Jewish Theology, Systematically and Historically Considered
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Title: Jewish Theology, Systematically and Historically Considered
Author: Kaufmann Kohler
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JEWISH THEOLOGY, SYSTEMATICALLY AND HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED ***
Jewish Theology
Systematically and Historically Considered
By
Dr. K. Kohler
President
Hebrew Union College
New York
The Macmillan Company
1918
CONTENTS
Dedication
Preface
Introductory
Chapter I. The Meaning of Theology
Chapter II. What is Judaism?
Chapter III. The Essence of the Religion of Judaism
Chapter IV. The Jewish Articles of Faith
Part I. God
A. God As He Makes Himself Known To Man
Chapter V. Man’s Consciousness of God and Belief in God
Chapter VI. Revelation, Prophecy, and Inspiration
Chapter VII. The Torah—the Divine Instruction
Chapter VIII. God’s Covenant
B. The Idea Of God In Judaism
Chapter IX. God and the Gods
Chapter X. The Name of God
Chapter XI. The Existence of God
Chapter XII. The Essence of God
Chapter XIII. The One and Only God
Chapter XIV. God’s Omnipotence and Omniscience
Chapter XV. God’s Omnipresence and Eternity
Chapter XVI. God’s Holiness
Chapter XVII. God’s Wrath and Punishment
Chapter XVIII. God’s Long-suffering and Mercy
Chapter XIX. God’s Justice
Chapter XX. God’s Love and Compassion
Chapter XXI. God’s Truth and Faithfulness
Chapter XXII. God’s Knowledge and Wisdom
Chapter XXIII. God’s Condescension
C. God In Relation To The World
Chapter XXIV. The World and its Master
Chapter XXV. Creation As the Act of God
Chapter XXVI. The Maintenance and Government of the World
Chapter XXVII. Miracles and the Cosmic Order
Chapter XXVIII. Providence and the Moral Government of the World
Chapter XXIX. God and the Existence of Evil
Chapter XXX. God and the Angels
Chapter XXXI. Satan and the Spirits of Evil
Chapter XXXII. God and the Intermediary Powers
Part II. Man
Chapter XXXIII. Man’s Place in Creation
Chapter XXXIV. The Dual Nature of Man
Chapter XXXV. The Origin and Destiny of Man
Chapter XXXVI. God’s Spirit in Man
Chapter XXXVII. Free Will and Moral Responsibility
Chapter XXXVIII. The Meaning of Sin
Chapter XXXIX. Repentance Or the Return To God
Chapter XL. Man, the Child of God
Chapter XLI. Prayer and Sacrifice
Chapter XLII. The Nature and Purpose of Prayer
Chapter XLIII. Death and the Future Life
Chapter XLIV. The Immortal Soul of Man
Chapter XLV. Divine Retribution: Reward and Punishment.
Chapter XLVI. The Individual and the Race
Chapter XLVII. The Moral Elements of Civilization
Part III. Israel And The Kingdom Of God
Chapter XLVIII. The Election of Israel
Chapter XLIX. The Kingdom of God and the Mission of Israel
Chapter L. The Priest-people and its Law of Holiness
Chapter LI. Israel, the People of the Law, and its World Mission
Chapter LII. Israel, the Servant of the Lord, Martyr and Messiah Of the
Nations
Chapter LIII. The Messianic Hope
Chapter LIV. Resurrection, a National Hope
Chapter LV. Israel and the Heathen Nations
Chapter LVI. The Stranger and the Proselyte
Chapter LVII. Christianity and Mohammedanism, the Daughter-Religions Of
Judaism
Chapter LVIII. The Synagogue and its Institutions
Chapter LIX. The Ethics of Judaism and the Kingdom of God
List Of Abbreviations
Index
Footnotes
DEDICATION
To The Memory
Of
EDWARD L. HEINSHEIMER
THE LAMENTED PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF GOVERNORS OF
THE HEBREW UNION COLLEGE
IN WHOM ZEAL FOR THE HIGH IDEALS
OF JUDAISM AND PATRIOTIC DEVOTION
TO OUR BLESSED COUNTRY WERE
NOBLY EMBODIED
In Friendship And
Affection
PREFACE
In offering herewith to the English-reading public the present work on
Jewish Theology, the result of many years of research and of years of
activity as President and teacher at the Hebrew Union College of
Cincinnati, I bespeak for it that fairness of judgment to which every
pioneer work is entitled. It may seem rather strange that no such work has
hitherto been written by any of the leading Jewish scholars of either the
conservative or the progressive school. This can only be accounted for by
the fact that up to modern times the Rabbinical and philosophical
literature of the Middle Ages sufficed for the needs of the student, and a
systematic exposition of the Jewish faith seemed to be unnecessary.
Besides, a real demand for the specific study of Jewish theology was
scarcely felt, inasmuch as Judaism never assigned to a creed the prominent
position which it holds in the Christian Church. This very fact induced
Moses Mendelssohn at the beginning of the new era to declare that Judaism
“contained only truths dictated by reason and no dogmatic beliefs at all.”
Moreover, as he was rather a deist than a theist, he stated boldly that
Judaism “is not a revealed religion but a revealed law intended solely for
the Jewish people as the vanguard of universal monotheism.” By taking this
legalistic view of Judaism in common with the former opponents of the
Maimonidean articles of faith—which, by the way, he had himself translated
for the religious instruction of the Jewish youth—he exerted a
deteriorating influence upon the normal development of the Jewish faith
under the new social conditions. The fact is that Mendelssohn emancipated
the modern Jew from the thraldom of the Ghetto, but not Judaism. In the
Mendelssohnian circle the impression prevailed, as we are told, that
Judaism consists of a system of forms, but is substantially no religion at
all. The entire Jewish renaissance period which followed,
characteristically enough, made the cultivation of the so-called science
of Judaism its object, but it neglected altogether the whole field of
Jewish theology. Hence we look in vain among the writings of Rappaport,
Zunz, Jost and their followers, the entire Breslau school, for any attempt
at presenting the contents of Judaism as a system of faith. Only the
pioneers of Reform Judaism, Geiger, Holdheim, Samuel Hirsch, Formstecher,
Ludwig Philippson, Leopold Stein, Leopold Loew, and the Reform theologian
_par excellence_ David Einhorn, and likewise, Isaac M. Wise in America,
made great efforts in that direction. Still a system of Jewish theology
was wanting. Accordingly when, at the suggestion of my dear departed
friend, Dr. Gustav Karpeles, President of the Society for the Promotion of
the Science of Judaism in Berlin, I undertook to write a compendium
(Grundriss) of Systematic Jewish Theology, which appeared in 1910 as Vol.
IV in a series of works on Systematic Jewish Lore (Grundriss der
Gesammtwissenschaft des Judenthums), I had no work before me that might
have served me as pattern or guide. Solomon Schechter’s valuable studies
were in the main confined to Rabbinical Theology. As a matter of fact I
accepted the task only with the understanding that it should be written
from the view-point of historical research, instead of a mere dogmatic or
doctrinal system. For in my opinion the Jewish religion has never been
static, fixed for all time by an ecclesiastical authority, but has ever
been and still is the result of a dynamic process of growth and
development. At the same time I felt that I could not omit the mystical
element which pervades the Jewish religion in common with all others. As
our prophets were seers and not philosophers or moralists, so divine
inspiration in varying degrees constituted a factor of Synagogal as well
as Scriptural Judaism. Revelation, therefore, is to be considered as a
continuous force in shaping and reshaping the Jewish faith. The religious
genius of the Jew falls within the domain of ethnic psychology concerning
which science still gropes in the dark, but which progressive Judaism is
bound to recognize in its effects throughout the ages.
It is from this standpoint, taken also by the sainted founder of the
Hebrew Union College, Isaac M. Wise, that I have written this book. At the
same time I endeavored to be, as it behooves the historian, just and fair
to Conservative Judaism, which will ever claim the reverence we owe to our
cherished past, the mother that raised and nurtured us.
While a work of this nature cannot lay claim to completeness, I have
attempted to cover the whole field of Jewish belief, including also such
subjects as no longer form parts of the religious consciousness of the
modern Jew. I felt especially called upon to elucidate the historical
relations of Judaism to the Christian and Mohammedan religions and dwell
on the essential points of divergence from them. If my language at times
has been rather vigorous in defense of the Jewish faith, it was because I
was forced to correct and refute the prevailing view of the Christian
world, of both theologians and others, that Judaism is an inferior
religion, clannish and exclusive, that it is, in fact, a cult of the Old
Testament Law.
It was a matter of great personal satisfaction to me that the German work
on its appearance met with warm appreciation in the various theological
journals of America, England, and France, as well as of Germany, including
both Jewish and Christian. I was encouraged and urged by many “soon to
make the book accessible to wider circles in an English translation.” My
friend, Dr. Israel Abrahams of Cambridge, England, took such interest in
the book that he induced a young friend of his to prepare an English
version. While this did not answer the purpose, it was helpful to me in
making me feel that, instead of a literal translation, a thorough revision
and remolding of the book was necessary in order to present it in an
acceptable English garb. In pursuing this course, I also enlarged the book
in many ways, especially adding a new chapter on Jewish Ethics, which, in
connection with the idea of the Kingdom of God, appeared to me to form a
fitting culmination of Jewish theology. I have thus rendered it
practically a new work. And here I wish to acknowledge my great
indebtedness to my young friend and able pupil, Rabbi Lee J. Levinger, for
the valuable aid he has rendered me and the painstaking labor he has
kindly and unselfishly performed in going over my manuscript from
beginning to end, with a view to revising the diction and also suggesting
references to more recent publications in the notes so as to bring it up
to date.
I trust that the work will prove a source of information and inspiration
for both student and layman, Jew and non-Jew, and induce such as have
become indifferent to, or prejudiced against, the teachings of the
Synagogue, or of Reform Judaism in particular, to take a deeper insight
into, and look up with a higher regard to the sublime and eternal verities
of Judaism.
“Give to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser; teach a righteous man, and
he will increase in learning.”
CINCINNATI, November, 1917.
INTRODUCTORY
Chapter I. The Meaning of Theology
1. The name Theology, “the teaching concerning God,” is taken from Greek
philosophy. It was used by Plato and Aristotle to denote the knowledge
concerning God and things godly, by which they meant the branch of
Philosophy later called Metaphysics, after Aristotle. In the Christian
Church the term gradually assumed the meaning of systematic exposition of
the creed, a distinction being made between _Rational_, or _Natural
Theology_, on the one hand, and _Dogmatic Theology_, on the other.(1) In
common usage Theology is understood to be the presentation of one specific
system of faith after some logical method, and a distinction is made
between _Historical_ and _Systematic Theology_. The former traces the
various doctrines of the faith in question through the different epochs
and stages of culture, showing their historical process of growth and
development; the latter presents these same doctrines in comprehensive
form as a fixed system, as they have finally been elaborated and accepted
upon the basis of the sacred scriptures and their authoritative
interpretation.
2. Theology and Philosophy of Religion differ widely in their character.
Theology deals exclusively with a specific religion; in expounding one
doctrinal system, it starts from a positive belief in a divine revelation
and in the continued working of the divine spirit, affecting also the
interpretation and further development of the sacred books. Philosophy of
Religion, on the other hand, while dealing with the same subject matter as
Theology, treats religion from a general point of view as a matter of
experience, and, as every philosophy must, without any foregone
conclusion. Consequently it submits the beliefs and doctrines of religion
in general to an impartial investigation, recognizing neither a divine
revelation nor the superior claims of any one religion above any other,
its main object being to ascertain how far the universal laws of human
reason agree or disagree with the assertions of faith.(2)
3. It is therefore incorrect to speak of a Jewish religious philosophy.
This has no better right to exist than has Jewish metaphysics or Jewish
mathematics.(3) The Jewish thinkers of the Spanish-Arabic period who
endeavored to harmonize revelation and reason, utilizing the Neo-Platonic
philosophy or the Aristotelian with a Neo-Platonic coloring, betray by
their very conceptions of revelation and prophecy the influence of
Mohammedan theology; this was really a graft of metaphysics on theology
and called itself the “divine science,” a term corresponding exactly with
the Greek “theology.” The so-called Jewish religious philosophers adopted
both the methods and terminology of the Mohammedan theologians, attempting
to present the doctrines of the Jewish faith in the light of philosophy,
as truth based on reason. Thus they claimed to construct a Jewish theology
upon the foundation of a philosophy of religion.
But neither they nor their Mohammedan predecessors succeeded in working
out a complete system of theology. They left untouched essential elements
of religion which do not come within the sphere of rational verities, and
did not give proper appreciation to the rich treasures of faith deposited
in the Biblical and Rabbinical literature. Nor does the comprehensive
theological system of Maimonides, which for centuries largely shaped the
intellectual life of the Jew, form an exception. Only the mystics, Bahya
at their head, paid attention to the spiritual side of Judaism, dwelling
at length on such themes as prayer and repentance, divine forgiveness and
holiness.
4. Closer acquaintance with the religious and philosophical systems of
modern times has created a new demand for a Jewish theology by which the
Jew can comprehend his own religious truths in the light of modern
thought, and at the same time defend them against the aggressive attitude
of the ruling religious sects. Thus far, however, the attempts made in
this direction are but feeble and sporadic; if the structure is not to
stand altogether in the air, the necessary material must be brought
together from its many sources with painstaking labor.(4) The special
difficulty in the task lies in the radical difference which exists between
our view of the past and that of the Biblical and medieval writers. All
those things which have heretofore been taken as facts because related in
the sacred books or other traditional sources, are viewed to-day with
critical eyes, and are now regarded as more or less colored by human
impression or conditioned by human judgment. In other words, we have
learned to distinguish between _subjective_ and _objective_ truths,(5)
whereas theology by its very nature deals with truth as absolute. This
makes it imperative for us to investigate historically the leading idea or
fundamental principle underlying a doctrine, to note the different
conceptions formed at various stages, and trace its process of growth. At
times, indeed, we may find that the views of one age have rather taken a
backward step and fallen below the original standard. The progress need
not be uniform, but we must still trace its course.
5. We must recognize at the outset that Jewish theology cannot assume the
character of _apologetics_, if it is to accomplish its great task of
formulating religious truth as it exists in our consciousness to-day. It
can no more afford to ignore the established results of modern linguistic,
ethnological, and historical research, of Biblical criticism and
comparative religion, than it can the undisputed facts of natural science,
however much any of these may conflict with the Biblical view of the
cosmos. Apologetics has its legitimate place to prove and defend the
truths of Jewish theology against other systems of belief and thought, but
cannot properly defend either Biblical or Talmudic statements by methods
incompatible with scientific investigation. Judaism is a religion of
_historical_ growth, which, far from claiming to be the final truth, is
ever regenerated anew at each turning point of history. The fall of the
leaves at autumn requires no apology, for each successive spring testifies
anew to nature’s power of resurrection.
The object of a systematic theology of Judaism, accordingly, is to single
out the essential forces of the faith. It then will become evident how
these fundamental doctrines possess a vitality, a strength of conviction,
as well as an adaptability to varying conditions, which make them potent
factors amidst all changes of time and circumstance. According to
Rabbinical tradition, the broken tablets of the covenant were deposited in
the ark beside the new. In like manner the truths held sacred by the past,
but found inadequate in their expression for a new generation, must be
placed side by side with the deeper and more clarified truths of an
advanced age, that they may appear together as the _one_ divine truth
reflected in different rays of light.
6. Jewish theology differs radically from Christian theology in the
following three points:
_A._ The theology of Christianity deals with articles of faith formulated
by the founders and heads of the Church as conditions of _salvation_, so
that any alteration in favor of free thought threatens to undermine the
very plan of salvation upon which the Church was founded. Judaism
recognizes only such articles of faith as were adopted by the people
voluntarily as expressions of their religious consciousness, both without
external compulsion and without doing violence to the dictates of reason.
Judaism does not know salvation by faith in the sense of Paul, the real
founder of the Church, who declared the blind acceptance of belief to be
in itself meritorious. It denies the existence of any irreconcilable
opposition between faith and reason.
_B._ Christian theology rests upon a _formula of confession_, the
so-called Symbolum of the Apostolic Church,(6) which alone makes one a
Christian. Judaism has no such formula of confession which renders a Jew a
Jew. No ecclesiastical authority ever dictated or regulated the belief of
the Jew; his faith has been voiced in the solemn liturgical form of
prayer, and has ever retained its freshness and vigor of thought in the
consciousness of the people. This partly accounts for the antipathy toward
any kind of dogma or creed among Jews.
_C._ The creed is a _conditio sine qua non_ of the Christian Church. To
disbelieve its dogmas is to cut oneself loose from membership. Judaism is
quite different. The Jew is _born_ into it and cannot extricate himself
from it even by the renunciation of his faith, which would but render him
an apostate Jew. This condition exists, because the racial community
formed, and still forms, the basis of the religious community. It is
birth, not confession, that imposes on the Jew the obligation to work and
strive for the eternal verities of Israel, for the preservation and
propagation of which he has been chosen by the God of history.
7. The truth of the matter is that the aim and end of Judaism is not so
much the salvation of the soul in the hereafter as the salvation of
humanity in history. Its theology, therefore, must recognize the history
of human progress, with which it is so closely interwoven. It does not,
therefore, claim to offer the final or absolute truth, as does Christian
theology, whether orthodox or liberal. It simply points out the way
leading to the highest obtainable truth. Final and perfect truth is held
forth as the ideal of all human searching and striving, together with
perfect justice, righteousness, and peace, to be attained as the very end
of history.
A systematic theology of Judaism must, accordingly, content itself with
presenting Jewish doctrine and belief in relation to the most advanced
scientific and philosophical ideas of the age, so as to offer a
comprehensive view of life and the world (“Lebens- und Weltanschauung”);
but it by no means claims for them the character of finality. The
unfolding of Judaism’s truths will be completed only when all mankind has
attained the heights of Zion’s mount of vision, as beheld by the prophets
of Israel.(7)
Chapter II. What is Judaism?
1. It is very difficult to give an exact definition of Judaism because of
its peculiarly complex character.(8) It combines two widely differing
elements, and when they are brought out separately, the aspect of the
whole is not taken sufficiently into account. Religion and race form an
inseparable whole in Judaism. The Jewish people stand in the same relation
to Judaism as the _body_ to the _soul_. The national or racial body of
Judaism consists of the remnant of the tribe of Judah which succeeded in
establishing a new commonwealth in Judæa in place of the ancient
Israelitish kingdom, and which survived the downfall of state and temple
to continue its existence as a separate people during a dispersion over
the globe for thousands of years, forming ever a cosmopolitan element
among all the nations in whose lands it dwelt. Judaism, on the other hand,
is the religious system itself, the vital element which united the Jewish
people, preserving it and regenerating it ever anew. It is the spirit
which endowed the handful of Jews with a power of resistance and a fervor
of faith unparalleled in history, enabling them to persevere in the mighty
contest with heathenism and Christianity. It made of them a nation of
martyrs and thinkers, suffering and struggling for the cause of truth and
justice, yet forming, consciously or unconsciously, a potent factor in all
the great intellectual movements which are ultimately to win the entire
gentile world for the purest and loftiest truths concerning God and man.
2. Judaism, accordingly, does not denote the Jewish nationality, with its
political and cultural achievements and aspirations, as those who have
lost faith in the religious mission of Israel would have it. On the other
hand, it is not a nomistic or legalistic religion confined to the Jewish
people, as is maintained by Christian writers, who, lacking a full
appreciation of its lofty world-wide purpose and its cosmopolitan and
humanitarian character, claim that it has surrendered its universal
prophetic truths to Christianity. Nor should it be presented as a religion
of pure _Theism_, aiming to unite all believers in one God into a Church
Universal, of which certain visionaries dream. Judaism is nothing less
than a message concerning the _One and holy God_ and _one, undivided
humanity_ with a world-uniting _Messianic goal_, a message intrusted by
divine revelation to the Jewish people. Thus Israel is its prophetic
harbinger and priestly guardian, its witness and defender throughout the
ages, who is never to falter in the task of upholding and unfolding its
truths until they have become the possession of the whole human race.
3. Owing to this twofold nature of a universal religious truth and at the
same time a mission intrusted to a specially selected nation or race,
Judaism offers in a sense the sharpest contrasts imaginable, which render
it an enigma to the student of religion and history, and make him often
incapable of impartial judgment. On the one hand, it shows the most
tenacious adherence to forms originally intended to preserve the Jewish
people in its priestly sanctity and separateness, and thereby also to keep
its religious truths pure and free from encroachments. On the other hand,
it manifests a mighty impulse to come into close touch with the various
civilized nations, partly in order to disseminate among them its sublime
truths, appealing alike to mind and heart, partly to clarify and deepen
those truths by assimilating the wisdom and culture of these very nations.
