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)