The Essential Agus. Steven T. Katz
but man’s productivity and prosperity will increase marvelously, so that people will be able to devote most of their time to Torah and religious meditation. (M.’s Code, “Hilchot Melochim.” Ch. XII.) In M.’s view, then, progress is many-sided, economic as well as spiritual, secular as well as religious. And the ultimate source of this ceaseless advance toward perfection in time is the Supreme Being, Who is also the Purpose of all purposiveness in nature and in history, and the Ground of all that exists.
The important thing to remember is that M. combined a rationalistic version of the biblical philosophy of history with his philosophic system. Thereby, he resolved the contradiction between the Perfect God, Who is the Cause of an imperfect but steadily improving world. To be sure, M. considered that goodness far outweighed all forms of evil in human life. The residual evil is due to the resistance of matter, and in the course of time, this resistance will be gradually overcome.
What is the contemporary religious import of this concept of God?—It does not allow us to think of God either as a loving Father or as a stern King, Who is placated by sacrifices, rituals and prayers. (Ill, 28.) It does not console us with the assurance that we can win His magical intervention, whereby the laws of nature will be changed in our behalf. Neither repentance, in the popular meaning of the word, nor the recitation of prescribed prayers, nor the distribution of our possessions for charity will change the course of events.10 We can speak of God as Compassionate only in the sense that He ordered the world in such a way as to provide for the needs of every living species.11 But the concerns of the majority of mankind are, after all, self-centered. The truly religious personality will love God, without presuming that God must love him in return, as Spinoza later put it. Furthermore, our awareness of the Divine Being generates supreme joy within our souls.12 The more we learn of His majesty, the more we yearn in love for His Presence, and this love is itself joy unalloyed. Indeed, God’s love and concern is directed toward us, to the extent to which we prepare ourselves to receive His overflowing, creative energy. Providence is proportional to the readiness of our personality to serve as His vessel in behalf of the uplift of mankind.13
In M.’s philosophy, the only true miracles are those of the human spirit, when it is touched by the Divine Power.14 The miracles of Scripture were built into the structure of natural law at creation. (II, 29.) Thereafter, we can look forward to the inflow of fresh freedom-generating creative power into the minds and hearts of creative men and women. All inventions, all the mighty achievements of the human spirit in every field of endeavor are the products of divine inspiration. (II, 45.) Man is not a passive victim of blind fate. On the contrary, God permeates the world only through the cooperation of great men and cooperative societies. (II, 40.) He achieves human progress not by suddenly interrupting the chains of causality but by inspiring men to utilize the opportunities available to them. And the goal of this divine-human cooperation is certain to be the ever more perfect society of the future.
This concept of God is thoroughly in harmony with the modern spirit. We know the tremendous potential of the human spirit for the improvement of the living condition of mankind, where M. could only hope and trust. The parallels between M.’s philosophy, stripped of its medieval picture of the cosmos, and the views of such modernists as Bergson, Alexander and Whitehead are obvious. God is the unifying, integrating, perfecting Pole of the di-polar universe, but matter, the source of perpetual resistance and negation, is also His creation. The ultimate triumph of Freedom and Purpose is asserted in the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo.
M.’s philosophy could be described as panentheistic, in that God includes the world, but the world does not include God. While He is eternal, He works within time. God is both personal and non-personal, for personality is a blend of freedom with purposiveness, and God is at once the Purpose of all purposes in the cosmos and the Free Creator, “who renews the world daily by His goodness.” He is immanent in the noblest momentary outreaches of the human spirit, but also transcendent, for we can affirm of Him only by negative attributes.
In sum, God is not only static perfection, but also a dynamic force, acting within history. Charles Hartshorne wrote, “Modern philosophy differs from most previous philosophy by the strength of its conviction that becoming in the more inclusive category [than, being].” (Ch. Hartshorne in “Philosophers speak about God,” U. of Chicago Press, 1953, p. 9.) Also, reflecting the Kabbalistic tradition, A. J. Kook wrote of the two forms of perfection, attributable to God, though he hesitated to apply any potentiality to God in Himself.
“We say that Absolute Perfection is necessarily existent and there is nothing potential in it. The Absolute is all actual. But there is a kind of perfection which consists in the process of being perfected; this type of perfection cannot be applied to the Deity, since Infinite, Absolute Perfection leaves no room for any additional increments of perfection. In order that Being shall not be devoid of growth in perfection, there must be a Becoming, a process beginning from the lowest depths, the levels of absolute privation, and rising therefrom steadily toward the Absolute Height. Thus existence was so constituted that it could never cease from progressing upward. This is its infinite dynamics.” (“Orot Hakodesh,” (Jerusalem, 1938), p. 549; “Banner of Jerusalem,” by J. B. Agus, p. 172.)
The Kabbalistic solution is to distinguish the Pure Being of God, as En Sof from His Becoming in the Pleroma of Sefirot. Modern philosophers feel no such compulsion—“there is no law of logic against attributing contrasting predicates to the same individual, provided they apply to diverse aspects of this individual.” (Hartshorne, op. cit., p. 15.)
MEANING OF FAITH
Can we prove the existence of God? M. demonstrates the existence of God by a variant of the cosmological proof—for every existent effect there is a cause; hence, an ultimate Cause, an Unmoved Mover. But when the issue of creation vs. eternity of the cosmos is raised, M. takes refuge in a theory of faith. The issue cannot be decided by the arguments of logic alone. An extra-logical factor must be brought into the equation. If the cosmos is created, “then the Torah is possible.” Since the scales of logic are evenly balanced, we are free to put our weight on the scale of creation and Torah.
M.’s resort to the Jamesian “Will to believe” must not be understood in superficial, tactical terms. M. made clear that his choice was not dictated by the literal teaching of the first chapters of Genesis. “The gates of interpretation are not closed to us.” (II, 25.) Nor did he opt for creation simply because of the possibility of including the miracles of Scripture in the primary act of creation. His argument moves on a deeper plane, so that it remains convincing in our contemporary universe of discourse. God does act in the world by relating Himself now to one person, now to another and by choosing a whole people as his instrument. (Ibid.)
Torah, in the sense of the harmonious unity of the supreme values of life, is itself a form of cognition. To love is to seek understanding, as M. put it.
Speculative reason is intimately one with the imperatives of ethics and the intuitive perceptions of “the imagination.” It is our personality as a whole that confronts the mystery of the universe, and when the judgment of logic is neutralized, the associated forms of outreach within us impel us to choose that view of the world which is consonant with the ultimate reality of spiritual values. In a created world, where the free spirit of God is sovereign, the human spirit finds its validation.
It follows that faith is not an alien element to the quest of truth, or a separate faculty detached from or even opposed to reason. On the contrary, faith is an extension of the adventure of speculative reason. Faith is the total posture of man, as “in fear and love,” he confronts the awesome majesty of the Supreme Being. God is “the soul of the soul” of the universe, the Ultimate Whole, Whose Wisdom proceeds from the whole to the parts, rather than the other way around. Hence, in our quest of His “nearness,”