Abraham: 'The First Monotheist' & Other Absurdities

Here, we are exploring the tragicomic fate that befell Abraham as a legend and his Monotheism--and accordingly what may befall those who consider themselves his grandchildren, who are trying to come to grips with his simple yet so profound of a perception.

In our times, Abrahamic monotheism does not fair well, neither in Europe and America nor in its home of origin, or elsewhere in the world.

Billions of humans are born in the Abrahamic traditions yet sel­dom initiated in its proper perceptual training. “Monotheist” is a mere logo for the average Muslim, Jew and Christian to be proud of or disgusted with, as the case may be.

Let's give a suggestion and refer to an absurdity that may help the reader to understand the issue here.

The suggestion is a quiz simple enough for anyone who wishes to do--yet complicated enough to crack brains on end, so watch out ~ alright:

Let he or she turn to oneself or to another and ask:

Why God? - Why not No-God?

Why One? - Why not Many?

Now, what is the percentage of "educated answers" to the above one will get out of all the millions upon millions of Abraham's children living on this planet today?

We say "educated answers" not "right answers" to avoid dogmatic issues for now. In other words, we are concerned with the level of "understanding" here, not "belief" or "faith" which by definition pertains to other sides of the human consciousness.

As for the absurdity, we select two impressions about the man Abraham:

First, in almost all the literature about Abraham, one is told that the worship of the One True God started with him, that he was the "first monotheist."

Now how could that be?

What about Melchizedek?

How about Noah and his Sons?

Enoch?

Adam?

Were they not Monotheists?

Just whence this *POP!* and there was Abraham the first Monotheist?

Second, we go to the “Patriarch of the Desert” nomadic image that a lot of people hold in their minds, yet at the same time we are told that he was from “Ur of the Chladeans,” which de­notes city dwelling, and that latter on he settled in Canaan which is not a desert.

So whence this “Patriarch of the Desert” image? . . .

Furthermore,

Was Abraham from “Ur of the Chaldeans” or “Ur of the Sumerians”?

According to historians, he lived before the times of the Assyrians, who are chronologically centuries before the Chaldeans.

So whence this “Ur of the Chaldeans” thing? . . .

Abrahamic Politicus

The political bottom-line of Abrahamic Monotheism is this:

That without the proper 'understanding' of the Mystery of the One God and how one relates to that God, there is no sense in following the Law or the Way or the Shariah and trying to build anything upon them, for it will be building on sand.

That's the whole gist of the Abrahamic quest and we all are deeply enmeshed in it for evident historical reasons.

Any monotheist, who is aware of the political knowledge and wisdom contained in the traditions of old, knows that the Ancient City was centered around the Temple--as was the case in Ur of the Sumerians, Ur-Salem (Jerusalem) of of the ancient Israelites, and other cities elsewhere in the ancient near east and rest of the world.

And there, in that temple, is to be found the knowledge of how to relate to the Sacred in all aspects of life: the political, the social, etc.

Also, that monotheist should be able to discern the fact, through ample evidence of recorded history, that when the City was centered around the Palace (politics) or the Market (economics) or the Camp (war), it fell into disintegration. For those are not the right centers of balance, neither for the group nor for the individual.

Moreover, to maintain being Faithful as a monotheist is to be disciplined in per­ceiving the One God-One Adam principle of unity, unity of Source and unity of Mankind; is to be trained in conceiving what is to be done accordingly, so one can keep in line within the monotheistic perception; is to be educated as to why we are doing it and what is the wisdom behind it all.

So, how can one expect any citizen in any city that claims to be for the Sacred, who is a member of the human race hence endowed with the faculty of Reason, to accept the hypothesis of One God Creator and Ruler of everything that he/she can see, touch, smell, taste and what have you, without questioning how could that all be of One God only, why not many, and what is God any­way, etc.?  These are all legitimate questions.

Now, who is going to answer that cit­izen who is being "asked" to follow a sacred Law, tread a sacred Way and join a sacred Community in the name of the One God of Abraham?

What kind of an absurd God would this God of Abraham be, if He did not expect His human creatures to pose those questions by their created intel­lects?

In our understanding, no one can answer those questions satisfactorily except the ones who are well trained: the Elders, i.e. the people of knowledge and wisdom. And one should find them where they should be: in the Temple, which is designated to that purpose, be it a mosque or church, synagogue or a designated school for that matter.

However, his­tory tells us that the Temple had to submit time and again to inner and outer games of power-politics which ended up throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Thus, the City has been and still is a house divided unto itself.

Still:

No civilization worthy of its name survived the day without the Principle of Unity: One God and One Adam = Unity of Source and of Mankind, and the proper training the citizen should be provided with according to them.

If humans start demarcating boundaries among themselves based on belonging to this or that "God", this or that "Adam", then civil war is not faraway from their sight.

Belonging to higher and lesser "Gods", higher and lesser "Adams", destroyed Polity once too many in human history.

So a modern day "Child of Abraham" should remember that:

No Law, No Way, No Shariah can be implemented without One God-One Adam first. The contours of the tragicomic history of the Abrahamic legacy were shaped through out the centuries according to that simple yet so profoundly elusive principle.

Beside, these Law, Way and Shariah are things of divine origins by definition. And divine things require divine guides by their own logic.

