Mishnaic Musings 9 by slaveofone
Man is bound to bless [God] for the evil even as he blesses [God] for the good, for it is written, And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might (Deut 6:5). With all thy heart—with both thine impulses, thy good impulse and thine evil impulse; and with all thy soul—even if he take away thy soul; and with all thy might—with all thy wealth.
m. Berakoth 9:5
The first part reminds me of Job’s response to his wife:
Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?
Job 2:10b, NRSV
This is a question that demands an answer. And here is mine. If God is a good and just God according to any definition of good and just that we could comprehend and count on, then yes. If, however, God is capricious, if his goodness is beyond our comprehension or his justice cannot be counted on or measured by any human definition, then no. In drawing this conclusion, I stand in direct conflict with the message of the scroll of Job, which outlines the second situation and replies to the question in the affirmative. For more on this, see Rejecting Job Part 1 and Part 2.
The second part of the quote represents a classic interpretation that would surface again and again in Jewish understanding for many centuries to come. It was made particularly famous by the school of Rabbi Akiva, whose unique understandings would eventually come to dominate Jewish perspective. Akiva stressed suffering and evils against God’s people as something that was part of the plan of God. He actually rejoiced in receiving suffering and evil from the world. When asked why, he turned to this verse and this interpretation. The word translated soul
is more accurately translated life.
Akiva believed that loving the Lord your God with all your life had its ultimate fulfillment in a willingness to give one’s entire life up to destruction because of obedience to God. For Akiva, this present world was of little importance—he set his heart, eyes, and mind on the world to come—and so he was more than willing to have his soul
taken from this world so that he could fulfill this great commandment.
Anabaptists stand near to this tradition in their radical love ethic. Our understanding of Christianity is that of Nachfolge Christi–following after Christ
with one’s entire life, even to the point of death. And, indeed, because Anabaptists knew that the way of Christ was in drastic opposition to the way of the world, they knew their following of Christ would cause them to come into sharp conflict with the world, thus resulting in their suffering, persecution, and even death. Anabaptists, however, embraced this suffering, persecution, and death because it proved that they were following Christ—for Christ himself suffered, was persecuted, and received death at the hands of the world. This all stemmed from the radical Anabaptist belief that true Christianity was not merely an inward acceptance or experience of grace and faith as Luther believed it, but also an outward expression of a fully committed life in all its aspects to the way of Christ. Anabaptists looked for and demanded the fruits of the Spirit in outward living to such an extent and with such consistency that Lutherans, Catholics, and Calvinists began hunting down and persecuting non-Anabaptists as of they were Anabaptists simply because such believers’ outward lives were irreproachable!
I am being maligned, by both preachers and others, with the charge of being Anabaptist, even as all others who lead a true, pious Christian life are now almost everywhere given this name.
Caspar Schwenckfeld, Epistolar (1564), 1, 203, English translation by Harold Bender
There are those who in reality are not Anabaptists but have a pronounced averseness to the sensuality and frivolity of the world and therefore reprove sin and vice and are consequently called or misnamed Anabaptists by petulant persons.
Heinrich Bullinger (Reformation leader and fierce enemy of Anabaptism), Der Wiedertöufferen Ursprung (1561), fol. 170r., English translation by Harold Bender
But what made the love ethic of Anabaptism so radical was not just that it sought to extend love to God by obeying him with one’s entire life, both inward and outward, but also because it sought to extend love to all humanity–even one’s enemies. In a culture, world, and time in which the proper Christian response to one’s enemies was to either coerce them into Christian faith through force and violence or to slaughter them, Anabaptists were pledged to fulfill both great commandments (to love the Lord their God and to love their neighbor as themselves). In so doing, whether by living or dying, they were committed to loving the Lord their God with all their life.
The Mishnaic Musings are a periodic series of posts where I reflect on one thing or another in the compendium of the Oral Law (the Mishnah) as I read through it for the first time. Quoted portions are taken from Hebert Danby’s eminent single-volume edition, The Mishnah, published by Oxford University Press.