"a purely ethical monotheism in which God, the guardian of moral order, keeps the world subject to the law, would restrict the scope of God's knowledge and concern to what is of ethical signifigance. God's relation to man would, in general, run along the lines of a universal principle. the divine pathos alone is able to break through this rigidity and create new dimensions for the unique, the specific, and the particular.
it is not law and order itself, but the living God who created the universe and established its law and order, that stands supreme in Biblical thought.
before the Torah, the covenant was.
prophecy is a reminder that what obtains between God and man is not a contract but a covenant. anterior to the covenant is love, the love of the fathers, and what obtains between God and israel must be understood, not as legal, but as a personal relationship, as participation, involvement, tension. God's life interacts with the life of the people. to live in the covenant is to partake of the fellowship of God and His people. Biblical religion is not what man does with his solitariness, but rather what man does with God's concern for all men.
the gulf that separates man from God is transcended by His pathos."
-abraham joshua heschel, excerpts.
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