely the bond to "country, kindred and father’s house," was expressly sublated, hence rela-tivized, in that Call. Thereby human existence became in some sense bifurcated. For the recipient of the call, the putative sacred unity of the cosmos was broken. To invoke another inadequate metaphor, "nature" (creation) and "grace" (the new Call) now form two foci within an ellipse -- one God, two sets of instructions. Tensions, anomalies, indeed aporias, resulted, which, as the story unfolds, are soluble only in a remote and experientially subjunctive eschaton.

            Cosmic reconstitution or in-flight (human) correction? Much of the history of the three "Abrahamic" faith communities repre-sented in this symposium arises as oscillation between the two poles within this ellipse. Indeed, one might speak of several ellip-tical forms. First, the Call ("grace") somehow transcends Creation or "nature" (". . . father’s house"). Second, while promising what might be seen as a new ". . . father’s house," that is, a new particularity, this new "nation" embodies and constitutes a new universality, a particular blessing on behalf of all nations. From Abraham is to issue a qualitatively different peoplehood, yet with-out rescinding that which it surmounts. Thence forward, Abraham stands under a dual mandate: nature and grace, a particular univer-sality. Despite, and at times seemingly because of this "in-flight correction," history continues on its turbulent way. As we all know, according to the story in which the Abrahamic Call is embedded, the harmony of the cosmos had first been disrupted by human rebellion. The Creation, pronounced good at the outset, indeed, with the appearance of the human, pronounced very good, had been placed in some indeterminate though limited manner and measure under human tutelage. Within limits, thus, the unfolding of the Divine creative venture had by design been made hostage to human caprice.

            According to the preceding story (Genesis 3-11), that project of world creation miscarried, provoking eventually a flood that would permit a new beginning, and when the second beginning misfired, a scattering of humans (Babel), effectively placing new limits on human action. Even that was not enough. So now, a third, and more positive, intervention, the Call to Abraham. This intervention can be described as a new enabling yet without preju-dice to the original Creation. The telos of this intervention is resto-rative rather than disjunctive. Yet while a total repristination is placed in eventual prospect, the Abrahamic Call at the outset is particular and incipient, rather than universal or realized.

            Whatever the goal or telos of the new enabling, thus, it is achieved only in stages. It begins inauspiciously with the wandering of a single household, itself not unusual in a nomadic era. First, both chronologically and generically, comes the formation of a special people drawn and set apart from all others. This new people can be described as metaphysically constituted.1 A special new covenant is instituted within the covenant that is general to the creation. However the resulting horizon is conceived ontologically or theologically, within the contours of Abrahamic faith, the res-pondents, Abraham and those who follow in his train, thereafter stand under a dual mandate: the orders of creation and of grace, grace as a covenanting Call and empowerment, and ultimately as the last word. "Go from your . . . father’s house."

            Though still subject to the laws of Creation, Abraham and Sarah now march by other music. And as the story unfolds over succeeding generations, viewed externally, the Call as a new di-rective becomes an additional anomaly in a human enterprise already off balance. To invoke another crude simile, the growth of new tissue beneath the putrefaction of an old wound can be temporarily irritating.

            This symposium addresses the paradox: the telos of the Abrahamic call is the blessing of all humans, but the implemen-tation of that call seemingly has often meant, or been accom-panied by, bane. Hence the questions confronting the writers in this symposium: to what extent, if any, is the Call inherently conflictual? To what extent is the conflict surrounding the Abrahamic enterprise random or accidental, rooted rather in the fallenness (and/or finitude?) of the human condition that occasioned the Call in the first place? Or could it be that disparity between the existing order and the dynamics triggered by the Call is intrinsically conflict en-gendering? Whatever the answer, if shalom is the true nature and destiny of the Call ("they shall sit every man under his vine . . . and none shall make them afraid" Micah 4:4), what can we learn, each from our own tradition’s conflicted past -- learning that will enable us together to achieve healing and harmony in the future, the healing and harmony that appears to be the telos of the Call? Given the accelerating growth of global encounter in our era, these questions become increasingly urgent.

