The Humanistic Pursuit of Values

From the Old Testament account of ancient Israel's travail comes a parallel to today's debate about the war in Vietnam

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF RELIGION

WITH all the contemporary crises that clamor for solution in our world, what is the value in studying the religion of an ancient civilization? The world of the Bible no longer exists, and even if it did, it would be considered a relic of a remote, pre-scientific age. Even the religion of ancient Israel is not equatable with Judaism, let alone Christianity.

The problem here is obviously but one concrete example of that which confronts the whole humanistic enterprise, especially those parts of it dealing with the cultures of past ages. Many of us would like to see humanistic study as an end in itself. The world, however, forces on us the question of the usefulness of such study, and I think this is a good thing.

It is good because there is an answer to give to the world, an answer the world" needs desperately to listen to. Study of the humanities is study of man, and study of man is study of values. Without values there' is no civilization, and the humanistic enterprise can be seen as an eternal search for those necessary values that make it possible for us to exist as human beings. Which values create, and which destroy? Seen in this way, humanities study is no leisurely pastime to pursue after the work Of the world is done, but the urgent and decisive business of the world itself. Other civilizations could afford self-destruction. Ours, as everybody knows, cannot. Thus our time must learn before it is too late what are the creative values which enable men to live together in creative tension.

But how can study of the past help our present search? Obviously no single answer will suffice, but one thing seems to me clear. We do little service to the world if we rigidly exclude contemporary crises from our minds when we study the past. The big issues for ourselves and our world make us what we are and to leave them outside the classroom means to leave a sizable part of ourselves too. It means as well that bifurcation of subject matter into the relevant and irrelevant, which results in the humanities appearing sterile for all but the aesthetically minded. Rather than excluding contemporary problems, we should allow them to trouble and excite our thinking about the subject at hand, to question its relevance for contemporary problems and to argue with the answers it suggests. If we cannot force the subject into dialogue with us, then perhaps we are wasting our time.

I am not suggesting a simplistic correlation between the subject matter of a course and the problems of our day. The biblical prophets spoke out of their own world view to their own crises, and one cannot simply swallow the medicine they prescribed in expectation that the illnesses are the same. Yet the pages of the Bible do present us with the raw material - man himself - and some potential analogies with which we can look anew at ourselves and our values. We can learn what it means to be human, what happens when a person is too strong, when a country is too weak, when men are blind to knowledge and insensitive to moral judgments. Our subject of study is a mirror of humanity from which we can learn how we look and act. Of course we must be on our guard against reading our own times and our own prejudiced solutions into the subject matter of a course. What confronts us is different from us, is the "Other." But just because it is "Other," it has the power to reveal to us what we are. We learn what our values are or ought to be by learning how other cultures have lived their values.

An example, however, may prove clearer than any theoretical statement, so allow me to pick a contemporary situation which may have certain parallels in ancient Israel and which is certainly the most burning issue today: the involvement of the United States in Vietnam. Specifically, I want to point to the attitudes toward the war. For the first time in our history, as far as I know, our involvement in a war is criticized from all sides. Communist nations naturally excoriate our policies; but to these we must add many of our friends and allies. Nor are Americans united behind the Administration. There are those who feel escalation is desirable, but many others think we are immorally involved in what was, originally, at least, and perhaps still is, a people's struggle for its own independence.

Particularly interesting is the way in which the Administration rejects these various criticisms. The opposition of the communists is naturally due to their evil intent and hypocrisy. Our friends, it is suggested, are showing a lack of faith in our good intentions. The standard word applied to internal criticism is "misguided," but at times the hint is made that this opposition shows a lack of patriotism. Through less official voices the judgments are even more severe. The "peaceniks" are weak, pink, supporters of our enemies, even traitors.

Thus the criticism of the Administration's policy is rejected in moral terms. The basic defect in those opposing it is said to be not a lack of information, though this is often also asserted, but a lack of moral stamina or a failure to adhere to the high ethical goals of freedom and democracy so courageously being fought for by our government and its soldiers. The United States is the shining knight who fights for truth and beauty in a troubled world.

This self-image is certainly not an adhoc creation of President Johnson; it rests rather upon a notion deeply ingrained in our tradition. We think of ourselves as the nation under God. The first settlers were seeking a religious haven and our founders asserted the "religious" truth that America was to be a place where one could find liberty and justice for all. Citizens of the first successful modern democracy could hardly avoid a sense of destiny, as if the country were directly under God's guidance to a degree not visible in those older nations of Europe and Asia. What the United States had achieved could thus be seen as God's will for the world. How easy it has been to slip from that faith to the dangerous assumption that whatever we now choose to do is also right and sanctioned by God, as long as we do it for "freedom and democracy."

