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CHAPTER V
THE WAY OF MONOTHEISM1
We have just considered the intrinsically historical characteristics of the diversity of religions. And I was saying that the diversity of religions is the diversity of three ways. We understand by ways the appropriation of one of the various possibilities which man discovers of being able to understand, and being able to know a reality intellectually, in this case the reality of religion and of God. Such ways are historical for three reasons. In the first place, because the different possibilities of the three ways are given congenerically and contemporaneously in every situation in an inchoative manner. In the second place, because out of these possibilities man selects and appropriates one. Finally, in the third place, because that appropriation provides a change to the scheme of possibilities with which one counts in a particular situation, and therefore, when the operation is repeated a course is being traced, which is precisely the systematic course of history as system {206} of possibilities. The first two reasons are actually articulated in the third.
The three ways —of dispersion, immanence, and transcendence— are ways which access, really and effectively a one, personal, and transcendent God. However, of these three ways only one is true: the way of transcendence. Then, one can ask, In what does the historicity of the other ways consist, on the one hand, and of the way of transcendence on the other? The historicity of the other ways does not consist in the fact that they may not reach God, but that they reach Him in an ab-errant way in the etymological sense of that word, i.e., through a circuitous route which indefectibly leads to God, but is still circuitous.
The way of transcendence is not a circuitous way. It is a way which in and of itself actually leads to God. However, it does not lead us in a straight line, but with ups-and-downs. It is not the case of the development of an abstract idea, but of the real and positive encounter with divine reality insofar as it is the fundament of a religion. Calling this a religious monotheism, it must be remarked that it has had a long history. And this history is not extrinsic to religious monotheism, because the way is not something chosen at a certain moment, but has an intrinsic viability.
Nevertheless, the viability of historical facts is enormously complex. It depends, in the first place, on what the way may be in itself. But, in the second place, it depends on another condition which it shares with every reality, historical or not. The fact is that every reality, by the mere fact of being one, is active by itself, and the activity of this viability consists in “giving of itself”. The chosen way is not only the chosen content, but one has to be aware about the course of history to see what it gives of itself. And what it gives of itself is something that refluxes {207} on the initial point, on the content. And this refluxing constitutes in a positive way the intrinsic viability of the way in question.
In the case of monotheism, viewing the question from this point of view, we find on the one hand that monotheism is not the patrimony of only one religion, for example the religion of Israel. I have already pointed out that in primitive civilizations there is a certain amount of monotheism. But all of them constitute, from this point of view of viability, a set of collateral branches. This does not mean they may be false: even though their monotheism may appear elementary and rudimentary, it does not have to be false because of this. All monotheisms in this sense are true. The fact is that historically they are a kind of dead-end street, just like the very peoples who have them. On the other hand, there is a positive trunk which has had historical fertility, and viability. And this historical viability refluxes upon the truth in question. In that case, not only is there a conformity of the idea with the reality it tries to apprehend, but in addition there is something different, the real and actual encounter. Through this way, at least in a presumptive manner and with faith, man proceeds finding the divinity painfully and slowly. It is the way of the ups-and-downs. This living trunk is the one that matters for us here. It is the only one that with historical fecundity has determined and constituted religious monotheism in history.
Then we have to ask:
In the first place: How has monotheism entered history?
In the second place: How does it unfold in it?
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§ 1
THE ENTRY OF MONOTHEISM IN HISTORY
It is already known that monotheism has come from primary cultures, above all from the cycle of the pastoral and nomadic culture. Here I shall limit myself to dealing with the Semite nomads, because from among them is where a way has been traced, which has the historical fecundity that leads to the stable religious monotheism in history.
For a nomadic shepherd, the divinity is something, which is in heaven; directs their wanderings through the steppes where these shepherds are traveling. The nomadic shepherd has always had a vague idea of the oneness of a god; of a god considered as powerful. It is probable that the root ’el, which gives the name of God in all Semitic languages, may signify “the powerful” etymologically. This god is a friend and protector of the tribe which has deposited its trust in him. For a Semite, “god” is always the god of someone. This someone is the family or the nomadic tribe in this case. And he is its god because they deposit in him the fountain of the ultimate possibilities for their life and existence. When these tribes travel their gods accompany them. And in their resting moments, at places consecrated by the inveterate history of the Semites, the gods manifest themselves. They manifest themselves in sacred trees, wells and oases, and above all at places even more qualified: at the mountaintops. There the theophanies occur. There the nomadic pastors assemble from different locations, and with a different god. They all cross at these places and sanctuaries where {209} the traditions accumulated throughout the centuries are preserved.
