1. An attribute of great importance for the theological conception of God,
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 God, 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 God, the great God, 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 God 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 God, 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 God 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 compass of the human understanding. The religious consciousness,
however, demands that we accentuate precisely those attributes of God
which bring Him nearest to us. If reason alone would have the decisive
voice in this problem, every manifestation of God 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 God as descending from the heavens to the
earth. Still Judaism does not accept the cold and distant attitude of the
philosopher; it teaches that God 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 God. Wherever man
seeks Him, there He is.
3. Rabbinical Judaism is very far from the attitude assigned 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 God so nigh unto them, as the
Lord our God is whensoever we call upon Him?”(416) saying that “each will
realize the nearness of God 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 God reveals Himself, not with His
own overwhelming might, but according to each man’s individual power and
capacity. The rabbis even make bold to assert that whenever Israel
suffers, God 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 God 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 God’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 God. 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 God, the
living God,” and behold, He is nigh, He takes possession of us, and we
call Him _our_ God.
5. The Haggadists expressed this intimate relation of God to man, and
specifically to Israel, by bold and often naïve metaphors. They ascribe to
God 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 lustrations 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 passages to prove that a theology of
the Synagogue carried out a “Judaization of God.”(420)
C. God In Relation To The World