PART II

THE CALL OF ABRAHAM

Leave your country, your kindred, and your father’s house . . .

From the particular to the universal. God (Yahweh, Allah, etc.) and the gods. Creation (immanence, world affirmation) and grace (world transcendence/ trans-formation). Covenant, covenants, and community. The "people of God," "chosen." The pro-perly religious message of God and of neighbor; the transforming force of grace, symbol, and liturgy. The place of the ethnoi (peoples): in history, in the "eschaton." In sum, a scriptural/theological profiling (Jewish, Christian, Islamic, respectively) of the odysseys begun in the story of the call of Abram.1

Editorial Introduction

(W)hy, then, do Christian and Moslim, who divide the inhabited world between them, fight with one another, each of them serving God with pure intention . . .?

                                     Al-Khazari, quoted by

                        Judah Halevi, 12th century CE

            The irony is oft noted -- the great world religions offer visions of peace yet especially in the Abrahamic traditions have often times been embroiled in war. After a quick survey of a few contemporary ethnic-religious conflicts, a scholar from each of the three traditions was asked to comment respectively on the anomalies in the tradition that make its adherents conflict-susceptible. The above quotation from Judah Halevi refers to an imaginary eighth century conversation between a Rabbi and a Khazar king (a presumably Turkic people in the Caucasus region who converted to Judaism in the early 9th century). The king was baffled by the gap between intention and act, between "talking the talk" and "walking the walk," to use the contemporary lingo. Worshipping the same God meant that they each had a right intention, but being at war with each other, their acts did not correspond.

            But why are we vulnerable to that disjunction? The incon-gruity is particularly glaring in the Christian instance. Having them-selves sprung from Judaism, Christians were unprepared, on the other hand, for the Islamic claim to supersede both Judaism and Christianity. Similarly, as Theodore Pulcini points out below, whereas the logic of the Christian appeal to Abraham can be viewed as inclusive with reference to Jewry, that appeal becomes exclusive in use, insofar as it rejects what to Jews is their defining characteristic.

            These few observations serve here to illustrate the aporetic potential of the vocation of Abraham, though we cannot, within the scope of this symposium, presume to resolve the resulting pro-LORD our God is one Lord (Deut. 6:4) -- intelligible. As it stands, that is an inclusive claim. Yet because many other gods appear in the cosmic arena, inclusion turns into exclusion.

            But there is more; the Deity thus proclaimed remains in-effable. The theophany that confronts Abraham recurs, and indeed is experienced on occasion by his descendants. Hence the formula, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob (e.g., Exodus 3:6; Acts 3:13), or more simply the "God of our fathers" (Deut 6:23). And while in a more general sense "the heavens declare the glory of God" (Psalms 19:1) and only the fool has said in his heart "there is no God" (Psalms 14:1), God remains hidden in a cloud of mystery, as at Sinai. Theophanies are rare, and those that are genuine acquire normative status.

            Enter the scriptures. The Abrahamic peoples become known as the "people of the Book." To the three traditions, the call of Abraham, and of his subsequent pilgrimage, become primordial. The story gets told and retold. The experiences of those who follow in his "train" works its way into the story and expands on it. Only over time, with various accretions, does it become scripture. It is the theophany thus sedimented in narrative that becomes the primordium around which a people is shaped.

            This primordium, however, needs interpretation and appli-cation in changing circumstances and time. Eventually these ela-borations vastly exceed the original texts in scope and volume. New theophanies, claiming descent from the original Abrahamic ex-perience, give rise nonetheless to distinctly new revelation, and thus to new faith communities, namely Christianity and Islam. These, too, become inscripturated, though in progressively shorter time. In the former instance, an Incarnational claim is somehow at odds with the aniconic Abrahamic vocation. In the third, the Islamic instance, the inscribing process is tightly compressed, being completed in less than two decades after the Prophet’s death. Further, while the archetype of the Qur’an remains with God, it has been sent down in earthly form. Therefore it possesses a literal exactitude and power that differs from the other two scriptures. "The Qur’an is for Muslims what Christ the Logos is for Christians," according to Mahmound M. Ayoub (The Qur’an and Its Interpreters [Albany: State University Press, 1984]). But like the Hebrew Bible and the Christian "New Testament," bodies of weighty and even authoritative commentary, but also controversy, have evolved.

            Interpreting the primordial texts accordingly becomes in-creasingly difficult over succeeding generations and centuries, because the primordium is refracted through growing layers of tradition. These layers unfold and extend the latencies within the primordium. They thus may possess richness of detail scarcely perceptible in the primordium.

            Meanwhile, however, because of the weight of tradition and of increasing remoteness of the primal theophany, contemporary practitioners may have little direct engagement with the seminal primordium. Tradition, and its institutional configuration, tends rather to overshadow the primordium than to be animated by it. Yet these dilemmas appear endemic. Moses on one occasion sighs, "Would that all God’s people were prophets . . ." (Numbers 11:29). Indeed, why not? Why not, a direct Abrahamic theophany to each?

            Yet the larger problem lies in the opposite direction, the unfolding process and apocalypsis. Religious obscurancy has not a little abetted an a-theistic rendition of evolution and progress in and since the Enlightenment. Are there clues in Michael Kogan’s ren-dering of the prologue to Abraham? Are the advancing globali-zation, pluralization, individualization (De Lorenzo) and yes, the achievement of global civilization without eschatological or apo-calyptic significance? While these questions cannot be pursued here, they surely beckon on the horizon. Meanwhile three com-mentaries on the call to Abram to go out from country, kindred, and father’s house follow and speak for themselves.

Paul Peachey

Rolling Ridge Study Retreat Community

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