There can be a special moment in which this family or tribe does not limit itself to perform their regular function of nomadic shepherd, but may find themselves in a precarious situation, in dire need and lack of food through drought or some other cause. We have an actual example from a tribe, which is not Semitic, but rather Iranian: the Bactrian, from whom a few years ago even a film has been obtained about what happens in these occasions. The chief of the caravan retires and waits for a divine inspiration. At a certain moment, he finds it in himself and says, “Let us go to the country, which the divinity has shown to me”. And they undertake a long trip crossing mountains, losing many animals, many men, and in the end they possibly find the place with precisely the thing they are looking for: abundant grazing fields for their cattle.
We find that approximately between the XIX and XVIII centuries B.C., there are some families of Arameans camping around the city of Ur in Mesopotamia, where the lunar cult is centered. Among these families is the family of Abraham. They are polytheists, they profess a lunar cult, and emigrate, as so many nomads, from the area of Ur to their land of origin at Haran, in the north of Mesopotamia. At Haran, another metropolis of the lunar cult, is where the family of Abraham is. In the Biblical text we find exactly the same situation which I have described with respect to the Bactrian: “Yahweh said to Abraham: Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk, and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you” (Gn 12:1).
If this happens to all nomads, What is so extraordinary that it happened to Abraham? After all, it is {210} a commonplace. Because to have a kind of inner vision —which does not have to be a revelation— of the oneness of a God, and to immerse in oneself to do God’s will is not something exclusive to Abraham. It has happened to numerous men on Earth, and is possible it happened to the chiefs of the Bactrian. Revelation is not a dictation or a great inner illumination, but a kind of inner judgment. What happens is that these things have to be judged by what they give of themselves to history. That is the issue. Taken in themselves, the case of the Bactrian, and the case of Abraham are more or less equivalent. But it is possible that the Bactrian may have entered their history through dead-end alleys. On the other hand, the case of Abraham has had an historical viability which has endured for centuries.
This is what we must study in the second part of this chapter: In what does the unfolding of this monotheism consist, which entered history so modestly?
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§ 2
THE HISTORICAL UNFOLDING OF MONOTHEISM
This monotheism has several stages. I shall have to recall them, not with the intention to describe their content, which is well known, but to interpret it from the point of view of the ideas I have explained concerning the ways and the possibilities.
I. Abraham and the Patriarchs: the solitary God
The first stage is the one of Abraham and the Patriarchs. Monotheism enters history with Abraham. The famous phrase of Genesis does not say “you can go”, but says to him with a reduplicative imperative: “Go forth to a land I will show you!” (Gn 12:1). And Abraham departs. Clearly, this is an inner experience of Abraham. Surely Abraham has retired and reflected for a more or less lengthy period about what he has to do. And has awaited for what anyone would expect. One retreats to reflect and think humanly, not to receive a flash coming from heaven. On the other hand, there is no obstacle for human reflection to be a reflection in which one requests and thinks he receives a divine illumination. It does not necessarily consist in something coming from the outside, but in activating a reflection with the desire to be correct.
This experience of the oneness is the experience of a God who, as the god of any Semite, is formally only the God {212} of someone. “God” in the abstract does not exist for a Semite. Are the Semites the only ones at this? At any rate, He is the God of someone. In addition, He is a single God, albeit a rudimentary one. Rudimentary, i.e., in the Semitic way, which sees in God a concrete uniqueness: He is their only God. Their God is rudimentarily the only one. He is a solitary God. Solitary because He does not have a goddess, and also because He does not have a pantheon. And in this characteristic of solitude is the germ of all the viability with which the monotheist idea is going to develop in history2. With respect to the other gods, probably Abraham encounters them like the rest of the Semites. When Jacob makes a contract with his father-in-law Laban, Jacob invokes the God of Abraham, and Laban invokes the god of Nahor (Gn 31:53). The Patriarchs encounter the other gods at least as social forces. However, they are not their God. And precisely in being theirs, and in His characteristic of being solitary is the radical uniqueness of the God of Abraham. In addition, this God is a moral and demanding God3.
Nevertheless, what Abraham asks of this God is the same as any other nomad: descendants and their own land (cf. Gn 15:2 ff.). The fact that Deuteronomy and the priestly code, describing the vocation of Abraham, may say that God has promised the entire country of Canaan, with more sons than stars in heaven, is due to a later reflection. No migrating nomad would ever ask for something like this. He would ask for descendants {213} and his own piece of land, so that he would not be a stranger in that land. In that kind of inner dialog, which the personal religion of Abraham consists, he wishes to settle in Canaan after having found the land to which he had been sent upon leaving Haran.
