Ethical Monotheism
By Dennis Prager
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Ethical monotheism means two things:
1. There is one God from whom emanates one morality for all humanity.
2. God's primary demand of people is that they act decently toward one another.
If all people subscribed to this simple belief—which does not entail leaving, or
joining, any specific religion, or giving up any national identity—the world
would experience far less evil.
Let me explain the components of ethical monotheism.
God
Monotheism means belief in "one God." Before discussing the importance of the
"mono," or God's oneness, we need a basic understanding of the nature of God.
The God of ethical monotheism is the God first revealed to the world in the
Hebrew Bible. Through it, we can establish God's four primary characteristics:
1. God is supranatural.
2. God is personal.
3. God is good.
4. God is holy.
Dropping any one of the first three attributes invalidates ethical monotheism
(it is possible, though difficult, to ignore holiness and still lead an ethical
life).
God is supranatural, meaning "above nature" (I do not use the more common term
"supernatural" because it is less precise and conjures up irrationality). This
is why Genesis, the Bible's first book, opens with, "In the beginning, God
created the heavens and the earth" in a world in which nearly all people
worshipped nature, the Bible's intention was to emphasize that nature is utterly
subservient to God who made it. Obviously, therefore, God is not a part of
nature, and nature is not God.
It is not possible for God to be part of nature for two reasons.
First, nature is finite and God is infinite. If God were within nature, He would
be limited, and God, who is not physical, has no limits (I use the pronoun "He""
not because I believe God is a male, but because the neuter pronoun "It"
depersonalizes God. You cannot talk to, relate to, love, or obey an "It.").
Second, and more important, nature is amoral. Nature knows nothing of good and
evil. In nature there is one rule—survival of the fittest. There is no right,
only might. If a creature is weak, kill it. Only human beings could have moral
rules such as, "If it is weak, protect it." Only human beings can feel
themselves ethically obligated to strangers.
Thus, nature worship is very dangerous. When people idolize nature, they can
easily arrive at the ethics of Nazism. It was the law of nature that Adolf
Hitler sought to emulate—the strong shall conquer the weak. Nazism and other
ideologies that are hostile to ethical monotheism and venerate nature are very
tempting. Nature allows you to act naturally, i.e., do only what you want you to
do, without moral restraints; God does not. Nature lets you act naturally - and
it is as natural to kill, rape, and enslave as it is to love.
In light of all this, it is alarming that many people today virtually venerate
nature. It can only have terrible moral ramifications.
One of the vital elements in the ethical monotheist revolution was its
repudiation of nature as god. The evolution of civilization and morality have
depended in large part on desanctifying nature.
Civilizations that equated gods with nature—a characteristic of all primitive
societies—or that worshipped nature did not evolve.
If nature is divine, and has a will of its own the only way for human beings to
conquer disease or obtain sustenance is to placate it - through witchcraft,
magic, voodoo, and/or human sacrifice.
One of ethical monotheism's greatest battles today is against the increasing
deification of nature, movements that are generally led (as were most radical
ideologies) by well educated, secularized individuals.
Personal
The second essential characteristic is that God is personal.
The God of ethical monotheism is not some depersonalized force: God cares about
His creations. As University of Chicago historian William A. Irwin wrote in a
1947 essay on ethical monotheism: "The world was to be understood in terms of
personality. Its center and essence was not blind force or some sort of cold,
inert reality but a personal God." God is not an Unmoved Mover, not a watchmaker
who abandoned His watch after making it, as the Enlightenment Deists would have
it. God knows each of us. We are, after all, "created in His image." This is not
merely wishful thinking why would God create a being capable of knowing Him, yet
choose not to know that being?
This does not mean that God necessarily answers prayers or even that God
intervenes in all or even any of our lives. It means that He knows us and cares
about us. Caring beings are not created by an uncaring being.
The whole point of ethical monotheism is that God's greatest desire is that we
act toward one another with justice and mercy. An Unmoved Mover who didn't know
His human creatures couldn't care less how they treat one another.
Goodness
A third characteristic of God is goodness. If God weren't moral, ethical
monotheism would be an oxymoron: A God who is not good cannot demand goodness.
