ABSTRACT
The denial of God’s activity in human life cut at the roots of the Prophets’ denunciations, pleadings and exhortations. It was a fundamental doctrine of their thought that His moral order dominates the lives of men, nations and humanity. The problem posed for theism by this glaring fact in human life was eased for the Prophets by their conception of community. The connection between morality and prosperity on the one hand, and, on the other, between sin and decay can be traced more easily in the lives of nations than in the lives of individuals. In the Prophets’ thought, therefore, the drama of human existence must reveal its plot, and significance, on earth. The arguments which the Prophets used to prove God’s activity in human life were for the irreligious. God’s love for Israel was both collective and distributive; it was love for the community and its individual members.
