Jewish Theology Part 7

Therefore G.o.d becomes the pattern and ideal of an all-encompa.s.sing goodness, which is never exhausted and never reaches an end.

Chapter XXI. G.o.d's Truth and Faithfulness

1. In the Hebrew language truth and faithfulness are both derived from the same root; _aman_, "firmness," is the root idea of _emeth_, "truth," and _emunah_, "faithfulness." Man feels insecurity and uncertainty among the varying impressions and emotions which affect his will; therefore he turns to the immovable Rock of life, calls on Him as the Guardian and Witness of truth, and feels confident that He will vindicate every promise made in His sight. He is the G.o.d by whom men swear-_Elohe amen_;(379) nay, who swears by Himself, saying, "As true as that I live."(380) He is the supreme Power of life, "the G.o.d of faithfulness, in whom there is no iniquity."(381) The heavens testify to His faithfulness; He is the trustworthy G.o.d, whose essence is truth.(382)

2. Here, too, as with other attributes, the development of the idea may be traced step by step. At first it refers to the G.o.d of the covenant with Israel, who made a covenant with the fathers and keeps it with the thousandth generation of their descendants. He shows His mercy to those who love Him and keep His commandments. The idea of G.o.d's faithfulness to His covenant is thus extended gradually from the people to the cosmos, and the heavens are called upon to witness to the faithfulness of G.o.d throughout the realm of life. Thus in both the Psalms and the liturgy G.o.d is praised as the One who is faithful in His word as in His work.(383)

3. From this conception of faithfulness arose two other ideas which exerted a powerful influence upon the whole spiritual and intellectual life of the Jew. The G.o.d of faithfulness created a people of faithfulness as His own, and Israel's G.o.d of truth awakened in the nation a pa.s.sion for truth unrivaled by any other religious or philosophical system. Like a silver stream running through a valley, the conviction runs through the sacred writings and the liturgy that the promise made of yore to the fathers will be fulfilled to the children. As each past deliverance from distress was considered a verification of the divine faithfulness, so each hope for the future was based upon the same attribute. "He keepeth His faith also to those who sleep in the dust." These words of the second of the Eighteen Benedictions clearly indicate that even the belief in the hereafter rested upon the same fundamental belief.

On the other hand, the same conception formed the keynote of the idea of the divine truthfulness. The primitive age knew nothing of the laws of nature with which we have become familiar through modern science. But the pious soul trusts the G.o.d of faithfulness, certain that He who has created the heaven and the earth is true to His own word, and will not allow them to sink back into chaos. One witness to this is the rainbow, which He has set up in the sky as a sign of His covenant.(384) The sea and the stars also have a boundary a.s.signed to them which they cannot transgress.(385) Thus to the unsophisticated religious soul, with no knowledge of natural science, the world is carried by G.o.d's "everlasting arms"(386) and His faithfulness becomes token and pledge of the immutability of His will.

4. At this point the intellect grasps an idea of intrinsic and indestructible truth, which has its beginning and its end in G.o.d, the Only One. "The G.o.ds of the nations are all vanity and deceit, the work of men; Israel's G.o.d is the G.o.d of truth, the living G.o.d and everlasting King."(387) With this cry has Judaism challenged the nations of the world since the Babylonian exile. Its own adherents it charged to ponder upon the problems of life and the nature of G.o.d, until He would appear before them as the very essence of truth, and all heathenish survivals would vanish as mist. G.o.d is truth, and He desires naught but truth, therefore hypocrisy is loathsome to him, even in the service of religion. With this underlying thought Job, the bold but honest doubter, stands above his friends with their affected piety. _G.o.d is truth_-this confession of faith, recited each morning and evening by the Jew, gave his mind the power to soar into the highest realms of thought, and inspired his soul to offer life and all it holds for his faith. "G.o.d is the everlasting truth, the unchangeable Being who ever remains the same amid the fluctuations and changes of all other things." This is the fundamental principle upon which Joseph Ibn Zaddik and Abraham Ibn Daud, the predecessors of Maimonides, reared their entire philosophical systems, which were Aristotelian and yet thoroughly Jewish.(388)

Mystic lore, always so fond of the letters of the alphabet and their hidden meanings, noted that the letters of _Emeth_-_aleph_, _mem_ and _tav_-are the first, the middle, and the last letters of the alphabet, and therefore concluded that G.o.d made truth the beginning, the center, and the end of the world.(389) Josephus also, no doubt in accordance with the same tradition, declares that G.o.d is "the beginning, the center, and the end of all things."(390) A corresponding rabbinical saying is: "Truth is the seal of G.o.d."(391)

