The Beginning of Our Thought

We know that immorality does not preserve the world, but rather that faithfulness preserves the world.  Nevertheless, like Eve and Adam in the first story recorded in the Bible, human beings predictably do not choose to begin their thinking with faithfulness to God, by going to God for help when they do not know how to determine what the truth is.  We see from our own experience that human beings most often are not faithful at all.  Knowing from experience that unfaithfulness, immorality, does not preserve the world we choose immorality anyway because it seems to be the way that we can assert our own independence and freedom of will.

By choosing immorality and not faithfulness we think that we are opening up all possibilities.  Anything is possible.  I think and therefore I am becomes the beginning of our thought.  No one can force us to accept what reality is because we can always imagine that reality might be something else.  All the time our experience tells us that unfaithfulness does not preserve life.  Unfaithfulness does not preserve the world.  In the end unfaithfulness only causes us endless pain.  Still we choose to be unfaithful, deciding that we must begin our thought with our independence.

If we end up in the belief in pantheism it is because we are full of nothing but ourselves.  We know from our experience that little things that are puffed up and full of nothing but themselves are not good for anything in the end, and that if they get so puffed up that they can no longer contain themselves they break into many fragments and no one can ever find them all.  The more time goes on the more our experience tells us that human beings are little things with very little power and not exempt from this principle that little things that get puffed up and full of themselves eventually destroy themselves.  Still, generally thinking human beings remain unafraid of deciding to begin their thought on the basis of immorality: I think therefore I am, rather than on the basis of faithfulness to others and ultimately and primarily faithfulness to God.

There are a minority of people in the world who do fear ending up in such terrifying pantheism, who regret having chosen immorality and seek to turn to faithfulness as it is revealed in the Bible.  Such people are usually found among Jews or Christians, where the Bible is found.  I will speak here first of the nature of the beginning of thought for Christians who seek the faithfulness of the Bible, for this is my own experience.  I will then speak of how the beginning of thought for the Christian, when it originates with the faithfulness revealed in the Bible, comes eventually to a recognition of its unity with the beginning and conclusion of the thought of the Jewish believer in the faithfulness that is revealed in the Bible.

What is the beginning of thought for the Christian believer?  It is the death and burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, or better transliterated, Yahoshua the Messiah.  And in recognizing this we are recognizing that the beginning of our thought as Christian believers is the Torah and Israel as defined by the covenant of God.  How do we know this?  If we try to imagine the Messiah in his death and resurrection entirely apart from his Biblical context we see that the foundation of our thought and all clarity of our hope is taken away from us.  Thus, if we examine the beginning of our thought we find that we attain clarity by understanding the death of the Messiah according to the Scriptures, and the burial and resurrection of the Messiah according to the Scriptures.  We find the beginning of our thought as Christian believers in the revelation of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, Yahoshua the Messiah of Israel in the Bible - not outside of or apart from the Bible.

What is it that we are saying when we say this?  We are saying that we see that the beginning of the thought of Jesus, Yahoshua the Messiah, was the Torah and Israel, that the beginning of his thought was the faithfulness of God revealed in God's covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and with all Israel.  We see that our hope in being restored to the truth of faithfulness from the deception of immorality is the trust that the Messiah of Israel had in the faithfulness of God expressed in God's covenant with Israel.  And we see that this faithfulness of God has been revealed to us and has convinced us that it should become the beginning of our thought through God having raised the Messiah from the dead in that faithfulness toward Israel, according to His covenant with Israel.

There is One Covenant

It is very often taught that in the Bible there is the making a number of covenants.  Usually this begins with Noah and the rainbow but sometimes begins with Adam.  In this way God's covenant with Abraham is seen as being one in a list that includes the covenant of circumcision, the Mosaic or Sinai covenant, God's covenant with David, the new covenant, and sometimes others.  This idea of many covenants is the result of the need to translate a fundamental idea from the Hebrew language and consciousness into English and other gentile languages and forms of thought.  There is really only one covenant of God just as there is only one word of God.  The idea of God's covenant is the idea of God's personally giving His word to someone.  God first personally gave His world to Abraham.  Since then He has not personally given His word to anyone other than Israel.  It is true that personally gave His word to Noah and that He called this a covenant, but in truth He only gave His word in part to Noah.  That is, what He said or promised to Noah was limited in its nature and even what He promised him was conditional.  God did not promise Noah that He would never destroy the earth again or that if he destroyed the earth He would save even eight souls.  God only promised Noah that He would not destroy the earth again by water.  He did not give His personal word to Noah that He would bless the earth.  Even to preserve the world from further dissolution and the cutting off of the line of Noah, so that no life would be saved, It was necessary for God to personally make His covenant with Abraham.