Thus the spirit of separatism and of universalism work in opposite
directions. Still, however hostile the two elements may appear, they
emanate from the same source. For the Jewish people, unlike any other
civilization of antiquity, entered history with the proud claim that it
possessed a truth destined to become some day the property of mankind, and
its three thousand years of history have verified this claim.
Israel’s relation to the world thus became a double one. Its priestly
world-mission gave rise to all those laws and customs which were to
separate it from its idolatrous surroundings, and this occasioned the
charge of hostility to the nations. The accusation of Jewish misanthropy
occurred as early as the Balaam and Haman stories. As the separation
continued through the centuries, a deep-seated Jew-hatred sprang up, first
in Alexandria and Rome, then becoming a consuming fire throughout
Christendom, unquenched through the ages and bursting forth anew, even
from the midst of would-be liberals. In contrast to this, Israel’s
prophetic ideal of a humanity united in justice and peace gave to history
a new meaning and a larger outlook, kindling in the souls of all truly
great leaders and teachers, seers and sages of mankind a love and longing
for the broadening of humanity which opened new avenues of progress and
liberty. Moreover, by its conception of man as the image of God and its
teaching of righteousness as the true path of life, Israel’s Law
established a new standard of human worth and put the imprint of Jewish
idealism upon the entire Aryan civilization.
Owing to these two opposing forces, the one centripetal, the other
centrifugal, Judaism tended now inward, away from world-culture, now
outward toward the learning and the thought of all nations; and this makes
it doubly difficult to obtain a true estimate of its character. But, after
all, these very currents and counter-currents at the different eras of
history kept Judaism in continuous tension and fluctuation, preventing its
stagnation by dogmatic formulas and its division by ecclesiastical
dissensions. “Both words are the words of the living God” became the maxim
of the contending schools.(9)
4. If we now ask what period we may fix as the beginning of Judaism, we
must by no means single out the decisive moment when Ezra the Scribe
established the new commonwealth of Judæa, based upon the Mosaic book of
Law, and excluding the Samaritans who claimed to be the heirs of ancient
Israel. This important step was but the climax, the fruitage of that
religious spirit engendered by the Judaism of the Babylonian exile. The
Captivity had become a refining furnace for the people, making them cling
with a zeal unknown before to the teachings of the prophets, now offered
by their disciples, and to the laws, as preserved by the priestly guilds;
so the religious treasures of the few became the common property of the
many, and were soon regarded as “the inheritance of the whole congregation
of Jacob.” As a matter of fact, Ezra represents the culmination rather
than the starting point of the great spiritual reawakening, when he came
from Babylon with a complete Code of Law, and promulgated it in the Holy
City to a worshipful congregation.(10) It was Judaism, winged with a new
spirit, which carried the great unknown seer of the Exile to the very
pinnacle of prophetic vision, and made the Psalmists ring forth from the
harp of David the deepest soul-stirring notes of religious devotion and
aspiration that ever moved the hearts of men. Moreover, all the great
truths of prophetic revelation, of legislative and popular wisdom, were
then collected and focused, creating a sacred literature which was to
serve the whole community as the source of instruction, consolation, and
edification. The powerful and unique institutions of the Synagogue,
intended for common instruction and devotion, are altogether creations of
the Exile, and replaced the former _priestly_ Torah by the Torah _for the
people_. More wonderful still, the priestly lore of ancient Babylon was
transformed by sublime monotheistic truths and utilized in the formation
of a sacred literature; it was placed before the history of the Hebrew
patriarchs, to form, as it were, an introduction to the Bible of humanity.
Judaism, then, far from being the late product of the Torah and tradition,
as it is often considered, was actually the creator of the Law.
Transformed and unfolded in Babylonia, it created its own sacred
literature and shaped it ever anew, filling it always with its own spirit
and with new thoughts. It is by no means the petrifaction of the Mosaic
law and the prophetic teachings, as we are so often told, but a continuous
process of unfolding and regeneration of its great religious truth.
5. True enough, traditional or orthodox Judaism does not share this view.
The idea of gradual development is precluded by its conception of divine
revelation, by its doctrine that both the oral and the written Torah were
given at Sinai complete and unchangeable for all time. It makes allowance
only for special institutions begun either by the prophets, by Ezra and
the Men of the Great Synagogue, his associates, or by the masters of the
Law in succeeding centuries. Nevertheless, tradition says that the Men of
the Great Synagogue themselves collected and partly completed the sacred
books, except the five books of Moses, and that the canon was made under
the influence of the holy spirit. This holy spirit remained in force also
during the creative period of Talmudism, sanctioning innovations or
alterations of many kinds.(11) Modern critical and historical research has
taught us to distinguish the products of different periods and stages of
development in both the Biblical and Rabbinical sources, and therefore
compels us to reject the idea of a uniform origin of the Law, and also of
an uninterrupted chain of tradition reaching back to Moses on Sinai.
Therefore we must attach still more importance to the process of
transformation which Judaism had to undergo through the centuries.(12)
Judaism manifested its wondrous power of _assimilation_ by renewing itself
to meet the demands of the time, first under the influence of the ancient
civilizations, Babylonia and Persia, then of Greece and Rome, finally of
the Occidental powers, molding its religious truths and customs in ever
new forms, but all in consonance with its own genius. It adopted the
Babylonian and Persian views of the hereafter, of the upper and the nether
world with their angels and demons; so later on it incorporated into its
religious and legal system elements of Greek and Egyptian gnosticism,
Greek philosophy, and methods of jurisprudence from Egypt, Babylon, and
Rome. In fact, the various parties which arose during the second Temple
beside each other or successively—Sadducees and Pharisees, Essenes and
Zealots—represent, on closer observation, the different stages in the
process of assimilation which Judaism had to undergo. In like manner, the
Hellenistic, Apocryphal and Apocalyptic literature, which was rejected and
lost to sight by traditional Judaism, and which partly fills the gap
between the Bible and the Talmudic writings, casts a flood of light upon
the development of the Halakah and the Haggadah. Just as the book of
Ezekiel, which was almost excluded from the Canon on account of its
divergence from the Mosaic Law, has been helpful in tracing the
development of the Priestly Code,(13) so the Sadduceean book of Ben
Sira(14) and the Zealotic book of Jubilees(15)—not to mention the various
Apocalyptic works—throw their searchlight upon pre-Talmudic Judaism.
6. Instead of representing Judaism—as the Christian theologians do under
the guise of scientific methods—as a nomistic religion, caring only for
the external observance of the Law, it is necessary to distinguish two
opposite fundamental tendencies; the one expressing the spirit of
legalistic nationalism, the other that of ethical or prophetic
universalism. These two work by turn, directing the general trend in the
one or the other direction according to circumstances. At one time the
center and focus of Israel’s religion is the Mosaic Law, with its
sacrificial cult in charge of the priesthood of Jerusalem’s Temple; at
another time it is the Synagogue, with its congregational devotion and
public instruction, its inspiring song of the Psalmist and its prophetic
consolation and hope confined to no narrow territory, but opened wide for
a listening world. Here it is the reign of the _Halakah_ holding fast to
the form of tradition, and there the free and fanciful _Haggadah_, with
its appeal to the sentiments and views of the people. Here it is the
spirit of _ritualism_, bent on separating the Jews from the influence of
foreign elements, and there again the spirit of _rationalism_, eager to
take part in general culture and in the progress of the outside world.
The liberal views of Maimonides and Gersonides concerning miracle and
revelation, God and immortality were scarcely shared by the majority of
Jews, who, no doubt, sided rather with the mystics, and found their
mouthpiece in Abraham ben David of Posquieres, the fierce opponent of
Maimonides. An impartial Jewish theology must therefore take cognizance of
both sides; it must include the mysticism of Isaac Luria and Sabbathai
Horwitz as well as the rationalism of Albo and Leo da Modena. Wherever is
voiced a new doctrine or a new view of life and life’s duty, which yet
bears the imprint of the Jewish consciousness, there the well-spring of
divine inspiration is seen pouring forth its living waters.
7. Even the latest interpretation of the Law, offered by a disciple who is
recognized for true conscientiousness in religion, was revealed to Moses
on Sinai, according to a Rabbinical dictum.(16) Thus is exquisitely
expressed the idea of a continuous development of Israel’s religious
truth. As a safeguard against arbitrary individualism, there was the
principle of loyalty and proper regard for tradition, which is aptly
termed by Professor Lazarus a “historical continuity.”(17) The Midrashic
statement is quite significant that other creeds founded on our Bible can
only adhere to the letter, but the Jewish religion possesses the key to
the deeper meaning hidden and presented in the _traditional_
interpretation of the Scriptures.(18) That is, for Judaism Holy Scripture
in its literal sense is not the final word of God; the Bible is rather a
living spring of divine revelation, to be kept ever fresh and flowing by
the active force of the spirit. To sum up: Judaism, far from offering a
system of beliefs and ceremonies fixed for all time, is as multifarious
and manifold in its aspects as is life itself. It comprises all phases and
characteristics of both a national and a world religion.
Chapter III. The Essence of the Religion of Judaism
1. We have seen how difficult it is to define Judaism clearly and
adequately, including its manifold tendencies and institutions. Still it
is necessary that we reach a full understanding of the essence of Judaism
as it manifested itself in all periods of its history,(19) and that we
single out the fundamental idea which underlies its various forms of
existence and its different movements, both intellectual and spiritual.
There can be no disputing the fact that the central idea of Judaism and
its life purpose is the doctrine of the One Only and Holy God, whose
kingdom of truth, justice and peace is to be universally established at
the end of time. This is the main teaching of Scripture and the hope
voiced in the liturgy; while Israel’s mission to defend, to unfold and to
propagate this truth is a corollary of the doctrine itself and cannot be
separated from it. Whether we regard it as Law or a system of doctrine, as
religious truth or world-mission, this belief pledged the little tribe of
Judah to a warfare of many thousands of years against the hordes of
heathendom with all their idolatry and brutality, their deification of man
and their degradation of deity to human rank. It betokened a battle for
the pure idea of God and man, which is not to end until the principle of
divine holiness has done away with every form of life that tends to
degrade and to disunite mankind, and until Israel’s Only One has become
the unifying power and the highest ideal of all humanity.
2. Of this great world-duty of Israel only the few will ever become fully
conscious. As in the days of the prophets, so in later periods, only a
“small remnant” was fully imbued with the lofty ideal. In times of
oppression the great multitude of the people persisted in a conscientious
observance of the Law and underwent suffering without a murmur. Yet in
times of liberty and enlightenment this same majority often neglects to
assimilate the new culture to its own superior spirit, but instead eagerly
assimilates itself to the surrounding world, and thereby loses much of its
intrinsic strength and self-respect. The pendulum of thought and sentiment
swings to and fro between the national and the universal ideals, while
only a few maturer minds have a clear vision of the goal as it is to be
reached along both lines of development. Nevertheless, Judaism is in a
true sense a religion of the people. It is free from all priestly tutelage
and hierarchical interference. It has no ecclesiastical system of belief,
guarded and supervised by men invested with superior powers. Its teachers
and leaders have always been men from among the people, like the prophets
of yore, with no sacerdotal privilege or title; in fact, in his own
household each father is the God-appointed teacher of his children.(20)
3. Neither is Judaism the creation of a single person, either prophet or a
man with divine claims. It points back to the patriarchs as its first
source of revelation. It speaks not of the God of Moses, of Amos and
Isaiah, but of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, thereby declaring the
Jewish genius to be the creator of its own religious ideas. It is
therefore incorrect to speak of a “Mosaic,” “Hebrew,” or “Israelitish,”
religion. The name _Judaism_ alone expresses the preservation of the
religious heritage of Israel by the tribe of Judah, with a loyalty which
was first displayed by Judah himself in the patriarchal household, and
which became its characteristic virtue in the history of the various
tribes. Likewise the rigid measures of Ezra in expelling all foreign
elements from the new commonwealth proved instrumental in impressing
loyalty and piety upon Jewish family life.
4. As it was bound up with the life of the Jewish people, Judaism remained
forever in close touch with the world. Therefore it appreciated adequately
the boons of life, and escaped being reduced to the shadowy form of
“otherworldliness.”(21) It is a religion of _life_, which it wishes to
sanctify by duty rather than by laying stress on the hereafter. It looks
to the _deed_ and the purity of the _motive_, not to the empty creed and
the blind belief. Nor is it a religion of _redemption_, contemning this
earthly life; for Judaism repudiates the assumption of a radical power of
evil in man or in the world. Faith in the ultimate triumph of the good is
essential to it. In fact, this perfect confidence in the final victory of
truth and justice over all the powers of falsehood and wrong lent it both
its wondrous intellectual force and its high idealism, and adorned its
adherents with the martyr’s crown of thorns, such as no other human brow
has ever borne.
5. _Christianity_ and _Islam_, notwithstanding their alienation from
Judaism and frequent hostility, are still daughter-religions. In so far as
they have sown the seeds of Jewish truth over all the globe and have done
their share in upbuilding the Kingdom of God on earth, they must be
recognized as divinely appointed emissaries and agencies. Still Judaism
sets forth its doctrine of God’s unity and of life’s holiness in a far
superior form than does Christianity. It neither permits the deity to be
degraded into the sphere of the sensual and human, nor does it base its
morality upon a love bereft of the vital principle of justice. Against the
rigid monotheism of Islam, which demands blind submission to the stern
decrees of inexorable fate, Judaism on the other hand urges its belief in
God’s paternal love and mercy, which educates all the children of men,
through trial and suffering, for their high destiny.
6. Judaism denies most emphatically the right of Christianity or any other
religion to arrogate to itself the title of “the absolute religion” or to
claim to be “the finest blossom and the ripest fruit of religious
development.” As if any mortal man at any time or under any condition
could say without presumption: “I am the Truth” or “No one cometh unto the
Father but by me.”(22) “When man was to proceed from the hands of his
Maker,” says the Midrash, “the Holy One, Blessed be His name, cast truth
down to the earth, saying, ‘Let truth spring forth from the earth, and
righteousness look down from heaven.’ ”(23) The full unfolding of the
religious and moral life of mankind is the work of countless generations
yet to come, and many divine heralds of truth and righteousness have yet
to contribute their share. In this work of untold ages, Judaism claims
that it has achieved and is still achieving its full part as the prophetic
world-religion. Its law of righteousness, which takes for its scope the
whole of human life, in its political and social relations as well as its
personal aspects, forms the foundation of its ethics for all time; while
its hope for a future realization of the Kingdom of God has actually
become the aim of human history. As a matter of fact, when the true object
of religion is the hallowing of life rather than the salvation of the
soul, there is little room left for sectarian exclusiveness, or for a
heaven for believers and a hell for unbelievers. With this broad outlook
upon life, Judaism lays claim, not to perfection, but to perfectibility;
it has supreme capacity for growing toward the highest ideals of mankind,
as beheld by the prophets in their Messianic visions.
Chapter IV. The Jewish Articles of Faith
1. In order to reach a clear opinion, whether or not Judaism has articles
of faith in the sense of Church dogmas, a question so much discussed since
the days of Moses Mendelssohn, it seems necessary first to ascertain what
faith in general means to the Jew.(24) Now the word used in Jewish
literature for faith is _Emunah_, from the root _Aman_, to be firm; this
denotes firm reliance upon God, and likewise firm adherence to him, hence
both _faith_ and _faithfulness_. Both Scripture and the Rabbis demanded
confiding trust in God, His messengers, and His words, not the formal
acceptance of a prescribed belief.(25) Only when contact with the
non-Jewish world emphasized the need for a clear expression of the belief
in the unity of God, such as was found in the Shema,(26) and when the
proselyte was expected to declare in some definite form the fundamentals
of the faith he espoused, was the importance of a concrete _confession_
felt.(27) Accordingly we find the beginnings of a formulated belief in the
synagogal liturgy, in the _Emeth we __ Yatzib_(28) and the _Alenu_,(29)
while in the Haggadah Abraham is represented both as the exemplar of a
hero of faith and as the type of a missionary, wandering about to lead the
heathen world towards the pure monotheistic faith.(30) While the Jewish
concept of faith underwent a certain transformation, influenced by other
systems of belief, and the formulation of Jewish doctrines appeared
necessary, particularly in opposition to the Christian and Mohammedan
creeds, still belief never became the essential part of religion,
conditioning salvation, as in the Church founded by Paul. For, as pointed
out above, Judaism lays all stress upon conduct, not confession; upon a
hallowed life, not a hollow creed.
2. There is no Biblical nor Rabbinical precept, “Thou shalt believe!”
Jewish thinkers felt all the more the need to point out as fundamentals or
roots of Judaism those doctrines upon which it rests, and from which it
derives its vital force. To the rabbis, the “root” of faith is the
recognition of a divine Judge to whom we owe account for all our
doings.(31) The recital of the _Shema_, which is called in the Mishnah
“accepting the yoke of God’s sovereignty,” and which is followed by the
solemn affirmation, “True and firm belief is this for us”(32) (_Emeth we
Yatzib_ or _Emeth we Emunah_), is, in fact, the earliest form of the
confession of faith.(33) In the course of time this confession of belief
in the unity of God was no longer deemed sufficient to serve as basis for
the whole structure of Judaism; so the various schools and authorities
endeavored to work out in detail a series of fundamental doctrines.
3. The Mishnah, in Sanhedrin, X, 1, which seems to date back to the
beginnings of Pharisaism, declares the following three to have no share in
the world to come: he who denies the resurrection of the dead; he who says
that the Torah—both the written and the oral Law—is not divinely revealed;
and the Epicurean, who does not believe in the moral government of the
world.(34) We find here (in reverse order, owing to historical
conditions), the beliefs in Revelation, Retribution, and the Hereafter
singled out as the three fundamentals of Rabbinical Judaism. Rabbi
Hananel, the great North African Talmudist, about the middle of the tenth
century, seems to have been under the influence of Mohammedan and Karaite
doctrines, when he speaks of four fundamentals of the faith: God, the
prophets, the future reward and punishment, and the Messiah.(35)
4. The doctrine of the One and Only God stands, as a matter of course, in
the foreground. Philo of Alexandria, at the end of his treatise on
Creation, singles out five principles which are bound up with it, viz.: 1,
God’s existence and His government of the world; 2, His unity; 3, the
world as His creation; 4, the harmonious plan by which it was established;
and 5, His Providence. Josephus, too, in his apology for Judaism written
against Apion,(36) emphasizes the belief in God’s all-encompassing
Providence, His incorporeality, and His self-sufficiency as the Creator of
the universe.
The example of Islam, which had very early formulated a confession of
faith of speculative character for daily recitation,(37) influenced first
Karaite and then Rabbanite teachers to elaborate the Jewish doctrine of
One Only God into a philosophic creed. The Karaites modeled their creed
after the Mohammedan pattern, which gave them ten articles of faith; of
these the first three dwelt on: 1, creation out of nothing; 2, the
existence of God, the Creator; 3, the unity and incorporeality of God.(38)
Abraham ben David (_Ibn Daud_) of Toledo sets forth in his “Sublime Faith”
six essentials of the Jewish faith: 1, the existence; 2, the unity; 3, the
incorporeality; 4, the omnipotence of God (to this he subjoins the
existence of angelic beings); 5, revelation and the immutability of the
Law; and 6, divine Providence.(39) Maimonides, the greatest of all
medieval thinkers, propounded thirteen articles of faith, which took the
place of a creed in the Synagogue for the following centuries, as they
were incorporated in the liturgy both in the form of a credo (_Ani
Maamin_) and in a poetic version. His first five articles were: 1, the
existence; 2, the unity; 3, the incorporeality; 4, the eternity of God;
and 5, that He alone should be the object of worship; to which we must add
his 10th, divine Providence.(40) Others, not satisfied with the purely
metaphysical form of the Maimonidean creed, accentuated the doctrines of
creation out of nothing and special Providence.(41)
This speculative form of faith, however, has been most severely denounced
by Samuel David Luzzatto (1800-1865) as “Atticism”;(42) that is, the
Hellenistic or philosophic tendency to consider religion as a purely
intellectual system, instead of the great dynamic force for man’s moral
and spiritual elevation. He holds that Judaism, as the faith transmitted
to us from Abraham, our ancestor, must be considered, not as a mere
speculative mode of reasoning, but as a moral life force, manifested in
the practice of righteousness and brotherly love. Indeed, this view is
supported by modern Biblical research, which brings out as the salient
point in Biblical teaching the ethical character of the God taught by the
prophets, and shows that the essential truth of revelation is not to be
found in a metaphysical but in an ethical monotheism. At the same time,
the fact must not be overlooked that the Jewish doctrine of God’s unity
was strengthened in the contest with the dualistic and trinitarian beliefs
of other religions, and that this unity gave Jewish thought both lucidity
and sublimity, so that it has surpassed other faiths in intellectual power
and in passion for truth. The Jewish conception of God thus makes _truth_,
as well as _righteousness_ and _love_, both a moral duty for man and a
historical task comprising all humanity.