Chapter XXII. G.o.d's Knowledge and Wisdom

1. The attempt to enumerate the attributes of G.o.d recalls the story related in the Talmud(392) of a disciple who stepped up to the reader's desk to offer prayer, and began to address the Deity with an endless list of attributes. When his vocabulary was almost exhausted, Rabbi Haninah interrupted him with the question, "Hast thou now really finished telling the praise of G.o.d?" Mortal man can never know what G.o.d really is. As the poet-philosopher says: "Could I ever know Him, I would be He."(393) But we want to ascertain what G.o.d is _to us_, and for this very reason we cannot rest with the negative att.i.tude of Maimonides, who relies on the Psalmist's verse, "Silence is praise to Thee."(394) We must obtain as clear a conception of the Deity as we possibly can with our limited powers.

To the divine attributes already mentioned we must add another which in a sense is the focus of them all. This is the knowledge and wisdom of G.o.d, the omniscience which renders Him all-knowing and all-wise. Through this all the others come into self-consciousness. We ascribe wisdom to the man who sets right aims for his actions and knows the means by which to attain them, that is, who can control his power and knowledge by his will and bend them to his purpose. In the same manner we think of wisdom in view of the marvelous order, design, and unity which we see in the natural and the moral world. But this wisdom must be all-encompa.s.sing, comprising time and eternity, directing all the forces and beings of the world toward the goal of ideal perfection.(395) It makes no difference where we find this lesson. The Book of Proverbs singles out the tiny ant as an example of wondrous forethought;(396) the author of Job dwells on the working together of the powers of earth and heaven to maintain the cosmic life;(397) modern science, with its deeper insight into nature, enables us to follow the interaction of the primal chemical and organic forces, and to follow the course of evolution from star-dust and cell to the structure of the human eye or the thought-centers of the brain. But in all these alike our conclusion must be that of the Psalmist: "O Lord, how manifold are Thy works, in wisdom hast Thou made them all."(398)

2. Accordingly, if we are to speak in human terms, we may consider G.o.d's wisdom the element which determines His various motive-powers,-omniscience, omnipotence, and goodness,-to tend toward the realization of His cosmic plan. Or we may call it the active intellect with which G.o.d works as Creator, Ordainer, and Ruler of the universe. The Biblical account of creation presupposes this wisdom, as it portrays a logical process, working after a definite plan, proceeding from simpler to more complex forms and culminating in man. Biblical history likewise is based upon the principle of a divinely prearranged plan, which is especially striking in such stories as that of Joseph.(399)

3. At first the divine wisdom was supposed to rest in part on specially gifted persons, such as Joseph, Solomon, and Bezalel. As Scripture has it, "The Lord giveth wisdom, out of His mouth cometh knowledge and understanding."(400) Later the obscure destiny of the nation appears as the design of an all-wise Ruler to the great prophets and especially to Isaiah, the high-soaring eagle among the seers of Israel.(401) With the progressive expansion of the world before them, the seers and sages saw a sublime purpose in the history of the nations, and felt more and more the supreme place of the divine wisdom as a manifestation of His greatness.

Thus the great seer of the Exile never tires of illumining the world-wide plan of the divine wisdom.(402)

4. A new development ensued under Babylonian and Persian influence at the time when the monotheism of Israel became definitely universal. The divine wisdom, creative and world-sustaining, became the highest of the divine attributes and was partially hypostatized as an independent cosmic power.

In the twenty-eighth chapter of the Book of Job wisdom is depicted as a magic being, far remote from all living beings of earth, beyond the reach of the creatures of the lowest abyss, who aided the Creator with counsel and knowledge in measuring and weighing the foundations of the world. The description seems to be based upon an ancient Babylonian conception-which has parallels elsewhere-of a divine Sybil dwelling beneath the ocean in "the house of wisdom."(403) Here, however, the mythological conception is transformed into a symbolic figure. In the eighth chapter of Proverbs the description of divine wisdom is more in accordance with Jewish monotheism; wisdom is "the first of G.o.d's creatures," "a master-workman" who a.s.sisted Him in founding heaven and earth, a helpmate and playmate of G.o.d, and at the same time the instructor of men and counselor of princes, inviting all to share her precious gifts. This conception is found also in the apocryphal literature,-in Ben Sira, the book of Enoch, the Apocalypse of Baruch, and the h.e.l.lenistic Book of Wisdom.(404)

