A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy Part 5

In G.o.d this is not the case. Again, why only three? They say essence, life, wisdom; why do they not add power, or hearing and seeing? If they think that power is implied in life, and hearing and seeing in wisdom, so is life implied in wisdom.

They quote Scripture in their support, for example, the verse in II Samuel (23, 2), "The _Spirit_ of the Lord spoke through me, and his _Word_ was upon my tongue." "Word" denotes, they say, his attribute of wisdom, and "Spirit" his life, as distinct persons. But they are mistaken. The expressions in question denote the words which G.o.d puts into the mouth of his prophets. There are other similar instances which they cite, and in their ignorance of Hebrew take metaphorical expressions literally. If they are consistent, they should add many more persons in the G.o.dhead, in accordance with the many phrases of the Bible concerning the hand of G.o.d, the eye of G.o.d, the glory of G.o.d, the anger of G.o.d, the mercy of G.o.d, and so on.[63]

The above discussion, as also that of Al-Mukammas (p. 19), shows clearly the origin of the doctrine of attributes as well as its motive. Both Al-Mukammas and Saadia and the later Jewish philosophers owed their interest in this problem primarily to the Mohammedan schools in which we know it played an important role (see Introduction, pp. xxiii, xxvi).

But there is no doubt that the problem originated in the Christian schools in the Orient, who made use of it to rationalize the dogma of the Trinity.

There is extant a confession of faith attributed to Jacob Baradaeus (sixth century), the founder of the Syrian Church of the Monophysites or Jacobites, in which the phrase occurs that the Father is the Intellect, the Son is the Word and the Holy Ghost is Life. In the works of Elias of Nisibis of the Nestorian Church, who lived shortly after Saadia (975-1049), we also find a pa.s.sage in which the three expressions essence, life and wisdom are applied to the three persons of the Trinity. The pa.s.sage is worth quoting. It reads as follows: "As the essence of G.o.d cannot receive accidents, his life and his wisdom cannot be accidents. But whatever is not accident is either substance or person. Hence as the essence of the Creator and his life and his wisdom are not three substances or three accidents, it is proved that they are three persons."[64]

Monotheism was a fundamental dogma of the Mohammedan faith. Hence it was necessary for their rationalizing theologians to meet the Trinitarians with their own weapons and show that the multiplicity of the divine attributes which they could not deny, since the Koran was authority for it, does in no way affect G.o.d's unity. The problem was quite as important for Judaism as it was for Islam, and for the same reason.

Hence Saadia's insistence that inadequacy of language is alone responsible for our expressing G.o.d's essential attributes in the three words, Living, Omnipotent, Omniscient; that in reality they are no more than interpretations of the expression Maker.

We have now shown that G.o.d is one in the two important senses of the word. He is one in the sense that there is no second G.o.d beside him; and he is one in his own essence, _i. e._, he is simple and not composed of parts. His Life and his Power and his Wisdom are not distinct one from the other and from his essence. They are all one. We have also proved G.o.d's incorporeality. Nevertheless Saadia is not satisfied until he has shown in detail that G.o.d cannot be compared to man in any sense, and that the anthropomorphic expressions in the Bible must not be taken literally. In reference to Biblical interpretation Saadia makes the general remark that whenever a verse of Scripture apparently contradicts the truths of reason, there is no doubt that it is figurative, and a person who successfully interprets it so as to reconcile it with the data of sense or reason will be rewarded for it. For not the Bible alone is the source of Judaism, Reason is another source preceding the Bible, and Tradition is a third source coming after the Bible.[65]

In order to show that G.o.d is not to be compared to any other thing in creation Saadia finds it convenient to use Aristotle's cla.s.sification of all existing things under the ten categories.[66] Everything that exists is either a substance, or it is an accident, _i. e._, an attribute or quality of a substance. Substance is therefore the first and most important of the categories and is exemplified by such terms as man, horse, city. Everything that is not substance is accident, but there are nine cla.s.ses of accident, and with substance they make up the ten categories. The order of the categories as Aristotle gives them in his treatise of the same name is, substance, quant.i.ty, quality, relation, place, time, position, possession, action, pa.s.sion. If these categories include all existing things and we can prove that G.o.d is not any of them, our object is accomplished. The one general argument is one with which we are already familiar. It is that G.o.d is the cause of all substance and accident, hence he is himself neither the one nor the other. Scripture supports our view, as in Deuteronomy 4, 15: "Take ye therefore good heed of yourselves; for ye saw no manner of form on the day that the Lord spake unto you in h.o.r.eb out of the midst of the fire: lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the heaven; the likeness of anything that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth: and lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun and the moon and the stars, even all the host of heaven, thou be drawn away," etc.

And tradition is equally emphatic in this regard. Our sages, who were the disciples of the prophets, render the anthropomorphic pa.s.sages in the Bible so as to avoid an objectionable understanding. This is particularly true of the Aramaic translation of the Targum.