Unlike all other gods believed in prior to monotheism, the biblical God rules by
moral standards. Thus, in the Babylonian version of the flood story, the gods,
led by Enlil, sent a flood to destroy mankind, saving only Utnapishtim and his
wife - because Enlil personally liked Utnapishtim. It is an act of caprice, not
morality. In the biblical story, God also sends a flood, saving only Noah and
his wife and family. The stories are almost identical except for one
overwhelming difference: The entire Hebrew story is animated by ethical/moral
concerns. God brings the flood solely because people treat one another, not God,
badly, and God saves Noah solely because he was "the most righteous person in
his generation."
Words cannot convey the magnitude of the change wrought by the Hebrew Bible's
introduction into the world of a God who rules the universe morally.
One ramification is that despite the victories of evil people and the sufferings
of good people, a moral God rules the world, and ultimately the good and the
evil will receive their just deserts. I have never understood how a good secular
individual can avoid debilitating despair. To care about goodness, yet to
witness the unbearable torments of the good and the innocent, and to see many of
the evil go unpunished—all the while believing that this life is all there is,
that we are alone in a universe that hears no child's cry and sees no person's
tears—has to be a recipe for despair. I would be overwhelmed with sadness if I
did not believe that there is a good God who somehow—in this life or an
afterlife—ensures that justice prevails.
Holiness
As primary as ethics are, man cannot live by morality alone. We are also
instructed to lead holy lives: "You shall be holy because I the Lord your God am
holy" (Leviticus 19:2). God is more than the source of morality, He is the
source of holiness.
Ethics enables life; holiness ennobles it. Holiness is the elevation of the
human being from his animal nature to his being created in the image of God. To
cite a simple example, we can eat like an animal—with our fingers, belching,
from the floor, while relieving ourselves or elevate ourselves to eat from a
table, with utensils and napkins, keeping our digestive sounds quiet. It is,
however, very important to note that a person who eats like an animal is doing
something unholy, not immoral. The distinction, lost upon many religious people,
is an important one.
One God and One Morality
The oneness of God is an indispensable component of ethical monotheism. Only if
there is one God is there one morality. Two or more gods mean two or more divine
wills, and therefore two or more moral codes. That is why ethical polytheism is
unlikely. Once God told Abraham that human sacrifice is wrong, it was wrong.
There was no competing god to teach otherwise.
One morality also means one moral code for all humanity. "Thou shall not murder"
means that murder is wrong for everyone, not just for one culture. It means that
suttee, the now rare but once widespread Hindu practice of burning widows with
their husband's body, is wrong. It means the killing of a daughter or sister who
lost her virginity prior to marriage, practiced to this day in parts of the Arab
world, is immoral. It means that clitoridectomies, the cutting off of a girl's
clitoris (and sometimes more), a ritual practiced on almost one hundred million
women living today mostly in Africa, is immoral.
While, in theory, the celebration of multiculturalism is neither offensive nor
original, in actuality multiculturalism is yet another attempt to undermine
ethical monotheism. Its underlying assumption is that there is no one universal
moral code; all cultures are morally equal. As a professor wrote to the New York
Times after that newspaper came out against clitoridectomies, who are we in the
West to condemn anyone else's cultural practice?
One Humanity
One God who created human beings of all races means that all of humanity are
related. Only if there is one Father are all of us brothers and sisters.
Human Life is Sacred
Another critical moral ramification of ethical monotheism is the sanctity of
human life. Only if there is a God in whose image human beings are created is
human life sacred. If human beings do not contain an element of the divine, they
are merely intelligent animals.
For many years, I have been warning that a totally secular world view will erode
the distinction between humans and animals. The popular contemporary expression
"All life is sacred" is an example of what secularism leads to. It means that
all life is equally sacred, that people and chickens are equally valuable. That
is why the head of a leading animal rights group, People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals (PETA), has likened the barbecuing of six billion chickens
a year to the slaughter of six million Jews in the Holocaust; and that is how
PETA could take out a full page ad in the Des Moines Register equating the
slaughter of animals with the murder of people.