From this period two different currents of thought appeared. The one represented wisdom as an independent being distinct from G.o.d, and this finally became merged, under Platonic influence, into the views of neo-Platonism, Gnosticism, and the Christian dogma. The other identified the divine wisdom with the Torah, and therefore it is the Torah which served G.o.d as counselor and mediator at the Creation and continues as counselor in the management of the world. This view led back to strict monotheism, so that the cosmology of the rabbis spoke alternately of the divine wisdom and the Torah as the instruments of G.o.d at Creation.(405)

5. The Jewish philosophers of the Middle Ages, such as Saadia, Gabirol, and Jehuda ha Levi, followed the Mohammedan theologians in enumerating G.o.d's wisdom among the attributes const.i.tuting His essence, together with His omnipotence, His will, and His creative energy. But they would not take wisdom or any other attribute as a separate being, with an existence outside of G.o.d, which would either condition Him or admit a division of His nature.(406) "G.o.d himself is wisdom," says Jehuda ha Levi, referring to the words of Job: "He is wise in heart."(407) And Ibn Gabirol sings in his "Crown of Royalty":

"Thou art wise, and the wisdom of Thy fount of life floweth from Thee; And compared with Thy wisdom man is void of understanding; Thou art wise, before anything began its existence; And wisdom has from times of yore been Thy fostered child; Thou art wise, and out of Thy wisdom didst Thou create the world, Life the artificer that fashioneth whatsoever delighteth him."(408)

Chapter XXIII. G.o.d's Condescension

1. An attribute of great importance for the theological conception of G.o.d, one upon which both Biblical and rabbinical literature laid especial stress, is His condescension and humility. The Psalmist says(409): "Thy condescension hath made me great," which is interpreted in the Midrash that the Deity stoops to man in order to lift him up to Himself. A familiar saying of R. Johanan is(410): "Wherever Scripture speaks of the greatness of G.o.d, there mention is made also of His condescension. So when the prophet begins, 'Thus saith the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place,' he adds the words, 'With him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit.'(411) Or when the Deuteronomist says: 'For the Lord your G.o.d, the great G.o.d, the mighty and the awful,' he concludes, 'He doth execute justice for the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger.'(412) And again the Psalmist: 'Extol Him that rideth upon the skies, whose name is the Lord, a Father of the fatherless and a Judge of the widows.' "(413) "Do you deem it unworthy of G.o.d that He should care for the smallest and most insignificant person or thing in the world's household?" asks Mendelssohn in his _Morgenstunden_. "It certainly does not detract from the dignity of a king to be seen fondling his child as a loving father," and he quotes the verse of the Psalm, "Who is like unto the Lord our G.o.d, that is enthroned on high, that looketh down low upon heaven and upon the earth."(414)

2. This truth has a religious depth which no philosophy can set forth.

Only the G.o.d of Revelation is near to man in his frailty and need, ready to hear his sighs, answer his supplication, count his tears, and relieve his wants when his own power fails. The philosopher must reject as futile every attempt to bring the incomprehensible essence of the Deity within the compa.s.s of the human understanding. The religious consciousness, however, demands that we accentuate precisely those attributes of G.o.d which bring Him nearest to us. If reason alone would have the decisive voice in this problem, every manifestation of G.o.d to man and every reaching out of the soul to Him in prayer would be idle fancy and self-deceit. It is true that the Biblical conception was simple and child-like enough, representing G.o.d as descending from the heavens to the earth. Still Judaism does not accept the cold and distant att.i.tude of the philosopher; it teaches that G.o.d as a spiritual power does condescend to man, in order that man may realize his kinship with the Most High and rise ever nearer to his Creator. The earth whereon man dwells and the human heart with its longing for heaven, are not bereft of G.o.d. Wherever man seeks Him, there He is.

3. Rabbinical Judaism is very far from the att.i.tude a.s.signed to it by Christian theologians,(415) of reducing the Deity to an empty transcendental abstraction and loosening the bond which ties the soul to its Maker. On the contrary, it maintains these very relations with a firmness which betokens its soundness and its profound psychological truth. In this spirit a Talmudic master interprets the Deuteronomic verse: "For what great nation is there that hath G.o.d so nigh unto them, as the Lord our G.o.d is whensoever we call upon Him?"(416) saying that "each will realize the nearness of G.o.d according to his own intellectual and emotional disposition, and thus enter into communion with Him." According to another Haggadist the verse of the Psalm, "The voice of the Lord resoundeth with power,"(417) teaches how G.o.d reveals Himself, not with His own overwhelming might, but according to each man's individual power and capacity. The rabbis even make bold to a.s.sert that whenever Israel suffers, G.o.d suffers with him; as it is written, "I will be with him in trouble."(418)

