Incarnation, Jews, Covenantal People

Pray to be known, to be understood and to be welcome -- Anthony Gittens

Throughout the many religious traditions the world has known, the idea of both incarnation and covenant have been frequently embraced. Looking at these as a sort of continuum one is able to see the relationship between them. Writing on both these subjects, the author, Peter Kreeft, discusses them in his book, The God Who Loves You. Proclaiming "G-d is love, the incarnation," Kreeft acknowledges that this topic is perhaps one of the most difficult in Western thought to grasp.

The subject, in its knowable, yet untouchable mystery, is the trinity of creation, where all is love. There is the Lover, the beloved and their creation, together forming a tri-partite relationship, one to the other. Kreeft writes:

• G-d is love.
• Love is G-d's essence.
• Love is one with G-d's personhood and being.
• Love requires a lover, a beloved, and the act of love.
• G-d is three parts of one.
• The three know and love each other.
• The processes of love are without beginning or end.
• The Creator loves by knowing, and by his will.
• The Creator loves both in time and in eternity.
• The Spirit is love between the Creator and his beloved creation.
• There is holiness, sacredness in human sex. Two make three.

G-d is love. Nowhere in the Tanakh does it say that G-d is justice or mercy itself, or that he is anything, but love itself. Love is G-d's essence. This is absolute; as the Tanakh tells it, everything else is relative to this love. "Love necessarily means three things: there is a lover, a beloved, and the act or creation of loving.

Thus for G-d to be love, he must somehow be all three. The Creator knows and loves his creation; his creation knows and loves his Creator. The Spirit which proceeds from this act of loving is sometimes called the Holy Spirit, or the Incarnate. This Spirit is the love between the Creator and his creation. Their knowledge of each other is through, and by this Spirit of love.

As the Creator knows his creation, he generates himself, his love by knowing him. So it is through knowing and the will that love comes into being. Thus the trinity may be also thought of as being, knowing and loving [by the will].

Creation loves both in eternity and in time. The relationship of the three is one of equality; creation is equal in love to creator and love, the spirit is equal to both. That is the force and power of love. In two come three; the Spirit of love is the ultimate origin of holiness or sacredness of human sexual love, says this tradition.

"The love of G-d has invaded our world, and we see with new eyes."
The love of the Spirit is a mystery, modern man has, tragically lost easy access into, or indeed, conception of. There is another ultimate dimension that ancient man found far easier to access. In this realm there is not science, empiricism, nor quantification, but rather it is a place of myth, imagination, analogy, and sacramentalism.
Since "G-d is the Creator, and since creation reflects and reveals the Creator, and since G-d is love, all creation somehow reflects and reveals this love," this Spirit.

Unlike ancient minds, "modern" man is enveloped by an overweening atmosphere of science and tangible proofs; in earlier times, the connections between individual and Creator were more obvious, for the simple reason that the ancient mind believed. The ancients viewed a beautiful landscape, sunset or night-time sky and were filled with the awe of the creation. Or for example, human sexuality was easily seen to be a part of the universal dimension, the wholeness or oneness of the world.

In today's English language, the pronouns he and she have been nearly stripped away. They are avoided, dis-used. Left in their place is a socio-political idea that rejects this very principle of universal oneness. There are labels and divisions, parsing the world into diverse units.
To the ancient mind, this is akin to tragedy. What could take the place of the Chinese idea of the yin and yang? Or the Hindu wedding ceremony in which bride and groom pronounce one to the other, "I am heaven, you are earth;" to which the bride responds, "I am earth, you are heaven."

Many modern minds, especially in the West will find these ideas unintelligible, in part thanks to science. Our rational mind does not allow us to go there. It is all myth, we say. Science, in its aims to reduce things to quantifiable matter fails, it cannot see cosmic love.

Rather, science ignores the "final cause" of creation. It cannot rationalize what something or someone was made for, its purpose, its goal, its end. This reason is the most important to creation. The Tenakh tells us that both the historical and in the ultimate dimension, G-d is the final cause, creation the ultimate end; it is the alpha and the omega, both the beginning and end.

In this ultimate dimension, we are freed "of the dirty little dungeon of a universe that the Enlightenment thinkers" of past centuries have placed us into wholesale. Enlightenment thought, thought in which rationality and science are the reigning sovereigns gives to modern minds, "a universe in which love and beauty, praise and value are mere subjective fictions," invented by the self spinning aloneness of a human mind.