Such views don't so much enhance the value of animal life as they reduce the
value of human life.
God's Primary Demand Is Goodness
Of course, the clearest teaching of ethical monotheism is that God demands
ethical behavior. As Ernest van den Haag described it: "[The Jews'] invisible
God not only insisted on being the only and all powerful God . . . He also
developed into a moral God."
But ethical monotheism suggests more than that God demands ethical behavior; it
means that Gods primary demand is ethical behavior. It means that God cares
about how we treat one another more than He cares about anything else.
Thus, ethical monotheism's message remains as. radical today as when it was
first promulgated. The secular world has looked elsewhere for its values, while
even many religious Jews, Christians, and Muslims believe that Gods primary
demand is something other than ethics.
Jews and Ethical Monotheism
Since Judaism gave the world ethical monotheism, one would expect that Jews
would come closest to holding its values. In some important ways, this is true.
Jews do hold that God judges everyone, Jew or Gentile, by his or her behavior.
This is a major reason that Jews do not proselytize (though it is not an
argument against Jews proselytizing; indeed, they ought to): Judaism has never
believed that non Jews have to embrace Judaism to attain salvation or any other
reward in the afterlife.
But within Jewish religious life, the picture changes. The more observant a Jew
is, the more he or she is likely to assume that God considers ritual observances
to be at least as important as God's ethical demands.
This erroneous belief is as old as the Jewish people, and one against which the
prophets passionately railed: "Do I [God] need your many sacrifices?" cried out
Isaiah (Isaiah 1:11). The question is rhetorical. What God does demand is
justice and goodness based on faith in God: "Oh, man," taught the prophet Micah,
"God has told you what is good and what God requires of you only that you act
justly, love goodness and walk humbly with your God" (Micah 6:8, emphasis
added).
In Judaism, the commandments between human beings and God are extremely
significant. But they are not as important as ethical behavior. The prophets,
Judaism's most direct messengers of God, affirmed this view repeatedly, and the
Talmudic rabbis later echoed it. "Love your neighbor as yourself is the greatest
principle in the Torah," said Rabbi Akiva (Palestinian Talmud, Nedarim 9:4).
That is why when the great Rabbi Hillel was asked by a pagan to summarize all of
Judaism "while standing on one leg, he was able to do so: "What is hateful to
you, do not do to others; the rest is commentary now go and study" (Babylonian
Talmud, Shabbat 31a). Hillel could have said, "Keep the 613 commandments of the
Torah; now go and do them," but he didn't. In fact, he went further. After
enunciating his ethical principle, he concluded, "The rest is commentary." In
other words, the rest of Judaism is essentially a commentary on how to lead an
ethical life.
Unfortunately, with no more direct messages from God, and few Hillels, the
notion that the laws between man and God and the laws between people are equally
important gained ever wider acceptance in religious Jewish life.
Perhaps there are three reasons for this:
1. It is much more difficult to be completely ethical than to completely observe
the ritual laws. While one can master the laws between people and God, no one
can fully master human decency.
2. While ethical principles are more or less universal, the laws between people
and God are uniquely Jewish. Therefore, that which most distinguishes observant
Jews from non-observant Jews and from non Jews are Judaism's ritual laws, not
its ethical laws. Thus it was easy for a mind set to develop which held that
what ever is most distinctively Jewish—i.e., the laws between people and God—is
more Jewishly important than whatever is universal.
3. Observance of many laws between people and God is public and obvious. Other
Jews can see how you pray, how diligently you learn Talmud and Torah, and if you
dress in the modest manner dictated by Jewish law. Few people know how you
conduct your business affairs, how you treat your employees, how you talk behind
others' backs, or how you treat your spouse. Therefore, the easiest way to
demonstrate the depth of your religiosity is through observance of the laws
between man and God, especially the ones that are most public.
Yet, while observant Jews may overstress the "monotheism" in "ethical
"monotheism," the fact is that they believe the entire doctrine to be true.
