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III. The crisis of Yahwism: the excluding God
The possession of Canaan initiates problems that these tribes perhaps did not suspect at the beginning. The fact is that while the shepherds —both the ones that remained in Palestine, and the ones that traveled to Egypt emigrating during forty years through the desert— were nomads, Canaan is an urban and sedentary civilization. This changes the aspect of the question. The sedentary also have their religious vision. For them God is also the God of someone, but is the God of some cities, of some organizations; is a God of the cosmos. This is the idea of an organized cosmos, completely alien to the mentality of a nomadic pastor. It is the case of a cosmic God, which in some measure has the characteristics of those who command in the cities. ’El, which is the generic name of God as supreme personality of the Phoenician pantheon, is precisely a king. And a king not to be found on the mountaintops, but in a particular place, the temple. In that temple a sacrifice is offered to him, which is not a {219} meal of fraternity between men and gods, but something different: a holocaust. Besides, this religion of the sedentary groups was essentially polytheistic; had a pantheon with ’El at its head.
Confronting this, the entering tribes have two possibilities. One of them is to admit that these gods exist subordinate to Yahweh, as subsidiary entities in charge of dispensing order in the cities, care of the fields, of gracing areas, fertility of the soil, etc. This is the posture adopted by syncretist Yahwism. Also, there is another completely different possibility, which is precisely to translate all these characteristics into an enrichment of the figure of Yahweh, who will continue to be the only one God. This is the possibility that pure Yahwism chooses: not to tolerate other gods, not even subordinate ba‘als, and in turn establish the idea of the oneness of Yahweh as the only God dispenser of all the necessities for an agrarian civilization, and in addition an urban one. This is the era of the judges upon which nabiism or prophetism (from nabî’, prophet, where the expression does not mean someone predicting the future, but a preacher of the word of God) is based. In such fashion, God is not only jealous, as in the case of Moses, or solitary as in the case of Abraham, but something different: now He is someone that excludes. Excludes other ba‘als not only as God of the nation, but also as God of the cosmos1.
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IV. The monarchy and the only God
The people of Israel settle more or less in Canaan. Then, a double common enemy appears: on one side, the Philistines —which are going to give the name to Palestine— and on the other side, the Arameans to the north, the great empires of the Euphrates, and Egypt on the south. The Canaanite cities, facing this common enemy, become more or less integrated in the life of Israel. In the great empires, the Israelites encounter, not the ba‘als, but other gods: the Babylonian Ištar, the Phoenician Astarté, the Hadad of the Arameans, without forgetting the influence of the divinities characterized by a more or less administrative monotheism, like the one of Amenophis IV (Akhenaton), etc. It is no longer a conflict with the ba‘als, it is a conflict with great gods.
One of the first things the people of Israel do is to build a temple to the divinity. Prophetism, right from the beginning proscribes the cult at the mountaintops because in some way it would be a return to the ba‘als. This is a rather curious thing, because at a later time the great prophetism will remember just the opposite with nostalgia: the era of the spousal in the desert, asking for interior religion, and not sacrifices in the temple. Together with the temple an essential element is introduced, the monarchy. In this political situation, facing empires, Israel introduces a monarchy. Now, Yahweh is not only God of the cosmos and the nation, but a king. At this {221} moment, also, is when the Yahwist and Elohist traditions begin to be put down in writing2.
Facing the situation described above, there were two possibilities: one was to maintain the uniqueness of Yahweh in the temple, while being permissive about other temples and other divinities, which may be located around Him. That was, in the end, the great historical prevarication into which Solomon fell, regardless of the reasons. The great prophetism, which is born at this moment, essentially attacks that position. It wishes to maintain the idea of Yahweh by means of a personal reflection about what this Yahweh, which appeared with Moses, has been, but is actually identical to the ’Elohim of Abraham. It is the case of an interior light, which one receives, but in the process, and in the heart of a reflection.
At this juncture the idea of God takes a decisive step. He is no longer the solitary God, He is not simply the jealous God or the exclusive God. He is —in the fourth place— something different: a God that when facing the rest of the gods, for the first time in the history of Israel, these gods are given a precise qualifier. They are ’ælilim3. Of course, it is a word play between ’Elohim and ’ælilim. ’Elohim means God, and ’ælilim means “nothing” (Sp. “nada”) or —if you will— “insignificant” (Sp. “nadería”). The other gods do not exist. Monotheism has reached its culminating point in Israel to admit for the first time purely and exclusively the existence of Yahweh4. The other gods {222} do not exist, but only by reason of their number. Because this Yahweh is the God of the universe; He has made it, He is its maker (cf. Ps 96:5). This God, primarily in Isaiah and Jeremiah, appears festooned with the great moral and theological characteristics: He is kadósh, holy, and tsodék, just. Monotheism thus acquires the objective characteristic of a religion in the temple, in the cult, and in the priesthood.
