History is the long story for the search for God. Even many of those who eschewed God searched for deity using a different name. Think about Marx and his exaltation of history itself as History. A central conviction throughout most of religion is that there is more to life than meets the eye. The search is then on for what this 'more to' amounts to. Some people exalted sex, others power, others romantic love and still others particular people. Polytheism is a recognition that all these have some divine power and so every one of them is in some sense worthy of worship.
The Hebrew religion was not something completely separate from this questing. The Hebrews simply concentrated their conviction. They believed that only one thing was worthy of worship for them (early on) or for all people (later in the Biblical tradition). The Hebrew conviction was that the divine had been found in moral experience. Right and wrong, the very quest to do good, is the location of the divine.
Alongside this conviction is the conviction that life itself is also divine. Hebraism is a life-affirming movement. One can look at the entire Biblical tradition as the working out of the implications of this dual conviction founded in a single source. How do we make sense of morality-as-God and God-as-life-itself simultaneously? In some ways this led to the dual conviction of God's goodness and omnipotence. All of life's movements are good, and they all act towards moral ends. This is the reason for the deuteronomistic conviction that all suffering is the result of behavior, as well. But the problems with this view are obvious to any thinking person. The world often looks indifferent to morality. What's more, the hebraic vision of what amounts to the 'good' often seems incomplete. It is often justice at the expense of mercy, while somehow perfect goodness must include both mercy and justice. It is often a kind of invulnerable good, when real goodness seems grounded in vulnerability. In think in the final analysis, Whitehead is correct when he says:
"The limitation of God is his goodness. He gains his depth of actuality by h is harmony of valuation. It is not true that God is in all respects infinite. If He were, He would evil as well as good. Also this unlimited fusion of evil as well as good. Also this unlimited fusion of evil with good would mean mere nothingness. He is something decided and is thereby limited."
The Christians, through Jesus Christ, discovered something new about God. They discovered Agape, the love of God. In Christ's self-sacrifice they knew God's saving grace had come. But the mode by which it came was something surprising, even shocking. It was salvation through suffering and death. Vulnerability trumped power. The hebraic conviction of the divinity of goodness was found in Christ's death. The conviction of life was found in Christ's resurrection. In this man, the two principles were brought together. I am not sure that Christians in general have ever worked this out theoretically or abstractly, but in raw experience they are encountering the truth. God's mercy and justice are swallowed up in His suffering. That it is the eternal God who suffers, ensures that life triumphs. In the cross and resurrection, shared by the same life, we have the fulfillment of the Hebraic promise. We can say with boldness: "God is Love, His word is Life."
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