GEN1000 … at an early period of Jewish thought, the rational quest for the Way of Righteousness asserted itself. The good, it was felt, somehow immanent in this world; there is a Divine law of justice, inherent in our minds and hearts, corresponding to the laws which holds nature in thrall. “Can it be that the judge of the whole universe will not do justice?” asks Abraham. Genesis 18:25   God’s purpose in choosing Abraham is “That he might command his children after him, that they shall keep the way of the Lord to do justice and righteousness.” [this verse]. “A way of the Lord” exists as the one right road to follow, and it is distinguished by the manifest, objective qualities of justice and righteousness, which are self-evident. The tension between the transrational Vision and the Way of “justice and righteousness” is illustrated in the trial of Abraham, which is a drama in two acts. In the first act, the romantic vision of the Divine Being is exemplified. He asks Abraham to slaughter his son, “his only one, the well-beloved.” Genesis 22:2  Abraham obeys, for after all God is beyond all good and evil; how can a poor mortal presume to weigh His commands in the scales of right and wrong? In the second act, an angel of the Lord tells Abraham not to kill his son, “For now I know that you fear God.” Again, Abraham obeys, this time as a mature worshiper who has learned his lesson-God wills that which is good.   In contrast to Kierkegaard’s admiration of the kind of faith that triumphs over mere morality, it should be pointed out that the heroism of Abraham in the second act was far more significant than his “fear of God” in the first act, precisely because it represented a harmonious resolution of his inner conflicts. This perspective becomes apparent as soon as we put this story in its historical context. In the days of Abraham and for a thousand years after him, it was universally assumed that human sacrifices were needed at critical moments in life. So Misha, King of Moab, sacrificed his son on the wall 2 Kings 3:27; so, too, the leading families of Carthage sacrificed their sons at the time of the slavery rebellion. O. Meltzer, Geschichte der Karthage, Vol II, Bk. 3 (1896).  It takes little courage to fall in line with the prevailing patterns of piety. In each successive generation, ordinary mortals did not hesitate to slaughter their sons on the altars of whatever Molochs happened to be worshiped. But, in the second part of the drama, Abraham found the courage and the wisdom to resist the impact of popular piety and to set over it the voice of the angel, who articulated the message of a rational conscience. Abraham was not merely “the first of the believers,” as Maimonides put it, or “the knight of faith,” as Kierkegaard put it--he was the protagonist of a moral-rational faith. To believe in God, who is beyond Nature and unlike all things, and, at the same time, to insist that the moral– rational Way, as it is manifest in the light of reason, is a revelation of His Will-this dual conviction establishes the central polarity in biblical religion. Abraham, the ideal believer, will not make peace with the notion that God punishes the innocent along with the guilty. Moses refused to concede that the ways of the Lord are so mysterious as to be beyond human standards of right and wrong. In the cleft of the rock, he was assured, that while “man could not see Him and live,” his Ways were comprehensible and compassionate.  Exodus 34:6-8 AGUS 32-34