The Corporate Nature

One is born through a corporate nature — and this results in there being a relationship with certain others, immediately, where there is two inherent aspects. You are the same and you are other. There is in being the same an automatic responsibility for one another — the same as for one’s self. And there is in being different from one another an automatic accountability to negotiate boundaries and relationships within that mutual responsibility.

On one side, this is the the foundational essence of the Torah. It is the reason there is a commandment to not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you and to do unto others what you would have them do unto you. It is the reason that Rabbi Hillel said that this commandment is the whole of the Torah and that everything else is commentary. And yet, this is the foundational essence of the Torah only on one side. This is the foundational essence of the What and the How of the Torah.

On the other side is the foundational essence of the Why of the Torah, the Why we are born through a corporate nature. This is because the Torah is the Torah of God, Y-H-V-H Elohim, the Creator, Blessed Be He. It is His design. In the corporate nature of Adam is reflected the relationship designed for Adam to learn as the one and ones created with their Creator. As the corporate nature is organic, so the relationship of Creator with His creature is organic. This is both the mystery and the revelation of the corporate nature. Therefore the commandments of good faith conduct and faithfulness toward the Lord directly correspond to and parallel the commandment of good faith conduct and faithfulness toward the fellow human being. This is the other side of the foundational essence of the Torah. And one side cannot stand without the other. Therefore in being commanded to practice the Torah of the corporate nature in Adam, we are commanded at the same time in the same commandment to abide faithful in our relationship with God. This is the fullness of the corporate nature, as will be seen.

Since this family nature, as given in the Torah, is the essence of the foundation of the Torah, defining both responsibility and accountability, why are we, as all being children of Adam, differentiated into different families at all? Why are we not just one singular family? We must be asking this question in the most profound way if we will come, as we need to, to see the true profundity of the answer. And to ask this question in the most profound way we must be sure to understand and appreciate exactly what the corporate nature is in the first place, so that with all the clarity of, and the whole weight of, our mind and soul we can really ask, why do we have many families and not just one? Is it enough to say that all the 613 commandments given to Israel, if observed perfectly, would describe for us the corporate nature in all the ways we need to learn? By being perfectly obedient to God in every commandment of love for God and for our fellow human beings we would learn intellectually and experientially the meaning of being born in a family, of being born through a corporate nature. Having said this, we can ask in a more profound way, Why do we not have simply one single family, and why has it not been so since the beginning?

The answer, according to the Torah of Genesis, is that the single family of Adam was broken by sin. Through the sin of unfaithfulness and disobedience toward God, Adam became no longer the father of life to his son Cain, or to his daughters, or to his sons Abel, or Seth, but became unto them the father of death. Under those conditions, every child was confronted with the choice of whether they would sin as their parents had sinned, or whether they would act in faithfulness to God according to their corporate nature. It would never be possible for any son or daughter to naturally take the place of their first mother and father as the corporate head of the single family of all humankind. If this were to happen in some way, only God could cause this. But even so, it is not possible for humankind to live unless it tries to heal its broken corporate nature.

Every child of Adam, every son or daughter, every man or woman when becoming a father or mother, when giving birth were giving birth not only to an individual but to a new family, a new planting of the human family tree. In this way the corporate nature became something that was manifested in many instances, over and over again, many families, many tribes and nations. And this is the corporate nature of Adam broken into tribalism that determines the basic social challenge of human society to this day. For in the past, at many times and through many different ways, the children of Adam have tried to unify themselves into one single family through wisdom, through power, through faith, but all has failed until today, and today it has become necessary for survival itself. Therefore tribalism is seen as the singular greatest obstacle to overcome by those seeking to save humanity from self-destruction. But they neither know the Torah revealed to Israel nor the corporate nature of Adam on the day that God created Adam from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils and he became a living soul. Nor do they know God’s plan of redemption to repair Adam’s broken corporate nature. Still, despite their ignorance, it is in their very efforts to create one unified human family, despite the many perverse forms their efforts take, that their conscience lives and is vulnerable to the word of God.

Mellow Wolf Publishing