The Lure of Love Divine: Mystery, Spirit, Process, Liberation

42 T I K K U N W W W. T I K K U N . O R G M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 1 0 SPECIALSECTON:GODANDTHETWENTY-FIRSTCENTURY T he Babylonian Talmud (Menahot 29b) says that whenMosesarrivedatthepeakofMountSinaitoreceive the Torah, he found God attaching the flourishes to the topsofthelettersoftheTorahscroll.Mosesdemandedto know why, with all of Israel waiting for the Torah, God was tarrying with this bit of rococo. God replied that in thefuturetherewouldariseasagebythenameofAkivawhowould derivegreatwisdomfromthesejotsandtittles. In this telling, the Torah that Akiva teaches is way beyond Moses’sgrasp,andGod’sdecisiontouseMosesasthelawgiverisinscrutable . ThepracticeofTalmud—thedocumentationandinterrogation, readingandconstructingoflegaldifferenceanddistinction—isnot mythicstorytelling,butitisgroundedinthismythos.Thispractice, whichsplitshairsandhascausedthehair-pullingofmanymystics, is exactly what Akiva taught. The practice is grounded not only in themythicencounterofMoseswithGodandAkivabutinCreation itself.Creationisseparationanddistinction—lightfromdarkness, upperwatersfromlowerwaters,landfromsea.Thisisthepractice of law—distinguishing categories, creating new categories, creating the world of pure and impure, forbidden and permitted, just andunjust.Itisinthepracticeoftheshaklave-tarya(thegiveand take of legal and intellectual discourse) that the Kingdom of Heaven,theprovinceofthejustandTheJust,iscreated.TheGod of a talmudist, or at least this talmudist, is the God that generates andisclaimedbylaw,theGodthatisimplicatedinandistherefore opentobejudgedbythecategoriesoflawwritlarge. TheGodoftheTalmudisalsoGodinExile—mourning,unable to end the Exile, living in the brokenness. God’s absence is very present.Itisinthisspacethatjusticecanhappen—thatpeoplecan act justly and create just societies. These are the four cubits of the law. This is the space within which one not only responds to the Other in front of one, but also in which, with the mediation of the institutions of law, one responds to the call of the Stranger whom onehasneveractuallymet. InthefinalsceneofthetalmudicmythofSinairecountedabove, Moses asks God about Akiva’s reward for all the Torah that he has studiedandtaught.GodsendsMosesforwardintimeagaintothe marketplaceswheretheyareweighingoutAkiva’sfleshafterhehas been martyred. Again Moses challenges God: “This is the reward forteachingTorah?”AgainGodrefusestoexplain. Torah was destined for and is needed in a broken and unredeemedworldinwhichwearecommandedtocreatejustsocieties . It is in the practice of justice that God exists and that redemption may happen. There are no promises. God could not keep Akiva frommartyrdom,nordidthisbotherAkiva,whoselustforTorahI embrace as the desire to do the quotidian and sublime work of justiceforitsownsake.I THEGODOFATALMUDIST by Aryeh Cohen THELUREOFLOVEDIVINE: Mystery,Spirit,Process,Liberation by Gary Dorrien I n 1948 philosopher Bertrand Russell and Jesuit philosopher Frederick Copleston conducted a famous BBC radio debate on the existence of God. Copleston contended that God’s existence was provable, and Russell disagreed . But the two philosophers readily agreed that God, if God existed, would be “a supreme personal being, distinct from the world and creator of the world.” That was too easy, and typical. Philosophy of religion debates about God’s existence often rush past the great question of what God might be, settling for positions about an assumed God. The traditions of theology that speak to me undercut any such assumption that the nature of divine reality is readily definable. Gary Dorrien is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and professor of religion at Columbia University . His books include the three-volume series, The Making of American Liberal Theology, widely praised as the definitive work in the field. Aryeh Cohen teaches Talmud at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies of the American Jewish University. He is currently writing a book on the just city as it is portrayed in rabbinic literature. Augustine put it best, cautioning that anything that one understands is not God. The apophatic mystical tradition of Meister Eckhart, Jan Ruysbroeck, and Nicholas of Cusa powerfullyinsisted that all ways of positively naming and describing God are inadequate, even as the experience of God’s wisdom in the divine Logos and love in the Spirit are central clues to the divine mystery. God is objectively definable only negatively, as that which God is not. The neo-Calvinist tradition of theology fashioned by Karl Barth got to a similar emphasis by a very different route, stressing the incomprehensible otherness of the veiled source of revelation. God is the Wholly Other mystery whose holiness is violated as soon as God acquires a name. In much of the liberal tradition of theological reflection to which I belong, an overconfident attachment to Enlightenment rationalism and Romantic experientialism caused liberals to downplay negative theology and the sense of God as ineffable mystery. As long as liberals thought that Western modernity was saving the...