The Presence of the Holy

Abstract

Chapter 2 speaks of how the idea of God works like a value concept, purging notions of worth that fail to cohere. Love, truth, and beauty fuse in the idea of God. Violence, cruelty, and deceit are purged. Pursuing the logic of perfection, we look to the idea of a perfect being, argued as a matter of theory by Plato. The Torah goes a step further, suppressing the myths of fractious and priapic gods. Justice is indissoluble from God’s identity. Grace and love become guides for our moral aspirations. Pursuing the idea of God’s goodness, we consider the binding of Isaac. Where sacrifice might have seemed the paradigm of piety, or arbitrary commands might seek to set God beyond mere goodness, I see a turning point: Abraham must choose between presuming that the highest devotion demands sacrifice of any lesser love, and the recognition that God’s absoluteness rests in goodness.