Healing our dysfunctional images of God

By Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

CHULA VISTA, California — One of Erich Fromm’s most penetrating insights pertains to his distinction between authoritarian vs. humanistic religion.  Fromm’s You Shall Be as Gods: A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament and Its Tradition is one of the most remarkable books I have ever read on the early chapters of Genesis. This book is a personal favorite. Although Fromm wrote this book back in 1966, much of the book has great applications for today’s troubled times.

In the first stage of human development, Fromm contends that the primitive origins of religion in the Bible began with a rudimentary understanding of the gods. Ancient biblical writers conceived of God as an authoritarian power. In the early chapters of Genesis, God (upon a whim)—decides to terminate His own Creation! (See Gen. 6:7; 8:21).

 However, as humankind evolves, the early biblical theology of God undergoes a metamorphic change. After the Flood, God promises humankind that He will no longer act like an authoritarian dictator, decreeing death upon everyone and everything. Human courts now must bear the onus of carrying out God’s justice (Gen 8:16; 9:5-6; Exod. 21-23ff.).

Fromm argues that the covenant represents one of the most important developments in the history of Judaism—and religion. God now becomes a constitutional monarch who respects human freedom, and partakes in a freedom that God Himself actually shares. Both parties must treat life with respect and honor sentience. As God’s co-partner, Abraham holds God morally accountable; Abraham demands that even the wretched Sodomites receive a fair hearing and acts as their defense attorney!  No longer are human beings at the mercy of a capricious God, fearful of God’s penchant for random acts of violence. Even the most awful citizen is entitled to a trial and has a presumption of innocence until the court arrives at its decision.

In the biblical consciousness, the Bible refines the idea of the covenant, and eventually God makes a covenant with Israel to embody the principles of justice and equity that now characterize ethical monotheism. Israel’s task is to model and bear witness to this radical new message of faith to a cynical world. The ethos of the Exodus and its vision of liberation must pertain to all of society’s indignant and marginalized people. [1]

The biblical drama is replete with stories where mere mortals contend with God, challenging the limits of divine forgiveness and tolerance.  There is a reason why Abraham or Moses and numerous other biblical heroes and prophets challenge God’s tendency to relapse and assume authoritarian power once again.[3]

After everything has been said and done, ancient Israel gradually came to a new understanding of Divine power, one that is ethically engaged with the welfare of Creation. Thus, the second stage of human evolution is the notion of the covenant, which binds God and humans alike to a moral code.

Of course this has important social implications for human beings.  For one thing, no authority—human or Divine—can break the power and purity of human conscience. Although YHWH makes a wager with Satan to test the moral strength of Job, Job forces God to stand trial. Not even God can escape the moral arena of justice. Although Fromm does not refer to the binding of Isaac, Fromm would undoubtedly have viewed the narrative in Kantian terms, where God expects Abraham to simply say “No . . .” to the Divine behest ordering him to offer his son as a sacrifice. More importantly, Fromm asserts the entire ethos of biblical and rabbinical literature[3]weighs decidedly against God’s occasional use of autocratic power.

Fromm then develops what he calls, the third stage of religious evolution—the notion of a Nameless God, Who is man’s eternal dialogical partner. The Bible’s war against idolatry is predicated on the belief that man cannot merely talk about God, but must talk to God. Human constructs of God, as Maimonides writes in his Guide to the Perplexed, end up in creating an idolatrous image of God—and cognitive images of God’s Reality are potentially more damaging than the graven kind, and much harder to eradicate because they reify the Divine! The God image of the Bible evolves as people come to understand the moral implications of ethical monotheism. From this perspective, the God-human relationship is no longer confrontational; rather, each party is bound to the eternal principles of truth and justice. God is no longer viewed as an extrinsic force to human history, but instead moves within history—not as a coercive force, but as a persuasive force commanding humanity to honor the moral voice of conscience. Up to a point Fromm agrees with Maimonides, but he goes somewhat beyond Maimonides and asserts that humanity’s spiritual evolution depends upon letting go of its pagan concepts of a capricious and authoritarian God.

