So, according to Sacks biblical morality is a tension or interaction between unity and diversity. I think I understand local morality more as custom or culture than morality although I think I can see why Sacks favours morality and certainly morality is a part of custom or culture. Universal morality will to a large degree be free of local custom or culture although its formulation might lead back to unspoken origins. I'm not inclined to worry too much about this so long as there is consensus over human rights.
More to the point, unity or diversity alone will inevitably over time lead to stagnation; each perspective challenges the other and so opens up possibilities for change. The activity which enables systems of morality or culture to be dynamic is conversation and I will return to this.
In chapter 3 of 'The Dignity of Difference' Sacks goes on to discuss the nature of God:
As an ancient Jewish teaching puts it: 'When a human being makes many coins in the same mint, they all come out the same. God makes every person in the same image - His image - and each is different.' The challenge to the religious imagination is to see God's image in one who is not in our image. That is the converse of tribalism. But it is also something other than universalism. It takes difference seriously. (Page 60)
No individual therefore can know the mind of God because they are a part of it. Indeed no community and culture can know the mind of God because they are still only a part of it. This is why conversations are so important; the spirit creates something new out of the clash of cultures.
By way of illustration, let me make two comments. First, theologians are increasingly recognising the importance of contextual theology as opposed to academic theology. For the former the context of the theologian is important, not because it is therefore somehow relative, but because its context needs to be understood alongside those of other theologies. Conversations may be less effective where the contexts of those taking part are not known. The criticism of academic theology is where it claims to be somehow more objective. The criticism is that the academic simply does not know his or her own context. This is why an early post described my context.
Second, Jesus' second commandment to love your neighbour as you love yourself. At school we were taught this as a three layer ranking of love. God first, neighbours second, self third. This splitting of the second commandment is of course absurd. If God has created all people in God's image then all people are equally loved. We have to love all including ourselves (and by extension our traditions) because all are loved by God. This is the origin of the idea of mutuality to which I will return in future.
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