During this turbulent century, probably the most violent in human history, many people have wondered whether “the created order of society, in one way or another, corresponds to an underlying order of the universe.”1 A recent leader in the search for order was the Catholic political philosopher Eric Voegelin, who initiated a study, in five volumes, on the subject of order in history. The first and fundamental volume is titled Israel and Revelation.2
Voegelin’s central thesis is that Israel’s exodus from Egypt was not just a political event in world history but an exodus from a symbolic world that had enabled ancient empires like Egypt to see themselves as belonging to a cosmic order. Gods and humans, cosmos and history, the heavenly order and the earthly empire, were bound up in one compact whole. Israel, however, broke from this “cosmological symbolism” and achieved a sense of “transcendence,” that is, an awareness of the Rule of God, which cannot be identified with the political order of empire.
This revelation of the transcendent God and God’s created order, expressed in the symbolism of biblical language, came to inspired persons, beginning especially with Moses, whose souls were so attuned to God and God’s kingdom that they represented a new type of human being in human history, persons existing in relation to the holy God whose will is the basis of social order. Besides Moses, Voegelin finds this new kind of historical person represented in Jeremiah, in the figure of the Suffering Servant, and in Jesus Christ, as well as in some persons outside the biblical tradition (such as Plato).
Strangely, Voegelin’s monumental work has been largely ignored in the field of biblical studies, which justifies my calling attention to it 40 or so years after its publication. Voegelin’s search for order has made a major impact on other fields, including political science, history, philosophy, literature and theology. A Voegelin symposium was held in San Francisco in connection with the annual meeting of the American Political Society (August 1996). Just this past summer, the Second International Conference on Voegelin’s work was held at the University of Manchester, in England.
To me it is highly significant that Voegelin lays the foundation for his comprehensive study by turning to the Old Testament, or more specifically to the phenomenon of Israel in the context of the religions of the ancient Near East. He is not concerned with Israel as a political state, or with the religion of Israel, but with Israel as the bearer of “revelation,” which provides a key to understanding the search for order in human history.
Voegelin maintains that God’s revelation came at a great cost, which he describes as a “mortgage” of Israel’s mundane existence upon the transcendent Rule of God, as evidenced in attachment to an ethnic group (the people Israel) and a promised land (the land of Israel). As long as this mortgage was in effect, God’s revelation could not achieve the universal implications anticipated in the call of Abraham (Genesis 12:1–3). In Christianity, however, this mortgage is liquidated, so to speak, and the promises to Israel are extended to all peoples (not just the chosen people) upon the whole “earth” (not just the “promised land”). The revelation of God’s kingdom, adumbrated in the revelation to Israel, reached its “maximum clarity” in the person of Jesus.
Even readers who do not share Voegelin’s ontology (study of human being in relation to God’s Being) will be allured by the author’s vivid, intriguing exposition of the Old Testament. Of all the things that could be said in response, I limit my attention to two observations: one positive and the other critical.3
Voegelin’s emphasis on symbolism is a breath of fresh air after the literalism of conservatives (especially “fundamentalists”) and the “historicism” of liberal interpreters (the “historical critics”). Even though one may have trouble with Voegelin’s philosophy of being, the pressing question is whether the quest for order in history leads toward a transcendent dimension that is given expression in biblical language. In his view, when one looks back over the biblical tradition, it is possible to trace “the trail of symbols” that show defection from and return to the transcendent ground of human history. In the future, Old Testament theology must take more seriously the symbolic dimensions of sacred scripture.4
The thorny problem is the proposed understanding of the relationship between the Jewish and Christian communities of faith. It is ironic that Voegelin, for whom revelation to Israel is the foundation and starting point, winds up with a negative assessment of the future of Israel in God’s purpose. As a Christian, he finds much that is true and good in the Old Testament, but those benefits are only partially valid because God’s revelation is attached to the concrete realities of this world: ethnic identity, political organization, life on the land. 046Hence, just as Israel made an exodus from “cosmological civilization” under Moses, it must—owing to its inescapable involvement in the mundane sphere—engage in an “exodus from itself.” It is the destiny of Israel to die and to be superseded by the universal revelation of God in Christ, in whom the promises to Abraham are extended to all peoples.5
In my judgment, there is a better way to view the Jewish-Christian relationship. The particularity of God’s revelation to the ethnic group Israel and the universal outreach and inclusivity of the Christian community need not be in conflict. The vocations of the two communities, one to be the people of the Torah and the other to be an inclusive community that knows no boundaries (see Galatians 3:28), are complimentary in God’s purpose. That view was set forth in Franz Rosenzweig’s classic The Star of Redemption.6 At the center of the Jewish community is the fire of God’s holy presence (see Exodus 3:2: “the bush burned, yet it was not consumed”); in the other community the rays of the fire reach outward into the whole world (see John 1:9: “the true light that enlightens everyone”). That view, I believe, is consonant with Paul’s agonized discussion of the relation between the two communities of faith in Romans 9–11. The statement that “all 047Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:26) does not mean that the Jewish community of faith will be dissolved and that all Jews will be Christianized. Rather, Paul speaks of the mystery (Romans 11:25) of God’s election that includes both Jews and gentiles in “the Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16).
Contemplating that amazing mystery, Paul breaks out into a concluding exclamation about the unfathomable wisdom of God:
O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are God’s judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
Romans 11:33 New Revised Standard Version
During this turbulent century, probably the most violent in human history, many people have wondered whether “the created order of society, in one way or another, corresponds to an underlying order of the universe.”1 A recent leader in the search for order was the Catholic political philosopher Eric Voegelin, who initiated a study, in five volumes, on the subject of order in history. The first and fundamental volume is titled Israel and Revelation.2 Voegelin’s central thesis is that Israel’s exodus from Egypt was not just a political event in world history but an exodus from a symbolic world that […]
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Peter L. Berger, A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural (New York: Doubleday, expanded ed., 1990), pp. 60–61.
2.
Eric Voegelin, Order and History, vol. 1, Israel and Revelation (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1956). See my review essay, “Politics and the Transcendent: Voegelin’s Philosophical and Theological Exposition of the Testament in the Context of the Ancient Near East,” The Political Science Reviewer 1 (fall 1971), pp. 1–29; revised and updated version in Stephen A. McKnight, Eric Voegelin’s Search for Order (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1978), pp. 62–100.
3.
See my essay presented at the second international Voegelin conference (1997) held at the University of Manchester, to be published by the Voegelin Society, “Revisiting Voegelin’s Israel and Revelation After Twenty-five Years.”
4.
See the editorial by Patrick Miller, in Theology Today (March 1977) and, Deo volente, my forthcoming Contours of Old Testament Theology (Fortress Press).
5.
Voegelin, Israel and Revelation, pp. 144, 315, 506 These and other relevant pages were discussed in a penetrating paper at the 1996 San Francisco Voegelin symposium by Aaron L. Mackler, “Voegelin’s Israel and Revelation After Forty Years: A Jewish Perspective.”
6.
See the English translation of the second German edition of Der Stern der Erlösung (1930): The Star of Redemption, trans. William W. Hallo (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970).