5. The second fundamental article of the Jewish faith is divine
revelation, or, as the Mishnah expresses it, the belief that the Torah
emanates from God (_min ha shamayim_). In the Maimonidean thirteen
articles, this is divided into four: his 6th, belief in the prophets; 7,
in the prophecy of Moses as the greatest of all; 8, in the divine origin
of the Torah, both the written and the oral Law; and 9, its immutability.
The fundamental character of these, however, was contested by Hisdai
Crescas and his disciples, Simon Duran and Joseph Albo.(43) As a matter of
fact, they are based not so much upon Rabbinical teaching as upon the
prevailing views of Mohammedan theology,(44) and were undoubtedly dictated
by the desire to dispute the claims of Christianity and Islam that they
represented a higher revelation. Our modern historical view, however,
includes all human thought and belief; it therefore rejects altogether the
assumption of a supernatural origin of either the written or the oral
Torah, and insists that the subject of prophecy, revelation, and
inspiration in general be studied in the light of psychology and
ethnology, of general history and comparative religion.
6. The third fundamental article of the Jewish faith is the belief in a
moral government of the world, which manifests itself in the reward of
good and the punishment of evil, either here or hereafter. Maimonides
divides this into two articles, which really belong together, his 10th,
God’s knowledge of all human acts and motives, and 11, reward and
punishment. The latter includes the hereafter and the last Day of
Judgment, which, of course, applies to all human beings.
7. Closely connected with retribution is the belief in the resurrection of
the dead, which is last among the thirteen articles. This belief, which
originally among the Pharisees had a national and political character, and
was therefore connected especially with the Holy Land (as will be seen in
Chapter LIV below), received in the Rabbinical schools more and more a
universal form. Maimonides went so far as to follow the Platonic view
rather than that of the Bible or the Talmud, and thus transformed it into
a belief in the continuity of the soul after death. In this form, however,
it is actually a postulate, or corollary, of the belief in retribution.
8. The old hope for the national resurrection of Israel took in the
Maimonidean system the form of a belief in the coming of the Messiah
(article 12), to which, in the commentary on the Mishnah, he gives the
character of a belief in the restoration of the Davidic dynasty. Joseph
Albo, with others, disputes strongly the fundamental character of this
belief; he shows the untenability of Maimonides’ position by referring to
many Talmudic passages, and at the same time he casts polemical side
glances upon the Christian Church, which is really founded on Messianism
in the special form of its Christology.(45) Jehuda ha Levi, in his
_Cuzari_, substitutes for this as a fundamental doctrine the belief in the
election of Israel for its world-mission.(46) It certainly redounds to the
credit of the leaders of the modern Reform movement that they took the
election of Israel rather than the Messiah as their cardinal doctrine,
again bringing it home to the religious consciousness of the Jew, and
placing it at the very center of their system. In this way they reclaimed
for the Messianic hope the universal character which was originally given
it by the great seer of the Exile.(47)
9. The thirteen articles of Maimonides, in setting forth a Jewish _Credo_,
formed a vigorous opposition to the Christian and Mohammedan creeds; they
therefore met almost universal acceptance among the Jewish people, and
were given a place in the common prayerbook, in spite of their
deficiencies, as shown by Crescas and his school. Nevertheless, we must
admit that Crescas shows the deeper insight into the nature of religion
when he observes that the main fallacy of the Maimonidean system lies in
founding the Jewish faith on _speculative knowledge_, which is a matter of
the intellect, rather than _love_ which flows from the heart, and which
alone leads to piety and goodness. True love, he says, requires the belief
neither in retribution nor in immortality. Moreover, in striking contrast
to the insistence of Maimonides or the immutability of the Mosaic Law,
Crescas maintains the possibility of its continuous progress in accordance
with the intellectual and spiritual needs of the time, or, what amounts to
the same thing, the continuous perfectibility of the revealed Law
itself.(48) Thus the criticism of Crescas leads at once to a radically
different theology than that of Maimonides, and one which appeals far more
to our own religious thought.
10. Another doctrine of Judaism, which was greatly underrated by medieval
scholars, and which has been emphasized in modern times only in contrast
to the Christian theory of original sin, is that man was created in the
image of God. Judaism holds that the soul of man came forth pure from the
hand of its Maker, endowed with freedom, unsullied by any inherent evil or
inherited sin. Thus man is, through the exercise of his own free will,
capable of attaining to an ever higher degree his mental, moral, and
spiritual powers in the course of history. This is the Biblical idea of
God’s spirit as immanent in man; all prophetic truth is based upon it; and
though it was often obscured, this theory was voiced by many of the
masters of Rabbinical lore, such as R. Akiba and others.(49)
11. Every attempt to formulate the doctrines or articles of faith of
Judaism was made, in order to guard the Jewish faith from the intrusion of
foreign beliefs, never to impose disputed beliefs upon the Jewish
community itself. Many, indeed, challenged the fundamental character of
the thirteen articles of Maimonides. Albo reduced them to three, viz.: the
belief in God, in revelation, and retribution; others, with more
arbitrariness than judgement, singled out three, five, six, or even more
as principal doctrines;(50) while rigid conservatives, such as Isaac
Abravanel and David ben Zimra, altogether disapproved the attempt to
formulate articles of faith. The former maintained that every word in the
Torah is, in fact, a principle of faith, and the latter(51) pointed in the
same way to the 613 commandments of the Torah, spoken of by R. Simlai the
Haggadist in the third century.(52)
The present age of historical research imposes the same necessity of
restatement or reformulation upon us. We must do as Maimonides did,—as
Jews have always done,—point out anew the really fundamental doctrines,
and discard those which have lost their holdup on the modern Jew, or which
conflict directly with his religious consciousness. If Judaism is to
retain its prominent position among the powers of thought, and to be
clearly understood by the modern world, it must again reshape its
religious truths in harmony with the dominant ideas of the age.
Many attempts of this character have been made by modern rabbis and
teachers, most of them founded upon Albo’s three articles. Those who
penetrated somewhat more deeply into the essence of Judaism added a fourth
article, the belief in Israel’s priestly mission, and at the same time,
instead of the belief in retribution, included the doctrine of man’s
kinship with God, or, if one may coin the word, his _God-childship_.(53)
Few, however, have succeeded in working out the entire content of the
Jewish faith from a modern viewpoint, which must include historical,
critical, and psychological research, as well as the study of comparative
religion.
12. The following tripartite plan is that of the present attempt to
present the doctrines of Judaism systematically along the lines of
historical development:
I. GOD
_a._ Man’s consciousness of God, and divine revelation.
_b._ God’s spirituality, His unity, His holiness, His perfection.
_c._ His relation to the world: Creation and Providence.
_d._ His relation to man: His justice, His love and mercy.
II. MAN
_a._ Man’s God-childship; his moral freedom and yearning for God.
_b._ Sin and repentance; prayer and worship; immortality, reward and
punishment.
_c._ Man and humanity: the moral factors in history.
III. ISRAEL AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD
_a._ The priest-mission of Israel, its destiny as teacher and martyr among
the nations, and its Messianic hope.
_b._ The Kingdom of God: the nations and religions of the world in a
divine plan of universal salvation.
_c._ The Synagogue and its institutions.
_d._ The ethics of Judaism and the Kingdom of God.
PART I. GOD
A. God As He Makes Himself Known To Man
Chapter V. Man’s Consciousness of God and Belief in God
1. Holy Writ employs two terms for religion, both of which lay stress upon
its moral and spiritual nature: _Yirath Elohim_—“fear of God”—and _Daath
Elohim_—“knowledge or consciousness of God.” Whatever the fear of God may
have meant in the lower stages of primitive religion, in the Biblical and
Rabbinical conceptions it exercises a wholesome moral effect; it stirs up
the conscience and keeps man from wrongdoing. Where fear of God is
lacking, violence and vice are rife;(54) it keeps society in order and
prompts the individual to walk in the path of duty. Hence it is called
“the beginning of wisdom.”(55) The divine revelation of Sinai accentuates
as its main purpose “to put the fear of God into the hearts of the people,
lest they sin.”(56)
2. God-consciousness, or “knowledge of God,” signifies an inner experience
which impels man to practice the right and to shun evil, the recognition
of God as the moral power of life. “Because there is no knowledge of God,”
therefore do the people heap iniquity upon iniquity, says Hosea, and he
hopes to see the broken covenant with the Lord renewed through
faithfulness grounded on the consciousness of God.(57) Jeremiah also
insists upon “the knowledge of God” as a moral force, and, like Hosea, he
anticipates the renewal of the broken covenant when “the Lord shall write
His law upon the heart” of the people, and “they shall all know Him from
the least of them unto the greatest of them.”(58) Wherever Scripture
speaks of “knowledge of God,”(59) it always means the moral and spiritual
recognition of the Deity as life’s inmost power, determining human
conduct, and by no means refers to mere intellectual perception of the
truth of Jewish monotheism, which is to refute the diverse forms of
polytheism. This misconception of the term “knowledge of God,” as used in
the Bible, led the leading medieval thinkers of Judaism, especially the
school of Maimonides, and even down to Mendelssohn, into the error of
confusing religion and philosophy, as if both resulted from pure reason.
It is man’s moral nature rather than his intellectual capacity, that leads
him “to know God and walk in His ways.”(60)
3. It is mainly through the _conscience_ that man becomes conscious of
God. He sees himself, a moral being, guided by motives which lend a
purpose to his acts and his omissions, and thus feels that this purpose of
his must somehow be in accord with a higher purpose, that of a Power who
directs and controls the whole of life. The more he sees purpose ruling
individuals and nations, the more will his God-consciousness grow into the
conviction that there is but One and Only God, who in awful grandeur holds
dominion over the world. This is the developmental process of religious
truth, as it is unfolded by the prophets and as it underlies the historic
framework of the Bible. In this light Jewish monotheism appears as the
ripe fruitage of religion in its universal as well as its primitive form
of God-consciousness, as the highest attainment of man in his eternal
seeking after God. Polytheism, on the other hand, with its idolatrous and
immoral practices, appeared to the prophets and lawgivers of Israel to be,
not a competing religion, but simply a falling away from God. They felt it
to be a loss or eclipse of the genuine God-consciousness. The object of
revelation, therefore, is to lead back all mankind to the God whom it had
deserted, and to restore to all men their primal consciousness of God,
with its power of moral regeneration.
4. In the same degree as this God-consciousness grows stronger, it
crystallizes into _belief_ in God, and culminates in _love_ of God. As
stated above,(61) in Judaism belief—_Emunah_—never denotes the acceptance
of a creed. It is rather the confiding trust by which the frail mortal
finds a _firm_ hold on God amidst the uncertainties and anxieties of life,
the search for His shelter in distress, the reliance on His ever-ready
help when one’s own powers fail. The believer is like a little child who
follows confidingly the guidance of his father, and feels safe when near
his arm. In fact, the double meaning of _Emunah_, faith and faithfulness,
suggests man’s child-like faith in the paternal faithfulness of God. The
patriarch Abraham is presented in both Biblical and Rabbinical writings as
the pattern of such a faith,(62) and the Jewish people likewise are
characterized in the Talmud as “believers, sons of believers.”(63) The
Midrash extols such life-cheering faith as the power which inspires true
heroism and deeds of valor.(64)
5. The highest triumph of God-consciousness, however, is attained in
_love_ of God such as can renounce cheerfully all the boons of life and
undergo the bitterest woe without a murmur. The book of Deuteronomy
inculcates love of God as the beginning and the end of the Law,(65) and
the rabbis declare it to be the highest type of human perfection. In
commenting upon the verse, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might,” they say: “Love the
Law, even when thy life is demanded as its price, nay, even with the last
breath of thy body, with a heart that has no room for dissent, amid every
visitation of destiny!”(66) They point to the tragic martyrdom of R. Akiba
as an example of such a love sealed by death. In like manner they refer
the expression, “they that love Thee,”(67) to those who bear insults
without resentment; who hear themselves abused without retort; who do good
unselfishly, without caring for recognition; and who cheerfully suffer as
a test of their fortitude and their love of God.(68) Thus throughout all
Rabbinical literature love of God is regarded as the highest principle of
religion and as the ideal of human perfection, which was exemplified by
Job, according to the oldest Haggadah, and, according to the Mishnah, by
Abraham.(69) Another interpretation of the verse cited from Deuteronomy
reads, “Love God in such a manner that thy fellow-creatures may love Him
owing to thy deeds.”(70)
All these passages and many others(71) show what a prominent place the
principle of love occupied in Judaism. This is, indeed, best voiced in the
Song of Songs:(72) “For love is strong as death; the flashes thereof are
flashes of fire, a very flame of the Lord. Many waters cannot quench that
love, neither can the floods drown it.” It set the heart of the Jew aglow
during all the centuries, prompting him to sacrifice his life and all that
was dear to him for the glorification of his God, to undergo for his faith
a martyrdom without parallel in history.
Chapter VI. Revelation, Prophecy, and Inspiration
1. Divine revelation signifies two different things: first, God’s
self-revelation, which the Rabbis called _Gilluy Shekinah_, “the
manifestation of the divine Presence,” and, second, the revelation of His
will, for which they used the term _Torah min ha Shamayim_, “the Law as
emanating from God.”(73) The former appealed to the child-like belief of
the Biblical age, which took no offense at anthropomorphic ideas, such as
the descent of God from heaven to earth, His appearing to men in some
visible form, or any other miracle; the latter appears to be more
acceptable to those of more advanced religious views. Both conceptions,
however, imply that the religious truth of revelation was communicated to
man by a special act of God.
2. Each creative act is a mystery beyond the reach of human observation.
In all fields of endeavor the flashing forth of genius impresses us as the
work of a mysterious force, which acts upon an elect individual or nation
and brings it into close touch with the divine. In the religious genius
especially is this true; for in him all the spiritual forces of the age
seem to be energized and set into motion, then to burst forth into a new
religious consciousness, which is to revolutionize religious thought and
feeling. In a child-like age when the emotional life and the imagination
predominate, and man’s mind, still receptive, is overwhelmed by mighty
visions, the Deity stirs the soul in some form perceptible to the senses.
Thus the “seer” assumes a trance-like state where the Ego, the
self-conscious personality, is pushed into the background; he becomes a
passive instrument, the mouthpiece of the Deity; from Him he receives a
message to the people, and in his vision he beholds God who sends him.
This appearance of God upon the background of the soul, which reflects Him
like a mirror, is Revelation.(74)
3. The states of the soul when men see such visions of the Deity
predominate in the beginnings of all religions. Accordingly, Scripture
ascribes such revelations to non-Israelites as well as to the patriarchs
and prophets of Israel,—to Abimelek and Laban, Balaam, Job, and
Eliphaz.(75) Therefore the Jewish prophet is not distinguished from the
rest by the capability to receive divine revelation, but rather by the
intrinsic nature of the revelation which he receives. His vision comes
from a moral God. The Jewish genius perceived God as the moral power of
life, whether in the form expressed by Abraham, Moses, Elijah, or by the
literary prophets, and all of these, coming into touch with Him, were
lifted into a higher sphere, where they received a new truth, hitherto
hidden from man. In speaking through them, God appeared actually to have
stepped into the sphere of human life as its moral Ruler. This
self-revelation of God as the Ruler of man in righteousness, which must be
viewed in the life of any prophet as a providential act, forms the great
historical sequence in the history of Israel, upon which rests the Jewish
religion.(76)
4. The divine revelation in Israel was by no means a single act, but a
process of development, and its various stages correspond to the degrees
of culture of the people. For this reason the great prophets also depended
largely upon dreams and visions, at least in their consecration to the
prophetic mission, when one solemn act was necessary. After that the
message itself and its new moral content set the soul of the prophet
astir. Not the vision or its imagery, but the new truth itself seizes him
with irresistible force, so that he is carried away by the divine power
and speaks as the mouthpiece of God, using lofty poetic diction while in a
state of ecstacy. Hence he speaks of God in the _first_ person. The
highest stage of all is that where the prophet receives the divine truth
in the form of pure thought and with complete self-consciousness.
Therefore the Scripture says of Moses and of no other, “The Lord spoke to
Moses face to face, as a man speaks to another.”(77)
5. The story of the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai is in reality the
revelation of God to the people of Israel as part of the great world-drama
of history. Accordingly, the chief emphasis is laid upon the miraculous
element, the descent of the Lord to the mountain in fire and storm, amid
thunder and lightning, while the Ten Words themselves were proclaimed by
Moses as God’s herald.(78) As a matter of fact, the first words of the
narrative state its purpose, the consecration of the Jewish people at the
outset of their history to be a nation of prophets and priests.(79)
Therefore the rabbis lay stress upon the acceptance of the Law by the
people in saying: “All that the Lord sayeth we shall do and hearken.”(80)
From a larger point of view, we see here the dramatized form of the truth
of Israel’s _election_ by divine Providence for its historic religious
mission.
6. The rabbis ascribed the gifts of prophecy to pagans as well as
Israelites at least as late as the erection of the Tabernacle, after which
the Divine Presence dwelt there in the midst of Israel.(81) They say that
each of the Jewish prophets was endowed with a peculiar spiritual power
that corresponded with his character and his special training, the
highest, of course, being Moses, whom they called “the father of the
prophets.”(82)
The medieval Jewish thinkers, following the lead of Mohammedan
philosophers or theologians, regard revelation quite differently, as an
_inner_ process in the mind of the prophet. According to their mystical or
rationalistic viewpoint, they describe it as the result of the divine
spirit, working upon the soul either from within or from without. These
two standpoints betray either the Platonic or the Aristotelian
influence.(83) Indeed, the rabbis themselves showed traces of
neo-Platonism when they described the ecstatic state of the prophets, or
when they spoke of the divine spirit speaking through the prophet as
through a vocal instrument, or when they made distinctions between seeing
the Deity “in a bright mirror” or “through a dark glass.”(84)
The view most remote from the simple one of the Bible is the rationalistic
standpoint of Maimonides, who, following altogether in the footsteps of
the Arabic neo-Aristotelians, assumed that there were different degrees of
prophecy, depending upon the influence exerted upon the human intellect by
the sphere of the Highest Intelligence. He enumerates eleven such grades,
of which Moses had the highest rank, as he entered into direct
communication with the supreme intellectual sphere. Still bolder is his
explanation of the revelation on Sinai. He holds that the first two words
were understood by the people directly as logical evidences of truth, for
they enunciated the philosophical doctrines of the existence and unity of
God, whereas the other words they understood only as sounds without
meaning, so that Moses had to interpret them.(85) In contrast to this
amazing rationalism of Maimonides is the view of Jehuda ha Levi, who
asserts that the gift of prophecy became the specific privilege of the
descendants of Abraham after their consecration as God’s chosen people at
Sinai, and that the holy soil of Palestine was assigned to them as the
habitation best adapted to its exercise.(86) The other attempt of some
rationalistic thinkers of the Middle Ages to have a “sound created for the
purpose”(87) of uttering the words “I am the Lord thy God,” rather than
accepting the anthropomorphic Deity, merits no consideration whatever.
7. It is an indisputable fact of history that the Jewish people, on
account of its peculiar religious bent, was predestined to be the people
of revelation. Its leading spirits, its prophets and psalmists, its
law-givers and inspired writers differ from the seers, singers, and sages
of other nations by their unique and profound insight into the moral
nature of the Deity. In striking contrast is the progress of thought in
Greece, where the awakening of the ethical consciousness caused a rupture
between the culture of the philosophers and the popular religion, and led
to a final decay of the political and social life. The prophets of Israel,
however, the typical men of genius of their people, gradually brought
about an advance of popular religion, so that they could finally present
as their highest ideal the God of the fathers, and make the knowledge of
His will the foundation of the law of holiness, by which they desired to
regulate the entire conduct of man. Thus, religion was no longer confined
by the limits of nationality, but was transformed into a spiritual force
for all mankind, to lead through a revelation of the One and Holy God
toward the highest morality.