The reflection of the prophets exerts a great influence on historians, and this makes them take a retrospective look to the past, starting from the time of Abraham. They begin to see these diverse stages of the people of Israel as so many interventions of God, and therefore, a kind of history of the interventions of God in Israel. The theology of the history of Israel appears, then, in four stages: in the first one, Yahweh offers the Covenant; in the second, we have the infidelity of Israel; in the third, the punishment by Yahweh; and finally, with repentance, the forgiveness and the renewal of the Covenant. This way the whole cycle called Deuteronomic is constituted, which sinks with the deportation to Babylon. That will become the fifth stage.
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V. Restoration and national religion: God and His Messiah
The deportation to Babylon means the collapse of the Covenant. The defeated people now asks, Who is Yahweh? If Yahweh is the God of someone, Who is that someone in the Babylonian captivity, when there is no people?
The intervention of the great prophetism at this moment, especially from the mouth of Ezekiel, issues from the consciousness of a great historical prevarication: Israel has not been faithful to Yahweh. Has introduced —against the first precept of the Decalog— strange cults, has admitted them in the lateral chapels of the Temple from the times of Solomon, etc. Facing that enormous historical prevarication there is a religious consciousness, activated by Ezekiel, following in the footsteps of the last preaching of Jeremiah, the prophet who has felt the most the inanities of religious preaching: no one paid attention to him; everything turned out poorly. However, he never lost hope. That hope is taken up by Ezekiel in his famous oracle to Israel, right there in Babylon: “I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you natural hearts... you shall be my people, and I will be your God (Ez 36:26-28). This is the new sense of the Covenant, which does not break the previous Covenant, but purifies it and accurately discovers new possibilities for the intellection of Yahweh. At this point Israel becomes aware there will be a restoration, to which it will return as the carrier or as the terminus of reference of that God. They will be the faithful remnant to the prophetic preaching, the so-called “Remnant of Israel”.
Then, after their return to Jerusalem, the Israelites had two possibilities. One possibility was the difficult task of rebuilding the Temple, and restore in some way the great religious traditions of Israel. Another, to abandon that way, and leave for {224} the desert to practice the Law scrupulously. It was the way made known to us by the texts of Qumran near the Dead Sea. Still, the new Covenant had never been understood as unconnected with the Temple. For this reason Israel is going to refer to God not only as a nation, but as something special, which is neither nation nor pure religious community, actually, as a national church.
As a national church not only is there a restoration, but in addition there is a historical reflection, much longer in this case, over all the things that have taken place. This is the origin of the priestly code —the P source— and of the establishment, for the first time, of the Biblical canon of the Old Testament with Ezra and Nehemiah. In the priestly code we receive an interpretation of what God is as creator of the world. Up to now God has appeared to us simply as creator of the world, nothing more. We are now told something else: that He created the world by only His word: “Then God said, let there be light, and there was light” (Gn 1:3)5. At this time there also appears, from the mouth of a woman of the people, the phrase that God has made things óuk ex ónton, “out of nothing” (2 Mc 7:28). God is not simply the creator of the world, but is something more profound: is creator out of nothing. And as creator from nothing He is formally a God of the cosmos. Of course, Israel has been facing several possibilities. On the one hand the possibility of the Iranian dualism between light and darkness. They could easily have said: on one side there is God, and facing Him the evil power, the darkness. Energetically the Deutero-Isaiah tells us: “I am Yahweh, there is no other, {225} I form the light, and create the darkness” (Is 45:6-7). Facing the Iranian dualism, what Israel accepts is precisely this complication into their idea of God, something that is not going to be a trifling matter: that God is also the creator of darkness, not only of light.
In the second place, this light and darkness does not refer to the cosmos only. There is something much more important. Until now God had been the director of the history of Israel in this four-phase process we observed in the previous stage. Now He is something different. God appears not only as God of the cosmos, and God of the history of Israel, but as God of the whole of history6. It is the apocalyptic literature, which gives us precisely the vision of a theology concerning the whole of history. This theology of history culminates actually in Daniel, around the time of Antiochus Epiphanes (175-163 BC). Upon seeing the profanation of the Temple by Antiochus Epiphanes —the “abomination of the desolation” (Dn 9:27)— he writes those magnificent chapters, which constitute the vision of what the empires on Earth are (cf. Dn 7-12). And this vision of the empires is not a chronological, and progressive history, but the concatenation of some figures in a time present to the divine mind, which is not the course of time, but a non-temporal (Sp. intemporal) time. God is not only the director of a history, which occurs, but the designer of an internal history. And His time is not a time of succession, but an {226} apocalyptic time anterior to the one of succession. It is there where the idea of a bar naša’, of a “son of man” is elaborated (Dn 7:13). With it there is going to be injected in Israel an idea, which it did not have before, and which retrospectively is going to enter in the final definite redaction of almost all the books of the Old Testament: the idea of a mašîah, of a Messiah, an anointed one. It is the surfacing of Messianism.