THE ABRAHAMIC CALL AS CONFLICTED METAPHOR

            Whatever the shape of the original Abrahamic event, the Call became an embryonic, yet ambiguous, metaphor in the ensuing march of history. On the one hand the Call appears as a funda-mental challenge to nature-grounded human history. Country, kindred and father’s house are human constructs, arising from the constraints and possibilities inherent in the determinisms of nature. As already intimated, the Call transcends and thus relativizes these natural, creation-grounded ties. Yet there is no suggestion that the creation-grounded familial order is being dissolved. Abraham main-tains his own household, and his descendants are organized by family, clan, and tribe as are the surrounding peoples. In any case, the Decalogue enshrines the inviolability of both the conjugal and the blood tie.

            Perhaps, then, the Call to Abraham was a unique event, merely the beginning of a new blood-line? The recurrent and active intervention of God in the ensuing history surely rules out that op-tion. It is instructive to note that a similar note is sounded when Jesus begins his public ministry (Mark 3:13-19; 31-35). Rather than displacement or dissolution of country, kindred and household, the Call signals their sublation in a transcendent vision. Yet how can that vision be implemented given the now innate dissonance within the cosmos?

            We are thus left with the question: does the Call constitute eclipse, or does it merely make more explicit claims that were already implicit in the scheme of things? If the former, if in effect it represents a new set of instructions, differing from the original order, we can only conclude that the price of the Call is a corres-ponding degree of dissonance in human existence, say, faith com-munity versus natural community. If the latter, rendering explicit what hitherto was only implicit, the Call merely underscores or reiterates the directives already given. In effect, little, if anything, has changed. History continues on its nature-based course of battle for country, kindred and family.

A PEOPLE SET APART

            The original Call, however, launched a new and distinct people, a people with a mission to other peoples, indeed to all peoples. This was a people apart, but a people nonetheless. Pre-cisely as special, as chosen, it was endowed with an indelibility, an inviolability, not shared by others. Here, too, there is ambiguity and paradox. The Call posits a universality of human destiny that relati-vizes all conflict-engendering particularity. This transformation is manifest paradigmatically by a covenantal formation that trans-cends and relativizes the ethnic fabric -- Go from your country, kindred and father’s house. . . . Yet ironically this new ethnos becomes a configuration that absolutizes its own particularity. In the process it uproots and displaces other peoples to establish its own identity as a territorially-organized people. Mutatis mutandis, this paradox characterizes each of the three principal Abrahamic traditions.

            Outwardly, the rise of the Abrahamic peoples seemingly perpetuates the inter-group struggle for supremacy that generally has characterized human history heretofore. The dynamics that permit the ascendancy of a regime or people over others vary endlessly. Any such ascent is readily ideologized by some form of cosmic appeal. In the instance of the Abrahamic peoples, the mo-notheistic and universal nature of the ideological claim tends by so much to reinforce the claim vis-a-vis others. It is hardly surprising that other peoples should resent this Abrahamic pretention.

            Thus it will hardly do to attribute the conflict that has plagued the journeys through history of the Abrahamic peoples simply to the perversity of others beyond the pale of the Call. In any event the inherent ambiguity of the Abrahamic project is somehow acknow-ledged in the unfolding story. In the early stages, the conflict with the peoples who are displaced is liturgically defined -- God fights the Abrahamic battles. Defeat, or at times even the exigency of literal battle, results from Abrahamic disobedience. In the end, Shalom rather than conquest or subjugation is disclosed as the real telos of the Call.

            Despite the outward similarity of the Abrahamic "nation" to peoples with their conflicts, the distinction between that nation and all others glimmers through the agony surrounding the establish-ment of monarchy (I Samuel 8). In principle, prior to that time, the Abrahamic nation was theocratically constituted and so (self) understood. But precisely how was such rule to operate empiri-cally? That seemingly was not fully clear, and perhaps by the nature of the case, it could be neither clear nor predictable. To the people the resulting vulnerability of this special nation to the conquest of others became intolerable (Joshua, Judges, I Samuel). By way of the dialogue initiated in the Call to Abraham, they demanded a king. Citing the irreducibility of the divine rule to the ethnic plane, Samuel, the prophetic steward of the Call, refused. Surprisingly, the LORD yielded, undercutting the prophet, while nonetheless coming to his support. Still, being sent himself to anoint Saul, the son of Kish, as king, he was forced to "eat crow."