Do we have divine guides around? ...

No we do not. We have elders, yes. But no divine guides.

Hence, and for a finale, on his and her part, a child of Abraham should approach the world as a Monotheist first, now more than ever. Being a Muslim, Jew, Christian should come second to that.

He and she should understand that their journey in life is part and parcel of the quest imprinted on the Patriarch, whether they are aware of it or not, whose journey was that of a Solo Monotheist.

His children are blessings to no one if they do not perceive and conceive the way Abraham perceived and conceived of God, the Universe, and Man. And walked his talk accordingly.

Peace.

Abraham and the West

We start with these questions for reflection:

Does the European mind rotate around the Absolute?

Did it ever?

Is it centered around it? Was it ever?

Is everything relative to that Absolute?

Everything such as church, family, country, nationality, color of skin, et cetera.

Was it ever the case when everything was relative to the Absolute?

Now, in another way, and it cannot be overemphasized for we are trying to do justice for both Abraham's Monotheism and Western culture, we say this :

The Truth that shalt set everybody free which God entrusted to Abraham before the Law of Moses, the Way of Jesus and Muhammad’s Shariah, that Truth, has it ever been introduced to the West as Monotheism per se?

That is:

God as such and Man as such;

God as the Absolute, the Infinite;

The Beyond Being, Becoming, Existing, Names, Numbers, Images, Space, Thought, Time, Gender, et cetera, yet the Source of them all;

The Mono Theos, the One God Is, Is Not , and beyond any Is-ing all-together.

Known, Un-Known and ultimately Un-Knowable.

Creator of Good and Evil, Heaven and Earth and what lies between and beyond them.

And Man, as Adam, as Anthropos, as God’s Agent of Transcendence in God’s Scheme of Creation.

God’s Steward in God’s Kingdom and the Vice-Regent of God’s Regency over All.

Man (he and she) is a fellow sister and brother human-being no matter how different they may seem to be from “us”.

Has the above been understood and practiced by the West?

Was it even introduced to it?

Unfortunately the answer is a resounding: No.

For judging by history, Europeans had never been adequately trained in this doctrine of Monotheism on a mass scale, neither in its exoteric practical aspect that is the right doctrinal and ceremonial formulation of how to walk the talk within One God-One Adam frame of ref­erence in the world, nor initiated in its esoteric specula­tive one that contemplates the mysteries of God’s Wisdom.

The Jews did not bother to make it their task to preach Love God & Neighbor to the gentiles, for they had already fallen into the Henotheistic trap of monopolizing god and nationalizing prophecy. That is, the One God-One Adam principle of the Greatest Commandments became: My God Yahweh and My Adam the Jew.

And the Council of Nicaea left no hope for Abrahamic Monotheism to reach the European mind unadulterated by equating Jesus with God.

What the Western­ers ended up with in their understanding of Abraham’s vision was a “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not” Law of Moses, which they did not need to follow, for supposedly Pauline teachings had already told them they had a Way to salvation in the “Incarnated God” : Jesus Christ.

Now add to that the troubles that came ashore between the two, Christians and Jews, plus the confrontation between Eu­rope and emergent Islam, then one should be able to construct the background of the past and present absence of the Abrahamic monotheistic perception in the West.

We say Abraham and the West never got a chance for a fair hand­shake. And we stress the fact that the West was left untrained in how to im­plement Abraham’s vision into practice by starting from One God and One Adam.

Hence, returning to our agitators of "Islam and the West," we say they fell short on understanding Islam's legacy as an Abrahamic continuation to what came before it.

In the final analysis, their oversight reflects the whole Western frame of mind about the subject of Monotheism per se, of Abraham's and beyond.

It is in the confusion about Abraham's Monotheism lies the whole issue of why the confusion about Islam in the West.

For it is in Abra­ham's perception that we should start seeking the answer as to what he and his grand­ kids were all about within the context of the Ancient Near East, the area between the Nile and the Euphrates.

And so, we close this post as we started it, with reflections:

Did the West ever get to touch Abraham’s Monotheism without its affiliation with the Judaic Law and the Christian Way?

Was Monotheism-as-such, as a doctrine unto itself, ever introduced to the West?

Is it not the time for the West to ask itself anew:

What is Monotheism?

* * *

There is a third form of human faith [beside polytheism and henotheism] with which we are acquainted in the West, more as hope than as datum, more perhaps as a possibility than as an actuality, yet also as an actuality that has modified at certain emergent periods our natural social faith and our polytheism.

In all the times and areas of our Western history this faith has struggled with its rivals, without becoming triumphant save in passing moments and in the clarified intervals of personal existence.

We look back longingly at times to some past age when, we think, confidence in the One God was the pervasive faith of men; for instance, to early Christianity, or to the church society of the Middle Ages, or to early Protestantism, or to Puritan New England, or to the pious nineteenth century.

But when we study these periods we invariably find in them a mixture of the faith in the One God with social faith [henotheism] and polytheism; and when we examine our longings we often discover that what we yearn for is the security of the closed society with its social confidence and social loyalty.

It is very questionable, despite many protestations to the contrary, despite the prevalence of self-pity among some modern men because "God is dead," that anyone has ever yearned for radical faith in the One God.

H. Richard Niebuhr, Radical Monotheism and Western Culture, p. 31