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Charting a New Reformation
Part XXX - The Ninth Thesis, Ethics (continued)
We have thus far relativized the mythical claims made for the code by which the people of Israel claimed to live, by noting that even the Bible reveals confusion about the source of the Ten Commandments. These laws clearly grew out of the common life of the people over a long period of time. They did not come down from on high, the revelation of the divine will. They grew over the centuries and were adapted to the new circumstances as their national life changed and developed. That is why there are different versions of these commandments in the biblical text itself. If the people themselves could not agree on the content of the code of law by which they claimed to live, then one knows that one is dealing with a human invention. Once the code is widely accepted, the mythology around it, however, begins to develop. Before pressing more deeply into the meaning of these commandments, I pause for a slight detour into that mythology.
To understand this story, we go to the Exodus 20 version, which is closest to what people began to agree culturally constituted the “law of God.” Even in this version, however, the biblical narrative makes it clear that these laws were designed to meet very real human needs. Not one in a thousand people will know this story, but it is in the Bible and has been available to us for hundreds of years. Because it didn’t fit into the developed mythology around the Ten Commandments, however, we have tended to ignore it. If we are to seek to understand what the ultimate ethical demands are by which we can live, if we succeed in charting a new reformation, then it becomes worthwhile to lift this story into our conscious minds. The details are as follows.
The Torah with its opening set of Ten Commandments, according to the Bible, actually arose from the suggestions of Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, who was called in the Exodus story “a priest of Midian.” This man, a kind of elder statesman among the people of Israel, observed Moses acting as the judge, resolving all of the disputes that arose among the people of Israel. As their acknowledged leader, Moses was thought to be the only one who knew the will of God well enough to be capable of judging his people. Only Moses had talked with God face to face on the top of Mt. Sinai, so only Moses could be trusted to interpret the law accurately in human disputes. So Jethro, convinced that Moses could not continue to be the sole judge of Israel, asked Moses to set up a tiered legal system of judges. For every ten members of the nation, he suggested, one man should be appointed judge to settle disputes that arose from within this group of ten. Any problems unable to be solved at the level of ten would then be appealed to the next level – to the judge who served as the decision-maker over a group of a hundred. If the person appointed judge over a hundred could not solve the problem, it would be appealed to the judge who was set up over a group of a thousand. Under this system of tiered decision-making, only those cases which could not be settled at the level of a thousand would come to the attention of Moses. Under this system, judging the disputes of the people would not become an overwhelming task falling on the shoulders of one man, but rather a manageable task, resting on an appellate system. Its weakness, however, lay in its lack of objectivity. By what standard would the judges on each level make their decisions? The will of God needed to be objectively applied, lest subjectivity destroy confidence in both the law and the judge. Moses saw the wisdom in Jethro’s suggestion and so the stage was set for this system to be put in place and for the law of God to be dictated to Moses in objective words that all could follow. Powerful symbols were then employed around this handing down of these “divine” rules. Those symbols included “darkness, clouds, earthquakes and fire.” Mystery abounded. The people were placed into a state of high expectation as they gathered at the foot of what came to be called God’s holy mountain. They were prohibited, on pain of death, from coming too close to the mountain. Only Moses and Aaron, the high priest, who was Moses’ brother, could actually enter into the presence of God. Those who had been chosen as the judges over the people, however, could come part way up the mountain, but only after undergoing elaborate acts of ritualistic cleansing, which set them apart from the rest of the people. While they were not allowed into the literal presence of God, they could still come close enough to be validated in their roles as judges.
So with the people aligned in tiers on that mountain according to their authority, with Moses and Aaron alone in God’s presence, God spoke and the Torah was formed. The Ten Commandments were the first part of the Torah and gave voice to the universal principles. Then came the rest of the Torah, designed, as it was, to cover every individual breach that might occur among the people: how to act, how to worship, what was clean and what was unclean, all were covered. The law flowed from God to Moses and Aaron, then to the priests and judges and finally to the people. God’s will for God’s people was thus objectified and written down. Now those who judged the people had to judge them not by their own whims or with their own authority, but by the written law of God. Objectivity banished relativity, for the “Law” was dictated by God and written down for all to see and to read. This provided the people with security, a single standard and with at least the illusion of objectivity. The anxiety created by subjectivity was thus minimized. The power of both truth and the will of God were now contained in written words, objective codes and articulated laws. That was always the way the laws were legitimized in the ancient world. Revelation as the source of truth is always mythological. Codes of law, mythologically attributed to God’s revelation, are always erected to minimize the anxiety of relativity. The fact is, however, that no code has God as its source and no code can or will endure forever. Knowledge changes, experiences expand, interaction with others always challenges the version of truth by which a person or a community lives. How does one balance individual rights against the corporate welfare of the people? How does one define the stranger or even the enemy within one’s gates that the law requires you to love? How does one determine justice when two virtues are in conflict? Remember the story of King Solomon, who was asked to determine who the real mother of a disputed child was? His solution was to draw his sword and to threaten to divide the child into two parts, so that each mother got equal justice! That is sometimes the nature of life. Did not both Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant pray to the same God for victory?
How much relativity or situationalism can the average human life manage? The answer is not very much. The ability to have an objective standard of right and wrong, operating in every situation, is a response to authority, not to freedom. The ability to weigh the options presented in a particular set of circumstances requires a level of maturity that most people do not have and cannot embrace. As the world grows more complex, however, that is what is and will be required of us.
