CHAPTER 1
The First Interruption
âScience tries to document the factual character of the natural world, and to develop theories that coordinate and explain these facts. Religion, on the other hand, operates in the equally important, but utterly different, realm of human purposes, meanings, and valuesâsubjects that the factual domain of science might illuminate, but can never resolve.â
Stephen Jay Gould, Rocks of Ages
Where did we come from? When did it all begin? And why? And how? Human beings are obsessed with beginnings. This obsession is driven by a desire to know as much as possible about who we are as inhabitants of the universe. We seek completeness in our lives. Another word for completeness is perfection. More often than not, âgood enoughâ will do for most people. But good enough is not good enough for those whose calling requires them to get to the heart of the matter, to the beginning of it all. Itâs a long journey. Anthropologists, archeologists, and historians, for example, are invaluable in getting us under way. Religion scholars, philosophers, and cosmologists keep us going. Their professional training obliges them to do so. Their ending is the beginning. Philosophers inform their colleagues that the journey is likely to be an endless task. The philosopher Martin Heideggerâs consideration of the matter is a case in point. Although what he has to say regarding the beginning may require more than one reading to deal with his way with words, his insight is instructive:
The beginning does not at first allow itself to emerge as beginning but instead retains in its own inwardness its beginning character. The beginning then first shows itself in the begun, but even there never immediately and as such. Even if the begun appears as the begun, its beginning and ultimately the entire âessenceâ of the beginning can still remain veiled. Therefore the beginning first unveils itself in what has already come forth from it. As it begins, the beginning leaves behind the proximity of its beginning essence and in that way conceals itself. Therefore an experience of what is at the beginning by no means guarantees the possibility of thinking the beginning itself in its essence. The first beginning is, to be sure, what is decisive for everything; still, it is not the primordial beginning, i.e., the beginning that simultaneously illuminates itself and its essential domain and in that way begins.1
Religion and science remain undeterred.
Please keep in mind that the following discussion of religion is not intended as an argument for the correctness of its worldview. I am telling a story about the interruption that we are, and religion demands attention given what it says about the topic. When I turn my attention to science, the story changes dramatically.
Religion
The Bible begins with a story about the beginning, with the first interruption to ever happen: âIn the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light and there was lightâ (Genesis 1:1â3). Put another way, God interrupted a state of nothingness and thereby brought about a state of somethingness. The power of interruption became an instructive force of the universe. God makes use of this force, for example, with a simple question directed at Adam, who, having broken Godâs law against apple-eating, was attempting to hide from sight: âWhere art thou?â (Genesis 3:9). Questions are interruptive in nature. They break the continuity of some action or event (for example, hiding) and encourage pause for thought. In Adamâs case, the pause was quick: âHere I am!â
The philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer has this to say about the interruptive function of questions: âThe essence of the question is to open up possibilities and keep them open.⌠To ask a question means to bring into the open. The openness of what is in question consists in the fact that the answer is not settled.⌠Every true question requires this openness.â2 Godâs question certainly brought Adam into the open, but his possibilities were already determined. There was no room for further conversation. Godâs question is rhetorical; itâs a call for confession. This is not to say, however, that Godâs question totally fails the test of being a âtrue question.â The question leaves open the possibility of choosing to answer a call, which Adam does when he confesses, âHere I am!â With this confession Adam acknowledges the presence and power of God. God calls for acknowledgment throughout the Bible. The act of acknowledgment is what enables us to open ourselves to whomever or whatever God is and to remain open to the One who on the sixth day of creation acknowledged the worth of bringing humankind into being. What God gave us is what God wants in return. Godâs rhetorical question to Adam is an interruption that serves a legitimate purpose.
The Judeo-Christian tradition makes much of how âinterruption is Godâs invitationâ to awaken us from the everyday routines that blind us to the ways of self-improvement and serving others.3 If only for a moment, interruptions grant us time to heed Godâs command âWalk before me and be thou perfect.â Christ repeats the command in his sermon on the mount: âBe ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfectâ (Matthew 5:48). The command is meant to interrupt the lives of those who walk the âcrooked pathsâ of sin (Isaiah 59:8). And notice, too, that the command itself contains an interruption. In order to abide by the command, we need to answer an essential question raised by the command: What exactly is perfection? The command doesnât say. Itâs an open question. Itâs debatable. In Gadamerâs terms, itâs a âtrue question.â The One who makes the command calls for acknowledgment. Are we acknowledging God as we struggle to answer the question and as we most likely interrupt each other in the process, believing at least for the moment that we can offer the best possible response? Why else would God make a command that leaves a crucial term undefined? The meaning of perfection is ambiguous. Ambiguity is a rhetorical device that encourages discussion and debate and the practice of rhetoric, which facilitates these communicative transactions. The need for public moral argument is born. Godâs command regarding perfection places us in a rhetorical situation. Indeed, as the philosopher Hans Blumenberg points out, âLacking definitive evidence and being compelled to act are the prerequisites of the rhetorical situation.â4 We have been interrupted by rhetoric that calls for additional rhetoric intended to decipher the truth and tell the story of perfection. The need for the rhetorical construction of a narrative is born.