            To move to the Christian saga, though chronology and other particulars differ widely from the Israelite precedent, the parallels between the Israelite and Jewish monarchies and Christendom appear powerfully revealing. Referring to the fourth century (CE) adoption of Christianity by the Roman empire, George Mendenhall, an Old Testament scholar of our own era, has described King David as the "Old Testament Constantine" (while extending the canvass to included a similar mutation in the message of Zarathustra by the later Achaemenids [7th, 6th] centuries BCE). Mendenhall observes that "all three cases are entirely analogous, illustrating (to put it as provocatively as possible) the dissolution of religion into politics. At the same time, the basis of solidarity was no longer the covenant, but the myth of descent from a common ancestor."2

            While I am far less familiar with the Islamic story, it is my impression that there too, as in ancient Israel and in Christendom, "the dissolution of religion into politics" has at times occurred. Despite a strong universalist impulse in the Islamic primordium, no more than in its Judaic and Christian antecedents, has that primor-dium been self-guaranteeing. Once a sufficient degree of religious monopoly prevails, the impulse to invoke the Abrahamic sanction for Creation-grounded order becomes all but irresistible. The Call that redefines popular cohesion from within, or "from below" (shalom), is turned into a rationale for external subjugation "from above" (pax-ification).

            In effect, the Abrahamic "nation" has in all three instances reverted to the pre-Abrahamic plane. Today the ghost of Christen-dom hangs over the former Yugoslavia. Absent the religious mar-kers -- Eastern vs. Western Christianity vs. Islam -- the respective "causes" of the warring parties might well collapse. In the jargon of the social sciences, while "religion" in this instance is hardly a sufficient "cause" for conflict, it is nonetheless a necessary com-ponent. The Call whose telos is the sublation of the ethnic impulse, the idolatry of "country, kindred and father’s house," is subverted into the reinforcement of the very impulse it was designed to surmount.

HISTORY AS REVELATION?

            The foregoing analysis is obviously a simplification. The attempt here to tease out the inner logic of the storied Call ignores the thicket of issues -- historical, linguistic, epistemological, theolo-gical, etc. -- that surround the Abrhamic story. Yet given the tumult of inquiries into that thicket, the inner logic of both the initial call, and its unfolding, tends to get trampled. Admittedly, toying with a paragraph in Genesis chapter 12 appears as terra firma compared to the tracing of the inner stream as it flows and gathers momentum down through the millennia.

            The foregoing cogitation turns on the embryonic potential of the Call as originally recorded, with scattered glances at later stages in its progression. Given the embryonic character of the Call, tracing that progression is critical to its comprehension. Tracing that evolution is a task well beyond the small reach of this essay. A few broad brush strokes must suffice.

            Above I noted the historical tension between the "already" and the "not yet" dimensions of the Call. Here, too, there is in-congruity. Our several eschatological readings (Jewish, Christian, Islamic) posit both linkage and discontinuity between these two dimensions. Fate in the hereafter, the "not yet," turns on disposition in the here and now, the "already." The story has a plot. It begins, proceeds and ends. Yet the end, the hereafter, is qualitatively dis-continuous with the here and now, and thus can in no way be temporally achieved. The end emerges from both the beginning and the realization of the journey, and yet ultimately is not merely their product.

            Prior to or apart from that end, this enigma is not solved. While in the end, as prophets announce, "the lion shall eat straw like the ox," his diet has been considerably more carnivorous over the centuries in the course of which whole peoples have been wiped out. For them it was of little comfort that the prophets were to announce a new historical era in which individual responsibility would succeed upon aeons of collective guilt. But no more shall the son "suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son," a prophet announces. "The soul that sins shall die" (Ezekiel 18:20).

            That transformation slowly gathered momentum over the centuries, emerging first in the western world. The corresponding conception of individual dignity is now spreading world wide, es-pecially by way of the universal campaign for "human rights." How-ever inadequate the formulation as yet -- the corresponding notions of duty, responsibility and solidarity are woefully lagging -- the advance appears to be, at least in some measure, irreversible.