8. The development of thought brought the God-seeking spirits to the
desire to know His will, or, in Scriptural language, His ways, in order to
attain holiness in their pursuit. The natural consequence was the gradual
receding of the power of imagination which had made the enraptured seer
behold God Himself in visions. As the Deity rose more and more above the
realm of the visible, the newly conceived truth was realized as coming to
the sacred writer through the spirit of God or an angel. _Inspiration_
took the place of _revelation_. This, however, still implies a passive
attitude of the soul carried away by the truth it receives from on high.
This supernatural element disappears gradually and passes over into sober,
self-conscious thought, in which the writer no longer thinks of God as the
Ego speaking through him, but as an outside Power spoken of in the third
person.
A still lower degree of inspiration is represented by those writings which
lack altogether the divine afflatus, and to which is ascribed a share of
the holy spirit only through general consensus of opinion. Often this
imprint of the divine is not found in them by the calm judgment of a later
generation, and the exact basis for the classification of such writings
among the holy books is sometimes difficult to state. We can only conclude
that in the course of time they were regarded as holy by that very spirit
which was embodied in the Synagogue and its founders, “the Men of the
Great Synagogue,” who in their work of canonizing the Sacred Scriptures
were believed to have been under the influence of the holy spirit.(88)
9. Except for the five books of Moses, the idea of a mechanical
inspiration of the Bible is quite foreign to Judaism. Not until the second
Christian century did the rabbis finally decide on such questions as the
inspiration of certain books among the Hagiographa or even among the
Prophets, or whether certain books now excluded from the canon were not of
equal rank with the canonical ones.(89) In fact, the influence of the holy
spirit was for some time ascribed, not only to Biblical writers, but also
to living masters of the law.(90) The fact is that divine influence cannot
be measured by the yardstick or the calendar. Where it is felt, it bursts
forth as from a higher world, creating for itself its proper organs and
forms. The rabbis portray God as saying to Israel, “Not I in My higher
realm, but you with your human needs fix the form, the measure, the time,
and the mode of expression for that which is divine.”(91)
10. While Christianity and Islam, its daughter-religions, must admit the
existence of a prior revelation, Judaism knows of none. It claims its own
prophetic truth as _the_ revelation, admits the title Books of Revelation
(Bible) only for its own sacred writings, and calls the Jewish nation
alone the People of Revelation. The Church and the Mosque achieved great
things in propagating the truths of the Sinaitic revelation among the
nations, but added to it no new truths of an essential nature. Indeed,
they rather obscured the doctrines of God’s unity and holiness. On the
other hand, the people of the Sinaitic revelation looked to it with a view
of ever revitalizing the dead letter, thus evolving ever new rules of life
and new ideas, without ever placing new and old in opposition, as was done
by the founder of the Church. Each generation was to take to heart the
words of Scripture as if they had come “this very day” out of the mouth of
the Lord.(92)
Chapter VII. The Torah—the Divine Instruction
1. During the Babylonian Exile the prophetic word became the source of
comfort and rejuvenation for the Jewish people. Now in its place Ezra the
Scribe made the Book of the Law of Moses the pivot about which the entire
life of the people was to revolve. By regular readings from it to the
assembled worshipers, he made it the source of common instruction. Instead
of the priestly Law, which was concerned only with the regulation of the
ritual life, the Law became the people’s book of instruction, a Torah for
all alike,(93) while the prophetic books were made secondary and were
employed by the preacher at the conclusion of the service as “words of
consolation.”(94) Upon the Pentateuch was built up the divine service of
the Synagogue as well as the whole system of communal life, with both its
law and ethics. The prophets and other sacred books were looked upon only
as means of “opening up” or illustrating the contents of the Torah. These
other parts of the _Mikra_ (“the collection of books for public reading”)
were declared to be inferior in holiness, so that, according to the
Rabbinical rule, they were not even allowed to be put into the same scroll
as the Pentateuch.(95) Moreover, neither the number, order, nor the
division of the Biblical books was fixed. The Talmud gives 24, Josephus
only 22.(96) Tradition claims a completely divine origin only for the
Pentateuch or Torah, while the rabbis often point out the human element in
the other two classes of the Biblical collection.(97)
2. The traditional belief in the divine origin of the Torah includes not
only every word, but also the accepted interpretation of each letter, for
both written and oral law are ascribed to the revelation to Moses on Mt.
Sinai, to be transmitted thence from generation to generation. Whoever
denies the divine origin of either the written or the oral law is declared
to be an unbeliever who has no share in the world to come, according to
the Tannaitic code, and consequently according to Maimonides(98) also. But
here arises a question of vital importance: What becomes of the Torah as
the divine foundation of Judaism under the study of modern times? Even
conservative investigators, such as Frankel, Graetz, and Isaac Hirsch
Weiss, not to mention such radicals as Zunz and Geiger, admit the gradual
progress and growth of this very system of law, both oral and written. And
if different historical conditions have produced the development of the
law itself, we must assume a number of human authors in place of a single
act of divine revelation.(99)
3. But another question of equal importance confronts us here, the meaning
of Torah. Originally, no doubt, Torah signified the instruction given by
the priests on ritual or juridical matters. Out of these decisions arose
the written laws (_Toroth_), which the priesthood in the course of time
collected into codes. After a further process of development they appeared
as the various books of Moses, which were finally united into _the Code_
or _Torah_. This Torah was the foundation of the new Judean commonwealth,
the “heritage of the congregation of Jacob.”(100) The priestly Torah,
lightly regarded during the prophetic period, was exalted by post-exilic
Judaism, so that the Sadducean priesthood and their successors, the
rabbis, considered strict observance of the legal form to be the very
essence of religion. Is this, then, the true nature of Judaism? Is it
really—as Christian theologians have held ever since the days of Paul, the
great antagonist of Judaism—mere nomism, a religion of law, which demanded
formal compliance with its statutes without regard to their inner value?
Or shall we rather follow Rabbi Simlai, the Haggadist, who first
enumerated the 613 commandments of the Torah (mandatory and prohibitive),
considering that their one aim is the higher _moral law_, in that they are
all summed up by a few ethical principles, which he finds in the 15th
Psalm, Isaiah XXXIII, 15; Micah VI, 8; Isaiah LVI, 1; and Amos V, 4?(101)
4. All these questions have but one answer, a reconciling one, Judaism has
the two factors, the priest with his regard for the law and the prophet
with his ethical teaching; and the Jewish Torah embodies both aspects, law
and doctrine. These two elements became more and more correlated, as the
different parts of the Pentateuch which embodied them were molded together
into the one scroll of the Law. In fact, the prophet Jeremiah, in
denouncing the priesthood for its neglect of the principles of justice,
and rebuking scathingly the people for their wrongdoing, pointed to the
divine law of righteousness as the one which should be written upon the
hearts of men.(102) Likewise, in the book of Deuteronomy, which was the
product of joint activity by prophet and priest, the Law was built upon
the highest moral principle, the love of God and man. In a still larger
sense the Pentateuch as a whole contains priestly law and universal
religion intertwined. In it the eternal verities of the Jewish faith,
God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and moral government of the world, are
conveyed in the historical narratives as an introduction to the law.
5. Thus the Torah as the expression of Judaism was never limited to a mere
system of law. At the outset it served as a book of instruction concerning
God and the world and became ever richer as a source of knowledge and
speculation, because all knowledge from other sources was brought into
relation with it through new modes of interpretation. Various systems of
philosophy and theology were built upon it. Nay more, the Torah became
divine Wisdom itself,(103) the architect of the Creator, the beginning and
end of creation.(104)
While the term Torah thus received an increasingly comprehensive meaning,
the rabbis, as exponents of orthodox Judaism, came to consider the
Pentateuch as the only book of revelation, every letter of which emanated
directly from God. The other books of the Bible they regarded as due only
to the indwelling of the holy spirit, or to the presence of God, the
_Shekinah_. Moreover, they held that changes by the prophets and other
sacred writers were anticipated, in essentials, in the Torah itself, and
were therefore only its expansions and interpretations. Accordingly, they
are frequently quoted as parts of the Torah or as “words of
tradition.”(105)
6. Orthodox Judaism, then, accepted as a fundamental doctrine the view
that both the Mosaic Law and its Rabbinical interpretation were given by
God to Moses on Mt. Sinai. This viewpoint is contradicted by all our
knowledge and our whole mode of thinking, and thus both our historical and
religious consciousness constrain us to take the position of the prophets.
To them and to us the real Torah is the unwritten moral law which
underlies the precepts of both the written law and its oral
interpretation. From this point of view, Moses, as the first of the
prophets, becomes the first mediator of the divine legislation, and the
original Decalogue is seen to be the starting point of a long process of
development, from which grew the laws of righteousness and holiness that
were to rule the life of Israel and of mankind.(106)
7. The time of composition of the various parts of the Pentateuch,
including the Decalogue, must be decided by independent critical and
historical research. It is sufficient for us to know that since the time
of Ezra the foundation of Judaism has been the completed Torah, with its
twofold aspect as _law_ and as _doctrine_. As _law_ it contributed to the
marvelous endurance and resistance of the Jewish people, inasmuch as it
imbued them with the proud consciousness of possessing a law superior to
that of other nations, one which would endure as long as heaven and
earth.(107) Furthermore, it permeated Judaism with a keen sense of duty
and imprinted the ideal of holiness upon the whole of life. At the same
time it gave rise also to ritualistic piety, which, while tenaciously
clinging to the traditional practice of the law, fostered hair-splitting
casuistry and caused the petrifaction of religion in the codified Halakah.
As _doctrine_ it impressed its ethical and humane idealism upon the
people, lifting them far above the narrow confines of nationality, and
making them a nation of thinkers. Hence their eagerness for their mission
to impart the wisdom stored in their writings to all humanity as its
highest boon and the very essence of divine wisdom.
Chapter VIII. God’s Covenant
1. Judaism has one specific term for religion, representing the moral
relation between God and man, namely, _Berith_, covenant. The covenant was
concluded by God with the patriarchs and with Israel by means of
sacrificial blood, according to the primitive custom by which tribes or
individuals became “blood brothers,” when they were both sprinkled with
the sacrificial blood or both drank of it.(108) The first covenant of God
was made after the flood, with Noah as the representative of mankind; it
was intended to assure him and all coming generations of the perpetual
maintenance of the natural order without interruption by flood, and at the
same time to demand of all mankind the observance of certain laws, such as
not to shed, or eat, blood. Here at the very beginning of history religion
is taken as the universal basis of human morality, so developing at the
outset the fundamental principle of Judaism that it rests upon a religion
of humanity, which it desires to establish in all purity. As the universal
idea of man forms thus its beginning, so Judaism will attain its final
goal only in a divine covenant comprising all humanity. Both the rabbis
and the Hellenistic writers consider the covenant of Noah with its
so-called Noahitic commandments as unwritten laws of humanity. In fact,
they are referred to Adam also, so that religion appears in its essence as
nothing else than a covenant of God with all mankind.(109)
2. Accordingly, Judaism is a special basis of relationship between God and
Israel. Far from superseding the universal covenant with Noah, or
confining it to the Jewish people, this covenant aims to reclaim all
members of the human family for the wider covenant from which they have
relapsed. God chose for this purpose Abraham as the one who was faithful
to His moral law, and made a special covenant with him for all his
descendants, that they might foster justice and righteousness, at first
within the narrow sphere of the nation, and then in ever-widening circles
of humanity.(110) Yet the covenant with Abraham was only the precursor of
the covenant concluded with Israel through Moses on Mt. Sinai, by which
the Jewish people were consecrated to be the eternal guardians of the
divine covenant with mankind, until the time when it shall encompass all
the nations.(111)
3. In this covenant of Sinai, referred to by the prophet Elijah, and
afterward by many others, the free moral relationship of man to God is
brought out; this forms the characteristic feature of a revealed religion
in contradistinction to natural religion. In paganism the Deity formed an
inseparable part of the nation itself; but through the covenant God became
a free moral power, appealing for allegiance to the spiritual nature of
man. This idea of the covenant suggested to the prophet Hosea the analogy
with the conjugal relation,(112) a conception of love and loyalty which
became typical of the tender relation of God to Israel through the
centuries. In days of direst woe Jeremiah and the book of Deuteronomy
invested this covenant with the character of indestructibility and
inviolability.(113) God’s covenant with Israel is everlasting like that
with the heaven and the earth; it is ever to be renewed in the hearts of
the people, but never to be replaced by a new covenant. Upon this eternal
renewal of the covenant with God rests the unique history of Judaism, its
wondrous preservation and regeneration throughout the ages. Paul’s
doctrine of a new covenant to replace the old(114) conflicts with the very
idea of the covenant, and even with the words of Jeremiah.
4. The Israelitish nation inherited from Abraham, according to the
priestly Code, the rite of _circumcision_ as a “sign of the
covenant,”(115) but under the prophetic influence, with its loathing of
all sacrificial blood, the _Sabbath_ was placed in the foreground as “the
sign between God and Israel.”(116) In ancient Israel and in the Judean
commonwealth the Abrahamitic rite formed the initiation into the
nationality for aliens and slaves, by which they were made full-fledged
Jews. With the dispersion of the Jewish people over the globe, and the
influence of Hellenism, Judaism created a propaganda in favor of a
world-wide religion of “God-fearing” men pledged to the observance of the
Noahitic or humanitarian laws. Rabbinism in Palestine called such a one
_Ger Toshab_—sojourner, or semi-proselyte; while the full proselyte who
accepted the Abrahamitic rite was called _Ger Zedek_, or proselyte of
righteousness.(117) Not only the Hellenistic writings, but also the
Psalms, the liturgy, and the older Rabbinical literature give evidence of
such a propaganda,(118) but it may be traced back as far as
Deutero-Isaiah, during the reign of Cyrus. His outlook toward a Jewish
religion which should be at the same time a religion of all the world, is
evident when he calls Israel “a mediator of the covenant between God and
the nations,” a “light to the peoples,”—a regenerator of humanity.(119)
5. This hope of a universal religion, which rings through the Psalms, the
Wisdom books and the Hellenistic literature, was soon destined to grow
faint. The perils of Judaism in its great struggles with the Syrian and
Roman empires made for intense nationalism, and the Jewish covenant shared
this tendency. The early Christian Church, the successor of the missionary
activity of Hellenistic Judaism, labored also at first for the Noahitic
covenant.(120) Pauline Christianity, however, with a view to tearing down
the barrier between Jew and Gentile, proclaimed a new covenant, whose
central idea is belief in the atoning power of the crucified son of
God.(121) Indeed, one medieval Rabbinical authority holds that we are to
regard Christians as semi-proselytes, as they practically observe the
Noahitic laws of humanity.(122)
6. Progressive Judaism of our own time has the great task of
re-emphasizing Israel’s world-mission and of reclaiming for Judaism its
place as the priesthood of humanity. It is to proclaim anew the prophetic
idea of God’s covenant with humanity, whose force had been lost, owing to
inner and outer obstacles. Israel, as the people of the covenant, aims to
unite all nations and classes of men in the divine covenant. It must
outlast all other religions in its certainty that ultimately there can be
but the one religion, uniting God and man by a single bond.(123)
B. The Idea Of God In Judaism
Chapter IX. God and the Gods
1. Judaism centers upon its sublime and simple conception of God. This
lifts it above all other religions and satisfies in unique measure the
longing for truth and inner peace amidst the futility and incessant
changes of earthly existence. This very conception of God is in striking
contrast to that of most other religions. The God of Judaism is not one
god among many, nor one of many powers of life, but is _the One_ and holy
God beyond all comparison. In Him is concentrated all power and the
essence of all things; He is the Author of all existence, the Ruler of
life, who lays down the laws by which man shall live. As the prophet says
to the heathen world: “The gods that have not made the heavens and the
earth, these shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens....
Not like these is the portion of Jacob; for He is the Former of all
things.... The Lord is the true God; He is the living God and the
everlasting King; at His wrath the earth trembleth, and the nations are
not able to abide His indignation.”(124)
2. This lofty conception of the Deity forms the essence of Judaism and was
its shield and buckler in its lifelong contest with the varying forms of
heathenism. From the very first the God of Judaism declared war against
them all, whether at any special time the prevailing form was the worship
of many gods, or the worship of God in the shape of man, the perversion of
the purity of God by sensual concepts, or the division of His unity into
different parts or personalities. The Talmudic saying is most striking:
“From Sinai, the Mount of revelation of the only God, there came forth
_Sinah_, the hostility of the nations toward the Jew as the banner-bearer
of the pure idea of God.”(125) Just as day and night form a natural
contrast, divinely ordained, so do the monotheism of Israel and the
polytheism of the nations constitute a spiritual contrast which can never
be reconciled.
3. The pagan gods, and to some extent the triune God of the Christian
Church, semi-pagan in origin also, are the outcome of the human spirit’s
going astray in its search for God. Instead of leading man upwards to an
ideal which will encompass all material and moral life and lift it to the
highest stage of holiness, paganism led to depravity and discord. The
unrelenting zeal displayed by prophet and law-giver against idolatry had
its chief cause in the immoral and inhuman practices of the pagan
nations—Canaan, Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon—in the worship of their
deities.(126) The deification of the forces of nature brutalized the moral
sense of the pagan world; no vice seemed too horrible, no sacrifice too
atrocious for their cults. Baal, or Moloch, the god of heaven, demanded in
times of distress the sacrifice of a son by the father. Astarte, the
goddess of fecundity, required the “hallowing” of life’s origin, and this
was done by the most terrible of sexual orgies. Such abominations exerted
their seductive influence upon the shepherd tribes of Israel in their new
home in Canaan, and thus aroused the fiercest indignation of prophet and
law-giver, who hurled their vials of wrath against those shocking rites,
those lewd idols, and those who “whored after them.”(127) If Israel was to
be trained to be the priest people of the Only One in such an environment,
tolerance of such practices was out of the question. Thus in the Sinaitic
law God is spoken of as “the jealous God”(128) who punishes unrelentingly
every violation of His laws of purity and holiness.
4. The same sharp contrast of Jewish ethical and spiritual monotheism
remained also when it came in contact with the Græco-Syrian and Roman
culture. Here, too, the myths and customs of the cult and the popular
religion offended by their gross sensuality the chaste spirit of the
Jewish people. Indeed, these were all the more dangerous to the purity of
social life, as they were garbed with the alluring beauty of art and
philosophy.(129) The Jew then felt all the more the imperative duty to
draw a sharp line of demarcation between Judaism with its chaste and
imageless worship and the lascivious, immoral life of paganism.
5. This wide gulf which yawned between Israel’s One and holy God and the
divinities of the nations was not bridged over by the Christian Church
when it appeared on the stage of history and obtained world-dominion. For
Christianity in its turn succeeded by again dragging the Deity into the
world of the senses, adopting the pagan myths of the birth and death of
the gods, and sanctioning image worship. In this way it actually created a
Christian plurality of gods in place of the Græco-Roman pantheon; indeed,
it presented a divine family after the model of the Egyptian and
Babylonian religions,(130) and thus pushed the ever-living God and Father
of mankind into the background. This tendency has never been explained
away, even by the attempts of certain high-minded thinkers among the
Church fathers. Judaism, however, insists, as ever, upon the words of the
Decalogue which condemn all attempts to depict the Deity in human or
sensual form, and through all its teachings there is echoed forth the
voice of Him who spoke through the seer of the Exile: “I am the Lord, that
is My name, and My glory will I not give to another, neither My praise to
graven images.”(131)
6. When Moses came to Pharaoh saying, “Thus speaketh JHVH the God of
Israel, send off My people that they may serve Me,” Pharaoh—so the Midrash
tells—took his list of deities to hand, looked it over, and said, “Behold,
here are enumerated the gods of the nations, but I cannot find thy God
among them.” To this Moses replied, “All the gods known and familiar to
thee are mortal, as thou art; they die, and their tomb is shown. The God
of Israel has nothing in common with them. He is the living, true, and
eternal God who created heaven and earth; no people can withstand His
wrath.”(132) This passage states strikingly the difference between the God
of Judaism and the gods of heathendom. The latter are but deified powers
of nature, and being parts of the world, themselves at one with nature,
they are subject to the power of time and fate. Israel’s God is enthroned
above the world as its moral and spiritual Ruler, the only Being whom we
can conceive as self-existent, as indivisible as truth itself.
