So there seem to be some excellent social and moral reasons for conflating the Greatest Commandments. But there are some concerns here as well. Specifically, when the Greatest Commandments form an identity relationship, the vertical, transcendent pursuit of holiness and purity is collapsed into the horizontal, immanent affairs of human relationships. Something is both gained and lost in this collapse. The gain, as we have just noted, is obvious. The pleasing of God can never become dislocated from the treatment of the other. Sacrifice has been folded into mercy. Purity is identified with
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