If the God, defined theistically, is no longer a possibility for modern men and women to embrace, so is every claim that there are objective laws, which express the will of this theistic deity. That being so, then where do we go to determine what is right and good, what is wrong and evil? It can never be an objective code revealed by a theistic deity from any of the symbolic mountain tops, where God is perceived to be speaking directly to you and me. The days of claiming to know the ultimate will of the theistic deity on any subject are over.
What then is left as an ethical norm for our times? Are we to be victimized by a code based on might as the ultimate arbiter of right? Is the “golden rule” to be reduced to the cynical, often quoted: “Those who have the gold, rule?” Was Nikita Khrushchev correct when he said that God is always on the side of those who have the biggest army and the most powerful weapons? Or is there another standard that we must seek to discover? St. Augustine is quoted, perhaps apocryphally, as having said that ethical behavior is to be determined by this single assertion: “We are to love God and do whatever we please!” Will that work? Not unless you define very carefully what it means to love God, but perhaps in this statement, we can find a new starting point for ethical conversations. At least we must try.
If God is love, as the Epistle of John states, then how does one live out this love? If God’s call to us is to live abundantly then how do we know what abundant life is? If God is the “Ground of Being” then what does it mean to enhance the being of another? Perhaps this is what St. Paul meant when he exhorted us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. (Phil. 2:12). He added that it is “God who is working within us.”
God is not a being, external to the world, prepared to invade life from on high to establish the divine will on earth. That claim, so familiar in religious circles, is nothing but an expression of the yearning present in the childhood of our humanity to explain the inexplicable. God is a process into which we live. Life, love and being are the operative words. What actions expand life? What actions increase love? What actions enhance being? That is the arena in which good must ultimately be separated from evil. It will never be found within a code of yesterday. It will always be found in the struggle to live fully, to love beyond the boundaries of our security, in the affirmation found at the depth of our being. Do we then dismiss the great eternal codes of the past? No, but we also do not install them into the status of ultimate and unchanging laws. We do, however, ascribe to them the wisdom of the ages and we give to our ancestors, who codified them, the courtesy of our attention.
We now turn to look at the Ten Commandments from this perspective. They will look quite different.
John Shelby Spong
Read the essay online here.
Question & Answer
C. Hutcheson via the Internet, writes:
Question:
I have read and appreciated several of your books and continue to read and ponder your articles. Based on the Twelve Theses that you are developing, I fail to understand what is left of “Christianity” that merits it calling it by that name. I accept the eight Points of Progressive Christianity and do think a reformation is needed. I am an Episcopalian, confirmed in the early 1960s and though I have difficulty with literal interpretations, I do cherish the liturgy, music and message. As a post-graduate in engineering, I respect science; accepting the theories of the “big bang,” evolution, etc. I am also aware of the struggle of the early Christians in reaching an orthodoxy and the later influence of imperial Rome on Christianity. It is the old conflict faith vs. science and I harbor both beliefs leading to a great deal of angst. My inadequate solution is to compartmentalize into rational and spiritual “boxes” to stay calm and carry on. Your Twelve Theses have added weight to one of the “boxes” and increased the angst. Do help me understand if one accepts your Twelve Theses, discounting a God, Jesus, prayer, life after death, etc., why would there be a need to hold on to the term Christianity unless it is as a bridge or point of departure? What remains of Christianity that isn’t already covered in the philosophy of ethics and morality? I am confused.
Answer:
Dear C. Hutcheson,
I suspect you will not be the only person who will respond as your letter indicates you are responding. What I am trying to do in this series is not easy. It also cannot be done in the space allowed for the answer to a question. I am challenging the traditional content that Christians have invested in the symbols of the Christian story. I am not challenging the reality of the Christ experience. I am doing that because that traditional content, as well as its frame of reference, has lost its meaning in the face of an explosion of human knowledge.
There is no supernatural being who lives above the sky. There is only the vast expanse of infinite space, filled with galaxies, dark matter and black holes. That definition of God, which postulated such an external deity and was called theism, is what is dying. The question is: “Does God die when a human definition of God dies?” I do not think so. The contemporary God experience, however, requires a new understanding shaped by new words. In this series, I am trying to frame that new understanding and to create those new words.
If there is no supernatural being living beyond the sky, then what does it mean to pretend that this God is active in human history? Can prayer actually turn a hurricane out to sea? Can prayer save a person from a plane crash, defend a combatant in warfare or heal a sickness?
If there is no supernatural being beyond the sky, can this non-existent deity incarnate the divine self into a human form in order to live among us? Can we still then literalize the details of this incarnate one’s magical entry through the virgin birth or his majestic departure through a cosmic ascension? Once one removes the concept of God as a supernatural being, the whole superstructure of traditional Christianity begins to crumble before our eyes. Denying this reality does not make it less so. If you have identified Christianity with this dated portrait or theological construction, then you are right, there is nothing of great value remaining.
I believe, however, that God is real, that God can be encountered in human life, that when we transcend the limits of our humanity, we do enter a new level of consciousness in which the divine and the human flow together as one. I do believe that this God experience can be understood in new words, that God in fact was in Christ, that human life can touch and enter that which is eternal. What I am seeking to do in this series, which I have entitled, Charting a New Reformation, is to spell out how these real God experiences can be talked about in the language of the 21st century. So what is left? A faith that makes contact with my heart and mind without playing the game called “Let’s pretend,” is what is left. It is, however, not the game that organized Christianity generally continues to play as it fades today into irrelevance.
Will it work? Can I succeed in this task? Time alone will answer that. If we do not make this effort, will Christianity somehow still survive? I do not believe there is a chance.
So I invite you to enter the debate. The series is far from over. The struggle goes on, but I believe “A New Christianity for a New World” is still a goal worth seeking with all my heart.
John Shelby Spong
Read an Share Online Here
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