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The Torah – A Gift of God’s Love

by R. R. Purdy

Once again, on holiday this fall, I heard an Anglican preacher trot out the old chestnut about the Old Covenant being a covenant of Law, while the New Covenant is a covenant of Love.

When will these preachers begin to do their homework? When will they realize that cliché is not just a slap in the face to the Jewish people, it is a very lazy and superficial treatment of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament?

Do they not know that one of the three or four most important words in the Old Testament, repeated over and over in the Psalms and Prophets, is chesed, translated as loving-kindness, faithful love, kindness, covenant love? The long name of the Holy One given in Exodus 34 is “The Lord! the Lord! a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness (chesed) and faithfulness….” This central characteristic of the divine nature is also a central requirement of God’s people under the Covenant.

Do they think God changed horses in mid-stream? Tried Law first, and when it did not work, then tried Love? What a travesty of both the meaning of the Hebrew scriptures and the nature of the divine and holy Creator that both Jews and Christians have come to slightly know.

Observant Jews see the Torah as a gift of God’s love, in exactly the same way as Christians see Christ. Both are gifts of grace, the first in a more limited way to the Hebrew or Jewish people, the second widening out to be available to all peoples and nations. Both Torah and Christ are full expressions of God’s love. Both are served not as obligation but as joy. The two Covenants exist side by side, each honoured and upheld by God.

Of course there is a great difference between Law and legalism. The latter has been found very much at home in most religions, including Christianity. It is most fully expressed today in the radical fundamentalist wings of many world religious communities. But let us stop equating legalism and Torah.

A recent book review spoke of the long and bitter history between Jews and Christians as “the greatest tragedy of the Western World.” What if the two religious communities had been able to walk side by side through all those centuries, respecting each other’s uniqueness but sharing in mutual compassionate ministry in the world? We might by now have learned from that experience how to reach out to other world religious traditions and do the same.

But it is not too late to start!

Rev. Bob Purdy is rector of St. George’s in the Pines Anglican Church in Banff, Alberta