7. As long as the pagan conception prevailed, by which the world was
divided into many divine powers, there could be no conception of the idea
of a moral government of the universe, of an all-encompassing purpose of
life. Consequently the great thinkers and moralists of heathendom were
forced to deny the deities, before they could assert either the unity of
the cosmos or a design in life. On the other hand, it was precisely this
recognition of the moral nature of God, as manifested both in human life
and in the cosmic sphere, which brought the Jewish prophets and sages to
their pure monotheism, in which they will ultimately be met by the great
thinkers of all lands and ages. The unity of God brings harmony into the
intellectual and moral world; the division of the godhead into different
powers or personalities leads to discord and spiritual bondage. Such is
the lesson of history, that in polytheism, dualism, or trinitarianism one
of the powers must necessarily limit or obscure another. In this manner
the Christian Trinity led mankind in many ways to the lowering of the
supreme standard of truth, to an infringement on justice, and to
inhumanity to other creeds, and therefore Judaism could regard it only as
a compromise with heathenism.
8. Judaism assumed, then, toward paganism an attitude of rigid exclusion
and opposition which could easily be taken for hostility. This prevailed
especially in the legal systems of the Bible and the rabbis, and was
intended primarily to guard the monotheistic belief from pagan pollution
and to keep it intact. Neither in the Deuteronomic law nor in the late
codes of Maimonides and Joseph Caro is there any toleration for idolatrous
practices, for instruments of idol-worship, or for idolaters.(133) This
attitude gave the enemies of the Jew sufficient occasion for speaking of
the Jewish God as hating the world, as if only national conceit underlay
the earnest rigor of Jewish monotheism.
9. As a matter of fact, since the time of the prophets Judaism has had no
national God in any exclusive sense. While the Law insists upon the
exclusive worship of the one God of Israel, the narratives of the
beginnings in the Bible have a different tenor. They take the lofty
standpoint that the heathen world, while worshiping its many divinities,
had merely lost sight of the true God after whom the heart ever longs and
searches. This implies that a kernel of true piety underlies all the error
and delusion of paganism, which, rightly guided, will lead back to the God
from whom mankind had strayed. The Godhead, divided into gods—as is hinted
even in the Biblical name, _Elohim_—must again become the one God of
humanity. Thus the Jew holds that all worship foreshadows the search for
the true God, and that all humanity shall at one time acknowledge Him for
whom they have so long been searching. Surely the Psalms express, not
national narrowness, but ardent love for humanity when they hail the God
of Israel, the Maker of heaven and earth, as the world’s great King, and
tell how He will judge the nations in justice, while the gods of the
nations will be rejected as “vanities.”(134) Nor does the divine service
of the Jew bear the stamp of clannishness. For more than two thousand
years the central point in the Synagogue liturgy every morning and evening
has been the battle-cry, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is
One.” And so does the conclusion of every service, the _Alenu_, the solemn
prayer of adoration, voice the grand hope of the Jew for the future, that
the time may speedily come when “before the kingdom of Almighty all
idolatry shall vanish, and all the inhabitants of the earth perceive that
unto Him alone every knee must bend, and all flesh recognize Him alone as
God and King.”(135)
Chapter X. The Name of God
1. Primitive men attached much importance to names, for to them the name
of a thing indicated its nature, and through the name one could obtain
mastery over the thing or person named. Accordingly, the name of God was
considered to be the manifestation of His being; by invoking it man could
obtain some of His power; and the place where that name was called became
the seat of His presence. Therefore the name must be treated with the same
reverential awe as the Deity Himself. None dare approach the Deity, nor
misuse the Name. The pious soul realized the nearness of the Deity in
hearing His name pronounced. Finally, the different names of God reflect
the different conceptions of Him which were held in various periods.(136)
2. The Semites were not like the Aryan nations, who beheld the essence of
their gods in the phenomena of nature such as light, rain, thunder, and
lightning,—and gave them corresponding names and titles. The more intense
religious emotionalism of the Semites(137) perceived the Godhead rather as
a power working from within, and accordingly gave it such names as _El_
(“the Mighty One”), _Eloha_ or _Pahad_ (“the Awful One”), or _Baal_ (“the
Master”). _Elohim_, the plural form of _Eloha_, denoted originally the
godhead as divided into a number of gods or godly beings, that is,
polytheism. When it was applied to God, however, it was generally
understood as a _unity_, referring to one undivided Godhead, for Scripture
regarded monotheism as original with mankind. While this view is
contradicted by the science of comparative religion, still the ideal
conception of religion, based on the universal consciousness of God,
postulates one God who is the aim of all human searching, a fact which the
term Henotheism fails to recognize.(138)
3. For the patriarchal age, the preliminary stage in the development of
the Jewish God-idea, Scripture gives a special name for God, _El
Shaddai_—“the Almighty God.” This probably has a relation to _Shod_,
“storm” or “havoc” and “destruction,” but was interpreted as supreme Ruler
over the celestial powers.(139) The name by which God revealed Himself to
Moses and the prophets as the God of the covenant with Israel is JHVH
(Jahveh). This name is inseparably connected with the religious
development of Judaism in all its loftiness and depth. During the period
of the Second Temple this name was declared too sacred for utterance,
except by the priests in certain parts of the service, and for mysterious
use by specially initiated saints. Instead, _Adonai_—“the Lord”—was
substituted for it in the Biblical reading, a usage which has continued
for over two thousand years. The meaning of the name in pre-Mosaic times
may be inferred from the fiery storms which accompanied each theophany in
the various Scriptural passages, as well as from the root havah, which
means “throw down” and “overthrow.”(140)
To the prophets, however, the God of Sinai, enthroned amid clouds of storm
and fire, moving before His people in war and peace, appeared rather as
the God of the Covenant, without image or form, unapproachable in His
holiness. As the original meaning of JHVH had become unintelligible, they
interpreted the name as “the ever present One,” in the sense of _Ehyeh
asher Ehyeh_, “I shall be whatever (or wherever) I am to be”; that is, “I
am ever ready to help.” Thus spoke God to Moses in revealing His name to
him at the burning bush.(141)
4. The prophetic genius penetrated more and more into the nature of God,
recognising Him as the Power who rules in justice, mercy, and holiness.
This process brought them to identify JHVH, the God of the covenant, with
the One and only God who overlooks all the world from his heavenly
habitation, and gives it plan and purpose. At the same time, all the
prophets revert to the covenant on Sinai in order to proclaim Israel as
the herald and witness of God among the nations. In fact, the God of the
covenant proclaimed His universality at the very beginning, in the
introduction to the Decalogue: “Ye shall be Mine own peculiar possession
from among all peoples, for all the earth is Mine. And ye shall be unto Me
a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”(142) In other words,—you have the
special task of mediator among the nations, all of which are under My
dominion.
5. In the Wisdom literature and the Psalms the God of the covenant is
subordinated to the universality of JHVH as Creator and Ruler of the
world. In a number of the Psalms and in some later writings the very name
JHVH was avoided probably on account of its particularistic tinge. It was
surrounded more and more with a certain mystery. Instead, God as the
“Lord” is impressed on the consciousness and adoration of men, in all His
sublimity and in absolute unity. The “Name” continues its separate
existence only in the mystic lore. The name _Jehovah_, however, has no
place whatsoever in Judaism. It is due simply to a misreading of the vowel
signs that refer to the word _Adonai_, and has been erroneously adopted in
the Christian literature since the beginning of the sixteenth
century.(143)
6. Perhaps the most important process of spiritualization which the idea
of God underwent in the minds of the Jewish people was made when the name
JHVH as the proper name of the God of the covenant was given up and
replaced by _Adonai_—“the Lord.” As long as the God of Israel, like other
deities, had His proper name, he was practically one of them, however
superior in moral worth. As soon as He became _the_ Lord, that is, the
only real God over all the world, a distinctive proper noun was out of
place. Henceforth the name was invested with a mysterious and magic
character. It became ineffable, at least to the people at large, and its
pronunciation sinful, except by the priests in the liturgy. In fact, the
law was interpreted so as directly to forbid this utterance.(144) Thus
JHVH is no longer the national God of Israel. The Talmud guards against
the very suspicion of a “Judaized God” by insisting that every benediction
to Him as “God the Lord” must add “King of the Universe” rather than the
formula of the Psalms, “God of Israel.”(145)
7. The Midrash makes a significant comment on the words of the Shema: “Why
do the words, ‘the Lord is our God’ precede the words, ‘the Lord is One’?
Does not the particularism of the former conflict with the universalism of
the latter sentence? No. The former expresses the idea that the Lord is
‘our God’ just so far as His name is more intertwined with our history
than with that of any other nation, and that we have the greater
obligation as His chosen people. Wherever Scripture speaks of the God of
Israel, it does not intend to limit Him as the universal God, but to
emphasize Israel’s special duty as His priest-people.”(146)
8. Likewise is the liturgical name “God of our fathers” far from being a
nationalistic limitation. On the contrary, the rabbis single out Abraham
as the missionary, the herald of monotheism in its march to
world-conquest. For his use of the term, “the God of heaven and the God of
the earth”(147) they offer a characteristic explanation: “Before Abraham
came, the people worshiped only the God of heaven, but Abraham by winning
them for his God brought Him down and made Him also the God of the
earth.”(148)
9. Reverence for the Deity caused the Jew to avoid not only the utterance
of the holy Name itself, but even the common use of its substitute
_Adonai_. Therefore still other synonyms were introduced, such as “Master
of the universe,” “the Holy One, blessed be He,” “the Merciful One,” “the
Omnipotence” (_ha Geburah_),(149) “King of the kings of kings” (under
Persian influence—as the Persian ruler called himself the King of
Kings);(150) and in Hasidean circles it became customary to invoke God as
“our Father” and “our Father in heaven.”(151) The rather strange
appellations for God, “Heaven”(152) and (dwelling) “Place” (_ha Makom_)
seem to originate in certain formulas of the oath. In the latter name the
rabbis even found hints of God’s omnipresence: “As
space—_Makom_—encompasses all things, so does God encompass the world
instead of being encompassed by it.”(153)
10. The rabbis early read a theological meaning into the two names JHVH
and _Elohim_, taking the former as the divine attribute of _mercy_ and the
latter as that of _justice_.(154) In general, however, the former name was
explained etymologically as signifying eternity, “He who is, who was, and
who shall be.” Philo shows familiarity with the two attributes of justice
and mercy, but he and other Alexandrian writers explained JHVH and _Ehyeh_
metaphysically, and accordingly called God, “the One who is,” that is, the
Source of all existence. Both conceptions still influence Jewish exegesis
and account for the term “the Eternal” sometimes used for “the Lord.”
Chapter XI. The Existence of God
1. For the religious consciousness, God is not to be demonstrated by
argument, but is a fact of inner and outer experience. Whatever the origin
and nature of the cosmos may be according to natural science, the soul of
man follows its natural bent, as in the days of Abraham, to look through
nature to the Maker, Ordainer, and Ruler of all things, who uses the
manifold world of nature only as His workshop, and who rules it in freedom
as its sovereign Master. The entire cosmic life points to a Supreme Being
from whom all existence must have arisen, and without whom life and
process would be impossible. Still even this mode of thought is influenced
and determined by the prevalent monotheistic conceptions.
Far more original and potent in man is the feeling of limitation and
dependency. This brings him to bow down before a higher Power, at first in
fear and trembling, but later in holy awe and reverence. As soon as man
attains self-consciousness and his will acquires purpose, he encounters a
will stronger than his own, with which he often comes into conflict, and
before which he must frequently yield. Thus he becomes conscious of
duty—of what he ought and ought not to do. This is not, like earlier
limitations, purely physical and working from without; it is moral and
operates from within. It is the sense of duty, or, as we call it,
_conscience_, the sense of right and wrong. This awakened very early in
the race, and through it God’s voice has been perceived ever since the
days of Adam and of Cain.(155)
2. According to Scripture, man in his natural state possesses the
certainty of God’s existence through such inner experience. Therefore the
Bible contains no command to _believe_ in God, nor any logical
demonstration of His existence. Both the Creation stories and those of the
beginnings of mankind assume as undisputed the existence of God as the
Creator and Judge of the world. Arguments appealing to reason were
resorted to only in competition with idolatry, as in Deuteronomy,
Jeremiah, and Deutero-Isaiah, and subsequently by the Haggadists in
legends such as those about Abraham. Nor does the Bible consider any who
deny the existence of God;(156) only much later, in the Talmud, do we hear
of those who “deny the fundamental principle” of the faith. The doubt
expressed in Job, Koheleth, and certain of the Psalms, concerns rather the
justice of God than His existence. True, Jeremiah and the Psalms(157)
mention some who say “There is no God,” but these are not atheists in our
sense of the word; they are the impious who deny the moral order of life
by word or deed. It is the villain (_Nabal_), not the “fool” who “says in
heart, there is no God.” Even the Talmud does not mean the real atheist
when speaking of “the denier of the fundamental principle,” but the man
who says, “There is neither a judgment nor a Judge above and beyond.”(158)
In other words, the “denier” is the same as the Epicurean (Apicoros), who
refuses to recognize the moral government of the world.(159)
3. After the downfall of the nation and Temple, the situation changed
through the contemptuous question of the nations, “Where is your God?”
Then the necessity became evident of proving that the Ruler of nations
still held dominion over the world, and that His wondrous powers were
shown more than ever before through the fact of Israel’s preservation in
captivity. This is the substance of the addresses of the great seer of the
Exile in chapters XL to LIX of Isaiah, in which he exposes the gods of
heathendom to everlasting scorn, more than any other prophet before or
afterward. He declares these deities to be vanity and naught, but
proclaims the Holy One of Israel as the Lord of the universe. He hath
“meted out the heavens with the span,” and “weighed the mountains in
scales, and the hills in a balance.” Before Him “the nations are as a drop
of the bucket,” and “the inhabitants of the earth as grasshoppers.” “He
bringeth out the hosts of the stars by number, and calleth them all by
name,” “He hath assigned to the generations of men their lot from the
beginning, and knoweth at the beginning what will be their end.”(160)
Measured by such passages as these and such as Psalms VIII, XXIV, XXXIII,
CIV, and CXXXIX, where God is felt as a living power, all philosophical
arguments about His existence seem to be strange fires on the altar of
religion. The believer can do without them, and the unbeliever will hardly
be convinced by them.
4. Upon the contact of the Jew with Greek philosophy doubt arose in many
minds, and belief entered into conflict with reason. But even then, the
defense of the faith was still carried on by reasoning along the lines of
common sense.(161) Thus the regularity of the sun, moon, and stars,—all
worshiped by the pagans as deities—was considered a proof of God’s
omnipotence and rule of the universe, a proof which the legend ascribes to
Abraham in his controversy with Nimrod.(162) In like manner, the
apocryphal Book of Wisdom(163) says that true wisdom, as opposed to the
folly of heathenism, is “to reason from the visible to the Invisible One,
and from the cosmos, the great work of art, to the Supreme Artificer.”
5. Philo was the first who tried to refute the “atheistic” views of
materialists and pantheists by adducing proofs of God’s existence from
nature and the human intellect. In the former he pointed out order as
evidence of the wisdom underlying the cosmos, and in the latter the power
of self-determination as shadowing forth a universal mind which determines
the entire universe.(164) Still, with his mystical attitude, Philo
realized that the chief knowledge of God is through intuition, by the
inner experience of the soul.
6. Two proofs taken from nature owe their origin to Greek philosophy.
Anaxagoras and Socrates, from their theory of design in nature, deduced
that there is a universal intelligence working for higher aims and
purposes. This so-called _teleological_ proof, as worked out in detail by
Plato, was the unfailing reliance of subsequent philosophers and
theologians.(165) Plato and Aristotle, moreover, from the continuous
motion of all matter, inferred a prime cause, an unmoved mover. This is
the so-called _cosmological_ proof, used by different schools in varying
forms.(166) It occupies the foremost place in the systems of the Arabic
Aristotelians, and consequently is dominant among the Jewish philosophers,
the Christian scholastics, and in the modern philosophic schools down to
Kant. It is based upon the old principle of causality, and therefore takes
the mutability and relativity of all beings in the cosmos as evidence of a
Being that is immutable, unconditioned, and absolutely necessary, causa
sui, the prime cause of all existence.
7. The Mohammedan theologians added a new element to the discussion. In
their endeavor to prove that the world is the work of a Creator, they
pointed as evidence to the multiformity and composite structure, the
contingency and dependency of the cosmos; thus they concluded that it must
have been created, and that its Creator must necessarily be the one,
absolute, and all-determining cause. This proof is used also by Saadia and
Bahya ben Joseph.(167) Its weakness, however, was exposed by Ibn Sina and
Alfarabi among the Mohammedans, and later by Abraham ibn Daud and
Maimonides, their Jewish successors as Aristotelians. These proposed a
substitute argument. From the fact that the existence of all cosmic beings
is merely possible,—that is, they may exist and they may not exist,—these
thinkers concluded that an absolutely necessary being must exist as the
cause and condition of all things, and this absolutely unconditioned yet
all-conditioning being is God, the One who _is_.(168) Of course, the God
so deduced and inferred is a mere abstraction, incapable of satisfying the
emotional craving of the heart.
8. While the cosmological proof proceeds from the transitory and imperfect
nature of the world, the _ontological_ proof, first proposed by Anselm of
Canterbury, the Christian scholastic of the XI century, and further
elaborated by Descartes and Mendelssohn, proceeds from the human
intellect. The mind conceives the idea of God as an absolutely perfect
being, and, as there can be no perfection without existence, the
conclusion is that this idea must necessarily be objectively true. Then,
as the idea of God is innate in man, God must necessarily exist,—and for
proof of this they point to the Scriptural verse, “The fool hath said in
his heart, there is no God,” and other similar passages. In its improved
form, this argument uses the human concept of an infinitely perfect God as
evidence, or, at least, as postulate that such a Being exists beyond the
finite world of man.(169)
Another argument, rather naïve in character, which was favored by the
Stoics and adopted by the Church fathers, is called _de consensu gentium_,
and endeavored to prove the reality of God’s existence from the
universality of His worship. It speaks well for the sound reasoning of the
Jewish thinkers that they refused to follow the lead of the Mohammedans in
this respect, and did not avail themselves of an argument which can be
used just as easily in support of a plurality of gods.(170)
9. All these so-called proofs were invalidated by Immanuel Kant, the great
philosopher of Königsberg, whose critical inquiry into the human intellect
showed that the entire sum of our knowledge of objects and also of the
formulation of our ideas is based upon our limited mode of apperception,
while the reality or essence, “the thing in itself,” will ever remain
beyond our ken. If this is true of physical objects, it is all the more
true of God, whom we know through our minds alone and not at all through
our five senses. Accordingly, he shows that all the metaphysical arguments
have no basis, and that we can know God’s existence only through _ethics_,
as a postulate of our moral nature. The inner consciousness of our moral
obligation, or duty, implies a moral order of life, or moral law; and
this, in turn, postulates the existence of God, the Ruler of life, who
assigns to each of us his task and his destiny.(171)
10. It is true that God is felt and worshiped first as the supreme power
in the world, before man perceives Him as the highest ideal of morality.
Therefore man will never cease looking about him for vestiges of divinity
and for proofs of his intuitive knowledge of God. The wondrous order,
harmony, and signs of design in nature, as well as the impulse of the
reason to search for the unity of all things, corroborate this innate
belief in God. Still more do the consciousness of duty in the
individual—conscience—and the progress of history with its repeated
vindication of right and defeat of wrong proclaim to the believer
unmistakably that the God of justice reigns. But no proof, however
convincing, will ever bring back to the skeptic or unbeliever the God he
has lost, unless his pangs of anguish or the void within fill his desolate
world anew with the vivifying thought of a living God.
11. Among all the Jewish religious philosophers the highest rank must be
accorded to Jehudah ha Levi, the author of the _Cuzari_,(172) who makes
the historical fact of the divine revelation the foundation of the Jewish
religion and the chief testimony of the existence of God. As a matter of
fact, reason alone will not lead to God, except where religious intuition
forms, so to speak, the ladder of heaven, leading to the realm of the
unknowable. Philosophy, at best, can only demonstrate the existence of a
final Cause, or of a supreme Intelligence working toward sublime purposes;
possibly also a moral government of the world, in both the physical and
the spiritual life. Religion alone, founded upon divine revelation, can
teach man to find a God, to whom he can appeal in trust in his moments of
trouble or of woe, and whose will he can see in the dictates of conscience
and the destiny of nations. Reason must serve as a _corrective_ for the
contents of revelation, scrutinizing and purifying, deepening and
spiritualizing ever anew the truths received through intuition, but it can
never be the final source of truth.