Rhetoric is at work whenever language is employed to open people to ideas, positions, and circumstances that, if rightly understood, stand a better than even chance of getting people to think and act wisely. Orators are forever attempting to create these openings, for this is how they maximize the chance that the members of some audience will take an interest in what is being said and thus become more involved in judging the truthfulness of the oratorâs discourse. Neither persuasion nor collaborative deliberation can take place without the formation of this joint interest. Interests take form only to the extent that we develop emotional attachments to things happening in our environments. Aristotle offers the first detailed analysis of this fact of life in Book Two of his Rhetoric. The rhetorical practice of moving ideas to people and people to ideas is dependent on the ability of orators to attune their discourse to the emotional character of those being addressed.
Acknowledgment happens as the orator is successful in accomplishing this interest-developing activity. The good speaker is always seeking acknowledgment from some audience whose good members are also waiting for the speaker to acknowledge their interests in some meaningful way. In short, rhetorical competence has a significant role to play in providing places (openings) where acknowledgment can be received and, in the best of possible worlds, the truth can be told. To tell the truth is to make the best possible use of the perfectionist impulse of language. Rabbi David Wolpe has this point in mind in telling the story of Moses: âMoses has to wrench words from inside himself. He cannot simply summon the phrase that would placate and please. Rather than the gentle comfort of rolling phrases and smooth oratory, Godâs leader has to prove by his inner struggle that he shares the peopleâs plight. The leader must also have a catch in his throat, not spread ready rhetoric like a salve over all wounds. Moses cannot lead by means of the easy fluency of the demagogue. His is a hard-earned eloquence. His is less the mastery of the word than the heroism of the word.â5
Hard-earned eloquence: I understand this to mean a form of rhetorical competence that one acquires not simply by knowing and talking theory but instead by being open and devoted to Godâs call and willing to enact the effort that it takes to spread the word in a convincing and honest way. Moses is set on a path where the acquisition of rhetorical competence must take place in the practical world of everyday existence.
Rhetorical competence is called for by the interruptive nature of Godâs command regarding perfection. Left undefined, perfection, and all that it entails, becomes a matter open for debate. As the debate begins and progresses, the One who created this opening with an all-important question receives acknowledgment. To participate in the debate is to say âHere I amâ to God. Participants also receive acknowledgment as they feel good about what they are doing. God makes possible this feeling, having gifted human beings with the capacity to appreciate the goodness of their actions. God tells us what this gift is: âI will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lordâ (Jeremiah 24:7). The gift is otherwise known as âconscienceâ (Latin: conscientia: con [with] scientia [knowing]), a gift that facilitates a knowing-with God about matters of importance (for example, perfection). Moreover, gifted with a heart, our lived bodies provide God a âdwelling placeâ (Hebrew: makom) where Godâs presence can be felt in times of need.6 The health of the lived body is born, as is living a good life.
The more wholehearted people are when engaging in activities that enable them to experience the presence of God in their lives, the more they can feel good about their efforts. Judaism emphasizes the importance of being wholehearted. The Hebrew word for this particular emotional capacity of the lived body is tamin, whose primary meaning is âperfection.â Dealing with the question of perfection in a wholehearted manner is a perfect thing to do. The effort is a demonstration of what is being called for when God commands, âWalk before me and be thou perfect.â The interruptive nature of this command is educational. God is teaching us how emotion and acknowledgment are related and how this relationship can have a positive effect on the health of the lived body. Rhetoric plays an important role in achieving this result. God employs the rhetorical device of ambiguity to initiate the interruption that makes us wonder about all that perfection entails.
I think it is fair to say that what is going on here is a particular use of the perfectionist impulse of language, the use of the right word, to perfect our ability to understand what God is said to be: perfection. And all of this being the case, I also think it is fair to say that God warrants acknowledgment for demonstrating a high level of rhetorical competence. God is an orator of the first degree. Following Godâs ways, we thus have an obligation to perfect our ability to be rhetorically competent; interruptions that necessitate the performance of this skill can happen anytime. Fulfilling the obligation also requires knowing how to make the best possible use of the perfectionist impulse of language. With God as our audience, not considering this matter is out of the question. The truth of perfection, of God, is on the line.
