Since Saturday night's performance of Moses und Aron, I've been pondering on the portrayal of its two main characters. Moses, the inarticulate one, presented as having this idea about the unique and eternal God, source of all existence, its order, purpose and meaning - the eternal one so far beyond human comprehension that no words or thought can convey the reality of the divine. It's only possible for humankind to be in awe, and to worship the source of our own being.
Aron, on the other hand is the one gifted with words with which to express the thoughts and ideas of other people, the spokesperson for the rank and file, who consider themselves unable to rise to the idea of reaching out to the infinite, of transcending all human concepts in placing the divine reality at the centre of life. Aron argues that people need words and symbols, something tangible to represent their higher intentions and meanings. In the wilderness, the people of Israel miss the deities around which their lives in Egyptian captivity revolved, and appeal to Aron to give them something more tangible to identify with.
He forges the image of the Golden Calf to be the focus they think they need, but this initiative turns out to be a recipe for chaos and anarchy, as it points them nowhere beyond themselves. It is nothing more than a reflection of who they are - their strengths, but also their fatal weaknesses and flaws. People look for something to secure and unite them outside themselves, but don't look far enough beyond themselves. The worship of the idol doesn't take them out of themselves towards the Beyond, but quickly becomes an end in itself, stifling growth, leading to decay and destruction. The concept of sacramental and iconic symbolism in which the visible is a window to the unseen, had yet to emerge as something human hearts and minds to play with and learn from.
Idolatry, which turns goods into Gods, ascribing ultimate divine significance and power to naturally created things and human constructs, is sternly prohibited by the law which Moses receives from God in solitude on Mount Sinai. In solitude, away from all social demands and pressure, it's easy to think uncompromisingly. Following through in people's lives with such a tough commandment is fraught with challenges and difficulties, as much today as in ancient times. Aron is unsuccessful in translating new ideas of God's supreme uniqueness in a way people can learn from them. Are we any better in an age in which we are frequently being told 'image is everything' ?
Schoenberg's Moses conveys starkly some central tenets of mature Jewish teaching. He doesn't, however, glean from Exodus the significance of the conversations and arguments between Moses and God, whom Moses talks to as a man talks to a trusted friend. Schoenberg's Moses seems to wrestle alone with absolute abstract ideas. He conveys them somehow to Aron who expresses them to the people on his behalf. Moses as introverted prophetic philosopher isn't quite the familiar biblical character. The bible is much more concrete in delivering ideas. Biblical anthropomorphism is far too easily written off as the product of a naive and primitive mind-set, rather than a creative engagement with understanding that leads beyond the dialogue of words into the depths of silence. It's a form of learning through play how to approach ineffable divine reality, and play is one of the great resources of the human mind for working things out creatively.
I heard the other day on the BBC Radio Four Today programme of Professor Dawkins' proposition to ban myth and fairy tale from schooling on grounds of the statistical improbability of magical events occurring - frogs turning into princes. Can't the editor do better than to put up a children's story writer in defence of her art, when an educator, psychiatrist or philosophical theologian is needed to contend with Dawins' instinct to censor anything that doesn't comply with his rationalistic world view? This is about the richly textured nature of truth we live by and worthy of better consideration even in a popular news programme.
Scientific rationalism and the knowledge it offers is an essential and reliable foundation to life in the modern world. It's not an end in itself. If idolised and made into a divine substitute, it has the power to consume and destroy its devotees. This we know only too well from the history of modernity. Are ordinary human beings capable of resisting the impulse to some kind of idolatry or another? Or at least reading the spiritual health warnings in place for the best part of three millennia? Sometimes I wonder.
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