Louis Bouyer, The Meaning of Sacred Scripture
   
Amos and the God of Justice

1. According to Fr. Bouyer: "As the religion of Israel is based on the intervention of God in the past, so it aspires toward what?

2. What expectation and hope did the Jewish people hold concerning the Day of Yahweh?

3. Fr. Bouyer says that, "The God in whom Israel believes is the God who is expected, and the God who is expected so that at last justice will be done."  Let's assume that's true.  Now ask yourself this: By whom will justice be done?  By Him?  Or by us?

4. For us today, says Bouyer, it seems entirely natural to represent the moral conscience as a divine voice.  Was it always so?

5. Just as each developing personality discovers justice in the experience of the first wrongs that are done to itself or it thinks have been done to it, so also, claims Bouyer, the sense of justice to be done on the day of judgment arose among the Jewish people where?

6. To whom, according to Bouyer, do we owe the beginning of the evolution by which Israel would go beyond the intuition that identified divine justice and the justice of Israel?

7. According to Bouyer, what was the expectation concerning divine judgment that seems to have been held in Israel at the time of the preaching of Amos?  How, in this regard, did Amos's preaching help to prepare the way for the coming of Christ?

8. Why, according to Fr. Bouyer, is the religion which considers confidence and security as entirely natural to the worshipper of the true God is not in the least a progress beyond the religion of fear?  And why, in addition, does the conviction of divine love always presuppose the previous journey by way of fear?    

9. What does Fr. Bouyer mean when he claims that Israel interpreted the Covenant the wrong way around?

10. Fr. Bouyer claims that, "Since Israel persists in seeing nothing in the Covenant but the promise, Amos will place, or replace in the forefront, the Lord's demand."  Explain what he means.

11. Later, he says this: "Nothing could be clearer: the reality of the Covenant, and therefore of the election of Israel, is integrally safeguarded ... its very grandeur makes it first of all a responsibility" [emphasis mine].  Compare Bouyer's comment with what the author of the article on "Covenant" from The Jerome Biblical Commentary says about whether the election of Israel should be seen as an election to a position of privilege? 

12. Bouyer claims that "two footholds for a complementary teaching are already to be found in Amos."  The first involves the hope that a remnant will emerge victorious from the trials they must face.  What is "the second germ of hope included in the inexorable teaching of Amos"?  

13.  How, according to Bouyer, does God judge our relations with Him?  Can you think of a passage in the New Testament that echoes this sentiment?

14. There is no demand made on man more to be feared than what?