And if it be said that the Old Testament as a whole constitutes a gospel, then are not the themes of humanity's relationship to God, and also of the essentials of salvation, themes that can be understood independently of a believer's attachment to the "name" of Jesus, Jesus in our postulated B.C. gospel being as yet unnamed? And is not the sacrifice of deity to itself as a necessity of Creation's essential unworthiness a sacrifice that can be understood independently of the manner of the sacrifice, or the of manner in which that sufficient sacrifice is simultaneously unable to vanquish the sovereignty of the deity? Are not the Cross and the Resurrection (of which so many Old Testament figures are held to be "types") not merely types themselves of more general truths?
Ultimately, of course, one is led to such conjectures as would include the idea that the great religions of the world--or perhaps even just the manifestations of "religion" as it might be thought to have circumspect and conscientious adherents throughout the world--constitute merely a multi-faceted faith system that is essentially one. Certainly Jesus' assertion that he has followers we know not of raises some pertinent questions along these lines,
There is a corollary to this notion of universal faith--a corollary as distasteful to the denominations as its precipitating notion of such faith--and that is the idea that, if all religions are one, then under any potent scrutiny, each of these religions is a collection of essential "nothings" that is aggregated around that essential religious "something." I will present here the idea that the Book of Malachi--not merely as an example but in fact as a quite salient example in that it is often taken as an introduction to the advent of the Christian messiah--is in fact a book dedicated to making nothings of what are conventionally taken to be great somethings of both Judaism and Christianity.
Malachi begins with an assertion of God's love for Israel and hatred for Edom. This is, of course, a rather stern distillation of the Genesis story of hapless, untamed Esau and his favored brother Jacob--Jacob being, incidentally, an example of God's favor shown on a person who, absent that partiality, would be rightly adjudged a scurrilous character (to frame the matter quite charitably.) Shown one of the greatest of all biblical visions at the place he would call "house of God," Jacob proceeds to impose upon his God a transactional relationship as a condition of following God. Let a person make such a challenge to the divine before a priest or preacher today, and that presumptuous person would be chastised roundly.
In reality, the standard notions of Esau's supposed unworthiness are undercut even in the Genesis text. Having neither birthright nor blessing, Esau is given nonetheless a "blessing" from Isaac that includes the notion that Esau will throw off his brother's yoke. Indeed, Esau becomes a great nation and, in the picture given of his eventual reunion with his cringing, maneuvering sibling, there seems to be no reason (absent, again, the unaccountable favor of God) to think of Esau (the eventual Edom) as less than Jacob (the eventual Israel.)
And yet the book of Malachi has Edom held in the greatest disdain, accounted a "land of wickedness" with which God will be angry forever. As it turns out, though, the Edomites as a people are not tied to that single land, and later they will relocate as the Idumeans who supply Judea and its environs with the House of Herod--scarcely the most noble of noble houses, it is true, but scarcely also the blasted remnant of Esau that Malachi must be taken to indicate. Actually, the book of Malachi says particularly that what is meant to be indicated by the Jacob-versus-Esau depiction is the potency of Israel's God beyond the boundaries of Israel. In essence, the Israel-versus-Edom parochial rivalry ends up being an instance of ephemera, paling in the light of the greater truth of God' sovereignty. The particular falls away in the face of the universal.
Malachi goes on then to disparage the contemporary practice--or rather malpractice--of sacrifice in the Temple, holding it to be unworthy of God. It would be better that no sacrifice be made at all, and this while the text maintains that God's name is feared among the nations, even as it is profaned by the practices prevailing in Israel. The notion that God is Israel's God is here turned on its head, and Israel is shown as lacking in piety what the world at large is providing. As if to add an insult, the priests--the beneficiaries of God's covenant with Levi--are held to be unworthy of their ancestor, who Malachi describes as having deserved God's favor for being a man of "peace and equity," even as Jacob's prophecy at the end of Genesis excoriates Levi (along with Simeon) for being violent and malicious. Again, the particular falls away in the face of the universal, and in this instance the essence of sacrifice is taken to be unbounded by the precincts of the temple or by the edicts of the Mosaic law.
And then the men of Israel are taken to task for having married daughters "of a strange god." Surely here the particulars of biblical parochialism are to be shown, one might think, as we revisit the matter of mixed marriages that so exercised Ezra and Nehemiah. However, the notion of "a daughter of a strange god" does not equate by necessity to "a daughter of a lineage excluded by being not of God's people." Having the testimony of the Book of Ruth at hand, the generation of Malachi--the book of Malachi that has God saying, "I hate divorce"--has also at hand the possibility of such "daughters of a strange god" being converted to Judaism (or at least persuaded not to perpetuate the beliefs of their youth.) As if to underscore the point, this passage begins with Malachi asking, "Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us?"
And then the searing notion of the universal over the particular is laid upon the people, who are at once reassured that they are children of the forebear Jacob, and excoriated for being the children of the trickster Jacob:
For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them.
In short, the Book of Malachi is a marvel of the universal stature of humanity being run through the mill of particularized religion. This is nothing more nor less than the corollary of the often-plumbed notion among theologians, to the effect that true religion leaps over the boundaries of particularized conceptions. Of course, the essence of any denomination is in its particulars, just as the essence of any religion is in its particulars. In any effort to claim hegemony over the universal truths of existence, while still retaining an institutional identity, many theologians will engage one upon the other in a sort of cosmic chicken, each straining to out-do the others in being more universal, while hoping that the others will fall away short enough of dissipation into generalities so that the winner can still effectively claim an orthodoxy of the most generous-minded sort.
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