4. As a matter of fact, all the names which we apply to G.o.d in speech or in prayer, even the most sublime and holy ones, are derived from our own sensory experience and cannot be taken literally. They are used only as vehicles to bring home to us the idea that G.o.d's nearness is our highest good. Even the material world, which is perceptible to our senses, must undergo a certain inner transformation before it can be termed science or philosophy, and becomes the possession of the mind. It requires still further exertions of the imagination to bring within our grasp the world of the spirit, and above all the loftiest of all conceptions, the very being of G.o.d. Yet it is just this Being of all Beings who draws us irresistibly toward Himself, whose nearness we perceive in the very depths of our intellectual and emotional life. Our "soul thirsteth after G.o.d, the living G.o.d," and behold, He is nigh, He takes possession of us, and we call Him _our_ G.o.d.

5. The Haggadists expressed this intimate relation of G.o.d to man, and specifically to Israel, by bold and often nave metaphors. They ascribe to G.o.d special moments for wrath and for prayer, a secret chamber where he weeps over the distress of Israel, a prayer-mantle (tallith) and phylacteries which He wears like any of the leaders of the community, and even l.u.s.trations which He practices exactly like mortals.(419) But such fanciful and extravagant conceptions were never taken seriously by the rabbis, and only partisan and prejudiced writers, entirely lacking in a sense of humor, could point to such pa.s.sages to prove that a theology of the Synagogue carried out a "Judaization of G.o.d."(420)

C. G.o.d In Relation To The World

Chapter XXIV. The World and its Master

1. In using the term world or _universe_ we include the totality of all beings at once, and this suggests a stage of knowledge where polytheism is practically overcome. Among the Greeks, Pythagoras is said to have been the first to perceive "a beautiful order of things" in the world, and therefore to call it _cosmos_.(421) Primitive man saw in the world innumerable forces continually struggling with each other for supremacy.

Without an ordering mind no order, as we conceive it, can exist. The old Babylonian conception prevalent throughout antiquity divided the world into three realms, the celestial, terrestrial, and the nether world, each of which had its own type of inhabitants and its own ruling divinities.

Yet these various divine powers were at war with each other, and ultimately they, too, must submit to a blind fate which men and G.o.ds alike could read in the stars or other natural phenomena.

With the first words of the Bible, "In the beginning G.o.d created the heavens and the earth," Judaism declared the world to be a unity and G.o.d its Creator and Master. Heathenism had always beheld in the world certain blind forces of nature, working without plan or purpose and devoid of any moral aims. But Judaism sees in the world the work of a supreme Intellect who fashioned it according to His will, and who rules in freedom, wisdom, and goodness. "He spoke, and it was; He commanded, and it stood."(422) Nature exists only by the will of G.o.d; His creative _fiat_ called it into existence, and it ceases to be as soon as it has fulfilled His plan.

2. That which the scientist terms nature-the cosmic life in its eternal process of growth and reproduction-is declared by Judaism to be G.o.d's creation. Ancient heathen conceptions deified nature, indeed, but they knew only a cosmogony, that is, a process of birth and growth of the world. In this the G.o.ds partic.i.p.ate with all other beings, to sink back again at the close of the drama into fiery chaos,-the so-called "twilight of the G.o.ds." Here the deity const.i.tutes a part of the world, or the world a part of the deity, and philosophic speculation can at best blend the two into a pantheistic system which has no place for a self-conscious, creative mind and will. In fact, the universe appears as an ever growing and unfolding deity, and the deity as an ever growing and unfolding universe. Modern science more properly a.s.sumes a self-imposed limitation; it searches for the laws underlying the action and interaction of natural forces and elements, thus to explain in a mechanistic way the origin and development of all things, but it leaves entirely outside of its domain the whole question of a first cause and a supreme creative mind. It certainly can pa.s.s no opinion as to whether or not the entire work of creation was accomplished by the free act of a Creator. Revelation alone can speak with unfaltering accents: "In the beginning G.o.d created heaven and earth." However we may understand, or imagine, the beginning of the natural process, the formation of matter and the inception of motion, we see above the confines of s.p.a.ce and time the everlasting G.o.d, the absolutely free Creator of all things.

