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The Scandal of Faith
| Article
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10114 |
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Section : |
EDITORIAL
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| Issue
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4 / 1993 |
536 Words |
| Author
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Morton A. Kaplan
Editor and Publisher |
The feature book in this issue of THE WORLD & I is Frederick Buechner's Son of Laughter, a paean of praise for the Torah, the Hebrew holy book.
Should I be offended is a Jew when M.D. Aeschliman in his commentary asks, "Who can read the story of Abraham's near sacrifice of Isaac-and especially what parent can read it-without a feeling of terror, contempt, disgust or hatred?" Not at all.
As Aeschliman points out: "How then does [Buechner] escape the conclusions that are drawn by skeptical readers of Judeo-Christian history such as Voltaire, Gibbon, Jefferson, Butler, Twain, France, or Gore Vidal, for that matter? Buechner looks at them through sin, vice, folly, and weakness to the Spirit that defines them." Of course, so much the worse for the cited intellectuals.
Men are sinful. They are prey to all the human frailties. They are redeemed by a faith in God that constantly recalls them to their duty before the Almighty. Faith played a major role in the fall of communism. As communism corroded his inner spirit, Yeltsin, the former communist, was redeemed by faith. The Torah is a chronicle of betrayal and redemption by faith. Its offensiveness is the ground of its enlightenment. The history of the Jews and their faith has not been prettied up by the inspired writers of the Book to hide the warts but brought to light to expose man's dependence upon God.
The peculiarity of the Jews was laid upon them by Moses to insulate them from a world in which religion, no matter how noble in sentiment, was the servant of the state. The great virtue of the Judeo-Christian tradition--and this is the heritage of the Torah, of which Christ was a teacher--is the setting of a standard above and beyond the secular that calls men to do their duty before God and to stand witness against the powerful and the corrupt.
We live in an age of utilitarian pleasure, of rights, not of duties. This nation was built on the Protestant ethic, which is directly derived from the Torah. Buechner knows the holy source of that ethic and celebrates it in his novels. Aeschliman, by his recounting of the failures of the Jews, celebrates the redeeming virtues of faith, and the emptiness of pure rationalism.
Intelligence is a tool. Detached from a redeeming faith, it has no capacity to control the excesses of which intelligence and passion are capable. Ask not with Falstaff what honor and
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