Secular Jews, on the other hand, believe that ethics can be separated from God
and religion. The results have not been positive. The ethical record of Jews and
non Jews involved in causes that abandoned ethical monotheism has included
involvement in moral relativism, Marxism, and the worship of art, education,
law, etc.
The lessons for religious Jews are never to forget the primacy of ethics and not
to abandon the ethical monotheist mission of Judaism. The lesson for secular
Jews is to realize that ethics cannot long survive the death of monotheism.
Christians and Ethical Monotheism
While the challenge to making ethics primary in Judaism is largely one of Jews
rather than of Judaism, the challenge to Christianity is more rooted in the
religion itself. Within Christianity, the doctrine developed that correct faith,
not correct works, is God's primary concern.
Paul articulated this view in the New Testament: If good deeds could lead to
salvation, he reasoned, "Christ would have died in vain" (Galatians 2:21). For
that reason, he continued, "We conclude that a man is put right with God only
through faith, and not by doing what the law commands" (Romans 3:28).
True, Catholicism holds that faith alone is not sufficient, that some works,
too, are necessary for salvation. But between faith in Christ and goodness in
behavior, the Church has, until recently, nearly always taught that faith is
more important. Thus the Church held for nearly two millennia that even the
kindest non Christians were all doomed: "Outside of the Church there is no
salvation." In a major move toward ethical monotheism, the twentieth century
Catholic Church has reinterpreted this statement, and now teaches that while
salvation will come through Jesus, it is not necessary for an individual to
assert belief in Jesus by name in order to be saved; only God judges who is
saved, and Catholics cannot declare who they are.
Historically, the thrust of Church teachings has not been that cruelty or
unethical behavior is the greatest sin. As historian Norman Cohn wrote:
The sins to which the Devil of Christian tradition has tempted human beings are
varied indeed: apostasy, idolatry, heresy, fornication, gluttony, vanity, using
cosmetics, dressing luxuriously, going to the theater, gambling, avarice,
quarreling, spiritual sloth have all, at times, figured in the list.... I have
looked in vain for a single instance . . . of the Devil tempting a human being
to cruelty.1
Some statements attributed to Jesus can lead a Christian to abandon the fight
against evil: "Resist not evil" is the prime example. Others include: "Pray for
those who persecute you," "Love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44), and Jesus' prayer
on the cross beseeching God to forgive his murderers. Christians can interpret
each of these verses in a way that does not detract from a Christian's duty to
fight evil. For example, the verses can be explained as applying only to an
individual—i.e., the ideal individual Christian will not resist evil done to
him, will love those who hurt her, etc., but this shouldn't be taken to mean
that believers won't resist evil done to others. Such interpretations are
certainly welcome. But it is difficult to imagine that the ideal Christian will
lead a life of nonresistance to evil directed to self, and then strongly resist
evil when it is done to others.
These verses of Jesus may explain why as prominent and personally fine a
Christian as the Reverend Billy Graham, the most widely listened to Protestant
in the world, failed to call evil by its name when he visited the Soviet Union
in 1982. Indeed, true to Martin Luther's teachings, Graham called on Soviet
Christians to obey the Soviet authorities, and did not publicly side with perse
cuted Christians. Rather than refer to the Soviet Union as an enemy of
Christianity, the Reverend Graham only referred to "the common enemy" of nuclear
war. At the time of the visit, George Will wrote:
Graham's delicacy [about the Soviet Union] is less interesting than his "common
enemy" formulation.... His language suggests a moral symmetry between his
country and the soviet Union.
The Washington Post reports that when Graham spoke in two churches, both "were
heavily guarded, with police sealing off all roads leading to them. Hundreds of
KGB security agents . . . were in the congregation." Graham told one
congregation that God "gives you the power to be a better worker, a more loyal
citizen because in Romans 13 we are told to obey the authorities." How is that
for a message from America;
Graham is America's most famous Christian. Solzhenitsyn is Russia's The contrast
is instructive.2
Another area of Christian theology that undermines ethical monotheism is the
belief that God saves human beings irrespective of how they act toward one
another, just as long as they have the right faith. Millions of Protestants hold
that believers in Jesus, no matter how many cruel acts they may perform, attain
salvation, while nonbelievers in Jesus, no matter how much good they do and how
much they may love God, are doomed to eternal damnation.
