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.