3. No definite theological dogma can define the order and process of the genesis of the world; this is rather a scientific than a religious question. The Biblical doc.u.ments themselves differ widely on this point, whether one compares the stories in the first two chapters of Genesis, or contrasts both of them with the poetical descriptions in Job and the Psalms.(423) And these divergent accounts are still less to be reconciled with the results of natural science. In the old Babylonian cosmography, on which the Biblical view is based, the earth, shaped like a disk, was suspended over the waters of the ocean, while above it was the solid vault of heaven like a ceiling. In this the stars were fixed like lamps to light the earth, and hidden chambers to store up the rain. The sciences of astronomy, physics, and geology have abolished these childlike conceptions as well as the story of a six-day creation, where vegetation sprang from the earth even before the sun, moon, and stars appeared in the firmament.

The fact is that the Biblical account is not intended to depreciate or supersede the facts established by natural science, but solely to accentuate those religious truths which the latter disregards.(424) These may be summed up in the following three doctrines:

4. First. Nature, with all its immeasurable power and grandeur, its wondrous beauty and harmony, is not independent, but is the work, the workshop, and the working force of the great Master. His spirit alone is the active power; His will must be carried out. It is true that we cannot conceive the universe otherwise than as infinite in time and s.p.a.ce, because both time and s.p.a.ce are but human modes of apperception. In fact, we cannot think of a Creator without a creation, because any potentiality or capacity without execution would imply imperfection in G.o.d.

Nevertheless we must conceive of G.o.d as the designing and creating intellect of the universe, infinitely transcending its complex mechanism, whose will is expressed involuntarily by each of the created beings. He alone is the living G.o.d; He has lent existence and infinite capacity to the beings of the world; and they, in achieving their appointed purpose, according to the poet's metaphor, "weave His living garment." The Psalmist also sings in the same key:

"Of old Thou didst lay the foundations of the earth; And the heavens are the work of Thy hands; They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure; Yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment.

As a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall pa.s.s away; But Thou art the selfsame, and Thy years shall have no end."(425)

5. Second. The numberless beings and forces of the universe comprise a unity, working according to one plan, subserving a common purpose, and pursuing in their development and interaction the aim which G.o.d's wisdom a.s.signed them from the beginning. However hostile the various elements may be toward each other, however fierce the universal conflict, "the struggle for existence," still over all the discord prevails a higher concord, and the struggle of nature's forces ends in harmony and peace. "He maketh peace in His high places."(426) Even the highest type of heathenism, the Persian, divided the world into mutually hostile principles, light and darkness, good and evil. But Judaism proclaims G.o.d as the Creator of both.

No force is left out of the universal plan; each contributes its part to the whole. Consequently the very progress of natural science confirms more and more the principle of the divine Unity. The researches of science are ever tending toward the knowledge of universal laws of growth, culminating in a scheme of universal evolution. Hence this supports and confirms Jewish monotheism, which knows no power of evil antagonistic to G.o.d.

6. Third. The world is good, since goodness is its creator and its final aim. True enough, nature, bent with "tooth and claw" upon annihilating one or another form of existence, is quite indifferent to man's sense of compa.s.sion and justice. Yet in the wise, though inscrutable plan of G.o.d she does but serve the good. We see how the lower forms of life ever serve the higher, how the mineral provides food for the vegetable, while the animal derives its food from the vegetable world and from lower types of animals. Thus each becomes a means of vitality for a higher species. So by the continuous upward striving of man the lower pa.s.sions, with their evil tendencies, work more and more toward the triumph of the good. Man unfolds his G.o.d-likeness; he strives to

"Move upward, working out the beast, And let the ape and tiger die."

7. The Biblical story of Creation expresses the perfect harmony between G.o.d's purpose and His work in the words, "And behold, it was good" spoken at the end of each day's Creation, and "behold, it was very good" at the completion of the whole. A world created by G.o.d must serve the highest good, while, on the contrary, a world without G.o.d would prove to be "the worst of all possible worlds," as Schopenhauer, the philosopher of pessimism, quite correctly concludes from his premises. The world-view of Judaism, which regards the entire economy of life as the realization of the all-encompa.s.sing plan of an all-wise Creator, is accordingly an energizing optimism, or, more precisely, meliorism. This view is voiced by the rabbis in many significant utterances, such as the maxim of R. Akiba, "Whatsoever the Merciful One does, is for the good,"(427) or that of his teacher, Nahum of Gimzo, "This, too, is for the good."(428) His disciple, R. Meir, inferred from the Biblical verse, "G.o.d saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good," that "death, too, is good."(429) Others considered that suffering and even sin are included in this verse, because every apparent evil is necessary that we may struggle and overcome it for the final victory of the good.(430) As an ancient Midrash says: "G.o.d is called a G.o.d of faith and faithfulness, because it was His faith in the world that caused Him to bring it into existence."(431)