Reading Pope Francis’s first encyclical, Lumen Fidei, or “The Light of Faith,” Nathaniel Peters notices “an unexpected word” featured prominently in the text – idolatry. How he unpacks its meaning:
As is characteristic of his evangelical boldness, Francis notes that in the story of the golden calf, “the opposite of faith is shown to be idolatry.” Faith demands a kind of patience. It requires us to abide the hiddenness of the God we long to see. The pope notes Martin Buber’s definition of idolatry, which he in turn took from the rabbi of Kock: “Idolatry is ‘when a face addresses a face which is not a face.’” Idolatry takes place when we refuse to abandon ourselves to God, when we look at a faceless thing that we can grasp instead of the face of God which sometimes remains invisible. The pope writes,
[Idols exist] as a pretext for setting ourselves at the centre of reality and worshiping the work of our own hands. Once man has lost the fundamental orientation which unifies his existence, he breaks down into the multiplicity of his desires; in refusing to await the time of promise, his life-story disintegrates into a myriad of unconnected instants. Idolatry, then, is always polytheism, an aimless passing from one lord to another. Idolatry does not offer a journey but rather a plethora of paths leading nowhere and forming a vast labyrinth.
Previous Dish on the new encyclical here and here. Update from rabbi reader:
Y’all quote Nathaniel Peters quoting the Pope quoting Martin Buber quoting the “Rabbi of Kock.” Well, it’s more likely that Dan Savage would quote the Rabbi of Kock, were he to identify himself; Martin Buber almost assuredly quoted the Rabbi of Kotzk, or the “Kokzker Rebbe,” a famous Hasidic teacher who was a spiritual genius, provocative and eccentric.
Maybe Nathaniel, er, Peters has been reading too much of the Dish lately.
The Dish 