2. A Religion Justified

IT is enough to pronounce or to read this just indictment against the religion of the Bible, as it was lived, in order to agree that never more could there be a question of practising its law, of restoring its worship or of believing in its dogmas; nor could the men of our times enter into such fanaticism and accept this racism and irrevocable dualism of good and wicked, elect and reprobate. If the question is thus put, it would immediately be answered in the negative. Bernard-Henri Levy, who seems to be asking us to take it or leave it, does not even know the Bible of which he speaks, and his book ‘Testament of God’ is but a free, distant and subjective re-interpretation of it. Talmudic Judaism, the only contemporary form of live Jewish religion, is as different from the original biblical religion as is Christianity, but in the opposite direction.

It is no longer possible, therefore, nor is it permissible for anyone to impose on the world a religious, ritual, moral or political law in the name of the Bible. It is not permissible for latter-day Judaism, nor for Islam, another transposition, though degenerate, of the Bible religion, nor for fundamentalist or puritan Protestantism, which harks back to it through its cult of Scripture in its literalism, nor finally for the likes of the Progressivists such as Father Jean Cardonnel and Father Davezies who draw from the religion of the Bible divine reasons for their worst combats. As it stands, the Holy Book called “The Old Testament” is a dead book. No one anywhere in the world reads it to the letter without interpretation or adjustment.

This is not the essential question. It is to know the truth and value of this religion in its historical context, in the world’s evolution. Did it play a role in the progress of mankind from the beginnings, at least from the time of Abraham (2750 b.c.) until the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 of our era? If the answer is yes, it is thereby justified and ever present in the memory of mankind as a record of its past, an indispensable part of its experience for the understanding of its complete destiny. There would then be no question of rejecting this heritage because of its odious or scandalous elements, as certain troublesome innovators have wished to do down the centuries, those such as Marcion, the Cathars, the Spirituals●, and now the anti-Semite imperialisms and racisms, Nazism and Communism combined.

It is a question of fact and of history before being one of ideas or of aesthetic and moral appreciation. Are we somehow, still today, “sons of Abraham” and have we some part in Israel’s predestination, Revelation and Law? Do we recognise Yahweh for our God?

A STORY THAT IS TRUE AND DIVINE!

The theoretical inventions of people like Bernard-Henri Lévy or Alain de Benoist or Muammar Gadhafi● have no reality other than in their minds and are already dead when they find their way into print, in the expectation that readers might one day find interest in these ideas and put something of them into effect. The Bible, on the contrary, began as history and was only written to keep pace with its development. The Bible gave its Spirit to a life that was not individual but collective, not limited to one generation but to over a thousand years! And although enclosed in one people, it ends by giving to the history of all other nations its sole centre of interest and universal, lasting intelligibility. That is a fact. It is not to be judged according to our spontaneous aesthetic likes or dislikes. Odious it may be for our personal sentiment, but that is how it was, and it is the centre of history.

Now this “Sacred History” impinged on its own protagonists long before we pored over it. It has been lived, then meditated upon and recounted as a divine work, a continuation of the first creation, equally flagrant, equally inexplicable and equally indisputable. God formed this family of Abraham, this people of Israel and brought it to the forefront, sustained and led them by a series of apparitions, theophanies, revelations and miracles in respect of which there was no room for discussion, but to which they only too happily submitted and obeyed! These are not open to debate We have no reason to cast doubt on these theophanies and miracles, without which the Bible would not exist nor would this holy people have existed for two thousand years. There is no need to go through the list again, but the crossing of the Reed Sea, according to its original document (Exodus 14) is, as it stands, an undeniable historical fact; the announcement of the imminent deliverance of the Babylonian captives by Cyrus, in chapters 40 to 55 of Isaiah, proved to be providential. And so it is with the rest, save for a few legends and incidental literary amplifications.

