Tradition for Crisis

It is easy enough to imagine that our current wealth, power, arms, and venturesome technology together constitute our best hope for the time to come. In the face of such seductions, this old prophetic tradition continues to make its demanding claim concerning our common security, prosperity, and well-being; this package of attractive certitudes cannot be an effective substitute for the material-based quotidian reality of neighborliness. Hosea well understood, moreover, that the transformative love of neighbor is grounded in the love of God, who is the ultimate ground of our life in God's world. Thus, Hosea could finish his great dramatic rendering of divorce-remarriage as a way of reiterating the five great terms of covenantal fidelity.