Studies in the Meaning of Judaism (JPS Scholar of Distinction Series)

3 / The Idea of God

3 / The Idea of God Ledor vador nagid godlecha Ulenetzach netzachim kedushatcha nakdish Veshivchacha Eloheinu mipinu lo yamush leolam vaed Our genial chairman has with most uncharacteristic severity insisted that this paper must not extend ledor vador, from generation to generation, nor to netzach netzachim, from eternity to eternity, nor even leolam vaed, forever and ever, but must end in forty-five minutes. Under the circumstances , then, I am grateful that his kind invitation was not to speak to you about God, His greatness, His Holiness and His praise, but only, nebbach, about the idea of God. Now it is clear that Judaism requires a belief in God, but what kind of idea of God, what sort of mental construct or intellectual picture of Him does it deem necessary? What is the Jewish idea of God? The answer to that question would seem, at first, to be the purpose of this paper. But I am troubled by a question which logically demands prior consideration. How will we recognize the Jewish idea of God when we find it? Among the concepts proposed by Mordecai Kaplan, Martin Buber, Hermann Cohen, Eric Fromm and others, how shall we judge which may properly be called Jewish? What are the criteria by which we may determine whether this formulation rather than that is truly the Jewish idea of God? This crucial question, as far as I have been able to ascertain, has rarely been dealt with in our day. Yet unless our standard of judgment about the idea of God is first made clear, unless we can establish with reasonable certainty what Judaism requires of an idea of God, our partisanship of this or that concept is equally meaningless. Hence I must request that 31 1957 it is to the question of the proper form of the idea of God in Judaism, not to the delineation of its correct content, that I may devote what I hope will seem to you the less-than-eternity that I have been given. Where shall we begin this investigation of ideational form? We must, I think, first find the place of the idea of God within the structure of Jewish religion as a whole, remembering that it is not belief in God, or the reality of God, or the existence of God with which we are concerned, but only the idea of Him which we create. Once we have found the relationship of this idea to the other elements of Judaism, we will then be able to establish the criteria which we seek. We turn, first, to the place of the idea of God in Judaism. It will, I think, help us clarify our perspective to begin with a brief look at how some other religions have dealt with this matter. In Christianity, it seems clear, not just belief in God, but one’s idea of God is crucial. This is not due simply to Christianity’s early conquest and absorption of Greek philosophy. The idea of God has been of vital significance to more than Christian theologians alone. Paul made faith in the crucified and risen Christ central to Christianity. It is through his faith in the Christ that a man becomes a Christian, that he lives as a Christian and that he achieves salvation. But the Christ is God, God become man, God who suffered and died, God who saves us from our sins. Not every faith will save a man. It is the specific content of his faith which determines his Christianity and his salvation for all eternity. It is no wonder then that for its first five hundred years Christianity devoted a major part of its intellectual energies to defining its idea of God. The great controversies and heresies of those years all center about the precise meaning of God in Christianity. With but a small stretch of the imagination one might view all the intellectual history of Christianity as one continuing effort to define its idea of God. The Protestant rebellion , for example, is, intellectually, basically a dispute as to where the body of Christ, the indwelling presence of God in our world, is to be found: in the Roman church, the gathered church, the church spiritual, the Spirit acting in the church, the heart of the believer, or the like. The very term Christianity uses for an exposition of its faith, “theology ,” literally “the science of God,” shows that for it there can be nothing of greater importance. But because this is...