The Word of God, then, which is also the Work of God is not open for discussion, at least not when it makes itself heard and is fulfilled. Abraham, for example, did not dream of questioning the moral legitimacy of God’s order demanding the sacrifice of Isaac his son (Gn 22) when this son had been granted him through a miracle of this same God. It is discussed afterwards, among intellectuals. And so it is with the whole Bible, which was an undeniable work of God, accepted and lived as such by leaders, kings, prophets and faithful multitudes from age to age, until its end. When Ezekias received the good news from Isaiah that his life was to be prolonged a further fifteen years through divine grace, he believed in it all the more sincerely because he saw its proof when the shadow cast by the declining sun on the dial of Ahaz the sun turn back ten steps by which it had declined on the royal palace (Is 38:8).

Must we, therefore, give up all discussion and no longer seek to understand what God has said and done? Must we accept all without discernment, canonise all and declare it all to be admirable? No. Having accepted this sacred History as true and divine, because it is, we can and we must make an effort to understand why it appears to be odious and scandalous to us, as indeed it was.

HOW GOD SHOULD HAVE SET ABOUT IT

Obviously, we ourselves would have arranged things better, without fanaticism, without racist exclusivism, without violence and without genocide. We would have gone in for dialogue rather than anathema! It is a pity God did not give us the work to do or ask our advice! And yet, it does not seem that elsewhere the inventions of men were any better. Of all the religions and philosophies imagined and founded by men, none has ever had the efficacy, growth and splendour of the biblical religion. And for the comparison to be fair and just, we have to add that we know very little of pagan thought and history, and of that only their best, whereas we know not only the glories of Sacred History but all its shades and turpitudes.

Before heaping reproaches and condemnations on Yahweh, the primary Author of the biblical events and the principal Author of the Book which relates and explains them, we must understand His “problem”. In a world fallen into idolatry and bestiality, God conceived the merciful design of restoring the knowledge of His Truth and of manifesting His Love for all men by making an eternal Covenant with them. How would He set about it?

Of course, the totalitarian rationalist that dwells within every modern man, immediately imagines that God could reveal Himself and show Himself to everyone and say everything all at once. But God is not like that. He respects the nature of man and the conditions of his earthly trial. He has to approach man without violating his liberty and slowly recreate the conditions of the saving dialogue. How could we superficially examine and haughtily judge the divine manner of condescending to the needs of man? Let us rather try to accept and try to understand in order to believe, admire and love God’s design for the world.

A DIVINE PROPAEDEUTIC

Before God took hold of them, misguided men and dispersed peoples believed greatly in false gods and entrusted themselves stupidly to their idols. Each people had its own gods, but as the psalmist says in Ps 95:5: “The gods of the Gentiles are nothing”, or as the Greek Septuagint version more specifically says, “are devils”. How is the true God, the living God, going to make Himself understood by them?

He enters into the world by revealing Himself first of all to one man as his particular God, by making a Covenant with him and his descendants. He thus gradually extends the basis of His work and takes root in one people, which for centuries He will make His instrument, His elect: Israel.

1. Monotheism. Evidently, He manifests Himself to this one man, to this one people, in His absolute being. His Omnipotence makes itself known as an irresistible will, capable of the greatest miracles, which alone directs all according to His designs. It is not surprising that this should firstly result in a fanaticism amongst the witnesses of this revelation. This fanaticism that will no longer tolerate idolatry, pretence or anything obstructing the true God, is justified and fully moral; it is even a model of perfect faith for us today, for mankind of all times, a rule of faith, the faith of Abraham, the Father of believers.

Even though we are shocked by what this God commands: the sacrifice of Isaac, the robbing of the Egyptians, anathema on the idolatrous Canaanite towns, etc. up to and including the Maccabean insurrection against the conquering Greeks of a refined though pagan civilisation, it is necessary to obey God and believe in Him, whatever He has ordained, at all times, for He is God.

Our dilettante liberalism finds that shocking. Wrongly so. We would prefer gentler methods. We, however, are doubtless lacking in historical sense and in information regarding barbarian practice elsewhere. Circumcision, for example, in no way shocked contemporaries; some sign of carnal belonging touching generation was necessary as the visible condition of entry into God’s Chosen People. Another example where our ignorance completely misleads us, is the sacrifice of Isaac: far from being a horror it was in fact a protest against the sacrifice of the newly-born as practised by all the contemporary cults of the Baalim. Having tested the fidelity of His servant by means of this trial, the God of Abraham forbade him ever to make human sacrifices. The gentleness of this God has no other parallel in these times of idolatry.