            Yet in two important respects this advance appears troubling. While doubtless attributable in part to the impact of the Abrahamic Call on the course of history, the Call itself was implemented by means of the evils it was to uproot, the displacement of peoples to make way for the people of the Call. Secondly, the status of the improvement beyond the pale of the Call is unclear if not confusing. Insofar as the Call is implemented, that is, "secularized," is it now obviated? Logically, does the Call pertain only to deficiency? Is the Call merely remedial? Does a fully just society still need "religion?" What is the ontological significance of human reform?

            It has been suggested that the global transformations now breathtakingly under way surely possess eschatological significance, yet voices informed by the Call are scarcely audible in this regard. The separation of church and state, for example, though profoundly implicit in the Abrahamic story, is more strongly as-serted by the exponents of Creation (state or society) than by exponents of the Call (church). Indeed the latter tend to seek recourse to the means of the former to promote the sway of the latter!

            These problems are cited, not because they can be solved here, but they illustrate the importance of the "already -- not yet" epoch in the story of the Call. It is here that the importance of the distinction between the Diaspora and the triumphalist paradigms outlined below becomes pertinent. For the former disavows as chimeric the very goal that the latter pursues. The salvific seed is dispersed. For the sake of the faithful few, not the dominant many, a city, a world, is saved (Genesis 18).

            Finally an astonishing aspect of the "already -- not yet" interim is adumbrated in the rise of the Hebrew monarchy noted above. The softening of the divine position at this point introduces a critically-important dimension of the Abrahamic story. That story proceeds by way of the proverbial two steps forward, one step backward. In recognition of the human predicament ("For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are but dust" Psalm 103:14), each episode or stage is framed by a lofty possibility, and a partially failed response. Thereupon the LORD picks up the pieces, as it were, and accepts the result as a staging venue for the next advance.

            In the long run, we may well ask whether Samuel’s misgivings were not justified. Monarchy and temple establishment apparently failed. The new step forward incorporates exile and Diaspora. Repristination becomes increasingly messianic and eschatological, hence in some measure, discontinuous with the most that history can achieve. In a sense, thus, the plot only thickens. The historical pace quickens, yet the likelihood of the achievement of hegemonic Abrahamic faith such as erstwhile Hebrew monarchy or Christen-dom recedes. Short of messianic finality, Diaspora appears as "the name of the Game."

SOME CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS

            The Call to Abraham is God’s overture to a humanity that con-tinuously abuses its exalted destiny in the Creation. Humanly per-ceived, given that fiasco, God confronts a dilemma. Either God must scrap the project (as in the Flood with Noah) or somehow contain the damage. Opting for the latter, the Call is the divine solution. The Creation, and with it the human enterprise, continues on its allotted course. But in Abraham, God addresses the human spirit in a special communicative manner, without prejudice to the covenant of creation or even the material status of the human within creation. In short, the intervention remains strictly "metaphysical," engaging the human spirit, without infringing on the creation-grounded animality from which that spirit emerges. As theologians have noted, the Call constitutes a "special" revelation within or alongside the general revelation that is implicit in creation. This special gesture consists of both judgment and renewal. But while this intervention permits the project to go forward, full restoration will be realized only in a trans-historical cosmic climax.

            Each of the three Abrahamic traditions has its particular eschatology, its particular conception of the beyond-time mystery. Nonetheless, for all three the grace proffered in the Call is in some manner a two-stage process, a down payment, as it were, to be followed by final settlement. The Call thus places believers in a field of tension between the "already" and the "not yet" moments of the new divine-human covenant. The Abrahamic peoples live in the unsettled period between the two eras.

            Alas, both the timing and the shape of the final settlement are vaguely defined. Presumably the down payment is substantial enough to inspire confidence in the eventual settlement. Often, however, the logic is reversed. The prospect of future glory is invoked to shore up confidence in the down payment. At that point, folk wisdom asserts itself. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Catch as catch can. The sound of the Call is drowned in the din.

