Law and Order
When God began to create heaven and earth—the earth being unformed and void, Genesis 1:1-2a Parsha: Bere’shit JPS Tagged Tanakh
To create – Biblically-based religions are susceptible to a subtle but dangerous trap. They can easily become religions of the book rather than religions of the God revealed in the book. You and I, being familiar with Christian origins, might recognize this snare in the tendency toward creedal theology. The Bible becomes a collection of proof texts and eternal principles. Once we have our statements of faith, we hardly need God, except, of course, when life turns sour and we want divine assistance. Otherwise we are content to believe according to dogma and doctrine based on the book.
There is a strain of Judaism that follows a similar path. Read this passage carefully:
“When God decided to create the universe God looked into the Torah, and created the universe according to the plan of what was written in it. The Torah is the cause of the universe, in every sense of the word cause. Aristotle identified four types of cause: formal, material, active and final. We find in rabbinic writings that the Torah is attributed as the cause of all being in each of these four ways. God used the Torah as the blueprint for the Creation.”[1]
I hope you noticed that this Jewish view actually refers to a Greek epistemology. Christians might elevate the Gospels and the letters of Paul to the place of high and holy text, but the Torah can occupy the same position in Judaism. The book is the final authority on everything.
Heschel provides a telling criticism of both Christian and Jewish textual myopia.
“It is not law and order itself, but the living God Who created the universe and established its law and order, and stands supreme in biblical thought. This differs radically from the concept of law as supreme, a concept found, for example, in the Dharma of Mahayana Buddhism. Before the Torah, the covenant was. In contrast to our civilization, the Hebrews lived in a world of the covenant rather than in a world of contracts. The idea of contract was unknown to them. The God of Israel ‘cares as little for contract and the cash nexus as He cares for mere slavish obedience and obsequiousness. His chosen sphere is that of covenant.’ His relationship to His partner is one of benevolence and affection. The indispensable and living instrument holding the community of God and Israel together is the law.”[2]
“ . . . what obtains between God and Israel must be understood, not as a legal, but as a personal relationship, as participation, involvement, tension.”[3] This is why the Bible uses marriage terminology to describe God’s relationship to Israel. Fidelity, adultery, jealousy, love, and betrayal are the correct descriptions, not rule, regulation, law, enforcement, and punishment. But it’s easy to make this mistake, to substitute the book for the Creator. The book is black and white, true or false, contract and conditions. Relationships don’t work like that. They have swings, situations, sentiment, and soul. They don’t depend on the fine print. You know when they’re working—and when they’re not, and you don’t have to consult an owner’s manual to figure it out.
If you’ve been thinking that Torah is God’s instruction manual for good living, maybe you’re leaning toward book belief. Maybe it would be worth stepping back and asking how you feel about your relationship with God. Oh, and be prepared for an emotional answer.
Topical Index: Torah, book, relationship, law, order, Genesis 1:1-2a
[1] Stephen M. Wylen, Settings of Silver: An Introduction to Judaism, 2nd edition (Paulist Press, 2000)
[2] Abraham Heschel, The Prophets: Two Volumes in One (Hendrickson Publishers, 1962), Vol. 2, p. 10.
[3] Ibid.
