Anthropology as Ethics. T. M. S. (Terry) Evens
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treats the possibility of global risk as a function of perfect faith. That is to say, such incalculable risk is brought into play only because God seeks to test Abraham's faith. The roundness of the risk repeats and depends on the perfection of the faith.
Since a Nuer takes God's presence for granted, faith cannot be an issue for him. And since he cannot act in blind faith, unlimited risk is not about to define his situation. A Nuer does not sacrifice in order to show his faith, but rather to ensure the continuity of life. And even in this connection the sacrifice is not exactly a means to an end since, as a function of Kwoth's design, sacrifice constitutes its own satisfaction. Whether or not the sacrifice effects the immediate purpose (say, healing), it is only incompletely differentiated from everyday (profane) life and therefore enjoys the practical status of simply the living of that life. In other words, for the Nuer, sacrifice is practiced in much the same way as eating, sleeping, and interrelating. To be sure, in view of the fact that a Nuer offers up what he truly perceives as a part or extension of himself, there is risk. But the risk is limited, never total. For this reason, among the Nuer a sacrifice like Abraham's, one so rarefied that it can alter the need and nature of sacrifice itself, is unthinkable. Each and every sacrifice not only gives life, but, precisely because it is definitively measured, because it always falls short of payment in full, also ensures that the practice of sacrifice will have to continue in its current form. While some Nuer sacrifices are deemed more important than others, none can serve as a sacrifice so total that it can effect a redemption powerful enough to reduce the need, by a giant Abrahamic step, for further sacrifice.
Self-Perfection and the Inversion of the Hierarchy of Spirit and Matter
“No risk, no gain,” to be sure. If Abraham's inordinately hazardous action yielded the considerable return of a marked intensification of human selfhood, then Nuer ritual practice must correspond to a relatively undeveloped or naive sense of self. That is to say, the act of sacrifice does not advance the Nuer along the road of self-development and, tautologically, toward the reduction of the need for substantive sacrifice. But the implicit value judgment here is pointedly complicated by the consideration that the Abrahamic leap of faith, which is also a leap of self-consciousness, not only carries grave risk but also encourages the turning of that risk into reality.
It is not hard to see that the self-development registered in the story of Abraham and Isaac reveals the operation of the principle of perfection. Indeed, inasmuch as that development ensures the perpetuity of Abraham's self as a leader of nations, of a premier worldly world (“In his seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed” [Genesis: chap. 22]), it bespeaks Abraham's likeness to God—the first creator of worlds. But as it does, it holds out an image not simply of self-development but of self-completion. That is, it informs man with, above and beyond a strong sense of self, a sense of self the logical destiny of which is sheer self-containment and self-transparency. More precisely, the development in question defines man, teleologically and for himself, as that creature whose fundamental end in life is self-perfection. This holds true despite the fact that the story's narrative, with its stunning emphasis on the need for Abraham to submit his will to God's, gives a powerful, if unarticulated, lesson about the idolatrous deception of such an image. Indeed, it is the implicit operation of this perfectibilist self-definition that explains why the lesson has to be given at all.
How does the Akedah portray this image of self-completion? To stay with the story's theme of blind faith, the relationship between God and man is depicted as a matter of choice. God chooses to issue a certain command to Abraham, who in turn, on no other basis than faith, chooses to obey. Inasmuch as it is wholly intentional and creative—that is, agential and unconstrained by force, guile, or reason—the conduct of both epitomizes what it means to choose. The relationship is thus pictured as mediate rather than immediate, a tie between two selves each of which has the power to direct its own conduct toward the other and therefore stands to the other as other. The relationship is in this sense open: the tie has a significant degree of play in it. The play amounts to the power of choice and thus constitutes a spiritual rather than material freedom. As such, obviously, it is predicated on a prominent distinction between mind and body. It is this distinction, of course, which admits of the most novel change recorded in the story, namely, the substitution of material by spiritual being in sacrifice. In effect, by deferring his volitional power to God, Abraham performs not a bloody but a spiritual transfusion; he injects God or the Other with the life that is His, thus renewing that patriarchal figure and defining it all the more so as a matter of spirit.
Hence, the theme of blind faith entails a prominent distinction between matter and spirit. The character of the difference between man and God implicates the sharpness of this distinction. What is narratively featured is not the material but the politico-spiritual character of the difference. Insofar as man enjoys the power of choice, he is one of a kind with God and is thus implicitly equipped to displace the latter (or at least appears so to himself). The story furnishes an account of how God goes about containing this difference, ensuring against the threat of it.18 But right from the beginning, the story secures the primacy of God's place by signaling that there really can be no contest, and that notwithstanding man's power of choice in the least, the relationship between him and God is ineradicably hierarchical rather than equalitarian, a relationship of authority rather than power. God's command is, although presumptively not Abraham's wish, certainly Abraham's witting but unquestioning commitment.
The hierarchical nature of the relationship is ultimately founded on generational priority: it is understood that man could not have created himself in the first place and is therefore owing to his Other. This fundamental asymmetry of creator and creature is inevitably glossed in terms of the ontological polarity of spirit and matter. Man's limited generative power or pro-creativity marks him as, although not exclusively, representatively material, while God's absolute generative power, creativity in itself, identifies him absolutely with the spiritual pole. Therefore, in respect of this polarity, man's power of choice, a godly attribute, presents a transcendence and makes of him a walking contradiction—a representatively material being that is nonetheless inspirited.
Herein rests the nub of the problem. Although the spiritual pole is in principle deemed superior, when it is prepossessingly introduced into man, that is, into the ‘creature, it risks subjection to definition by its material counterpart. As a result of this unholy-holy admixture, the creature is ever tempted to define himself in terms of the limitlessness or perfection of the maker, and to conduct himself in such a way as to make that self-definition come true. Insofar as the main intended lesson of the story is about the vital need to acknowledge performatively God's supremacy, the threat of this antinomian turn of events may be seen to furnish the story's very raison d'être.
Hierarchical Inversion and Immaculate Boundaries
Referring to the idea of boundaries can flesh the point out. Plainly, because they extend in space, material things lend themselves to precise delineation. Spirit, however, characterized by zero dimensions, does not—its boundaries are definitively ethereal. Therefore, insofar as material boundaries are spiritually informed, one might expect them to present themselves as fuzzy and fluid rather than fast. But the same condition of ontological ambiguity offers the alternative possibility: where they are found together in the concrete individual, that is, nearer to the material end of the polarity, that end is enabled and even given to impose its inherent perspective on the spiritual pole. The boundaries of the individual thus look not merely but perfectly precise. Which is to say, for purposes of self-definition, they become absolutely exclusive or closed, dualistically defining the individual as against everything else.
As soon as the material perspective presents itself as the starting point of perception, the kind of boundary it disposes advances a definition of perfection in terms of fixity and closure. This definition stands in sharp contrast to any non-idolatrous apprehension of the Perfect, in which is featured precisely the unrepresentability of amorphous openness. And when the material notion of boundary is applied to the distinction between matter and spirit, it defines dualism. Considered as a dualism, this distinction is no longer simply sharp and prominent, but differentiates its polar principles immaculately. Consequently, matter comes to be seen as one thing and spirit entirely another.
More importantly here, though, is