12. The same method must apply also to modern thought and research, which
substituted historical methods for metaphysics in both the physical and
intellectual world, and which endeavors to trace the origin and growth of
both objects and ideas in accordance with fixed laws. The process of
evolution, our modern key with which to unlock the secrets of nature,
points most significantly to a Supreme Power and Energy. But this energy,
entering into the cosmic process at its outset, causing its motion and its
growth, implies also an end, and thus again we have the Supreme
Intelligence reached through a new type of teleology.(173) But all these
conceptions, however they may be in harmony with the Jewish belief in
creation and revelation, can at best supplement it, but can certainly
neither supplant nor be identified with it.
Chapter XII. The Essence of God
1. An exquisite Oriental fable tells of a sage who had been meditating
vainly for days and weeks on the question, What is God? One day, walking
along the seashore, he saw some children busying themselves by digging
holes in the sand and pouring into them water from the sea. “What are you
doing there?” he asked them, to which they replied, “We want to empty the
sea of its water.” “Oh, you little fools,” he exclaimed with a smile, but
suddenly his smile vanished in serious thought. “Am I not as foolish as
these children?” he said to himself. “How can I with my small brain hope
to grasp the infinite nature of God?”
All efforts of philosophy to define the essence of God are futile. “Canst
thou by searching find out God?” Zophar asks of his friend Job.(174) Both
Philo and Maimonides maintain that we can know of God only that He _is_;
we can never fathom His innermost being or know what He is. Both find this
unknowability of God expressed in the words spoken to Moses: “If I
withdraw My hand, thou shall see My back—that is, the effects of God’s
power and wisdom—but My face—the real essence of God—thou shalt not
see.”(175)
2. Still, a divinity void of all essential qualities fails to satisfy the
religious soul. Man demands to know what God is—at least, what God is to
him. In the first word of the Decalogue God speaks through His people
Israel to the religious consciousness of all men at all times, beginning,
“I am the Lord, _thy_ God.” This word _I_ lifts God at once above all
beings and powers of the cosmos, in fact, above all other existence, for
it expresses His unique self-consciousness. This attribute above all is
possessed by no being in the world of nature, and only by man, who is the
image of his Maker. According to the Midrash, all creation was hushed when
the Lord spoke on Sinai, “_I_ am the Lord.”(176) God is not merely the
supreme Being, but also the supreme Self-consciousness. As man, in spite
of all his limitations and helplessness, still towers high above all his
fellow creatures by virtue of his free will and self-conscious action, so
God, who knows no bounds to His wisdom and power, surpasses all beings and
forces of the universe, for He rules over all as the one completely
self-conscious Mind and Will. In both the visible and invisible realms He
manifests Himself as the absolutely free Personality, moral and spiritual,
who allots to every thing its existence, form, and purpose. For this
reason Scripture calls Him “the living God and everlasting King.”(177)
3. Judaism, accordingly, teaches us to recognize God, above all, as
revealing Himself in self-conscious activity, as determining all that
happens by His absolutely free will, and thus as showing man how to walk
as a free moral agent. In relation to the world, His work or workshop, He
is the self-conscious Master, saying “I am that which I am”; in relation
to man, who is akin to Him as a self-conscious rational and moral being,
He is the living Fountain of all that knowledge and spirituality for which
men long, and in which alone they may find contentment and bliss.
Thus the God of Judaism, the world’s great _I Am_, forms a complete
contrast, not only to the lifeless powers of nature and destiny, which
were worshiped by the ancient pagans, but also to the God of modern
paganism, a God divested of all personality and self-consciousness, such
as He is conceived of by the new school of Christian theology, with its
pantheistic tendency. I refer to the school of Ritschl, which strives to
render the myth of the man-god philosophically intelligible by teaching
that God reaches self-consciousness only in the perfect type of man, that
is, Christ, while otherwise He is entirely immanent, one with the world.
All the more forcibly does Jewish monotheism insist upon its doctrine that
God, in His continual self-revelation, is the supermundane and
self-conscious Ruler of both nature and history. “I am the Lord, that is
My name, and My glory will I not give to another,”—so says the God of
Judaism.(178)
4. The Jewish God-idea, of course, had to go through many stages of
development before it reached the concept of a transcendental and
spiritual god. It was necessary first that the Decalogue and the Book of
the Covenant prohibit most stringently polytheism and every form of
idolatry, and second that a strictly imageless worship impress the people
with the idea that Israel’s God was both invisible and incorporeal.(179)
Yet a wide step still intervened from that stage to the complete
recognition of God as a purely spiritual Being, lacking all qualities
perceptible to the senses, and not resembling man in either his inner or
his outer nature. Centuries of gradual ripening of thought were still
necessary for the growth of this conception. This was rendered still more
difficult by the Scriptural references to God in His actions and His
revelations, and even in His motives, after a human pattern. Israel’s
sages required centuries of effort to remove all anthropomorphic and
anthropopathic notions of God, and thus to elevate Him to the highest
realm of spirituality.(180)
5. In this process of development two points of view demand consideration.
We must not overlook the fact that the perfectly clear distinction which
we make between the sensory and the spiritual does not appeal to the
child-like mind, which sees it rather as external. What we call
transcendent, owing to our comprehension of the immeasurable universe, was
formerly conceived only as far remote in space or time. Thus God is spoken
of in Scripture as dwelling in heaven and looking down upon the
inhabitants of the earth to judge them and to guide them.(181) According
to Deuteronomy, God spoke from heaven to the people about Mt. Sinai, while
Exodus represents Him as coming down to the mountain from His heavenly
heights to proclaim the law amid thunder and lightning.(182) The
Babylonian conception of heaven prevailed throughout the Middle Ages and
influenced both the mystic lore about the heavenly throne and the
philosophic cosmology of the Aristotelians, such as Maimonides. Yet
Scripture offers also another view, the concept of God as the One
enthroned on high, whom “the heavens and the heaven’s heavens cannot
encompass.”(183)
The fact is that language still lacked an expression for pure spirit, and
the intellect freed itself only gradually from the restrictions of
primitive language to attain a purer conception of the divine. Thus we
attain deeper insight into the spiritual nature of God when we read the
inimitable words of the Psalmist describing His omnipresence,(184) or that
other passage: “He that planted the ear, shall He not hear? He that formed
the eye, shall He not see? He that chastiseth the nations, shall He not
correct, even He that teaches man knowledge?”(185)
The translators and interpreters of the Bible felt the need of eliminating
everything of a sensory nature from God and of avoiding anthropomorphism,
through the influence of Greek philosophy. This spiritualization of the
God idea was taken up again by the philosophers of the Spanish-Arabic
period, who combated the prevailing mysticism. Through them Jewish
monotheism emphasized its opposition to every human representation of God,
especially the God-Man of the Christian Church.
6. On the other hand, we must bear in mind that we naturally ascribe to
God a human personality, whether we speak of Him as the Master-worker of
the universe, as the all-seeing and all-hearing Judge, or the
compassionate and merciful Father. We cannot help attributing human
qualities and emotions to Him the moment we invest Him with a moral and
spiritual nature. When we speak of His punitive justice, His unfailing
mercy, or His all-wise providence, we transfer to Him, imperceptibly, our
own righteous indignation at the sight of a wicked deed, or our own
compassion with the sufferer, or even our own mode of deliberation and
decision. Moreover, the prophets and the Torah, in order to make God plain
to the people, described Him in vivid images of human life, with anger and
jealousy as well as compassion and repentance, and also with the organs
and functions of the senses,—seeing, hearing, smelling, speaking, and
walking.
7. The rabbis are all the more emphatic in their assertions that the Torah
merely intends to assist the simple-minded, and that unseemly expressions
concerning Deity are due to the inadequacy of language, and must not be
taken literally.(186) “It is an act of boldness allowed only to the
prophets to measure the Creator by the standard of the creature,” says the
Haggadist, and again, “God appeared to Israel, now as a heroic warrior,
now as a venerable sage imparting knowledge, and again as a kind dispenser
of bounties, but always in a manner befitting the time and circumstance,
so as to satisfy the need of the human heart.”(187) This is strikingly
illustrated in the following dialogue: “A heretic came to Rabbi Meir
asking, ‘How can you reconcile the passage which reads, “Do I not fill
heaven and earth, says the Lord,” with the one which relates that the Lord
appeared to Moses between the cherubim of the ark of the covenant?’
Whereupon Rabbi Meir took two mirrors, one large and the other small, and
placed them before the interrogator. ‘Look into this glass,’ he said, ‘and
into that. Does not your figure seem different in one than in the other?
How much more will the majesty of God, who has neither figure nor form, be
reflected differently in the minds of men! To one it will appear according
to his narrow view of life, and to the other in accordance with his larger
mental horizon.’ ”(188)
In like manner Rabbi Joshua ben Hanania, when asked sarcastically by the
Emperor Hadrian to show him his God, replied: “Come and look at the sun
which now shines in the full splendor of noonday! Behold, thou art
dazzled. How, then, canst thou see without bewilderment the majesty of Him
from whom emanates both sun and stars?”(189) This rejoinder, which was
familiar to the Greeks also, is excelled by the one of Rabban Gamaliel II
to a heathen who asked him “Where does the God dwell to whom you daily
pray?” “Tell me first,” he answered, “where does your soul dwell, which is
so close to thee? Thou canst not tell. How, then, can I inform thee
concerning Him who dwells in heaven, and whose throne is separated from
the earth by a journey of 3500 years?” “Then do we not do better to pray
to gods who are near at hand, and whom we can see with our eyes?”
continued the heathen, whereupon the sage struck home, “Well, you may see
your gods, but they neither see nor help you, while our God, Himself
unseen, yet sees and protects us constantly.”(190) The comparison of the
invisible soul to God, the invisible spirit of the universe, is worked out
further in the Midrash to Psalm CIII.
8. From the foregoing it is clear that, while Judaism insists on the
Deity’s transcending all finite and sensory limitations, it never lost the
sense of the close relationship between man and his Maker. Notwithstanding
Christian theologians to the contrary, the Jewish God was never a mere
abstraction.(191) The words, “I am the Lord thy God,” betoken the intimate
relation between the redeemed and the heavenly Redeemer, and the song of
triumph at the Red Sea, “This is my God, I will extol Him,”
testifies—according to the Midrash—that even the humblest of God’s chosen
people were filled with the feeling of His nearness.(192) In the same way
the warm breath of union with God breathes through all the writings, the
prayers, and the whole history of Judaism. “For what great nation is there
that hath God so nigh unto them as the Lord our God is, whenever we call
upon Him?” exclaims Moses in Deuteronomy, and the rabbis, commenting upon
the plural form used here, _Kerobim_, = “nigh,” remark: “God is nigh to
everyone in accordance with his special needs.”(193)
9. Probably the rabbis were at their most profound mood in their saying,
“God’s greatness lies in His condescension, as may be learned from the
Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings. To quote only Isaiah also: ‘Thus
saith the High and Lofty One, I dwell in high and holy places, with him
that is of a contrite and humble spirit.’(194) For this reason God
selected as the place of His revelation the humble Sinai and the lowly
thornbush.”(195) In fact, the absence of any mediator in Judaism
necessitates the doctrine that God—with all His transcendent majesty—is at
the same time “an ever present helper in trouble,”(196) and that His
omnipotence includes care for the greatest and the smallest beings of
creation.(197)
10. The doctrine that God is above and beyond the universe, transcending
all created things, as well as time and space, might lead logically to the
view of the deist that He stands outside of the world, and does not work
from within. But this inference has never been made even by the boldest of
Jewish thinkers. The Psalmist said, “Who is like the Lord our God, that
hath His seat on high, that humbleth Himself to behold what is in heaven
and on earth?”(198)—words which express the deepest and the loftiest
thought of Judaism. Beside the all-encompassing Deity no other divine
power or personality can find a place. God is in all; He is over all; He
is both immanent and transcendent. His creation was not merely setting
into motion the wheels of the cosmic fabric, after which He withdrew from
the world. The Jew praises Him for every scent and sight of nature or of
human life, for the beauty of the sea and the rainbow, for every flash of
lightning that illumines the darkened clouds and every peal of thunder
that shakes the earth. On every such occasion the Jew utters praise to
“Him who daily renews the work of creation,” or “Him who in everlasting
faithfulness keepeth His covenant with mankind.” Such is the teaching of
the men of the Great Synagogue,(199) and the charge of the Jewish God idea
being a barren and abstract transcendentalism can be urged only by the
blindness of bigotry.(200)
11. The interweaving of the ideas of God’s immanence and transcendency is
shown especially in two poems embodied in the songs of the Synagogue, Ibn
Gabirol’s “Crown of Royalty” and the “Songs of Unity” for each day of the
week, composed by Samuel ben Kalonymos, the father of Judah the Pious of
Regensburg. Here occur such sentences as these: “All is in God and God is
in all”; “Sufficient unto Himself and self-determining, He is the
ever-living and self-conscious Mind, the all-permeating, all-impelling,
and all-accomplishing Will”; “The universe is the emanation of the
plenitude of God, each part the light of His infinite light, flame of His
eternal empyrean”; “The universe is the garment, the covering of God, and
He the all-penetrating Soul.”(201) All these ideas were borrowed from
neo-Platonism, and found a conspicuous place in Ibn Gabirol’s philosophy,
later influencing the Cabbalah.
Similarly the appellation, _Makom_, “Space,” is explained by both Philo
and the rabbis as denoting “Him who encompasses the world, but whom the
world cannot encompass.”(202) An utterance such as this, well-nigh
pantheistic in tone, leads directly to theories like those of Spinoza or
of David Nieto, the well-known London Rabbi, who was largely under
Spinozistic influence(203) and who still was in accord with Jewish
thought. Certainly, as long as Jewish monotheism conceives of God as
self-conscious Intellect and freely acting Will, it can easily accept the
principle of divine immanence.
12. We accept, then, the fact that man, child-like, invests God with human
qualities,—a view advanced by Abraham ben David of Posquieres in
opposition to Maimonides.(204) Still, the thinkers of Judaism have ever
labored to divest the Deity of every vestige of sensuousness, of likeness
to man, in fact, of every limitation to action or to free will. Every
conception which merges God into the world or identifies Him with it and
thus makes Him subject to necessity, is incompatible with the Jewish idea
of God, which enthrones Him above the universe as its free and sovereign
Master. “Am I a God near at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off?
Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the
Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth?”(205) “To whom will you liken Me,
that I should be equal?”(206)
Chapter XIII. The One and Only God
1. From the very beginning no Jewish doctrine was so firmly proclaimed and
so heroically defended as the belief in the One and Only God. This
constitutes the essence and foundation of Judaism. However slowly the
people learned that there could be no gods beside the One God, and that
consequently all the pagan deities were but “naught and vanity,” the
Judaism of the Torah starts with the proclamation of the Only One, and
later Judaism marches through the nations and ages of history with a
never-silent protest against polytheism of every kind, against every
division of the Godhead into parts, powers, or persons.
2. It is perfectly clear that divine pedagogy could not well have demanded
of a people immature and untrained in religion, like Israel in the
wilderness period, the immediate belief in the only one God and in none
else. Such a belief is the result of a long mental process; it is attained
only after centuries of severe struggle and crisis. Instead of this, the
Decalogue of Sinai demanded of the people that they worship only the God
of the Covenant who had delivered them from Egypt to render them His
people.(207) But, as they yielded more and more to the seductive worship
of the gods of the Canaanites and their other neighbors, the law became
more rigid in prohibiting such idolatrous practices, and the prophets
poured forth their unscathing wrath against the “stiff-necked people” and
endeavored by unceasing warnings and threats to win them for the pure
truth of monotheism.(208)
3. The God of Sinai proclaims Himself in the Decalogue as a “jealous God,”
and not in vain. He cannot tolerate other gods beside Himself. Truth can
make no concession to untruth, nor enter into any compromise with it
without self-surrender. A pagan religion could well afford to admit
foreign gods into its pantheon without offending the ruling deities of the
land. On the contrary, their realm seemed rather to be enlarged by the
addition. It was also easy to blend the cults of deities originally
distinct and unite many divinities under a composite name, and by this
process create a system of worship which would either comprise the gods of
many lands or even merge them into one large family. This was actually the
state of the various pagan religions at the time of the decline of
antiquity. But such a procedure could never lead towards true monotheism.
It lacks the conception of an inner unity, without which its followers
could not grasp the true idea of God as the source and essence of all
life, both physical and spiritual. Only the One God of revelation made the
world really one. In Him alone heaven and earth, day and night, growth and
decay, the weal and woe of individuals and nations, appear as the work of
an all-ruling Power and Wisdom, so that all events in nature and history
are seen as parts of one all-comprising plan.(209)
4. It is perfectly true that a wide difference of view exists between the
prohibition of polytheism and idolatry in the Decalogue and the
proclamation in Deuteronomy of the unity of God, and, still more, between
the law of the Pentateuch and the prophetic announcement of the day when
Israel’s God “shall be King of the whole earth, and His name shall be
One.”(210) Yet Judaism is based precisely upon this higher view. The very
first pages of Genesis, the opening of the Torah, as well as the exilic
portions of Isaiah which form the culmination of the prophets, and the
Psalms also, prove sufficiently that at their time monotheism was an axiom
of Judaism. In fact, heathenism had become synonymous with both
image-worship and belief in many gods beside the Only One of Israel, and
accordingly had lost all hold upon the Jewish people. The heathen gods
were given a place in the celestial economy, but only as subordinate
rulers or as the guardian angels of the nations, and always under the
dominion of God on high.(211)
5. Later, in the contest against Græco-Egyptian paganism, the doctrine of
God’s unity was emphasized in the Alexandrian propaganda literature, of
which only a portion has been preserved for us. Here antagonism in the
most forcible form is expressed against the delusive cults of paganism,
and exclusive worship claimed for “the unseen, yet all-seeing God, the
uncreated Creator of the world.”(212) The Rabbinical Haggadah contains but
dim reminiscences of the extensive propaganda carried on previous to
Hillel, the Talmudic type of the propagandist. Moreover, this period
fostered free inquiry and philosophical discussion, and therefore the
doctrine of unity emerged more and more from simple belief to become a
matter of reason. The God of truth put to flight the gods of falsehood.
Hence many gentiles espoused the cause of Judaism, becoming “God-fearing
men.”(213)
6. In this connection it seems necessary to point out the difference
between the God of the Greek philosophers—Xenophanes and Anaxagoras, Plato
and Aristotle—and the God of the Bible. In abandoning their own gods, the
Greek philosophers reached a deistic view of the cosmos. As their study of
science showed them plan and order everywhere, they concluded that the
universe is governed by an all-encompassing Intelligence, a divine power
entirely distinct from the capricious deities of the popular religion.
Reflection led them to a complete rupture with their religious belief. The
Biblical belief in God underwent a different process. After God had once
been conceived of, He was held up as the ideal of morality, including both
righteousness and holiness. Then this doctrine was continuously elucidated
and deepened, until a stage was reached where a harmony could be
established between the teachings of Moses and the wisdom of Plato and
Aristotle. To the noble thinkers of Hellas truth was an object of supreme
delight, the highest privilege of the sage. To the adherents of Judaism
truth became the holiest aim of life for the entire people, for which all
were taught to battle and to die, as did the Maccabean heroes and Daniel
and his associates, their prototypes.
7. A deeper meaning was attached to the doctrine of God’s unity under
Persian rule, in contact with the religious system of Zoroaster. To the
Persians life was a continual conflict between the principles of good and
of evil, until the ultimate victory of good shall come. This dualistic
view of the world greatly excels all other heathen religious systems,
insofar as it assigns ethical purpose to the whole of life. Yet the great
seer of the Exile opposes this system in the name of the God of Judaism,
speaking to Cyrus, the king of Persia; “I am the Lord and there is none
else; beside Me there is no God. I will gird thee, though thou dost not
know Me, in order that the people shall know from the rising of the sun
and from the west that there is none beside Me. I form the light and
create darkness; I make peace and also create evil, I am the Lord that
doeth these things.”(214) This declaration of pure monotheism is
incompatible with dualism in both the physical and the moral world; it
regards evil as being mere semblance without reality, an opposing force
which can be overcome and rendered a source of new strength for the
victory of the good. “Out of the mouth of the Most High cometh there not
the evil and the good?”(215)
8. The division of the world into rival realms of good and evil powers, of
angelic and demoniacal forces, which originated in ancient Chaldea and
underlies the Zoroastrian dualism, finally took hold of Judaism also.