In reality we are - and have been - a secular nation, but our politicians are careful to remind us in any crisis that we are the agents of God's ways with his world. Surely one of the greatest distortions of the biblical faith is this false sense of religious destiny which so deeply and tragically pervades so much of American political culture, even where God is not named or believed in. Bob Dylan has bitterly but honestly portrayed this in one of his songs, showing how the most inhuman acts can be justified under the rubric, "God's on our side."

THIS then is our crisis, or at least one aspect of it. What does the study of the Old Testament have to say to it? Potentially perhaps a great deal. We instinctively think of the Bible as a book of religion. In large part, however, it is rather a searing critique of religion, of religion, that is, as it was practiced by the establishment. This establishment was guided by the king, when there was one, and the priests and prophets of the court. According to the judgments of many writers of the Bible, this establishment was interested primarilly in self-aggrandizement and security, while religion was falsely and idolatrously used to further the ambitions of leader and people. This false use of religion raised the fury of these biblical writers and led to what seemed like wholesale indictments of Israel's religion. These same critics believed also that God had created and chosen Israel, but they asserted that her first responsibility was to be obedient and faithful to God, rather than to royal or self-seeking ambitions.

This meant that actions of the chosen nation were judged not by the canons of national expediency or political morality, but by those of God's holy righteousness. The author of Deuteronomy has Moses say to the Israelites:

Do not say in your heart after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you, 'It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land'; know therefore, that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness; for you are a stubborn people. Remember and do not forget how you provoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness; from the day you came out of the Land of Egypt, until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the Lord (Deut. 9:6f, RSV)

The prophet Amos uses the election of Israel precisely to show why God must judge it. "You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities" (Amos 3:2, RSV). The chosenness of Israel is never an excuse for license; it is rather the grounds upon which God will destroy the nation if it has failed to live up to His righteousness. The intent of the covenant was to ensure Israel's radical obedience to God. Instead king and people have used the covenant to justify the status quo. God has been subordinated to man.

Amos so despaired of Israel that he finally believed God would utterly destroy his covenant people for their faithlessness. God's judgment is that "the end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass by them" (Amos 3:2, RSV). Of the king Amos sees no better fate: "Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel must go into exile away from his land" (Amos 7:11, RSV). Were the judgments of this concerned citizen taken into account? No, they were dismissed as treason against the king, and Amos was forbidden to preach at the royal sanctuary.

A few years later Isaiah proclaimed God's judgment upon the political acts of the kings of Judah. During these difficult times when the Assyrian empire ranged at will over the small kingdoms of the Near East, the rulers of Judah participated in the usual political and military ventures of coalition and sporadic rebellion against the overlord. Egypt, although at this time no longer a mighty power, still seemed the best sapport for uprisings against Assyria, and it is no surprise to see Judah entering into discussions with the rulers of the Nile. For Isaiah, however, these actions were signs that Judah had forsaken its dependence upon God and turned to depend upon other nations for support—nations which Isaiah knows are but broken reeds.

'Woe to the rebellious, children,' says the Lord, 'who carry out a plan, but not mine; and who make a league, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin; who set out to go down to Egypt, without asking for my counsel, to take refuge in the protection of Pharaoh ... Everyone comes to shame through a people that cannot profit them, that brings neither help nor profit, but shame and disgrace. (Isa. 30: If, 5, RST) .

God desires true faith in his providence alone, but Judah has tried to secure its own existence without looking to God. Here again religion is used by the kings to support the establishment; from Isaiah's standpoint this is idolatry.

For they are a rebellious people, lying sons, sons who will not hear the instruction of the Lord; who say to the seers, 'See not'; and to the prophets, 'Prophesy not to us what is right; speak to us smooth things,prophesy illusions, leave the way, turn aside from the path, let us hear no more of the Holy One of Israel.' (Isa. 30:9-11, RSV)

Although Isaiah seems to have had some access to the ears of the kings, there is little evidence they listened to him rather than to their military counselors. King Ahaz turned to Assyria for help against Israel and Syria, contrary to the prophet's oracle; and even the more attentive Hezekiah seems not to have listened hard enough to avoid the nearly total disaster which Assyria wreaked upon Judah in 701. What is important to realize is that Isaiah did not fear to attack, even in time of warfare, the policies of the nation and its use of religious support. It takes little imagination to visualize this prophet also branded as a traitor (cf. Isa. 8:12f).

