People of the Book – Cain and Abel
The biblical reflections on injustice, violence, and the perennial reality of a disjunction in the divinely ordered plan of creation are consistent themes through the entire corpus of Scripture. The narrative of Cain and Abel, and the world’s first physical violence, embody many of the realities which men and women continue both to exhibit and suffer in the 21st century.
Like Adam, Cain disobeys the commandments of God, here the natural law written on every human heart not to take innocent life, murdering his brother because of jealousy, anger and rejection. The fratricidal tendencies to sever the bonds of family and friendship due to perceived injustice and rivalry which continue to be writ large on the human community through the ages are here described with power and incisiveness.
After the murder, Cain remains unrepentant. The International Critical Biblical Commentary explains: “Yahwe opens the inquisition, as in 3:9, with a question, which Cain, unlike Adam, answers with a defiant repudiation of responsibility. It is impossible to doubt that here the writer has the earlier scene before his mind, and consciously depicts a terrible advance in the power of sin” (108).
Cain has here repeated the pride of Adam’s first sin, seeking to take the place reserved to God alone, in this instance the sovereignty over life and death. However, Cain transcends even his father’s offense, mockingly asking that proud and self-absorbed response which is reflected in every instance of imposing our will on another to their detriment: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (4:9).
God’s response reflects that of the marginalized and outcast which are to this day oppressed through the actions of others: “What have you done! Listen, your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground” (4:10).
This notion, the blood of the righteous “crying out” to God, strikes so many chords with contemporary believers — the Right to Life efforts, the liberation theology movement, the silencing of prophets both ecclesiastical and not (think Oscar Romero, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, John Lennon). But it can also manifest itself in our more mundane daily lives. How many of us have soaked the soil of our hearts with the figurative blood of the innocent in petty grudges, slanders and dishonesties? Because of Abel’s position as the first such person to suffer unjustly, St. Augustine refers to the silent and often unrecognized blessed throughout the ages as the “Ecclesia ab Abel” — the church from Abel. Vatican II reiterated such a perspective (cf. Lumen Gentium 2).
God, the perfectly Good and perfectly Just, has a perfectly suitable punishment for Cain. His action cannot be condoned; thus he is banished and forced to live as a wanderer outside the settled life of Canaan in the lawlessness of the desert — a terrible fate in the ancient mindset under which the narrative arose. However, as in every instance, God tempers his justice with mercy. His punishment is mitigated by a “mark” on Cain’s body which would be recognizable, and therefore offers Cain immunity from the retributive “justice” which he himself had practiced.
The horrific deeds done in the name of this mark are well-documented, for it unquestionably had its role in the tragedies of the Middle Passage and the defense of institutionalized slavery by European and American Christians. This is not only a horribly misconstrued historical and cultural development, it is bad theology. Anyone who reads the story carefully can see that the mark is protective and not penal in function. It distinguishes Cain as one whose murder would be avenged by God sevenfold (4:15). To harm and enslave others based on such a faulty anthropological connection in the name of Christianity demands repentance and continual self-assessment so as to ensure nothing whatsoever in that vein continues to manifest itself in our day or within our personal worldview.
Modern secularist Regina Schwartz asks some piercing questions in her book “The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism.” As can be inferred from the subtitle, Schwarz posits much of the West’s tendency to divide the world into Some and Other, Preferred and Outcast, to the biblical heritage of its past.
She asks: “Why did God condemn Cain’s sacrifice? What would have happened if he had accepted both Cain’s and Abel’s offerings instead of choosing one, and had thereby promoted cooperation between the sower and the shepherd instead of their competition and violence? What kind of God chooses one sacrifice over the other? This God who excludes some and prefers others, who casts some out, is a monotheistic God… Cain kills in the rage of his exclusion. And the circle is vicious: because Cain is outcast, Abel is murdered and Cain is cast out. We are the descendants of Cain because we too live in a world where some are cast out, a world in which whatever law of scarcity made that ancient story describe only one sacrifice as acceptable — a scarcity of goods, land, labor, or whatever — still prevails to dictate the terms of a ferocious and fatal competition. Some lose.” (The Curse of Cain, 3-4).
While I disagree with Schwarz’s conclusion about the notion of a collective cultural identity steeped in violence being attributable largely to the biblical mindset, these are questions from which the theologian cannot shy away. They can shed light on who or what we think God is and is capable of, to whom he offers his favor, and what demands he imposes on our own lives. Who are we in the tale? Who are we casting out? And who are we called to forgive?
Michael M. Canaris of Collingswood is an administrator at Fairfield University’s Center for Faith and Public Life and is on the faculty for the Department of Philosophy, Theology, and Religious Studies at Sacred Heart University.
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