            How then, after these three or four millennia, do we respond to the Call launched with Abraham? Can we discern any normative guidelines? Within the histories and traditions referenced above, one might discern three possible paradigms: the first may be described as kaleidoscopic, history taken as it comes, on a trial and error basis, without pattern or principle. The second may be described as triumphalism, the possibility that the Abrahamic covenant will carry the day, while the third views Diaspora as the "normal" posture of an Abrahamic people in the already/not yet field of tension that characterizes the post Abrahamic era.

            Though at least on the surface these three tendencies, even paradigms, can be distinguished variously in the history of the three peoples, each has its own claim to validity. The kaleidoscopic paradigm accords with both the flux and the variability of history, on the one hand, and the ineffability of the Divine, on the other. It accords as well with the prophetic discovery that despite the importance of people and nations in the Abrahamic scheme, "the soul that sins shall die." No longer shall it be said, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge."

            With regard to the triumphalist paradigm, this is seemingly implicit in the promise of universal blessing that is built into the primordial call. What can surpass a Solomonic reign, a Europe as Christendom, or peoples under Islamic rule? Should we not strive for a public order whose institutions are Abrahamically grounded and guided? And today, should we not minimally seek to uphold, or minimally to retain, whatever "establishment" residue of those eras that still remain? Yet almost inevitably, the more nearly history approximates the triumphalist paradigm, the higher the probability that the Abrahamic faith is taken captive by the "country, kindred and father’s house" it is designed to transmute and transcend.

            Alongside, or in the wake of these two paradigms, a third option has emerged , characterized as Diaspora (dispersion). Out-wardly the Diaspora paradigm resembles the kaleidosocope inso-far as it exists alongside other configurative modes. Historically, however, it appears as a third-stage emergent, appearing princi-pally after the kaleidoscopic and triumphalist stages. Diaspora is a seminal concept, evoking the image of scattered seed, in this instance, the scattering of salvific potential, ready to spring up wherever it falls into receptive soil. Envisioned in a variety of images in Hebrew prophecy, this imagery resounds in the various logoi of Jesus and finds parallels as well in the Qur’anic texts.

            The fact that historically, all three impulses or modalities have appeared, depending on context and setting, is instructive. That fact surely reflects the multidimensionality and complexity of the human condition. It also warns against too hasty an espousal of one paradigm versus another. In any case, the term "paradigm," as in-troduced here, serves as sensitizing concept, directing our atten-tion to particular possibilities and tendencies rather than to objects, entities, or externally replicable patterns or programs.

            Given the incipient nature of the Abrahamic vocation, however, the Diaspora motif appears more attuned to the already/not yet tentativeness of the Abrahamic saga as well as to the cul-tural pluralism that characterizes the global scene. Admittedly, this claim as presented here may reflect the very ethnocentrism that the Abrahamic Call seeks to challenge; that is, not only American religious and cultural diversity, but also the "radical Reformation"3 heritage in which my own spiritual roots lie.

            This symposium can provide no definitive solution to the aporias of the Abrahamic saga. Nonetheless the responses of the some twenty writers from the three traditions to the questions here posed do provide a variety of insights that may well enrich the understanding of the thoughtful reader. We offer these delibera-tions as a contribution to the growing stream of interfaith con-versation.

NOTES

            1. David Novak, Jewish-Christian Dialogue: A Jewish Justifi-cation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). He draws the phrase, "the metaphysically constituted human society," with some qualification, from Joseph B. Soloveitchik from Tradition 6.2 (Spring-Summer, 1964).

            2. George Mendenhall, The Tenth Generation: The Origins of the Biblical Tradition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1973), pp. 16f.

            3. This term was coined by the Reformation historian George Hunston Williams to distinguish the dissenting "free church" (Ana-baptist) movement that arose within the "magisterial" Reformation (Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican) in the sixteenth century. Williams, The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1957). See also Paul Peachey, "The `Free Church?’: A Time Whose Idea Has Not Come," in Anabaptism Revisited, edited by Walter Klaassen (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1992). When the break between the Papacy and the Reformers (Luther, etc.) became definitive, temporal rule was the only order-maintaining alternative to the historic succession embodied in the Papacy. When this brought temporal rule (the magistracy) into the domain of the "church," the "radicals" proceeded on the basis that Christ’s pre-sence in the gathering of believers is self-authenticating, not tied to historical or sacramental mediation.