Beyond Thinking
“Come now, and let us reason together,” says the Lord, Isaiah 1:18a NKJV
Reason – Just to be clear, the verse from Isaiah is not an invitation to enter into cognitive cooperation with God. The Hebrew verb is yākaḥ, and a better translation might be “let us debate,” or “let us argue (as in a court of law).” God’s point here is that He is willing to forgive if we are willing to listen to His case. But there’s another factor here that needs some explanation. Reason (not yākaḥ) is not king of the hill in the biblical world. It is in our Greco-Roman West, but it isn’t in the East. Something else is more important than thinking.
Consider the comment from Franz Rosenzweig:
“Cognition is autonomous; it refuses to have any answers foisted on it from the outside. Yet it suffers without protest having certain questions prescribed to it from the outside (and it is here that my heresy regarding the unwritten law of the university originates). Not every question seems to me worth asking. Scientific curiosity and omnivorous aesthetic appetite mean equally little to me today; though I was once under the spell of both, particularly the latter. Now I only inquire when I find myself inquired of. Inquired of, that is, by men [Menschen] rather than by scholars. There is a man in each scholar, a man who inquires and stands in need of answers. I am anxious to answer the scholar qua man but not the representative of a certain discipline, that insatiable, ever inquisitive phantom which like a vampire drains him whom it possesses of his humanity. I hate that phantom as I hate all phantoms. Its questions are meaningless to me.”[1]
“ . . . the error involves the inability to let go of experiences of wonder that punctuate the current of daily life. The philosopher is unable to wait for life itself to bring the solutions to his marveling, to integrate his wonder into the very fabric of living.”[2]
Rosenzweig’s comments should be clear. What matters in Scripture is not having all the answers—or even knowing all the questions. What matters is being in the midst of life, that is, being able to acknowledge and appreciate the awe of being alive, standing in the midst of all that is with heartfelt gratitude, not external philosophical or theological questions. What Rosenzweig condemns is the “outsider” view of our shared living space, the view that began with the Greek notion of the nature—everything except the observer. The biblical view is that we are right in the middle of it all, and what matters are our actions and reactions to life in the creation. The biblical view is practical involvement, not external reasoning. In fact, this is why the Bible says so much about how to live and so little about the essence of life. We should seriously consider Heschel’s insight that the Bible tells us nothing about the essence of God—and everything about what it means to live in God’s world. Think about that, oh, no, wait. Don’t convert biblical practice into cognitive dogma. Go beyond thought—and reply to God’s call.
Topical Index: reason, thought, practice, response, Isaiah 1:18
[1] Franz Rosenzweig, Star of Redemption (Syracuse University Press, 1999), pp. 96-97 cited in Eric L. Santner, On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life, pp.17-18.
[2] Eric L. Santner, On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life, p. 20.
