Radical Judaism_ Rethinking God and Tradition - Arthur Green [55]
The value of this tradition of the ten utterances is in its insistence that divinity lies hidden within the perceptible world. The mystic understands that the true relationship of God and world is not that of “Creator” and “creature,” separate from one another, but rather one of deep structure and surface appearance. God is the underlying reality of being; peel off the surface or lift the veil of our divided and multifaceted reality and you will begin to peer through to the singularity of truth, the One that lies within and behind the many. So too may you peer through the multifaceted text of Torah to discover first the ten, then the silent One. The use of “utterances” regarding Creation is of course premature, if they are to be thought of in terms of human speech. But perhaps in order to understand the claim we have to leave prose behind, hearing in the rabbinic formula nothing more or less than the Psalmist's magnificent “The Heavens declare the glory of God, the skies tell of His handiwork” (Ps. 19:1). The “David” of that Psalm, whatever his real name, was already taking “speech” other than literally.
It is possible, in other words, to know God prior to and without religion. Awareness of the One who “peers through the lattices,” waiting to be discovered within the variety and beauty of the evolving natural order, does not depend upon the existence of religious language. If evolution is indeed the greatest sacred story, perhaps the most vital knowledge of God exists prior to all religious forms. It is that which is to be discovered in simple encounter with nature and its wonders. The celebration of Creation, so central to the Psalmists, calls out for revival in our day. We need not fear it.38 On the contrary, the urgent need to transform human behavior in relation to the environment will be best supported by a religious life that returns to the Psalmists’ consciousness of our human place within (not above) the great symphony of Creation.39
But the ten utterances, which we might call the voiceprint of God within the natural world, are also linked to another ten, the ten commandments of Sinai. (In Hebrew they are called not “commandments” — mitzvot—but dibberot [“words”], essentially another way of saying “utterances.”)40 This is to say that God speaks twice, once in creating the world and again in giving the Torah. Creation itself, in the form of ongoing evolution, is the great self-revelation of God.41 There “speech” must be taken metaphorically; the world is an expression of the hidden One, of the divine Self. But Torah as text takes that reality and recasts it in a language to which we can respond. “Torah speaks in human language,” as the ancients taught.
What is changed by Sinai, using “Sinai” as metaphorically as you choose? On one hand, nothing is changed. The earth is as filled with divine radiance as it was before. The face of God is to be seen, as always, in the face of every creature. The dibberot add nothing to the ma'amarot that were there from the beginning. Yet everything has been changed, because awareness has been given to us as a gift. “You have been shown to know,” says the Deuteronomist in recalling the event at Sinai, “that Y-H-W-H is God; there is naught besides Him” (Deut. 4:35). You have now been shown this in your own human language. We can certainly still hide our eyes, still turn away from the light. But it is considerably harder to do so, requiring an act of willful denial. Now it is right there before us, “in black and white,” as it were, in a language we cannot help but read.
Another change: the ten utterances of Creation have now been restated, but this time in imperative form. Life in the world after Eden might seem like a life without responsibility. Our