The early 20^th century Jewish mystic and scholar Abraham Isaac Kook offers words that fit well with the sentiment expressed in Maimonides and Fromm:  

• The greatest impediment to the human spirit, upon reaching maturity, results from the fact that the conception of God is crystallized among people in a particular form, which goes back to childish habit and imagination. This is an aspect of making a “graven image” or a “likeness of God,” against which we must always beware, particularly in an epoch of greater intellectual enlightenment.[4]

Kook is correct. Sometimes people never outgrow the childish perceptions they have of God. Faith demands wrestling with our beliefs, testing them, and purifying them from their conceptual dross.  Kook adds further:  

• All the ideological arguments among people and all the inner conflicts that every individual suffers in his own world outlook are caused by a confused conception of God . . . .One must always cleanse one’s thoughts about God to make sure they are free of the dross of deceptive fantasies, of groundless fear, of evil inclinations, of wants and inadequacies. Faith in God must enhance human happiness . . . . When the duty to honor God is conceived of in an enlightened manner, it raises human worth and the worth of all creatures, filling them with largeness of spirit, combined with genuine humility. But a crude conception of God tends toward the idolatrous, and degrades the dignity of man and of other beings  . . . [5]

Historically, every Western religion has at different times of its history, embraced attitudes toward the Other that may justifiably be called “anti-life.” It behooves the children of all the Abrahamic faiths to find a way to spiritually sublimate the texts of terror. The true “holy war” is the war against one’s own darker impulses; recognizing the human penchant for violence and taking steps to control these urges is the only way to ensure the survival of the human species. Humanistic religion, as understood and developed by Fromm and Kook, offer a powerful path to transform the darkness of today’s religious societies into communities that honor life with reverence and respect.  

Notes:  

[1] Exod. 18:21; 23:2-4;  Deut. 1:17; 10:17; 16:19; 24:14; 25:13-16; 27:19;  Prov. 20:10. 22:22. Jer 22:3. Ezek. 22:29. 15. Job 31:39. Jer. 22:13. Mal.3:5, passim.

[2] Gen. 19:15; 20:4. Exod. 23:7; Num 16:22, 2 Sam 23:3; 24:17; Job 8:3; 12:4; 34:17. Pss. 11:4-7; 145:17; Jer. 12:1. 15:1. Gen. 19:15. Deut 32:23. 1 Sam. 12:25. 26:10. 27:1. 1 Ch 21:12, 13. Ps 40:15. Isa. 7:20. Jer 12:4, passim.

[3]  In terms of rabbinic legends, the Sages illustrate the limits of Divine power.  Fromm cites one of his favorite rabbinic tales that is beloved by all students of the Talmud in BT Bava Metzia 59b.. The Talmud relates a fascinating Aggadic episode known as “The Oven of Achnai.” A man named Achnai invented a new kind of oven consisting of tiles separated by sand but plastered together with cement. R. Eliezer believed this new type of oven would technically be exempt from the laws of ritual impurity; however, the Sages differed; this oven was still ritually susceptible to the laws governing ritual impurity. The real controversy did not so much center around the oven’s status so much; the real issue they argued about was the nature of rabbinical authority as understood by a younger generation of rabbinical scholars.

R. Eliezer saw the Halacha in binary terms: either the Torah permitted the oven, or it prohibited the oven. Since there was no evidence in the Scriptures to indicate such an oven was susceptible to impurity, ergo, it was permitted. The Sages took a different viewpoint. For them, they had the right to circumvent even biblical authority itself.

To prove his case, Rabbi Eliezer brought many miraculous signs to show that he was correct, but the Sages rejected his opinion. Rabbi Eliezer then calls upon God Himself to vindicate his position. A Heavenly voice is heard: “What argument do you have with Rabbi Eliezer, for the halachah (Jewish law) is like him in every instance?” Upon hearing this, Rabbi Joshua declares: “It (The Torah) is no longer in Heaven (Deut.30:12)”! This means that we pay no credence to a Heavenly voice in matters of halachah, for the Torah was already given to humankind at Mount Sinai, while citing the phrase: “You shall follow the majority …” “matters shall be decided according to the majority (of the Sages)” (Exod. 23:2).

[4]Ben Zion Bokser, Abraham Isaac Kook, (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 262-263.

[5] Ibid.

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Rabbi Samuel is spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Sholom in Chula Vista