And yet science through all its triumphs has not been able to extinguish an ancient, almost primordial instinct from the deepest places in our soul, to realize love as the highest wisdom and meaning in a life. So then the Judeo-Christian Bible, or Tanakh, in its entirety is then to be read with imagination, with myth and analogy as a divine love story, says Peter Kreeft.

In both the Jewish and Christian telling of the story, the Word contained in the book is a covenant, an agreement between G-d, the Lover and his beloved; the persons he created, the Jews and all who come to him in the Spirit of the Oneness (adonai echad).

The word of G-d is the Christ, the unity of G-d, the Creator. And to the Christian mind, among other names we may call this oneness, the Christ, love incarnate. Christ has proved G-d's love for his creation by the example of the Cross. He has come because of, and for love, alone. He comes out of love.

Other manifestations of love are found in the connection between the "fall" from the garden of Eden. The connection here is found between the fall and freedom. Love does not enslave; love makes free. Because you are the Beloved, you are free. We are not the Creator's pets; we are meant to be G-d's lover.

In the redemption, love manifests. G-d's love is powerful and in full display as soon as Adam falls. He makes a mistake, he falls away from the covenant that he made in free will with G-d to obey.
as covenantal people, Jews traditionally see the "law" of the Torah as an expression of G-d's will. It is their joy to learn, to know this will. Thus they see their holy book as a love making manual, if you will.
In the ten commandments, the main covenants presented to creation by G-d, the Creator, are laid out. In essence, they form the whole of the "covenant-contract." G-d is to have this agreement with his people, who in free will grow to abide by this contract, or rule. In following the way of G-d in divine law, more love is made. Human-kind is "fruitful and multiplies."

Caring for the garden, the world of Creation, is so that human persons may learn to be more like Creators. G-d wishes to teach love through loving the world and the soil it comprises, to raise a crop to the benefit of all of creation.
The Creator starts small and then moves through the world until his love reaches the ears of his perhaps, most complex creation, mankind. As a lover, G-d is not jealous. Sharing in oneness is the essence of all.

"And the forbidden fruit of Adam and Eve is to teach the Beloved the reality of pure, "blind," love." If they had been told that the reason (a rational idea) was that the fruit was poison, would not Adam and Eve have obeyed; not from a trusting, free love, but from a selfish fear?
Yet G-d did command them, and asked for their love in return for no other reason than love itself. This is covenant. When we "fall," we lick our wounds, we gain a sense of the real, we dust ourselves off and remain in the moment, rather than a self-serving, spinning mind.
Thus we again realize the fall as a direction back to the source, back to the Creator and we, are his Beloved. This love is not sentimental, it is not cheap, easy or compromising. This love is in totality.

You are the deepest secret of G-d's heart. --Peter Kreeft

Bold Love and Evil

"If Christ, for one had practiced the love we advocate these days, he would have lived to a ripe old age."

In his classic book, Bold Love, psychologist and minister, Dan Allender writes compellingly of the face of evil in a world that is all things, not all love. He says, "We've come to view love as being nice. Forgiving and forgetting. Yielding to the desires of others. Yet the kind of love modeled by Jesus Christ, Ghandi, Martin Luther King and others has nothing to do with manners or unconditional acceptance. Rather, it is shrewd. Disruptive. Courageous. And as a result, often socially unacceptable."
Bold love is a harsh mistress, because there's nothing redeeming about a love that just blindly accepts.

What does it mean to love those who harm me? What does it mean, to love my enemy? The love of my friend is not so difficult. This story ultimately is about a forgiving love in a world side by side with the evil of the devil. Allender says that forgiveness surely does not mean forgetting the past, and ignoring the damage of harms past and present. Doing this would be erasure of one's personal history in the midst of a life. Human beings have been created lives worthy of love and forgiveness. We must first learn to forgive ourselves of the fault and failings that we have perpetrated. We must accept our humanness, our sometimes incomprehensible oddities and weaknesses.

"Bold love is a powerful agent of change that can transform both the lover and the beloved." The passion of bold love is a gift that brings a hardened heart face to face with a redemptive tenderness, and love of a Creator for his creation. We have all heard so much about God's love that his wrath and fury at our hardness and iniquity have been plowed under. There is no understanding of the Gospel message nor the centrality of the cross. Without recognition of the cross, its meaning and intersection of both, wrath and mercy are lost. It is a cross.