In spite of these teachings, two points need to be emphasized.
First, it is Christianity, more than any other religion, including Judaism, that
has carried the message of the Jewish prophets, the clearest voices of ethical
monotheism, to the world.
Second, Christianity, though not theologically pure in its ethical monotheism,
can and does lead millions of people to more ethical lives. People do not live
by theology alone. Theological teachings aside, the kindness and selflessness
often associated with religious Christians and with charitable Christian
institutions are rarely paralleled anywhere in the secular world—and
infrequently in the religious world, either.
I yearn for the day when Christians will emphasize ethical monotheism as the
most important part of their commitment to Christianity. I know from years of
work and friendship with Christians of all persuasions that ethical monotheism
is a value that many of them can easily and passionately affirm.
Muslims and Ethical Monotheism
During some of the Western world's darkest periods, Islam was a religious light
in the monotheistic world. The seeds of ethical monotheism are deeply rooted in
Islam. For whatever reason, however, the soil for their nourishment has, over
the last several hundred years, been depleted of necessary nutrients. Islam
could be a world force for ethical monotheism, but in its present state, the
outlook is problematic.
The Quran has numerous verses that emphasize belief in the one universal God who
judges people according to their behavior. Like all religions, however, Islam
contains xenophobic elements and doctrines that are incompatible with ethical
monotheism. Unlike some other religions today, however, within Islam, xenophobia
and hostility to ethical monotheism too often seem to prevail. For example,
though the Quran states explicitly that in matters of faith there shall be no
coercion, almost everywhere Islam dominates there is considerable religious
coercion, whether by the state or by the community.
An example of such state sponsored coercion is Saudi Arabia, where religious
police monitor what Muslims drink and reduce women to childlike status by
forbidding them, for example, to drive cars. Saudi Arabia also severely
restricts the religious freedom of other faiths.
The Sudan, too, is ruled by devout Muslims, and it is one of the most cruel
states in the world, especially to its large black non Muslim minority.
Muslims need what most Christians and Jews have experienced - separation of
church and state; interaction with other faiths and with modernity; and reform.
Islam needs to compete with secularism, not outlaw it, and to allow competing
ideologies within Islam. In religion, as in politics, when there is no
competition, there is corruption and intolerance.
There are some Muslim voices crying for reform and for ethical monotheism, such
as that of Dr. Fathi Osman, the former Princeton historian of Islam and editor
of Arabia. When their influence increases, Islam will be a world force for
ethical monotheism.
Conclusion
In his essay "The Hebrews" in the seminal 1947 work The Intellectual Adventure
of Ancient Man: An Essay on Speculative Thought in the Ancient Near East,
Professor William A. Irwin writes:
Israel's great achievement, so apparent that mention of it is almost trite, was
monotheism. It was an achievement that transformed subsequent history.
One may raise the question whether any other single contribution from whatever
source since human culture emerged from the stone ages has had the far reaching
effect upon history that Israel in this regard has exerted both through the
mediums of Christianity and Islam and directly through the world of Jewish
thinkers themselves.
The nations are condemned [by the Prophets] for the depravity of their morals.
And here is the point: they are so condemned by the God of Israel! It is His
righteousness, be it observed, not His might or His glory or any other of the
divine qualities prized at the time, which provides the ground of his supremacy.
Here we see the meaning of that phrase so commonly employed in the study of
Hebrew history: Israel's monotheism was an ethical monotheism.
As the twentieth century ends, most people have still not learned its most
obvious lesson—that attempts to change the world that do not place God and
goodness at their center will make this world worse. Is it not time to try
ethical monotheism?
It is the only truly effective answer to moral relativism, to racism, to
nationalism, to worshipping art or law or success. All one needs to do is live
by the simple and revolutionary message of Micah, "to do justice, love goodness,
and walk humbly with your God."
Notes
1The New York Review of Books, April 25,1985.
2 George Will, "Churches in Politics Pray for Skepticism," Los Angeles Times,
May 13, 1982.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/mono.html