Thus, facing this God who has all of history in his hands —in its design— and is the creator of the whole world from nothing, the Israelite clearly feels the adoration and the profound insignificance of which man consists. Still, two possibilities are locked here. One of them is to consider God so remote from man, that He is lost at a distance with a problematic access. Then, it is believed that this God is accessed only by the sacrificial rites of the objective body of the religion. It is a possibility7. The other possibility is different. It is not the transcendence by remoteness, but a transcendence by proximity. Then, this transcendent ’Elohim, Yahweh, is absolutely transcendent and personal, but does not limit Himself to being a friend, He is something more, He is precisely the Father of all men. This is the sixth stage: the arrival of Christianity.
VI. Christianity
Above all, Christ has proclaimed the idea of God the Father, removing all the sentimental aspect from this expression. And this God the Father in His proximity to men establishes or, at {227} least, wishes to establish the malkut shamáyeem, the Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of the Father. And then, in order to enter this Kingdom, and belong to it certain conditions must be met, which are not precisely the conditions of the cult of the objective body of the religion. The letter of introduction for the entry into this Kingdom is precisely the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven” (Mt 5:3), etc. The Beatitudes are the letter of introduction to enter by this new way, the way of paternity, and filiation. With this now appears, not only the God of a family, of a people, of a monarchy, of a remnant of Israel, of a national church, but something different: a God of the whole of mankind. The universalism, the universalist monotheism.
Christ presents Himself as agent of this Kingdom. First, because He preaches in the name of God. But something else: Christ not only preaches in the name of God, but in addition (in a more or less perceptible manner, but quite unsettling) He had an identity with that word of God He preached. In one way or another He was God, not only the word of God. He was God, and because of this Christ can say “I am the way”, i.e., that which leads to God. And even more: “I am the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6).
Hence, for Israel, and even Christ, two possibilities open up. Christ is not exempt from the human condition: He wanted to share our condition, and therefore, to move in that heavy game of possibilities, which the trajectory of history constitutes. It is the case of two possibilities, which are found incorporated in a radical and unique situation. Christ has in front of Him a national church. He wishes to convert the Israelites, and make them believe in Him, in such a way that proceeding from the national church of Israel the universality of the religion that Christ {228} preached might be established. Perhaps this might not have appeared totally unacceptable to Israel. But for this there were also two possibilities: one, to believe that the national church is first nation, and then church. The other, to believe the opposite, that it is church first, and nation second. In the end, it is the case of a dualism, which has perforated in good measure even the great historical vicissitudes of Christianity in Europe.
Not the Sanhedrin, but a group within —there is always a group, which virtually commands— considered that what was needed was an éthnos, a nation, with a church, and not a national church as patrimony of an éthnos. Nevertheless, Christ preached just the opposite. He preached a community with God, a surrender of love —through His Beatitudes, etc.— so that a good Israelite would be one who would enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The confrontation was violent. So violent that it became the motive, at least an external cause, for the crucifixion of Christ. And thus, by Christ appropriating this possibility, He opened a different way: the way of death and resurrection.
It should be noted that a complement was needed: once more there appears in history this necessity of an interior illumination, which may give us a historical reflection over everything that has happened in the past. This is precisely the existence of the Holy Spirit. Faith in the Paschal mystery, the experience of the Holy Spirit, and the hope in a second coming of Christ constitute precisely the interior driving force of all Christianity in history. An internal reflection looking towards the past now appears. This task of reflection is not opposed to internal illumination, but is essential to it. Revelation is not a dictation, even though it may appear as a dictation. Dictation is a literary genre, which is not at all exclusive to Christianity.
{229} This reflection has retrospective steps. It is an interior reflection from the situation of the coming of the Holy Spirit back to Christ, and another second reflection from Christ to the past, towards the Prophets. The result of both reflections is the written constitution of the New Testament. The great reflection of the New Testament is not a biographic history, but a theological history: the theological history as to how the truth of the Holy Spirit illuminates the life of Christ, which in its turn is clarifying the Prophets. The history does not end there, because there is also a way of reflecting from the Prophets to further back, at least from the point of view of ideas, to the reflections of the priestly code, and of the Deuteronomists. Yahweh, who intervenes there, is the same Yahweh, which was preached by the Prophets, and is the Father of Christ, and one of the moments of the spiration (Sp. espiración) of the Holy Spirit. And the reflection does not end there, but proceeds still further back: from the Deuteronomic texts, and the Yahwist and Elohist traditions it reaches back to the starting point: Abraham. And there finally appears in nineteen centuries of history that oneness, which is what constitutes the intrinsic viability of the religious monotheism of Israel and Christianity. A viability, which has taken centuries of history in order to be able to travel from the simple God as friend of the family of Abraham to the God of all men, in the hands of Christianity.