Mercy and its mysteries are great. Is it possible that we may be both passionately furious, and disposed to the doing of good?
Like the biblical figures Job and Jacob, we have the privilege to struggle with our failings, with God, and know that we will not be destroyed. Someone has been to the cross and shown us that. We are not to be in exile, nor a stranger to the promises of God. Not to be stripped naked and shamed, even in our darkest rage and most insolent self-justification, the face of God is there for the viewing. We may see his face and live.

The apostle Paul writes,  'For if we were God's enemies, we were reconciled with him through the death of his son.' Romans 5:8-10
"In his book, The Crucified God, Jurgen Moltmann expressed the loss for the Father and for the Son in this way: 'The Son suffers the dying; the Father suffers the death of the Son.
 The grief of the Father here is just as important as the death of the Son. The Fatherlessness of the Son is matched by the Sonlessness of the Father."

Allender writes, "Love is [now] before me, like a wall, like a deep cut on my hand. It is unforgettable; it is inflamed within me; it is a shrill, silent, noisy, still voice that captures my deepest and my most superficial thoughts." I am saved because he is mine and I am his. I am the deepest secret of God's heart.

Henri Nouwen: Masculine and Feminine God

You have to keep searching for your body's deeper need, the need for genuine love. Every time you are able to go beyond the body's superficial desires for love, you are bringing your body home and moving toward integration and unity.” -Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son

Masculine and Feminine God
"Often I have asked friends to give me their first impression of Rembrandt's Prodigal Son. Inevitably, they point to the wise old man who forgives his son: the benevolent patriarch.

"The longer I look at 'the patriarch', the clearer it becomes to me that Rembrandt has done something quite different from letting God pose as the wise old head of a family. It all began with the hands. The two are quite different. The father's left hand touching the son's shoulder is strong and muscular. The fingers are spread out and cover a large part of the prodigal son's shoulder and back. I can see a certain pressure, especially in the thumb. That hand seems not only to touch, but, with its strength, also to hold. Even though there is a gentleness in the way the father's left hand touches his son, it is not without a firm grip.
"How different is the father's right hand! This hand does not hold or grasp. It is refined, soft, and very tender. The fingers are close to each other and they have an elegant quality. It lies gently upon the son's shoulder. It wants to caress, to stroke, and to offer consolation and comfort. It is a mother's hand....'
"As soon as I recognized the difference between the two hands of the father, a new world of meaning opened up for me. The Father is not simply a great patriarch. He is mother as well as father. He touches the son with a masculine hand and a feminine hand. He holds, and she caresses. He confirms and she consoles. He is, indeed, God, in whom both manhood and womanhood, fatherhood and motherhood, are fully present.'

'That gentle and caressing right hand echoes for me the words of the biblical prophet Isaiah, "Can a woman forget her baby at the breast, feel no pity for the child she has borne? Even if these were to forget, I shall not forget you. Look, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands."
Also Nouwen writes: “Your body needs to be held and to hold, to be touched and to touch. None of these needs is to be despised, denied, or repressed. But you have to keep searching for your body's deeper need, the need for genuine love. Every time you are able to go beyond the body's superficial desires for love, you are bringing your body home and moving toward integration and unity.”

excerpted from Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son

In Return of the Prodigal Son, Nouwen describes love and forgiveness as unconditional. Though this is not a new idea, Nouwen's thought is arguably unique as he approached this theme from the view of the younger son, the elder son, and the father.
Each captures the unconditional quality of love and forgiveness in their own way. The younger son's life shows how the beloved lives a life of misery by thinking he can be loved only by meeting certain qualifications of the lover which he fails to meet.
The elder son's actions shows how the beloved can be depressed because he thinks he should receive greater love because he has done all the right things, or that he has met these qualifications.
The father alone understands how to love and forgive and is able to do so, and be happy. Nouwen explains that we are the younger son at times; when we think we don't deserve the love or the forgiveness, and the elder son at times; when we think we deserve love, or that another doesn't deserve it more than us-- that we are all called to be like the father; that by being like the father, we can come closer to being loved as the beloved.

About Henri Nouwen

Henri Nouwen (1932-1996) is a 20th century Christian writer, poet, teacher and mystic. He lived both in the Netherlands and in the United States. His books are now read in many languages around the world.