There is no question today of seeing a revival of the terrible manifestations of the divine Absolute as in ancient times. They were necessary and they remain useful for us to know. God no longer causes the death of those who touch sacred things without respect, as He did to poor Uzzah.● But when we see the many heedless profanations and insolent sacrileges in our day, we begin to regret that the story of Uzzah has been effaced from human memory and maybe that it still does not happen again from time to time!

2. Covenant. Again it is evident that God can only show Himself faithful to His Covenant, and bear witness to how true, salutary and blessed it is, by visibly protecting and privileging His people in all their combats, and by filling them to overflowing with all sorts of tangible and carnal goods, to the envy, therefore, of every other people. Thus it was that Yahweh sent to the Hebrews prestigious and miracle-working leaders; thus it was that He worked cosmic miracles for them. Later, His Ark, the mysterious place of His Presence, was to be for them an infallible pledge of victory.

Does He show Himself to be partial, or as we would say, racist? And within His people, elitist? Of course, and necessarily so. For He must first of all convince His own people of the formidable reality of His presence, a divine, living and acting Presence. Then He must allow something of this Presence to be perceived by other peoples, so that the best of them may believe and the wicked tremble.

And so He instructs His people in a very rough manner, contempt, hatred, vengeance and gory victory against Israel’s idolatrous enemy; love, pride, protection, rest and feasts for His Chosen People. It is necessary to know what is wanted. Yahweh wants to reveal Himself as Father of Israel, true God, All Powerful. He crushes those who know Him not and are strangers to Him; how could He do otherwise? No doubt, in the next world He will mete out full justice to those individuals who have been badly treated, each according to his faith. But that is another matter, beyond our competence. He blindly privileges this god-fearing people, these Hebrews who alone invoke His Name.

3. Holiness. Yet, because He is God and His people remain His creatures, He treats them with rigour. It is difficult for “rabble”, suddenly favoured with such abundance and divine blessings not to become conceited as a result, to want still more until they finally go beyond the limit. That is the long and lamentable history of the Hebrews in the desert and later of arrogant Jerusalem, sure of its salvation because Yahweh’s honour is at stake (Ez 16 and 23)!

And so God, Who is so good towards His faithful friends, is obliged to be rough towards the rebels. Whence the frequent formidable divine outbursts of wrath, as devastating as storms, which fill the pages of our Bible. Blessings are followed by curses and victories granted by God are succeeded by defeats when He ruthlessly hands His own people over to their enemies. He even goes so far as to leave the Holy Ark in the enemy’s hands (1 Sm 4:11), in order to show Israel that He is not their prisoner!

These opposing sentiments in no way speak against the perfection of the God of the Old Covenant. On the contrary, it shows Him to be truly living and present to His people, educating them day by day in the knowledge of His inviolable holiness and absolute justice. And always, so that Israel’s enemies not by deceived in their turn, after having used them like a stick to chastise His faithless people, He breaks them and rejects them without further ado as though they had never been. After Sargon’s victorious and devastating campaigns against the Northern Kingdom, Isaiah prophesied his ultimate chastisement: “Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger […] Shall the axe vaunt itself over him who hews with it, or the saw magnify itself against him who wields it? As if a rod should wield him who lifts it, or as if a staff should lift him who is not wood!” (Is 10:5-15) And Jeremiah, or one of his disciples, after the ruin of Jerusalem, announced the fall of Babylon which, for a time, had been the instrument of God’s wrath against His people: “You are my hammer and weapon of war: with you I break nations in pieces; with you I destroy kingdoms. […] I will requite Babylon and all the inhabitants of Chaldea before your very eyes for all the evil that they have done in Sion, says Yahweh.” (Jr 51:20-24)

Understood in this way, the odious things of this immense history are part of a plan of wisdom and love. They are among the necessary components of a wise propaedeutic ordained by a most high and most perfect God for an all too oppressive and too wicked human world. Once again, let us not forget, this is no armchair gnosis, but the real transformation of a pagan humanity into a holy people!