Still this was not carried to such an extent that Satan, the supreme ruler
of the demon world, was given a dominion equal to that of God, or
interfering with it, so as to impair thereby the principle of monotheism,
as was done by the Church later on. As a matter of fact, at the time of
nascent Christianity the leaders of the Synagogue took rigid measures
against those heretics (_Minim_) who believed in two divine powers,(216)
because they recognized the grave danger of moral degeneracy in this
Gnostic dualism. In the Church it led first to the deification of Christ
(_i.e._ the Messiah) as the vanquisher of Satan; afterwards, owing to a
compromise with heathenism, the Trinity was adopted to correspond with the
three-fold godhead,—father, mother, and son,—the place of the mother deity
being taken by the Holy Ghost, which was originally conceived as a female
power (the Syrian _Ruha_ being of the feminine gender).(217)
9. The churchmen have attempted often enough to harmonize the dualism or
trinitarianism of Christianity with the monotheism of the Bible. Still
Judaism persists in considering such an infringement upon the belief in
Israel’s one and only God as really a compromise with heathenism. “A Jew
is he who opposes every sort of polytheism,” says the Talmud.(218)
10. The medieval Jewish thinkers therefore made redoubled efforts to
express with utmost clearness the doctrine of God’s unity. In this effort
they received special encouragement from the example of the leaders of
Islam, whose victorious march over the globe was a triumph for the one God
of Abraham over the triune God of Christianity. A great tide of
intellectual progress arose, lending to the faith of the Mohammedans and
subsequently also to that of the Jews an impetus which lasted for
centuries. The new thought and keen research of that period had a lasting
influence upon the whole development of western culture. An alliance was
effected between religion and philosophy, particularly by the leading
Jewish minds, which proved a liberating and stimulating force in all
fields of scientific investigation. Thus the pure idea of monotheism
became the basis for modern science and the entire modern world-view.(219)
11. The Mohammedan thinkers devoted their attention chiefly to elucidating
and spiritualizing the God idea, beginning as early as the third century
of Islamism, so to interpret the Koran as to divest God of all
anthropomorphic attributes and to stress His absolute unity, uniqueness,
and the incomparability of His oneness. Soon they became familiar with
neo-Platonic and afterward with Aristotelian modes of speculation through
the work of Syrian and Jewish translators. With the help of these they
built up a system of theology which influenced Jewish thought also, first
in Karaite and then in Rabbanite circles.(220) Thus sprang up successively
the philosophical systems of Saadia, Jehuda ha Levi, Ibn Gabirol, Bahya,
Ibn Daud, and Maimonides. The philosophical hymns and the articles of
faith, both of which found a place in the liturgy of the Synagogue, were
the work of their followers. The highest mode of adoring God seemed to be
the elaboration of the idea of His unity to its logical conclusion, which
satisfied the philosophical mind, though often remote from the
understanding of the multitude. For centuries the supreme effort of Jewish
thought was to remove Him from the possibility of comparison with any
other being, and to abolish every conception which might impair His
absolute and simple unity. This mental activity filled the dwellings of
Israel with light, even when the darkness of ignorance covered the lands
of Christendom, dispelled only here and there by rays of knowledge
emanating from Jewish quarters.(221)
12. The proofs of the unity of God adduced by Mohammedan and Jewish
thinkers were derived from the rational order, design, and unity of the
cosmos, and from the laws of the mind itself. These aided in endowing
Judaism with a power of conviction which rendered futile the conversionist
efforts of the Church, with its arguments and its threats. Israel’s only
One proved to be the God of truth, high and holy to both the mind and the
heart. The Jewish masters of thought rendered Him the highest object of
their speculation, only to bow in awe before Him who is beyond all human
ken; the Jewish martyrs likewise cheerfully offered up their lives in His
honor; and thus all hearts echoed the battle-cry of the centuries, “Hear O
Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One,” and all minds were illumined
by the radiant hope, “The Lord will be King of the earth; on that day the
Lord shall be One, and His name shall be One.”
13. Under all conditions, however, the doctrine of unity remained free
from outward compulsion and full of intrinsic vigor and freshness. There
was still room for differences of opinion, such as whether God’s life,
power, wisdom, and unity are attributes—distinct from His being, and
qualifying it,—or whether they are inherent in His nature, comprising His
very essence. This controversy aimed to determine the conception of God,
either by Aristotelian rationalism, as represented by Maimonides, or by
the positive religious assumptions of Crescas and others.
This is Maimonides’ statement of the unity: “God is one; that is, He is
unlike any other unit, whether made one in point of numbers or species, or
by virtue of composition, separation, and simplification. He is one in
Himself, there being no multiplicity in Him. His unity is beyond all
definition.”(222)
Ibn Gabirol in his “Crown of Royalty” puts the same thought into poetic
form: “One art Thou; the wise wonder at the mystery of Thy unity, not
knowing what it is. One art Thou; not like the one of dimension or number,
as neither addition nor change, neither attribute nor quality affects Thy
being. Thou art God, who sustainest all beings by Thy divinity, who
holdest all creatures in Thy unity. Thou art God, and there is no
distinction between Thy unity, Thy eternity, and Thy being. All is
mystery, and however the names may differ, they all tell that Thou art but
one.”(223)
14. Side by side with this rationalistic trend, Judaism always contained a
current of mysticism. The mystics accepted literally the anthropomorphic
pictures of the Deity in the Bible, and did not care how much they might
affect the spirituality and unity of God. The philosophic schools had
contended against the anthropomorphic views of the older mystics, and thus
had brought higher views of the Godhead to dominance; but when the
rationalistic movement had spent its force, the reaction came in the form
of the Cabbalah, the secret lore which claimed to have been “transmitted”
(according to the meaning of the word) from a hoary past. The older system
of thought had stripped the Deity of all reality and had robbed religion
of all positiveness; now, in contrast, the soul demanded a God of
revelation through faith in whom might come exaltation and solace.(224)
Nevertheless the Maimonidean articles of faith were adopted into the
liturgy because of their emphasis on the absolute unity and indivisibility
of God, by which they constituted a vigorous protest against the Christian
dogma. Judaism ever found its strength in God the only One, and will find
Him ever anew a source of inspiration and rejuvenation.
Chapter XIV. God’s Omnipotence and Omniscience
1. Among all the emotions which underlie our God-consciousness the
foremost is the realization of our own weakness and helplessness. This
makes us long for One mightier than ourselves, for the Almighty whose acts
are beyond comparison. The first attribute, therefore, with which we
feeble mortals invest our Deity is omnipotence. Thus the pagan ascribes
supreme power over their different realms to his various deities. Hence
the name for God among all the Semites is _El_—“the Powerful One.”(225)
Judaism claims for God absolute and unlimited power over all that is. It
declares Him to be the source and essence of all strength, the almighty
Creator and Ruler of the universe. All that exists is His creation; all
that occurs is His achievement. He is frequently called by the rabbis _ha
Geburah_, the Omnipotence.(226)
2. The historical method of study seems to indicate that various cosmic
potencies were worshiped in primitive life either singly or collectively
under the name of _Elohim_, “divine powers,” or _Zibeoth Elohim_, “hosts
of divine powers.” With the acceptance of the idea of divine omnipotence,
these were united into a confederacy of divine forces under the dominion
of the one God, the “Lord of Hosts.” Still these powers of heaven, earth
and the deep by no means at once surrendered their identity. Most of them
became angels, “messengers” of the omnipotent God, or “spirits” roaming in
the realms where once they ruled, while a few were relegated as monsters
to the region of superstition. The heathen deities, which persisted for a
while in popular belief, were also placed with the angels as “heavenly
rulers” of their respective lands or nations about the throne of the Most
High. At all events, Israel’s God was enthroned above them all as Lord of
the universe. In fact, the Alexandrian translators and some of the rabbis
actually explained in this sense the Biblical names _El Shaddai_ and
_J.H.V.H. Zebaoth_.(227) The medieval philosophers, however, took a
backward step away from the Biblical view when, under the influence of
Neoplatonism, they represented the angels and the spirits of the stars as
intermediary forces.(228)
3. According to the Bible, both the Creation and the order of the universe
testify to divine omnipotence. God called all things into existence by His
almighty word, unassisted by His heavenly messengers. He alone stretched
out the heavens, set bounds to the sea, and founded the earth on pillars
that it be not moved; none was with Him to partake in the work. This is
the process of creation according to the first chapter of Genesis and the
fortieth chapter of Isaiah. So He appears throughout the Scriptures as
“the Doer of wonders,” “whose arm never waxes short” to carry out His
will. “He fainteth not, neither is He weary.” His dominion extends over
the sea and the storm, over life and death, over high and low.
Intermediary forces participating in His work are never mentioned. They
are referred to only in the poetic description of creation in the book of
Job: “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?... When
the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for
joy.”(229)
Proof of God’s supreme power was found particularly in history, either in
His miraculous changing of the natural order, or in His defeat of the
mighty hostile armies which bade Him defiance.(230) Often the heathen
deities or the celestial powers are introduced as dramatic figures to
testify to the triumph of the divine omnipotence, as when the Lord is said
to “execute judgment against the gods of Egypt” or when “the stars in
their courses fought against Sisera.”(231)
4. God’s power is limited only by His own volition. “He doeth what He
willeth.”(232) In man the will and the power for a certain act are far
apart, and often directly conflicting. Not so with God, for the very idea
of God is perfection, and His will implies necessarily the power to
accomplish the desired end. His will is determined only by such factors as
His knowledge and His moral self-restraint.
5. Therefore the idea of God’s omnipotence must be coupled with that of
His omniscience. Both His power and His knowledge are unlike man’s in
being without limitation. When we repeat the Biblical terms of an
all-seeing, all-hearing, and all-knowing God, we mean in the first
instance that the limitation of space does not exist for Him. He beholds
the extreme parts of the earth and observes all that happens under the
heavens; nothing is hidden from His sight. He not only sees the deeds of
men, He also searches their thoughts. Looking into their hearts, He knows
the word, ere it is upon the tongue. Looking into the future, he knows
every creature, ere it enters existence. “The darkness and the light are
alike to Him.” With one glance He surveys all that is and all that
happens.(233) He is, as the rabbis express it, “the all-seeing Eye and the
all-hearing Ear.”(234)
In like manner the distinctions of time disappear before Him. The entire
past is unrolled before His sight; His book records all that men do or
suffer, even their tears;(235) and there is no forgetfulness with Him. The
remotest future also is open before Him, for it is planned by Him, and in
it He has allotted to each being its days and its steps.(236) Yea, as He
beholds events ere they transpire, so He reveals the secrets of the future
to His chosen ones, in order to warn men of the judgments that threaten
them.(237)
6. The idea of divine omniscience could ripen only gradually in the minds
of the people. The older and more child-like conception still remains in
the stories of the Deluge and the Tower of Babel, where God descended from
heaven to watch the doings of men, and repented of what He had done.(238)
Obviously the idea of divine omniscience took hold of the people as a
result of the admonitions of the prophets.
7. Philosophical inquiry into the ideas of the divine omnipotence and
omniscience, however, discloses many difficulties. The Biblical assertion
that nothing is impossible to God will not stand the test as soon as we
ask seriously whether God can make the untrue true,—as making two times
two to equal five—or whether He can declare the wrong to be right.
Obviously He cannot overturn the laws of mathematical truth or of moral
truth, without at the same time losing His nature as the Source and
Essence of all truth. Nor can He abrogate the laws of nature, which are
really His own rules for His creation, without detracting from both His
omniscience and the immutability of His will. This question will be
discussed more fully in connection with miracles, in chapter XXVII.
Together with the problem of the divine omniscience arises the difficulty
of reconciling this with our freedom of will and our moral responsibility.
Would not His foreknowledge of our actions in effect determine them? This
difficulty can only be solved by a proper conception of the freedom of the
will, and will be discussed in that connection in chapter XXXVII.
Altogether, we must guard against applying our human type of knowledge to
God. Man, limited by space and time, obtains his knowledge of things and
events by his senses, becoming aware of them separately as they exist
either beside each other or in succession. With God all knowledge is
complete; there is no growth of knowledge from yesterday to to-day, no
knowledge of only a part instead of the whole of the world. His
omniscience and omnipotence are bound up with His omnipresence and
eternity. “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My
ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are
My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”(239)
Chapter XV. God’s Omnipresence and Eternity
1. As soon as man awakens to a higher consciousness of God, he realizes
the vast distance between his own finite being limited by space and time,
and the Infinite Being which rules everywhere and unceasingly in lofty
grandeur and unlimited power. His very sense of being hedged in by the
bounds and imperfections of a finite existence makes him long for the
infinite God, unlimited in might, and brings to him the feeling of awe
before His greatness. But this conception of God as the omnipresent and
everlasting Spirit, as distinct from any created being, is likewise the
result of many stages of growing thought.
2. The primitive mind imagines God as dwelling in a lofty place, whence He
rules the earth beneath, descending at times to take part in the affairs
of men, to tarry among them, or to walk with them.(240) The people adhered
largely to this conception during the Biblical period, as they considered
as the original seat of the Deity, first Paradise, later on Sinai or Zion,
and finally the far-off heavens. It required prophetic vision to discern
that “the heavens and the heavens’ heavens do not encompass God’s
majesty,” expressed also in poetic imagery that “the heaven is My throne
and the earth My footstool.”(241) The classic form of this idea of the
divine omnipresence is found in the oft-quoted passage from Psalm
CXXXIX.(242)
3. The dwelling places of God are to give way the moment His omnipresence
is understood as penetrating the universe to such an extent that nothing
escapes His glance nor lies without His dominion.(243) They are then
transformed into places where He had manifested His Name, His Glory, or
His Presence (“Countenance,” in the Hebrew). In this way certain
emanations or powers of God were formed which could be located in a
certain space without impairing the divine omnipresence. These
intermediary powers will be the theme of chapter XXXII.
The following dialogue illustrates this stage of thought: A heretic once
said sarcastically to Gamaliel II, “Ye say that where ten persons assemble
for worship, there the divine majesty (_Shekinah_) descends upon them; how
many such majesties are there?” To which Gamaliel replied: “Does not the
one orb of day send forth a million rays upon the earth? And should not
the majesty of God, which is a million times brighter than the sun, be
reflected in every spot on earth?”(244)
4. Nevertheless a conception of pure spirit is very difficult to attain,
even in regard to God. The thought of His omnipresence is usually
interpreted by imagining some ethereal substance which expands infinitely,
as Ibn Ezra and Saadia before him were inclined to do,(245) or by
picturing Him as a sort of all-encompassing Space, in accordance with the
rabbis.(246) The New Testament writers and the Church fathers likewise
spoke of God as Spirit, but really had in mind, for the most part, an
ethereal substance resembling light pervading cosmic space. The
often-expressed belief that man may see God after death rests upon this
conception of God as a substance perceptible to the mind.(247)
A higher standpoint is taken by a thinker such as Ibn Gabirol, who finds
God’s omnipresence in His all-pervading will and intellect.(248) But this
type of divine omnipresence is rather divine immanence. The religious
consciousness has a quite different picture of God, a self-conscious
Personality, ever near to man, ever scanning his acts, his thoughts, and
his motives. Here philosophy and religion part company. The former must
abstain from the assumption of a divine personality; the latter cannot do
without it. The God of religion must partake of the knowledge and the
feelings of His worshiper, must know his every impulse and idea, and must
feel with him in his suffering and need. God’s omnipresence is in this
sense a postulate of religion.
5. The second earthly and human limitation is that of time. Confined by
space and time, man casts his eyes upward toward a Being who shall be
infinite and eternal. Whatever time begets, time swallows up again.
Transitoriness is the fate of all things. Everything which enters
existence must end at last. “Also heaven and earth perish and wax old like
a garment. Only God remains forever the same, and His years have no end.
He is from everlasting to everlasting, the first and the last.” So speak
prophet and psalmist, voicing a universal thought(249); and our liturgical
poet sings:
“The Lord of all did reign supreme
Ere yet this world was made and formed;
When all was finished by His will,
Then was His name as King proclaimed.
“And should these forms no more exist,
He still will rule in majesty;
He was, He is, He shall remain,
His glory never shall decrease.”(250)
6. But the idea of God’s eternity also presents certain difficulties to
the thinking mind. As Creator and Author of the universe, God is the First
Cause, without beginning or end, the Source of all existence; as Ruler and
Master of the world, He maintains all things through all eternity; though
heaven and earth “wax old like a garment,” He outlasts them all. Now, if
He is to manifest these powers from everlasting to everlasting, He must
ever remain the same. Consequently, we must add immutability as a
corollary of eternity, if the latter is to mean anything. It is not enough
to state that God is without beginning and without end; the essential part
of the doctrine is His transcendence above the changes and conditions of
time. We mortals cannot really entertain a conception of eternity; our
nearest approach to it is an endless succession of periods of time, a
ceaseless procession of ages and eons following each other. Endless time
is not at all the same as timelessness. Therefore eternity signifies
transcendence above all existence in time; its real meaning is
_supermundaneity_.(251)
7. This seems the best way to avoid the difficulty which seemed almost
insuperable to the medieval thinkers, how to reconcile a Creation at a
certain time and a Creator for whom time does not exist. In the effort to
solve the difficulty, they resorted to the Platonic and Aristotelian
definition of time as the result of the motions of the heavenly bodies;
thus they declared that time was created simultaneously with the world.
This is impossible for the modern thinker, who has learned from Kant to
regard time and space, not as external realities, but as human modes of
apperception of objects. So the contrast between the transient character
of the world and the eternity of God becomes all the greater with the
increasing realization of the vast gap between the material world and the
divine spirit.
At this point arises a still greater difficulty. The very idea of creation
at a certain time becomes untenable in view of our knowledge of the
natural process; the universe itself, it seems to us, extends over an
infinity of space and time. Indeed, the modern view of evolution in place
of creation has the grave danger of leading to pantheism, to a conception
of the cosmos which sees in God only an eternal energy (or substance)
devoid of free volition and self-conscious action.(252) We can evade the
difficulty only by assuming God’s transcendence, and this can be done in
such a way as not to exclude His immanence, or—what is the same thing—His
omnipresence.
8. Both God’s omnipresence and His eternity are intended only to raise Him
far above the world, out of the confines of space and time, to represent
His sublime loftiness as the “Rock of Ages,” as holding worlds without
number in “His eternal arms.” “Nothing can be hidden from Him who has
reared the entire universe and is familiar with every part of it, however
remote.”(253)
Chapter XVI. God’s Holiness
1. Judaism recognizes two distinct types of divine attributes. Those which
we have so far considered belong to the metaphysical group, which chiefly
engage the attention of the philosopher. They represent God as a
transcendental Being who is ever beyond our comprehension, because our
finite intellect can never grasp the infinite Spirit. They are not
descriptions, but rather inferences from the works of the Master of the
world to the Master himself. But there are other divine attributes which
we derive from our own moral nature, and which invest our whole life with
a higher moral character. Instead of arising from the external necessity
which governs nature in its causes and effects, these rest upon our
assumption of inner freedom, setting the aims for all that we achieve.
This moral nature is realized to some extent even by the savage, when he
trembles before his deity in pangs of conscience, or endeavors to
propitiate him by sacrifices. Still, Judaism alone fully realized the
moral nature of the Deity; this was done by investing the term “holiness”
with the idea of moral perfection, so that God became the ideal and
pattern of the loftiest morality. “Be ye holy, for I the Lord your God am
holy.”(254)—This is the central and culminating idea of the Jewish
law.(255)
2. Holiness is the essence of all moral perfection; it is purity unsullied
by any breath of evil. True holiness can be ascribed only to Divinity,
above the realm of the flesh and the senses. “There is none holy but the
Lord, for there is none beside Thee,” says Scripture.(256) Whether man
stands on a lower or higher level of culture, he has in all his plans and
aspirations some ideal of perfection to which he may never attain, but
which serves as the standard for his actions. The best of his doings falls
short of what he ought to do; in his highest efforts he realizes the
potentiality of better things. This ideal of moral perfection works as the
motive power of the will in setting for it a standard; it establishes
human freedom in place of nature’s compulsion, but such an ideal can
emanate only from the moral power ruling life, which we designate as the
divine Holiness.
3. Scripture says of God that He “walketh in holiness,”(257) and
accordingly morality in man is spoken of as “walking in the ways of
God.”(258) “Walk before Me and be perfect!” says God to Abraham.(259)
Moses approached God with two petitions,—the one, “Show me Thy ways that I
may know Thee!” the other, “Show me, I pray Thee, Thy glory!” In response
to the latter God said, “No man can see Me and live”, but the former
petition was granted in that the Lord revealed Himself in His moral
attributes.(260) These alone can be understood and emulated by man; in
regard to the so-called metaphysical attributes God will ever remain
beyond human comprehension and emulation.
