The Two Quests

The story of Abraham revolves around two main themes: the quest for the Promised Land and the renewal of the quest for a son. These are two themes that are the main part of the Adam and Eve story as well. According to my understanding, the Fall consisted of the man and woman seeking a child and making a human as God had just made two humans. God had planned to give them a child, virginally, and so to test them he commanded them not to have sexual relations. They were asked to give up the greatest earthly good, human union and intimacy, to be given the ultimate good, divine union.

Adam and Eve couldn’t understand why a good God would ask them to forgo human intimacy and the children who would follow, so they trusted in the wisdom of the serpent, had sexual relations, and conceived Cain: “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, ‘I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD’.”

The garden is not so much a garden as it is the man and woman themselves, so when God banishes them from the garden of delight, it means that they are alien’s to themselves, so to speak. As I mentioned in my entry of the early morning of December 4th, the result of the Fall was that our minds are darkened, our wills weakened, and our passions disordered. This is called concupiscence, and it was the natural result of the man and woman trusting in the powers of their bodies to have life. If they had trusted in God, that is, if they had eaten of the tree of life, then they would have had life. Before the Fall, the man was master of his body, and God was master over him, but through his sin, he rejected God as his master resulting in his body rejecting him as its master. How relationships disintegrate: when the rightful authority of God is rejected, all hell breaks loose.

So the man and the woman, Adam and Eve, begin a journey seeking peace and re-unification, seeking harmony and order, seeking faith and life. Now they have to overcome the challenges of concupiscence in their journey back to themselves, in their journey back to trusting and loving God and eating of the tree of life, in their journey back to fruitfulness, meaning, and life. This is the journey we all undertake. This journey is symbolized in the quest for the Promised Land that is initiated at the beginning of the Abraham story.

Shortly into the Abraham story, he seeks a son. His story starts with the quest for the Promised Land, and it ends with the quest for a son. This is the mirror image of the story of Adam and Eve which starts with a quest for a son and ends with the quest for both their lost personal integrity and union with God, which is symbolized by the quest for the Promised Land.

There is a psychological term known as reenactment which is when a person relives a prior event; people tend to do it much of the time, and most of it is done unconsciously. It is especially common with traumatic and unresolved events and conflicts; part of the reason it is done is due to our desire to understand. When a traumatic event leaves one dumbfounded, our desire is to make sense of it; one way we try to make sense of it is to somehow recreate the scene and relive it. It is sort of like rewinding a movie and re-watching a confusing scene or a scene where you didn’t hear all the words. Some classic examples of reenactment are the girl with an alcoholic father seeking out and marrying an alcoholic or someone alcoholic-like, the abandoned child who seeks out and marries someone who will leave them, the rejected person who always ends up rejected by everyone he tries to get close to, the son of a workaholic who swears he won’t be like his dad who was never around but yet ends up just like his dad working all the time. For whatever reason, this seems to be the way things are, as far as I understand psychology.

I bring up reenactment because a similar type of thing seems to occur throughout the Bible. The same old things happen over and over again. Some of the scenery may change and the characters, but, at root, it is the exact same event some time later. The path to understanding the Bible and the Catholic Faith which it is an expression of, is by seeing and understanding the recurring patterns throughout its story. Once you have the pattern down and can recognize it in other situations, then it is found everywhere and the story and its message become very simple. I think I have stumbled across the ins and outs of understanding this pattern. And in many ways, it is very simple. One of the easiest places to see this pattern is in the life of Abraham, which is why I chose to discuss him next.

I never read or saw the Da Vinci Code, and I am glad of it, but I think there is something to it. I think there is a code or pattern which helps to make sense of the chaos. God is not a God of disorder, confusion, isolation and death but of order, understanding, union and life. Everything fits together and has a reason: “thou hast arranged all things by measure and number and weight” (Wisdom 11:20). The Bible and Catholic Faith are already well understood, in a way, yet there is certainly room for a better understanding, one which roots the understanding in the story of the Bible, a biblical theology.

A theologian’s work is to make sense of and give reasons for that which we already believe; his task is to find the patterns and see the connections and unity in the Bible and all doctrine to better make sense of it for everyone else; his mission is to find the key and unlock the treasure chest holding the mysteries of the kingdom and then use that treasure to feed the multitude. His goal is to lead others to Christ. “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ,” said Saint Jerome. A deep understanding of the Bible is part and parcel with knowing who Jesus is and what exactly He did to remedy our specific sickness. "Blessed is the man who delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on it day and night. He is like a tree…” (Psalm 1:2-3): the tree of life. A theologian’s work is to enlighten people to the life God has given and called us to; he is to awaken and enliven the trust people have in God, that is, he is to help resuscitate each person’s tree of life.



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