The Biblical text (cf. Gn 15:9 ff.) tells us that Abraham then offers a sacrifice, which consists in placing a series of animals atop a mound of stones, which —except for the birds— he breaks into two pieces. He wishes to make a sacrifice of surrender to God. To make a Covenant, an alliance or a contract is said in the Semitic languages “cutting the Covenant”, precisely because the animals are cut. Abraham falls into a deep stupor, and in his dream he sees the smoke pass between the two pieces of the victims. The passing of smoke meant to seal the contract. Abraham interprets this smoke as God, which means that God makes a Covenant with him. In this dream his God is the one who has passed, and the one that really and actually constitutes a Covenant with him. That this is told as a dream is nothing but the literary genre of a historical mentality. The fact is that he felt this as a kind of providential help from the divinity. And then, from this moment on, something else is created. Not only is the God of the family of Abraham created, but also an objective body of religion, composed at least by two elements. In the first place, the alliance with ’Elohim, which is —as we shall see— the proper name of God. And, in the second place, a cult, which is not a sacrifice, as it will be afterwards, but a cult resembling what we might call a common meal of men with the gods.
This God to whom Abraham offers this sacrifice, with whom he feels related through a Covenant, and to whom he has asked for land and descendants, first of all, gives him a son. And afterwards gives him the possibility of buying from some Hittites a few {214} feet of ground to bury his wife Sarah. With this he no longer is a zar-áh, a stranger in Canaan: he now has descendancy and land4. The family of Abraham and his descendants, Isaac, Jacob, etc., are going to emigrate from one place to another, and pass through Bethel, Shechem, the terebinth of Mamre, the well of Beersheba, etc. And there, his ’Elohim, his God, is called with different names in different places: ’El-Ra’i (Gn 16:13), “The God of Vision”; ’El-‘Elyon (Gn 14:18), “God Most High”; ‘El-‘olam (Gn 21:33), “God Eternal”; ‘El-Šadday (Gn 17:1, etc.) probably “God of the Mountains”, etc. Until finally, the name of ’Elohim begins to signify the personal divinity to which all the life of the Patriarchs refers. Everything a Semite understands by divine begins to be concentrated in one personality only.
When seen retrospectively, the history that begins here is going to be the historical experience of the alliance of Abraham. Not a Covenant, but indeed an alliance. It is the historical experience of understanding that ’Elohim is the God of this group. This brings us to the second stage.
II. Moses and Yahwism: the jealous God
Later, these Semites, because of conditions similar to the ones I was referring to, add themselves to the large migration of Hyksos, probably all of them Semites. Part of them, not all —and this is important—, install themselves in Egypt: “Israel resided in {215} Egypt, in the land of Goshen, and settled there”, the Biblical text says (Gn 47:27). They are to remain there for centuries subject to hard work, from which Moses will try to liberate them. Moses then has an idea superior to the one Abraham had. In the latter it was the case of a family having a God. Moses wants something more: he wants to have a people. And as a people, that they have a God of these people, not merely the God of a family.
Moses had a double possibility. In the first place, it would be possible to arrange for each of the different tribes, when leaving Egypt, to keep their own ’Elohim, and to be the only one. That way, when meeting the Semites that had remained, adorers of ’Elohim, all would have good neighbor relationships. But the road Moses is going to follow is a different possibility. He chooses a unique one God for the whole people, a God whose name —Yahweh— has provoked many discussions about its origin. Probably that name existed already among the Kenites of the desert4.
This is told to us by three traditions, in three different sources: the Elohist, the Yahwist, and the priestly. It is the famous theophany at Horeb. The Elohist account tells us that at least the voice of Yahweh appeared to him there, and that in reply to the question of Moses for his name, he is told hayáh ‘ashér hayáh (Ex 3:14), which the Seventy translated as egó éimi o ón, and the Vulgate as ego sum qui sum, “I am the one who am”. But this is not what the Hebrew text says, which in all probability wishes to leave an incognita about the proper name of that God. And this for one reason: for a Semite —and in general for the ancients— to know the proper name is equivalent to {216} handle the very essence of the being who has that name. The text actually says: “I am who am, this is unimportant, the fact is that I will be with you, will be the God of your people”6. The Yahwist account takes one more step. A different step by saying: “Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Ex 3:15), even though he was not known by that name. Here, a step backward is taken to the God of the Patriarchs. Finally the priestly source tells us: “I am Yahweh, I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as ’El-Šhadday (probably “the God of the mountains”); but my name, Yahweh, I did not make known to them” (Ex 6:2-3).