4. In order to serve as vehicle for the expression of the highest moral
perfection, the Biblical term for holiness, _Kadosh_, had to undergo a
long process of development, obscuring its original meaning. The history
of this term gives us the deepest insight into the working of the Jewish
genius towards the full revelation of the God of holiness. At first the
word _Kadosh_(261) seems to have denoted unapproachableness in the sense
in which fire is unapproachable, that is, threatening and consuming. This
fiery nature was ascribed by primitive man to all divine beings. Hence the
angels are termed “the holy ones” in Scripture.(262) According to both
priestly practice and popular belief, the man who approached one of these
holy ones with hand or foot, or even with his gaze, was doomed to
die.(263) Out of such crude conceptions evolved the idea of God’s majesty
as unapproachable in the sense of the sublime, banishing everything
profane from its presence, and visiting with punishment every violation of
its sanctity. The old conception of the fiery appearance of the Deity
served especially as a figurative expression of the moral power of God,
which manifests itself as a “consuming fire,”(264) exterminating evil, and
making man long for the good and the true, for righteousness and love.
5. The divine attribute of holiness has accordingly a double meaning. On
the one hand, it indicates spiritual loftiness transcending everything
sensual, which works as a purging power of indignation at evil, rebuking
injustice, impurity and falsehood, and punishing transgression until it is
removed from the sight of God. On the other hand, it denotes the
condescending mercy of God, which, having purged the soul of wrong, wins
it for the right, and which endows man with the power of perfecting
himself, and thus leads him to the gradual building up of the kingdom of
goodness and purity on earth. This ethical conception of holiness, which
emanates from the moral nature of God, revealed to the prophetic genius of
Israel, must not be confused with the old Semitic conception of priestly
or ritual holiness. Ritual holiness is purely external, and is
transferable to persons and things, to times and places, according to
their relation to the Deity. Hence the various cults applied the term
“holy” to the most abominable forms of idolatry and impure worship.(265)
The Mosaic law condemned all these as violations of the holiness of
Israel’s God, but could not help sanctioning many ordinances and rites of
priestly holiness which originated in ancient Semitic usages. Hence the
two conceptions of holiness, the priestly or external and the prophetic or
ethical, became interwoven in the Mosaic code to such an extent as to
impair the standard of ethical holiness stressed by the prophets, the
unique and lofty possession of Judaism. Hence the letter of the Law caused
a deplorable confusion of ideas, which was utilized by the detractors of
Judaism. The liberal movement of modern Judaism, in pointing to the
prophetic ideals as the true basis of the Jewish faith, is at the same
time dispelling this ancient confusion of the two conceptions of holiness.
6. The Levitical holiness adheres outwardly to persons and things and
consists in their separation or their reservation from common use. In
striking contrast to this, the holiness which Judaism attributes to God
denotes the highest ethical purity, unattainable to flesh and blood, but
designed for our emulation.
The contemplation of the divine holiness is to inspire man with fear of
sin and to exert a healthful influence upon his conduct. Thus God became
the hallowing power in Judaism and its institutions, truly the “Holy One
of Israel” according to the term of Isaiah and his great exilic successor,
the so-called Deutero-Isaiah.(266) Thus His holiness invested His people
with special sanctity and imposed upon it special obligations. In the
words of Ezekiel, God became the “Sanctifier of Israel.”(267)
The rabbis penetrated deeply into the spirit of Scripture, at the same
time that they adhered strictly to its letter. While they clung
tenaciously to the ritual holiness of the priestly codes, they recognized
the ideal of holiness which is so sharply opposed in every act and thought
to the demoralizing cults of heathenism.(268)
7. Accordingly, holiness is not the metaphysical concept which Jehuda ha
Levi considers it,(269) but the principle and source of all ethics, the
spirit of absolute morality, lending purpose and value to the whole of
life. As long as men do good or shun evil through fear of punishment or
hope for reward, whether in this life or the hereafter, so long will ideal
morality remain unattained, and man cannot claim to stand upon the ground
of divine holiness. The holy God must penetrate and control all of
life—such is the essence of Judaism. The true aim of human existence is
not salvation of the soul,—a desire which is never quite free from
selfishness,—but holiness emulating God, striving to do good for the sake
of the good without regard to recompense, and to shun evil because it is
evil, aside from all consequences.(270)
8. The fact is that holiness is a religious term, based upon divine
revelation, not a philosophical one resting upon speculative reasoning. It
is a postulate of our moral nature that all life is governed by a holy
Will to which we must submit willingly, and which makes for the good. How
volition and compulsion are with God one and the same, how the good exists
in God without the bad, or holiness and moral purpose without unholy or
immoral elements, how God can be exactly opposite to all we know of
man,—this is a question which philosophy is unable to answer. In fact,
holiness is best defined negatively, as the “negation of all that man from
his own experience knows to be unholy.” These words of the Danish
philosopher Rauwenhoff are made still clearer by the following
observations: “The strength in the idea of holiness lies exactly in its
negative character. There is no comparison of higher or lesser degree
possible between man’s imperfections and God’s perfect goodness. Instead,
there is an absolute contrast between mankind which, even in its noblest
types, must wrestle with the power of evil, and God, in whom nothing can
be imagined which would even suggest the possibility of any moral
shortcoming or imperfection.”(271) As the prophet says, “Thou art too pure
of eyes to look complacently upon evil,”(272) and according to the
Psalmist, “Who shall ascend into the mountain of the Lord, and who shall
stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart.”(273)
9. The idea of holiness became the preëminent feature of Judaism, so that
the favorite name for God in Rabbinical literature was “the Holy One,
blessed be He,” and the acme of all ceremonial and moral laws alike was
found in “the Hallowing of His name.”(274) If the rabbis as followers of
the Priestly Code were compelled to lay great stress upon ritual holiness,
they yet beheld in it the means of moral purification. They never lost
sight of the prophetic principle that moral purity is the object of all
human life, for “the holy God is sanctified through righteousness.”(275)
Chapter XVII. God’s Wrath and Punishment
1. Scripture speaks frequently of the anger and zeal of God and of His
avenging sword and judgment, so as to give the impression that “the Old
Testament God is a God of wrath and vengeance.” As a matter of fact, these
attributes are merely emanations of His holiness, the guide and incentive
to moral action in man. The burning fire of the divine holiness aims to
awaken the dormant seeds of morality in the human soul and to ripen them
into full growth. Whenever we to-day would speak of pangs of conscience,
of bitter remorse, Scripture uses figurative language and describes how
God’s wrath is kindled against the wrongdoing of the people, and how fire
blazes forth from His nostrils to consume them in His anger. The nearer
man stands to nature, the more tempestuous are the outbursts of his
passion, and the more violent is the reaction of his repentance. Yet this
very reaction impresses him as though wrought from outside or above by the
offended Deity. Thus the divine wrath becomes a means of moral education,
exactly as the parents’ indignation at the child’s offenses is part of his
training in morality.
2. Thus the first manifestation of God’s holiness is His indignation at
falsehood and violence, His hatred of evil and wrongdoing. The longer men
persist in sin, the more does He manifest Himself as “the angry God,” as a
“consuming fire” which destroys evil with holy zeal.(276) The husbandman
cannot expect the good harvest until he has weeded out the tares from the
field; so God, in educating man, begins by purging the soul from all its
evil inclinations, and this zeal is all the more unsparing as the good is
finally to triumph in His eternal plan of universal salvation. We must
bear in mind that Judaism does not personify evil as a power hostile to
God, hence the whole problem is only one of purifying the human soul.
Before the sun of God’s grace and mercy is to shine, bearing life and
healing for all humanity, His wrath and punitive justice must ever burst
forth to cleanse the world of its sin. For as long as evil continues
unchecked, so long cannot the divine holiness pour forth its
all-forbearing goodness and love.
3. On this account the first revelation of God on Sinai was as “a jealous
God, who visiteth the sins of the fathers upon the children and the
children’s children until the third and fourth generation.” So the
prophets, from Moses to Malachi, speak ever of God’s anger, which comes
with the fury of nature’s unchained forces, to terrify and overwhelm all
living beings.(277) Thus Scripture considers all the great catastrophes of
the hoary past,—flood, earthquakes, and the rain of fire and brimstone
that destroys cities—as judgments of the divine anger on sinful
generations. Wickedness in general causes His displeasure, but His wrath
is provoked especially by violations of the social order, by desecrations
of His sanctuary, or attacks on His covenant, and His anger is kindled for
the poor and helpless, when they are oppressed and deprived of their
rights.(278)
4. Thus the divine holiness was felt more and more as a moral force, and
that which appeared in pre-prophetic times to be an elemental power of the
celestial ire became a refining flame, purging men of dross as in a
crucible. “I will not execute the fierceness of Mine anger,” says the
prophet, “for I am God and not man, the Holy One in the midst of thee, and
I will not come in fury.”(279) So sings the Psalmist, “His anger is but
for a moment; His favor for a life-time.”(280) In the same spirit the
rabbis interpreted the verse of the Decalogue, “The sin of the fathers is
visited upon the children and children’s children only if they continue to
act as their fathers did, and are themselves haters of God.”(281)
The fact is that Israel in Canaan had become addicted to all the vices of
idolatry, and if they were to be trained to moral purity and to loyalty to
the God of the Covenant, they must be taught fear and awe before the flame
of the divine wrath. Only after that could the prophet address himself to
the conscience of the individual, saying:
“Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire?
Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?
He that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly;
He that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands
from holding of bribes,
That stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his
eyes from looking upon evil;
He shall dwell on high; his place of defense shall be the
munitions of rocks;
His bread shall be given, his water shall be sure.
Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty; they shall behold a
land stretching afar.”(282)
Here we behold the fiery element of the divine holiness partly depicted as
a reality and partly spiritualized. The last of the prophets compares the
divine wrath to a melting furnace, which on the Day of Judgment is to
consume evildoers as stubble, while to those who fear the Lord He shall
appear as the sun of righteousness with healing on its wings.(283)
5. The idea as expressed by the prophets, then, was that God’s anger will
visit the wicked, and particularly the ungodly nations of heathendom, and
that He shall judge all creatures in fire.(284) This was significantly
altered under Persian influence, when the Jew began to regard the world to
come as promising to the righteous greater bliss than the present one.
Then the day of divine wrath meant doom eternal for evil-doers, who were
to fall into the fiery depths of Gehenna, “their worm is never to die and
their fire never to be quenched.”(285) This became the prevailing view of
the rabbis, of the Apocalyptics and also of the New Testament and the
Church literature.(286) The Jewish propaganda in the Hellenistic
literature, however, combined the fire of Gehenna with the Stoic, or
pagan, view of a general world-conflagration, and announced a general
doomsday for the heathen world, unless they be converted to the belief in
Israel’s one and holy God, and ceased violating the fundamental (Noachian)
laws of humanity.(287)
6. A higher view of the punitive anger of God is taken by Beruriah, the
noble wife of R. Meir,(288)—if, indeed, the wife of the saintly Abba
Helkiah did not precede her(289)—in suggesting a different reading of the
Biblical text, as to make it offer the lesson: “not the sinners shall
perish from the earth, but the sins.” From a more philosophical viewpoint
both Juda ha Levi and Maimonides hold that the anger which we ascribe to
God is only the transference of the anger which we actually feel at the
sight of evildoing. Similarly, when we speak of the consuming fire of
hell, we depict the effect which the fear of God must have on our inner
life, until the time shall come when we shun evil as ungodly and love the
good because it is both good and God-like.(290)
Chapter XVIII. God’s Long-suffering and Mercy
1. In one of the little known apocryphal writings, the Testament of
Abraham, a beautiful story is told of the patriarch. Shortly before his
death, the archangel Michael drove him along the sky in the heavenly
chariot. Looking down upon the earth, he saw companies of thieves and
murderers, adulterers, and other evil-doers pursuing their nefarious
practices, and in righteous indignation he cried out: “Oh would to God
that fire, destruction, and death should instantly befall these
criminals!” No sooner had he spoken these words than the doom he
pronounced came upon those wicked men. But then spoke the Lord God to the
heavenly charioteer Michael: “Stop at once, lest My righteous servant
Abraham in his just indignation bring death upon all My creatures, because
they are not as righteous as he. He has not learned to restrain his
anger.”(291) Thus, indeed, the wrath kindled at the sight of wrongdoing
would consume the sinner at once, were it not for another quality in God,
called in Scripture _long-suffering_. By this He restrains His anger and
gives the sinner time to improve his ways. Though every wicked deed
provokes Him to immediate punishment, yet He shows compassion upon the
feeble mortal. “Even in wrath He remembereth compassion.”(292) “He hath no
delight in the death of the sinner, but that he shall return from his ways
and live.”(293) The divine holiness does not merely overwhelm and consume;
its essential aim is the elevation of man, the effort to endow him with a
higher life.
2. It is perfectly true that a note of rigor and of profound earnestness
runs through the pages of Holy Writ. The prophets, law-givers, and
psalmists speak incessantly of how guilt brings doom upon the lands and
nations. As the father who is solicitous of the honor of his household
punishes unrelentingly every violation of morality within it, so the Holy
One of Israel watches zealously over His people’s loyalty to His covenant.
His glorious name, His holy majesty cannot be violated with immunity from
His dreaded wrath. There is nothing of the joyous abandon which was
predominant in the Greek nature and in the Olympian gods. The ideal of
holiness was presented by the God of Israel, and all the doings of men
appeared faulty beside it.
But its power of molding character is shown by Judaism at this very point,
in that it does not stop at the condemnation of the sinner. It holds forth
the promise of God’s forbearance to man in his shortcomings, due to His
compassion on the weakness of flesh and blood. He waits for man, erring
and stumbling, until by striving and struggling he shall attain a higher
state of purity. This is the bright, uplifting side of the Jewish idea of
the divine holiness. In this is the innermost nature of God disclosed. In
fear and awe of Him who is enthroned on high, “before whom even the angels
are not pure,” man, conscious of his sinfulness, sinks trembling into the
dust before the Judge of the whole earth. But the grace and mercy of the
long-suffering Ruler lift him up and imbue him with courage and strength
to acquire a new life and new energy. Thus the oppressive burden of guilt
is transformed into an uplifting power through the influence of the holy
God.
3. The predominance in God of mildness and mercy over punitive anger is
expressed most strikingly in the revelation to Moses, when he had
entreated God to let him see His ways. The people had provoked God’s anger
by their faithlessness in the worship of the golden calf, and He had
threatened to consume them, when Moses interceded in their behalf. Then
the Lord passed by him, and proclaimed: “The Lord, the Lord, God, merciful
and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping
mercy unto the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression
and sin; and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity
of the fathers upon the children and upon the children’s children, unto
the third and unto the fourth generation.”(294) Such a passage shows
clearly the progress in the knowledge of God’s nature. For Abraham and the
traditions of the patriarchs God was the righteous Judge, punishing the
transgressors. He is represented in the same way in the Decalogue on
Sinai.(295) Was this to be the final word? Was Israel chosen by God as His
covenant people, only to encounter the full measure of His just but
relentless anger and to be consumed at once for the violation of this
covenant? Therefore Moses wrestled with his God. Filled with compassionate
love for his people, he is willing to offer his life as their ransom. And
should God himself lack this fullness of love and pity, of which even a
human being is capable? Then, as from a dark cloud, there flashed suddenly
upon him the light of a new revelation; he became aware of the higher
truth, that above the austerity of God’s avenging anger prevails the
tender forgiveness of His mercy; that beyond the consuming zeal of His
punitive justice shines the sun-like splendor of His grace and love. The
rabbis find the expression of mercy especially in the name JHVH (_i.e._
“the One who shall ever be”) which is significantly placed here at the
head of the divine attributes. Indeed, only He who is the same from
everlasting to everlasting, and to whom to-morrow is like yesterday, can
show forbearance to erring man, because in whatsoever he has failed
yesterday he may make good to-morrow.
4. Like Moses, the master of the prophets, so the prophet Hosea also
learned in hard spiritual struggle to know the divine attribute of mercy
and lovingkindness. His own wife had proved faithless, and had broken the
marital covenant; still his love survived, so that he granted her
forgiveness when she was forsaken, and took her back to his home. Then, in
his distress at the God-forsaken state of Israel through her
faithlessness, he asked himself: “Will God reject forever the nation which
He espoused, because it broke the covenant? Will not He also grant
forgiveness and mercy?” The divine answer came to him out of the depths of
his own compassionate soul. Upon the crown of God’s majesty which Amos had
beheld all effulgent with justice and righteousness, he placed the most
precious gem, reflecting the highest quality of God—His gracious and
all-forgiving love.(296) Whether the priority in this great truth belongs
to Hosea or Moses is a question for historical Bible research to answer,
but it is of no consequence to Jewish theology.
5. Certainly Scripture represents God too much after human fashion, when
it ascribes to him changes of mood from anger to compassion, or speaks of
His repentance.(297) But we must bear in mind that the prophets obtained
their insight into the ways of God by this very process of transferring
their own experience to the Deity. And on the other hand, we are told that
“God is not a man that He should lie, neither the son of man that He
should repent.”(298) All these anthropomorphic pictures of God were later
avoided by the ancient Biblical translators by means of paraphrase, and by
the philosophers by means of allegory.(299)
6. According to the Midrashic interpretation of the passage from the
Pentateuch quoted above, Moses desired to ascertain whether God ruled the
world with His justice or with His mercy, and the answer was: “Behold, I
shall let My _goodness_ pass before thee. For I owe nothing to any of My
creatures, but My actions are prompted only by My grace and good will,
through which I give them all that they possess.”(300) According to
Judaism justice and mercy are intertwined in God’s government of the
world; the former is the pillar of the cosmic structure, and the latter
the measuring line. No mortal could stand before God, were justice the
only standard; but we subsist on His mercy, which lends us the boons of
life without our meriting them. That which is not good in us now is to
become good through our effort toward the best. God’s grace underlies this
possibility.
Accordingly, the divine holiness has two aspects, the overwhelming wrath
of His justice and the uplifting grace of His long-suffering. Without
justice there could be no fear of God, no moral earnestness; without mercy
only condemnation and perdition would remain. As the rabbis tell us, both
justice and mercy had their share in the creation of man, for in man both
good and bad appear and struggle for supremacy. All generations need the
divine grace that they may have time and opportunity for improvement.(301)
7. Thus this conception of grace is far deeper and worthier of God than is
that of Paulinian Christianity; for grace in Paul’s sense is arbitrary in
action and dependent upon the acceptance of a creed, therefore the very
reverse of impartial justice. In Judaism divine grace is not offered as a
bait to make men believe, but as an incentive to moral improvement. The
God of holiness, who inflicts wounds upon the guilty soul by bitter
remorse, offers also healing through His compassion. Justice and mercy are
not two separate powers or persons in the Deity, as with the doctrine of
the Church; they are the two sides of the same divine power. “I am the
Lord before sin was committed, and I am the Lord after sin is
committed”—so the rabbis explain the repetition of the name JHVH in the
revelation to Moses.(302)
Chapter XIX. God’s Justice
1. The unshakable faith of the Jewish people was ever sustained by the
consciousness that its God is a God of justice. The conviction that He
will not suffer wrong to go unpunished was read into all the stories of
the hoary past. The Babylonian form of these legends in common with all
ancient folk-lore ascribes human calamity to blind fate or to the caprice
of the gods, but the Biblical narratives assume that evil does not befall
men undeserved, and therefore always ascribe ruin or death to human
transgression. So the Jewish genius beheld in the destruction of Sodom and
Gomorrah a divine judgment upon the depraved inhabitants, and derived from
it a lesson for the household of Abraham that they should “keep the way of
the Lord to do righteousness and justice.”(303) The fundamental principle
of Judaism throughout the ages has been the teaching of the patriarch that
“the Judge of all the earth cannot act unjustly,”(304) even though the
varying events of history force the problem of justice upon the attention
of Jeremiah,(305) the Psalmists,(306) the author of the book of Job,(307)
and the Talmudical sages.(308) “Righteousness and justice are the
foundations of Thy throne”(309)—this is the sum and substance of the
religious experience of Israel. At the same time man realizes how far from
his grasp is the divine justice: “Thy righteousness is like the mighty
mountains; Thy judgments are like the great deep.”(310)
2. The Master-builder of the moral world made justice the supporting
pillar of the entire creation. “He is The Rock, His work is perfec
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