Jewish Theology, Systematically and Historically Considered. Kaufmann Kohler
by the bridal love of Israel with which the people “went after God in the wilderness.”363 It is this love of God, according to Akiba's interpretation of the Song of Songs, which “all the waters could not quench,” “a love as strong as death.”364 This love raised up a nation of martyrs without parallel in history, although the followers of the so-called Religion of Love fail to give it the credit it deserves and seem to regard it as a kind of hatred for the rest of mankind.365 Whenever the paternal love of God is truly felt and understood it must include all classes and all souls of men who enter into the relation of children to God. Wherever emphasis is laid upon the special love for Israel, it is based upon the love with which the chosen people cling to the Torah, the word of God, upon the devotion with which they surrender their lives in His cause.366
7. Still, Judaism does not proclaim love, absolute and unrestricted, as the divine principle of life. That is left to the Church, whose history almost to this day records ever so many acts of lovelessness. Love is unworthy of God, unless it is guided by justice. Love of good must be accompanied by [pg 131] hate of evil, or else it lacks the educative power which alone makes it beneficial to man.
God's love manifests itself in human life as an educative power. R. Akiba says that it extends to all created in God's image, although the knowledge of it was vouchsafed to Israel alone.367 This universal love of God is a doctrine of the apocryphal literature as well. “Thou hast mercy upon all … for Thou lovest all things that are, and hatest nothing which Thou hast made. … But Thou sparest all, for they are Thine, O Lord, Lover of souls,” says the Book of Wisdom;368 and when Ezra the Seer laments the calamity that has befallen the people, God replies, “Thinkest thou that thou lovest My creatures more than I?”369
8. Among the mystics divine love was declared to be the highest creative principle. They referred the words of the Song of Songs—“The midst thereof is paved with love,”370 to the innermost palace of heaven, where stands the throne of God.371 Among the philosophers Crescas considered love the active cosmic principle rather than intellect, the principle of Aristotle, because it is love which is the impulse for creation.372 This conception of divine love received a peculiarly mystic color from Juda Abravanel, a neo-Platonist of the sixteenth century, known as Leo Hebraeus. He says: “God's love must needs unfold His perfection and beauty, and reveal itself in His creatures, and love for these creatures must again elevate an imperfect world to His own perfection. Thus is engendered in man that yearning for love with which he endeavors to emulate the divine perfection.”373 Both Crescas and Leo Hebraeus thus gave the keynote for Spinoza's “Intellectual love” as the cosmic principle,374 and this has been echoed even [pg 132] in such works as Schiller's dithyrambs on “Love and Friendship” in his “Philosophic Letters.”375 Still this neo-Platonic view has nothing in common with the theological conception of love. In Judaism God is conceived as a loving Father, who purposes to lead man to happiness and salvation. In other words, the divine love is an essentially moral attribute of God, and not a metaphysical one.
9. If we wish to speak of a power that permeates the cosmos and turns the wheel of life, it is far more correct to speak of God's creative goodness.376 According to Scripture, each day's creation bears the divine approval: “It is good.”377 Even the evil which man experiences serves a higher purpose, and that purpose makes for the good. Misfortune and death, sorrow and sin, in the great economy of life are all turned into final good. Accordingly, Judaism recognizes this divine goodness not only in every enjoyment of nature's gifts and the favors of fortune, but also in sad and trying experiences, and for all of these it provides special formulas of benediction.378 The same divine goodness sends joy and grief, even though shortsighted man fails to see the majestic Sun of life which shines in unabated splendor above the clouds. Judaism was optimistic through all its experiences just because of this implicit faith in God's goodness. Such faith transforms each woe into a higher welfare, each curse into actual blessing; it leads men and nations from oppression to ever greater freedom, from darkness to ever brighter light, and from error to ever higher truth and righteousness. Divine love may have pity upon human weakness, but it is divine goodness that inspires and quickens human energy. After all, love cannot be the dominant principle of life. Man cannot love all the time, nor can he love all the world; his sense of justice demands that he hate [pg 133] wickedness and falsehood. We must apply the same criterion to God. But, on the other hand, man can and should do good and be good continually and to all men, even to the most unworthy. Therefore God becomes the pattern and ideal of an all-encompassing goodness, which is never exhausted and never reaches an end.
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Chapter XXI. God's Truth and Faithfulness
1. In the Hebrew language truth and faithfulness are both derived from the same root; aman, “firmness,” is the root idea of emeth, “truth,” and emunah, “faithfulness.” Man feels insecurity and uncertainty among the varying impressions and emotions which affect his will; therefore he turns to the immovable Rock of life, calls on Him as the Guardian and Witness of truth, and feels confident that He will vindicate every promise made in His sight. He is the God by whom men swear—Elohe amen;379 nay, who swears by Himself, saying, “As true as that I live.”380 He is the supreme Power of life, “the God of faithfulness, in whom there is no iniquity.”381 The heavens testify to His faithfulness; He is the trustworthy God, whose essence is truth.382
2. Here, too, as with other attributes, the development of the idea may be traced step by step. At first it refers to the God of the covenant with Israel, who made a covenant with the fathers and keeps it with the thousandth generation of their descendants. He shows His mercy to those who love Him and keep His commandments. The idea of God's faithfulness to His covenant is thus extended gradually from the people to the cosmos, and the heavens are called upon to witness to the faithfulness of God throughout the realm of life. Thus in both the [pg 135] Psalms and the liturgy God is praised as the One who is faithful in His word as in His work.383
3. From this conception of faithfulness arose two other ideas which exerted a powerful influence upon the whole spiritual and intellectual life of the Jew. The God of faithfulness created a people of faithfulness as His own, and Israel's God of truth awakened in the nation a passion for truth unrivaled by any other religious or philosophical system. Like a silver stream running through a valley, the conviction runs through the sacred writings and the liturgy that the promise made of yore to the fathers will be fulfilled to the children. As each past deliverance from distress was considered a verification of the divine faithfulness, so each hope for the future was based upon the same attribute. “He keepeth His faith also to those who sleep in the dust.” These words of the second of the Eighteen Benedictions clearly indicate that even the belief in the hereafter rested upon the same fundamental belief.
On the other hand, the same conception formed the keynote of the idea of the divine truthfulness. The primitive age knew nothing of the laws of nature with which we have become familiar through modern science. But the pious soul trusts the God of faithfulness, certain that He who has created the heaven and the earth is true to His own word, and will not allow them to sink back into chaos. One witness to this is the rainbow, which He has set up in the sky as a sign of His covenant.384 The sea and the stars also have a boundary assigned to them which they cannot transgress.385 Thus to the unsophisticated religious soul, with no knowledge of natural science, the world is carried by God's “everlasting arms”386 and [pg 136] His faithfulness becomes token and pledge of the immutability of His will.
4. At this point the intellect grasps an idea of intrinsic and indestructible truth, which has its beginning and its end in God, the Only One. “The gods of the nations are all vanity and deceit, the work of men; Israel's God is the God of truth, the living God and everlasting King.”387 With this cry has Judaism challenged the nations of the world since the Babylonian exile. Its own adherents it charged to ponder upon the problems of life and the nature of God, until He would appear before them as the very essence of truth, and all heathenish survivals would vanish as mist. God is truth, and He desires naught but truth, therefore hypocrisy is loathsome to him, even in the service of religion. With this underlying thought Job, the bold but honest doubter,