TRANSITION TOWARDS UNIVERSALISM

At first, one could legitimately believe in an exclusive divine election, in the choice of Israel against all others, as though Israel were different from the rest of men, superior to other peoples and alone called to possess the earth. But in the end, Yahweh’s Covenant, on this condition, was concluded, first with Abraham, then with Moses and all his people (Ex 24). It is then that the secondary effects of this exclusivism appear so strongly that they scandalise us: Mosaic fanaticism, Jewish racism and immoralism. But very early on, Yahweh began to address His people in another language, without changing His conduct towards His people. He continued to show them the same predilection, though no longer against others, rather for others, for the future benefit of all others. Had He not from the very beginning said to Abram at that time still an idolater: “By you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves” (Gn 12:3)?

At the very time when Yahwism showed itself to be the most ardently nationalistic, and Judean nationalism the most deeply religious, the time of the final writing of the Book of Deuteronomy – a magisterial illustration of the divine Covenant – the prophecies of Isaiah show the love of Yahweh suddenly and magnificently open to the pagans: “All the nations shall flow to it, and many peoples shall come, and say: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of Yahweh, to the house of the God of Jacob; that He may teach us His ways and that we may walk in His paths. For out of Sion shall go forth the law, and the word of Yahweh from Jerusalem’.” (Is 2:1-3). It is in this universalist perspective that the pacifist verse “and they shall beat their swords into plowshares” is most opportunely situated. The world will have to achieve this divine biblical peace!

It is, therefore, not a betrayal of the message but its development when a disciple of Isaiah would later insert this magnificent prophecy in chapter 19 about Egypt and Assyria, the two great conquering empires, the two irreconcilable enemies, chastised by Yahweh, then coming to Him to be converted: “When they cry to Yahweh because of oppressors He will send them a Saviour […] and they will know Yahweh and worship Him with sacrifice and burnt offering, […] In that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom Yahweh of Hosts has blessed, saying: ‘Blessed be Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel My heritage’.”

This universalism would take a quantum leap forward at the end of the Babylonian captivity (538), when an unknown author, the awesome Prophet of chapters 40-55, and 60-62 of the same Book of Isaiah, clearly announced the ascent of all peoples towards Jerusalem, all unanimous in proclaiming their faith in the one true God. These wonderful texts are well known for they adorn our Epiphany-tide liturgy: “A multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; all those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of Yahweh.” (Is 6o:6). Ezekiel had fully prepared for this explosion of Jewish nationalism into spiritual universalism.

And when, in the 5^th century, the “sons of the captivity”, faced with persecution from their neighbours and new threats from pagan empires, gave in to xenophobia, an inspired author would tell them the story of Jonas, whom God sent in times past to Nineveh, not to destroy the city but that it might be converted and live. For as the good God said to Jonas, who was scandalised by His weakness: “Should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left (that is to say, good from evil) and also much cattle?” (Jon 4:11) Then the Jews remembered that God was the God of the whole world, and that His religion is a way open for all peoples.

At that time wise men and saints were already known among the pagans, Ezekiel had recalled this by referring to “Noah, Daniel and Job” those “heroes of ancient times” (Ez 14:14-20). It was Job whom an inspired scribe brought to the forefront in preference to a brother of the Jewish race, “a man that was blameless and upright, one who feared God, and turned away from evil” in order to deal with the mystery of the trials of the righteous. And, did you notice, that in a later account (4^th -5^th century) of the death of King Josiah, it is Pharaoh Neco who sought to dissuade the King against opposing his army as it went up to fight against the King of Assyria, and at God’s command. It is astonishing that it should be Pharaoh who heard the voice of Yahweh and the pious King of Jerusalem who resisted the will of God made manifest to him by a pagan! “God has commanded me to make haste. Cease opposing God, who is with me, lest He destroy you. Nevertheless Josiah would not turn away from him, but disguised himself in order to fight with him. He did not listen to the words of Neco from the mouth of God”! (2 Ch 35:21-22)

The death of this king, the restorer of an already obsolete Yahwism, that of Deuteronomy (2 Ch 34:14-33), was undoubtedly necessary for Jewish racism to open up to the universalism of Ezekiel and Jonas.

