Christoformity: to love another is to yearn for mutual Christoformity. This deserves a little expansion. The heart of the Old Testament’s “law” is the Shema, and the heart of the Shema is to love God with one’s heart, soul, and strength (Jesus adds “mind” in Mark 12:28–32). What is perhaps not noticed is how close love and obedience are in the Bible, not least because the covenant arrangement, after all, is borrowed from the ancient suzerainty treaty.33 Jon Levenson, in a monumentally important study
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