VII. Islam
Nevertheless, six centuries later there is a moment of regression, characterized by Islam. I call it regression not because I may wish to qualify this as an inferior religion. It is a different matter altogether.
Christ had presented Himself to the people of Israel not only {230} as a prophet who follows the line of the prophets, but being Himself, personally, a revelation of God. However, Islam is going to amputate from Christ precisely this characteristic of divine person, and is going to limit itself to see Christ as just one more prophet, in the uninterrupted line of prophets. For them the last one is Mohammed. This way Islamic monotheism is a kind of remoteness from the revelation. The Koran as a juridical and religious writing is a revealed text, but God himself is beyond His own Koran in a kind of remoteness. It is, undeniably, from this point of view, a regression from what has been the stepping march of Christ, and Christianity.
Thus, three monotheisms have been constituted in history: the monotheism of Israel, the Christian monotheism, and the Islamic monotheism. With respect to the monotheism of Israel, it is evident Christian monotheism does nothing but accept it. The monotheism of Israel does not accept the point of view of Christianity. The monotheism of Islam, in what it has of monotheism, has nothing contrary to Christianity. How could it have any, since the first metaphysical systematization of theology in medieval Europe, has been due precisely to the Islamic? What happens is that the monotheism of Islam, from the religious point of view, is a regression. The figure of a God incorporated to history disappears to limit itself again to a God who has simply spoken to men in history, and whose last words are contained in the Koran.
And so, facing these three monotheisms, evidently, there is no speculative reason at all to choose from. It is simply an option of faith. It is the heartbeat of the real and effective ways by which monotheism has been viable throughout history. Still, if we center our consideration on {231} Christianity, a serious problem appears. If Christianity presents itself as true, as the only truth about God, then it is necessary to ask: What is the situation with respect to the other religions? What happens with the people of other religions? What are the other religions? Here lies the problem of the historical and theological position of Christianity within the history of religions.
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1 In the 1965 Madrid seminar Zubiri said: “This pure Yahwism was presented as something, which accused the rest of the Israelites —the great majority of them. Thus, Israel acquired the conscience of a great national sin: a sin of infidelity, and therefore, a sin against fidelity, i.e., against the truth of Yahweh. Then, the cult at the mountaintops was attacked; they attempted to erase all traces of this cult of the Patriarchs. It is an enrichment of the idea of God. The uniqueness of Yahweh is an exclusivity (...), but not only of other gods; it also excludes the ba‘als. The only Ba‘al, the only Lord is Yahweh (...). Yahweh is Lord of the land. And precisely because He excludes the ba‘als, then the God of the Fathers is manifested not only as the God of a people, but also as God of the world, God of the cosmos or, even better, of nature”.
2 In the 1965 Madrid seminar Zubiri added: “the identification of Yahweh with ’Elohim survives in two lines of the tradition. One, the Yahwist (the J source), which believes that the God of Israel has never been other than Yahweh. The other, the Elohist (E source), which insists that Yahweh has not been the God of Israel until the moment of the revelation at Horeb”.
3 Cf. Lv 26:1; Is 10:11; Ezk 30:13; Hb 2:18; Ps 96:5; 1 Cro 16:26.
4 In the 1965 Madrid seminar Zubiri explained: “However, the thing was not so simple. Psalm 96, which the Vulgate translated saying omnes dii gentium daemonia (‘all gods of the gentiles are demons’, Ps 96:5), takes its inspiration from the version of the Greek Septuagint, which says daimónia. The idea should have been maintained here that they were ’Elohim in the sense that these non-terrestrial beings, while not being gods, still existed. The Hebrew text that has been preserved says ’ælilim, which is “insignificant”. Probably that is the text we should accept. Perhaps the translation sometimes proposed —‘idols’— might be the one that best transmits these shades of meaning: facing Yahwism, the religions of the Orient would be ‘idolatry’. At any rate, the oscilations of the translators reveals it was not such a simple step or one quickly taken”.
5 In the 1965 Madrid seminar Zubiri added: “It is precisely at this moment when the intellection of ’Elohim is enlarged to understand him as creator simply by the dynamic power of His word”.
6 On the text of the 1965 Madrid seminar Zubiri wrote: “The conception of God as physically one and unique, creator of the world, and of history, was not a point of departure in Abraham, but a point of arrival, painfully achieved through a lengthy historical way, where each one of its moments has been the enlightenment —in the different historical situations of the life of Israel— of the different possibilities of understanding the same God, the God of Abraham.
7 In the 1965 Madrid seminar Zubiri distinguished here two further possibilities: of an inaccessible “remoteness” (Rabbinism), and of an accessible “remoteness” (Hassidism).