20th Century Jewish Religious Thought: Original Essays on Critical Concepts, Movements, and Beliefs

God

God Louis Jacobs W hether belief in God erupted spontaneously in ancient Israel or whether there can be traced in the biblical record a gradual evolution from polytheism through henotheism to pure monotheism, it is certain that, from the sixth century B.C.E. at the latest, God was conceived of as the One Supreme Being, Creator and Controller of heaven and earth. Maimonides opens his great digest of judaism, the Mishneh Torah, with: "The foundation of all foundations and the pillar of all sciences is to know that there exists a Prime Being who has brought all things into existence. All creatures in heaven and earth and in between enjoy existence only because He really exists" (MT Hil. Yesodei ha-Torah 1:1). Maimonides' thought-patterns and language are those of medieval jewish philosophy, but his basic credo would have been shared by virtually all believing jews until modern times. Since, by definition, belief in God is belief in a unique Being totally different from any of his creations, the problem for jewish as for all theists has always been how to give expression in language to the nature of that deity. The popular distinction between the comprehension and the apprehension 292 GOD of God-the former impossible for humans-is generally shared by Jewish theologians, although the linguistic problem remains: how to identify the divine Subject that is apprehended. Judah Halevi observes that humans can dwell on God's works but must refrain from describing his nature, "For if we were able to grasp it, this would be a defect in Him" (Kuzari, 5, 21). Joseph Albo tells of the sage who, when invited to describe God's essence, replied: "If I knew Him I would be He" (SeIer ha-Ikkarim 2, 30). Consequently , throughout the history of Jewish thought there has been considerable tension in the matter of God-talk. To say too much, without qualification, is to fall into the trap of gross anthropomorphism. To say too little is to court the opposite risk of having so many reservations that the whole concept suffers, in Anthony Flew's pungent phrase, "the death of a thousand qualifications."1 Between these extremes Jewish thinkers can be divided into those who passionately declare that, for all the tremendous divide between God and man, God can still be spoken of, within limits, in human terms, and those who prefer the negative path, seeing the sheer wondrousness of God in that he is utterly beyond all human conceptualization . These latter echo the words of the psalmist (in the usual rendering of the verse): "For Thee silence is praise, 0 God" (Ps. 62:2), though they are often as inconsistent in pursuing the way of negation as the psalmist himself in this very psalm. In this area, if not in others, Solomon Schechter was right in contending that the best theology is not consistent. The Bible abounds in descriptions of God in human terms. He has an eye and a hand; he is good, compassionate, and merciful; his wrath is kindled against evildoers; he occasionally changes his mind and yet elsewhere it is stated that he is not a human being who can change his mind. This type of description is partly due to the concrete nature of classical Hebrew, which is deficient in abstract terms, and, especially in biblical poetry, has its origins in ancient mythological conceptions regarding the nature and activity of the pagan gods. In any event, anthropomorphism presented no problem to the biblical authors. Nor was it much of a problem to the rabbis of the Talmud and Midrash, who were in no way averse to inventing new anthropomorphisms of their own while qualifying the bolder, not to say outrageous , of these by the word kivyakhol (as it were). The nonphilosophicallyminded Jews of Germany and France in the Middle Ages were quite content to follow the biblical and rabbinic precedents, though few were evidently prepared to go all the way with the learned thirteenth-century German talmudist Moses of Tachav, who in Ketav Tamim held that it is necessary for a Jew to believe that God really does sit on a throne in heaven surrounded by his angels or, at least, that he does so when he reveals himself to his proph- GOD 293 ets. A century earlier, Abraham ben David of Posquieres (known as Rabad), in his stricture on Maimonides' round declaration, probably aimed at...