Read Online Not in God's Name by Jonathan Sacks - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jonathan Sacks
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Christians, to think in dualistic terms borrowed from Greece. The physical arena with its wars and destruction was neither real nor the work of God. It was, as Plato said, a play of shadows cast on the wall of our senses by an artificial light. The real world is that of the forms, of eternity and the soul. This is where God lives. What the Messiah had done was not to change history. Rather, he had brought his disciples the truth about the other world, the realm of the spirit that lies within us if we only have the knowledge, the
gnosis
, the secret key that unlocks the door.
Dualism entered Judaism and Christianity when it became easier to attribute the sufferings of the world to an evil force rather than to the work of God.
The Qumran and Nag Hammadi sects disappeared. The mainstream in both Judaism and Christianity rejected dualism. Within Judaism, the group that survived were the rabbis. In some respects their teachings were close to those of the first Christians. They believed in the primacy of love and forgiveness. They subscribed to the morality taught in the Sermon on the Mount. They called it
lifnim mi-shurat ha-din
, going beyond the letter of the law. They saw themselves as heirs to the prophets, and believed, as did the early Christians, in the goodness of ordinary people.
They also discovered a powerful way of excluding heretical beliefs. They did not codify doctrine as the Church eventually did at the Council of Nicea in 325. Instead they fought the battle of ideas through the prayer book. The way they defeated dualism – they called it
shtei reshuyot
, ‘two domains’ – was elegant and effective. They chose the single most emphatic rejection of dualism in the Bible, Isaiah’s statement, ‘I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil’ (Isa. 45:7). Out of delicacy they substituted ‘all things’ for ‘evil’. They then set these words as the opening line of the communal daily Morning Prayer, where they stand to this day. So whoever prayed in the synagogue denied dualism. It soon disappeared from the Jewish mainstream, surfacing from time to time only in esoteric mystical texts.
Christianity likewise rejected the Gnostic Gospels. The most significant dualistic challenge came from Marcion of Sinope in the mid-second century. He believed that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New were two quite different deities. Like the Gnostics he believed that the Jewish God, Creator of the physical universe, was a different and lower being than the God of Christianity, who was spiritual, not physical, practising love and forgiveness rather than justice and retribution. The two religions had nothing to do with one another, so the Hebrew Bible, the ‘Old Testament’, had no place within the Christian canon. Marcion’s views were rejected as heresy. Dualism reappeared in the eleventh century in the form of the Cathars, against whom Pope Innocent III launched the Albigensian Crusade (1209–29). Some say that suspicion of lingering dualism was one of the reasons the Inquisition was started in 1234.
Unfortunately, a mild form of dualism has a habit of reappearing. Hardly a week goes by without someone in an article or book drawing a contrast between the Old Testament God of revenge and the New Testament God of forgiveness. The well-known atheist Richard Dawkins began the second chapter of
The God Delusion
with the words, ‘The God of the Old Testamentis arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction.’ 4 He was surprised and angry when, in conversation, I told him that those words showed that he was a Christian atheist, not a Jewish atheist. He could not understand this, but it is quite simple. The words ‘the God of the Old Testament’ are only spoken by Christians. Outside Christianity, there is no Old Testament. There is the Hebrew Bible.
It has become one of the taken-for-granted clichés of Western culture that the God of the Old Testament is the God of law,
gnosis
, the secret key that unlocks the door.
Dualism entered Judaism and Christianity when it became easier to attribute the sufferings of the world to an evil force rather than to the work of God.
The Qumran and Nag Hammadi sects disappeared. The mainstream in both Judaism and Christianity rejected dualism. Within Judaism, the group that survived were the rabbis. In some respects their teachings were close to those of the first Christians. They believed in the primacy of love and forgiveness. They subscribed to the morality taught in the Sermon on the Mount. They called it
lifnim mi-shurat ha-din
, going beyond the letter of the law. They saw themselves as heirs to the prophets, and believed, as did the early Christians, in the goodness of ordinary people.
They also discovered a powerful way of excluding heretical beliefs. They did not codify doctrine as the Church eventually did at the Council of Nicea in 325. Instead they fought the battle of ideas through the prayer book. The way they defeated dualism – they called it
shtei reshuyot
, ‘two domains’ – was elegant and effective. They chose the single most emphatic rejection of dualism in the Bible, Isaiah’s statement, ‘I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil’ (Isa. 45:7). Out of delicacy they substituted ‘all things’ for ‘evil’. They then set these words as the opening line of the communal daily Morning Prayer, where they stand to this day. So whoever prayed in the synagogue denied dualism. It soon disappeared from the Jewish mainstream, surfacing from time to time only in esoteric mystical texts.
Christianity likewise rejected the Gnostic Gospels. The most significant dualistic challenge came from Marcion of Sinope in the mid-second century. He believed that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New were two quite different deities. Like the Gnostics he believed that the Jewish God, Creator of the physical universe, was a different and lower being than the God of Christianity, who was spiritual, not physical, practising love and forgiveness rather than justice and retribution. The two religions had nothing to do with one another, so the Hebrew Bible, the ‘Old Testament’, had no place within the Christian canon. Marcion’s views were rejected as heresy. Dualism reappeared in the eleventh century in the form of the Cathars, against whom Pope Innocent III launched the Albigensian Crusade (1209–29). Some say that suspicion of lingering dualism was one of the reasons the Inquisition was started in 1234.
Unfortunately, a mild form of dualism has a habit of reappearing. Hardly a week goes by without someone in an article or book drawing a contrast between the Old Testament God of revenge and the New Testament God of forgiveness. The well-known atheist Richard Dawkins began the second chapter of
The God Delusion
with the words, ‘The God of the Old Testamentis arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction.’ 4 He was surprised and angry when, in conversation, I told him that those words showed that he was a Christian atheist, not a Jewish atheist. He could not understand this, but it is quite simple. The words ‘the God of the Old Testament’ are only spoken by Christians. Outside Christianity, there is no Old Testament. There is the Hebrew Bible.
It has become one of the taken-for-granted clichés of Western culture that the God of the Old Testament is the God of law,
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