Those whose faith is based on a literal interpretation of Scripture are likely to find what I am saying about interruption, God, and perfection to be inappropriate and unneeded. They might say something like this: âTo be perfect in Godâs eyes, just do what God says and does. Itâs all there in the Bible.â So members of a Pentecostal church in the mountains of North Carolina, my home state, live by the word of God recorded in Mark 16:18: âThey shall take up serpents.â And in Luke 10:19, these snake handlers are reassured that ânothing shall by any means hurt you.â Last year a leader of the church was bitten by a snake while holding it during a service. Luke 10:19 didnât work. So much for a perfect reading of the Bible. And while the man lay dying in agony, he refused any treatment because that was not Godâs way. Where does God say that? With all due respect to his family and fellow church members, the question of perfection is still up for grabs. And then consider this. The story of Noah and the ark tells of how God acted early on when God took exception to the sinful ways of humankind. And God declared, âI will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth ⌠for it repenteth me that I have made [him]â (Genesis 6:57). The flood came, and humankind was extinguished. There is a word for what God practiced: eugenics. It makes me cringe to say it, given the termâs horrendous history, but thatâs what God chose to do. Speak about an interruption. God was the first eugenicist. Must we do what God did in order to be perfect? The ancient Greek term for eugenics is eu (good) genes (birth). With this understanding of the term, one could say that God extinguished humankind so to bring about a better breed of humankind. Still, God is a eugenicist. Just how sinful were our ancestors to warrant mass murder? Personally, I would like to hear a bit more debate about what a perfect interruption is.
I am telling a story about interruption. The Judean-Christian tradition tells us the story begins with Godâs interrupting creation of all there is. There would be no reason to turn to the Judean-Christian religion when telling my story if, in the beginning, God was content with Godâs own perfection and left well enough alone. The nineteenth-century philosopher Frederick W. J. Schelling has this possibility in mind when he asks: âHas creation a final purpose at all, and if so why is it not attained immediately, why does perfection not exist from the very beginning?â7 For Schelling, the answer is clear. Perfection takes time: âGod is a life, not a mere being. All life has a destiny and is subject to suffering and development. God freely submitted himself to this too, in the very Beginning.⌠All history remains incomprehensible without the concept of a humanly suffering God. Scripture, too, ⌠puts that time into a distant future when God will be all in all, that is, when He will be completely realized. For this is the final purpose of creation: that which could not be in itself, shall be in itself.â8
Schelling holds to an evolutionary metaphysics: the notion of an evolving God who has it all together but still needs the thinking and acting of human creatures in order to complete the task of all being One with the cosmos. An earlier version of this theory is developed in the Judaic tradition of Kabbalah (the mystical core of Judaism and ultimately of Christianity and Islam). The theory is based on the teachings of the sixteenth-century rabbi Isaac Luria. His interpretations of the five books of Moses and the Zohar (a mystical commentary on these books) give rise to a cosmological myth intended to clarify the workings of the self-manifestation of divinity and how human beings come to play a fundamental role in sustaining this holy happening. The myth calls into question the fundamental belief of older rabbinic theology that Godâs own well-being is not contingent on human action. Luria insists, on the contrary, that the Creator does need our help. Luria thus creates a new narrative that redefines the traditional understanding of Godâs perfection. In so doing, he provides an appreciation of interruption that differs significantly from a traditional Christian understanding of the matter. A brief summary of Luriaâs teachings is sufficient for my purposes.9
According to Luria, the Creatorâs first act was not the interruptive event of ârevelationâ but rather withdrawal, the creation of an opening, a âvoidâ or empty place within the Creatorâs infinite presence and perfection. Ein Sof, the âendless lightâ of the Creator, withdrew âfrom Itself into Itselfâ in order to make room in the midst of Itself for the entire cosmos to come into being. This act of withdrawal is the Creator interrupting Itself. The action is the ultimate act of self-effacement. Otherness is granted priority in Godâs workings, a giving way to a place, an infinite dimension of space-time, which allows for life and its development. The essential nature of the Creator is that of sharing and compassion, a desire to give of Itself. This entire process occurs before Godâs interrupting avowal âLet there be light!â The creation of the cosmos presupposes a more primordial creation: with the Creatorâs withdrawal there arises an absence, a ânothingness,â a vacated place where something other than God can flourish under Godâs care. Only then can Godâs next interruption occur.
Luria teaches that before this second interruption took place a crisis occurred in Godâs creation process. The result of this crisis becomes evident when Moses first stands in Godâs light and is told that the Jewish people have a future. When Moses asks for Godâs âName,â he is told, âEhyeh-asher-ehyeh.â English renders this reply in a static way: âI am who I am.â In Hebrew, however, the dynamic of being open to the future is unequivocal: âI shall be who I shall be.â According to Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, âHere is a Name (and a God), who is neither completed nor finished. This God is literally not yet.â10 The crisis in the creation process was that the dynamic operations intrinsic to Godâs perfection were flawed. Godâs perfection entails imperfection. God needs a future to achieve completeness; hence Godâs reply to Moses, which admits as much. The perfection of Godâs bei...