Be that as it may, after the Exodus, Moses undertakes a unification of the tribes or clans, which have left Egypt, with the Semite clans, which had remained in the neighborhood of Canaan. Then he founds a people, which is not only a family, but strictly a people. Yahweh is the God of His people, and not only the God of a family. This Yahweh has the characteristics of ultimateness. And in these characteristics of ultimateness the objective body of the new religion is going to be constituted.
Above all, the great task he has to accomplish, in order to provide a God that will be the only God of all the people, is to identify Yahweh with ’Elohim. This identification is {217} the one that both the Yahwist and the priestly code point out. In the text of Deuteronomy, much later, when this fact is mentioned we are given a very characteristic phrase: “Understand that Yahweh, your ’Elohim, is precisely the ’Elohim, the faithful God...” (Dt 7:9). The identification of Yahweh with ’Elohim and the invocation of fidelity is an essential element. The Hebrew text uses the verb e-man. For a Semite fidelity is not simply a moral virtue. It is the formal constitutive characteristic of truth. Truth is that with which one can rely, it is assured. That is why calling God “faithful” is exactly the same as calling him “true”.
The tribes, thus unified under one name for God make a pact: this is the pact of Shechem, of which there is still an important account in the book of Joshua (Jos 24:25-28). Now it is not simply an alliance, as in the case of Abraham, but a real and positive Covenant, a berît. By virtue of this Covenant these tribes are established and unified when facing a common enemy: this is the entry into Canaan. At this entry into Canaan there was a double possibility. On the one hand, the possibility of simply maintaining the idea of a solitary God. This was difficult, because now it was not just the case of only one family. After having stayed in Egypt, it was difficult to maintain the idea of one solitary God. There was a different possibility: to admit only one God, Yahweh, who does not tolerate other alien gods near Him. Actually, the first commandment mentions this negatively: “You shall not have other gods before my face” (Ex 20:3). And, it is said, of course, by “I Yahweh”, “your God, who brought you out of Egypt” (Ex 20:2). The solitary God has changed into something different, has taken another step: He is now a jealous God, not tolerating others before His face. Monotheism {218} has begun its upwards stepping march into history. From the solitary God we now step to the jealous God. What happens is that now, instead of beginning the way of mere friendship, a more complex way is started: the way of fidelity7. These tribes, upon entering the land of Canaan no longer ask, as Abraham surely did, for a piece of land and descendants. No, they ask for the whole country to settle themselves, which is a different matter. This is the third stage; the entry into Canaan.
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1 In Zubiri’s index of the 1965 Madrid seminar monotheism is studied in the chapter dedicated to “Christianity in the History of Religions”. In the 1971 seminar the study of the three great monotheisms has acquired greater independence with respect to the conferences dedicated to “Christianity in the History of Religions”, and for this reason we offer it here as an independent chapter.
2 In the 1965 Madrid seminar Zubiri said: “it is not a metaphysical transcendence and uniqueness, but a historical transcendence and uniqueness”.
3 In the 1965 Madrid seminar Zubiri said: “Finally, He is a God who is not a simple personification of nature —is not a mere God of this world—, but is a moral God, since He demands a trusting, faithful, and full surrender to Him. He demanded it precisely when submitting him to the test of the sacrifice of his first-born Isaac”.
4 In the 1965 Madrid seminar Zubiri said: “this monotheism —precisely because it is religious— had to adopt the form of an objective body. This objective body was quite clear: it is the body of the tribal family”.
5 On the text of the 1965 Madrid seminar Zubiri wrote: “do not unify all the gods of the different tribes, but quite the opposite: uphold the one God, but in a necessarily new form”.
6 In the 1965 Madrid seminar Zubiri said: “It is just one more step in transcendence: hiding what is only the patrimony of God, His own name. However, He needed a name; (...) and then is given a name, not expressing His essence, but to express at least the way in which the people is going to invoke Him. And this name is Yahweh. Whatever its origin and etymology, the people of Israel sensed it in relationship to the verb hayah, to be, but in the sense of occurrence. Actually he is, a God who is with them (...) in the founding, and the vicissitudes of a people”.
7 On the text of the 1965 Madrid seminar Zubiri had written: “The historical experience of Israel will now be the historical experience of this ‘jealousy’. But this will enlighten new possibilities for understanding God”.