TOWARDS THE CROSSING OF A THRESHOLD

After fifteen centuries of rough pedagogy, blows followed by material compensation, ceaselessly alternating, this people truly believed in the living God, in His Covenant, in His untiring fidelity, and, of their own accord they began to think that so many wonders and such a great mystery were not for themselves alone but for the whole world. So Yahweh perfected His Revelation; He made it cross a decisive threshold, at the risk of seeing some left behind and others going to extremes, on the one side Integrism and on the other Progressivism, before these terms existed! In this divine manoeuvre, so delicate and truly unique in the history of Revelation, a tension and division would be created – again this is not divine, but human! – that would grow to the point of rupture and a final breakup..

1. For or against Sacrifices. God contests Himself! Through the voice of the prophets and inspired scribes, He relativises one or other element of the former revelation that centuries’ old tradition gradually hardened into an absolute, because it was all too favourable to the bad side of man. Such were the protests of the prophets against the superstition and formalism of worship, devoid of all upright intention.

Hear the Prophet Amos: “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal offerings, I will not accept them, and the peace offerings of your fatted beasts I will not look upon” (Am 5:21-22).

This passage is well-known, as are many similar ones, which are indicated in the notes of all bibles[(Ps 40:6-8; Ps 50:5-15). Yet all these sacrifices, these oblations and obligatory rituals had to be firmly observed. Elsewhere the prophets vehemently recalled the necessity of strict observance provided that it be accompanied by purity, generosity and honesty (Ez 43-44). Even when it is the “sons of strangers” who offer them (Trito-Isaiah 56:6)! And so, sacrifice or no sacrifice, the tension builds up until the break between the partisans and opponents of the Temple sacrifices, awaiting a more perfect sacrifice mysteriously evoked by Malachi (Ml 1:11) in the last pages of the Old Book.

2. For or against the Law. Similarly, the practice of the Law met with the contestation of the great inspired writers. It was useless, hypocritical and incapable of pleasing God whilst the heart of man is so bad. Moses had already foreseen, if we are to believe Deuteronomy (28), the incapacity of His people to fulfil the terms of the Covenant. But, far from despairing, the same prophets foretold for the future a new era, a “circumcision of hearts” (Dt 10:16), when God would change their hearts, rendering them accessible to piety, justice and brotherly love.

Hear the Prophet Jeremiah: “I will put My Law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” Ez 31:33) Likewise, Ezekiel: “I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them; I will take the stony heart out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My ordinances and obey them; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.” (Jr 11:19-20)

3. For or against the King. It was good to have kings, provided these kings did not take themselves for gods. Since they had yielded to this temptation too often, an anti-royalist (but not republican, for all that!) dissident, also under divine inspiration, juxtaposed all the clearly royalist accounts in the Book of Samuel with chapters of a plainly contrary spirit, as we have said. And God, appearing to have broken His word given to David through Nathan, He irrevocably abolished the Davidic monarchy in Judah.

But this was only the better to depict in a hundred oracles the new Moses, the son of David, the wonderful Messiah Who was to come and lead His people into a glorious future, unite the two kingdoms into one, rule over the nations and establish the reign of Yahweh on earth. Contestation of the present political institutions would thus open the way to a wonderful utopia, towards which the eyes and hearts of the righteous would turn whilst the impious, losing the faith, would rally to the pagan overlords, Antiochus the Greek and later Caesar, the divine Caesar!

The Jewish people as a whole would live out this utopia and die from it; but they would be torn between flesh and spirit, between the fanaticism, racism and materialism, which are no more than its old skin, and the spiritualism, universalism and holiness, which so many admirable works heralded and aroused expectations. Over five hundred years, from among the Jews a minority of righteous men, of the poor, of witnesses of the Holy Spirit, whose eyes were fixed on the reign of Yahweh which was to appear, would become refined. It is on this last state of the Bible religion that the whole has to be judged. Odious in its beginnings but sublime in its end, and therefore justified to such a degree that one would regret to see it disappear, if nothing more beautiful were not to take its place, to perfect rather than abolish it.

Father George de Nantes
Excerpt from The Religion of the Bible Odious, Justified, Obsolete,
Catholic Counter-Reformation no. 131, February 1981.

Proceed to: 3. A Transitory and Defunct Religion.