The clearest case is, however, Jeremiah. In a later crisis, this time with Babylonia, when Judah was in its death rattle as an independent nation, he thunders his denunciation of people and ruler, scathingly indicts those who are fighting the Babylonians and who once again are attempting to find help in Egypt. His counsel is that of surrender and the quiet acceptance of exile. Only here lies hope for the true existence of the people. "Thus says the Lord, this city shall surely be given into the hand of the army of the king of Babylon and be taken" (Jer. 38:3, RSV). What clearer case of treason than this? Small wonder that he is considered such. "For I hear many whispering. Terror is on every side! 'Denounce him! Let us denounce him! say all my familiar friends, watching for my fall.' 'Perhaps he will be deceived, then we can overcome him, and take our revenge on him'" (Jer. 20:10, RSV). He is arrested and charged with words that sound frighteningly modern. "Let this man be put to death, for he is weakening the hands of the soldiers who are left in this city, and the hands of all the people, by speaking such words to them. For this man is not seeking the welfare of this people, but their harm" (Jer. 38:4). When one opposes the government's policies in wartime, he is givmg encouragement to the enemy. Jeremiah, in fact, barely escaped death.

Now these prophets were not primarily social scientists or military analysts. Their basic judgments stemmed rather from their theological views, with which we are not here concerned. But the striking thing is that, by and large, the prophets were correct in their political judgments. Egypt was a broken reed; Assyria and Babylonia were so mighty that any small coalition had no realistic chance of success. The idea that the city of Jerusalem could have withstood a siege by the Babylonian forces seems for us today slightly ridiculous. In fact it is almost too easy to see that the only hope for Israel and Judah did lie in accepting the sovereignty of the empires and giving up the political and military hopes which dominated the kings. From our vantage point the naivete and false optimism of the rulers is truly incredible, and the prophetic interpretation of events rational and sound, even though their presuppositions were theological and not rational.

The question then is: Why is it that what seems so obvious to us and to the prophets was not obvious to the rulers? The answer must be that they were blinded from any realistic appraisal by a self-seeking which so greedily desired a goal that it refused to look at any obstacles in the way of obtaining the goal, blinded surely too by a false sense of religious security. Had not God chosen the nation? Did it not have a religious destiny? Did this not mean that the decisions of the nation had divine sanctions? Should not the official cult always be on the side of the king? The prophets saw what the people and perhaps the rulers did not: that religion was used on the one hand to give security and optimism and on the other to justify the present policy, whatever it might be.

Today we can say quite glibly that the prophets were right and the kings wrong, indeed stupid, although this says little about whom we would have voted for had we lived in those times. It is more profitable, however, for us to ask other questions. Why were the prophets able to see more realistically than the kings and common people? Why were not the prophets at least listened to as concerned citizens who, right or wrong, spoke out of a sense of obedience to the nation's God and a love for the people and their true welfare? Why were they branded as disloyal and traitors? Whatever particular answers we might offer, I think everyone will agree that here is an object lesson in the distortion of reality which self-seeking and false security can so easily create.

More profitable still is to ask whether there is a parallel between these situations in ancient Israel and our current debate about Vietnam? In both cases the government follows a political and military policy that is questioned from within about its practical results and ideological assumptions. In both cases the rulers and their critics theoretically share the same basic principles. In both cases the criticism is rejected and suspicioned as disloyal. Will people a thousand years hence judge our dilemma as easily as we judge the dilemma of Israel?

President Dickey, while attending the Pentagonal Conference at Bowdoin College,views a portrait of the Rev. Samson Occom, who aided Eleazar Wheelock in thefounding of Dartmouth. At the left, Bowdoin Museum director Marvin S. Sadik.

THE AUTHOR: Robin J. Scroggs, Associate Professor of Religion, has made the New Testament his special field of study, but the article he has written for this issue is based on the opening lecture of the Old Testament course he taught in the fall term. Professor Scroggs came to Dartmouth as instructor in 1959, was elevated to assistant professor in 1962, and became associate professor last year. A graduate of the University of North Carolina (1951), he took his B.D. degree at Duke and his doctorate at Princeton. He was awarded a Dartmouth Faculty Fellowship for 196465 and spent the year in Germany studying the theology of Paul.