The scandal of particularity is a phrase which means different things to different people. For many, it refers to God’s selection of the Jews to be his Chosen People through whom the salvation of the world would be wrought. Why would he bestow this privilege on Abraham and his descendants and not on everone? The question is even more compelling today as the imperatives of diversity, equity and inclusion dominate policy and discredit discrimination.
Rather than respond to the question with a posture of inquiry, we should accept it with a spirit of reverence and gratitude. Fortunately, the Catholic Church has within our lifetime officially promoted this attitude. Vatican II’s ‘Nostra Aetate’ states about the Jews: “Theirs is the sonship and the glory and the covenants and the law and the worship and the promises; theirs are the fathers and from them is the Christ according to the flesh…..God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their Fathers;… the Church awaits that day, known to God alone, on which all peoples will address the Lord in a single voice and ‘serve him shoulder to shoulder’”. Let us hope there is a growing collaboration between Judaism and Christianity in the service of the Lord.
Clearly, one area in which this is evident is in philanthropy. Through the responsible application of their assets donors from either religious community recognize and promote the human dignity of others. Their respect for human dignity arises from two shared foundational beliefs. This is where the scandal of particularity comes in, for these two beliefs are mysteries first revealed to the Jews.
The first is unicity, the uniqueness, the ‘oneness’ of God. There is, and logically can be, only one God. Monotheism was introduced through Abraham into a misguided world laboring under polytheism. The second is aseity, the belief that God is the source of his own existence and, as such, the source of all existence.
How do unicity and aseity, these mysteries unveiled for us through the Jews, relate to philanthropy?
That God is one and that he has created us in his image confirm that all of us share an identity, an identity which constitutes among us a community in which each member is in some way responsible of all members. Because of his unicity, God is indivisible and therefore his image is indivisible. That God is the source of his own existence and therefore the source of all life, namely his aseity, indicates that we – privileged to be recipients of his life – are ourselves in some way co-collaborators in his existence.
We are made in God’s image and God is one. Therefore, we are one, a fraternal community. Philanthropists acknowledge this fraternity and act accordingly. Because God is the source of existence and we are beneficiaries of his existence, we share in a limited way the power of creativity. Philanthropists acknowledge this gift as well and recognize it as a responsibility.
From the revelation of unicity and aseity millennia ago to the Jewish patriarchs, through the present, and toward the eschaton, the Kingdom advances and the shoulder-to shoulder service solidifies.