Such terms as head, eye, ear, mouth, lip, face, hand, heart, bowels, foot, which are used in relation to G.o.d in the Bible, are figurative.

For it is the custom of language to apply such terms metaphorically to certain ideas like elevation, providence, acceptance, declaration, command, favor, anger, power, wisdom, mercy, dominion. Language would be a very inadequate instrument if it confined itself to the literal meaning of the words it uses; and in the case of G.o.d we should be limited to the statement that he is.

What was said of the nouns above mentioned applies also to other parts of speech, such as verbs attributing human activity to G.o.d. Such phrases as "incline thine ear," "open thine eyes," "he saw," "he heard," "he spoke" are figurative. So the expression, "the Lord smelled," which sounds especially objectionable, denotes acceptance.

The theophanies in the Bible, where G.o.d is represented under a certain form, as in Ezekiel, Isaiah and Kings, do not argue against our view, for there are meant specially created forms for the benefit and honor of the prophet. This is what is meant by the "Glory of the Lord," and "Shekinah." Sometimes it is simply a created light without an individual form. When Moses asked to see G.o.d, he meant the created light. G.o.d cannot be seen with the eye nor can he be grasped in thought or imagination. Hence Moses could not have meant to see G.o.d, but the created light. His face was covered so that he should not be dazzled by the exceeding splendor of the beginning of the light, which is too much for a mortal to endure; but later when the brightest part pa.s.sed by, the covering was taken off and Moses saw the last part of the light.

This is the meaning of the expression in Exodus 33, 23, "And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back: but my face shall not be seen."

Having treated of G.o.d as the creator of the world and having learned something about his attributes, we must now proceed to the study of man, or which is the same thing, to an investigation of G.o.d's relations to the rational part of his creation in the sublunar world. That man is endowed with a soul cannot be doubted, for the activities of man's soul are directly visible. The problem which is difficult is concerning the nature of the soul.[67] Here opinions differ, and some regard the soul as an accident of the body, some think it is a corporeal substance like air or fire, while others believe there is more than one soul in man. It will be our task to vindicate our own view against these erroneous ideas. The soul is too important in its functions to be an accident. It is neither air nor fire because it has not the properties of these bodies. And if the soul consisted of two or more distinct parts, the perceptions of sense would not reach the reason, and there would be no co-operation between these two powers. The true view is therefore that the soul of man is a substance created by G.o.d at the time when the human body is completed. The soul has no eternal existence before the body as Plato thought, for nothing is eternal outside of G.o.d, as we saw before.

Nor does it enter the soul from the outside, but is created with and in the body. Its substance is as pure as that of the celestial spheres, receiving its light like them, but is much finer than the substance of the spheres, for the latter are not rational, whereas the soul is. The soul is not dependent for its knowledge upon the body, which without the latter has neither life nor knowledge, but it uses the body as an instrument for its functions. When connected with the body the soul has three faculties, reason, spirit and desire. But we must not think with Plato that these powers form so many divisions or parts of the soul, residing in different parts of the body. All the three faculties belong to the one soul whose seat is in the heart; for from the heart issue the arteries, which give the body sense and motion.

The soul was put in the body because from its nature it cannot act by itself; it must have the body as its instrument in order thereby to attain to perfect happiness, for the soul's functions either purify or defile it. When the soul leaves the body she can no longer repent; all this must be done while she is in the body. Being placed in the body is therefore a good for the soul. If she were left alone, there would be no use in her existence or in that of the body, and hence the entire creation would be in vain, which was made for the sake of man. To ask why was not the soul made so as to be independent of the body is foolish and tantamount to saying why was not the soul made something else than soul. The soul is not in any way harmed by being with the body, for the injury of sin is due to her own free will and not to the body. Moreover, the body is not unclean, nor are the fluids of the body unclean while in the body; some of them are declared in the Bible to cause uncleanness when they leave the body, but this is one of those ordinances which, as we shall see later, are not demanded by the reason for their own sake, but are specially commanded for a different purpose. As for the sufferings which the soul undergoes by reason of her connection with the body, some are due to her own negligence, such as cold, heat, and so on, others are inflicted by G.o.d for the soul's own good so that she may be later rewarded.

We see here, and we shall learn more definitely later, that Saadia is opposed to the view of the ascetics--a view Neo-Platonic in its origin--that matter and body as such are evil, and that the constant effort of man must be to free the soul from the taint of the body in which it is imprisoned, and by which it is dragged down from its pristine n.o.bility and purity. Saadia's opposition to the belief in the pre-existence of the soul at once does away with the Neo-Platonic view that the soul was placed in the body as a punishment for wrongdoing. The soul was created at the same time with the body, and the two form a natural unit. Hence complete life involves both body and soul.

We have seen that G.o.d's creation of the world is due to his goodness.

His first act of kindness was that he gave being to the things of the world. He showed himself especially beneficent to man in enabling him to attain perfect happiness by means of the commandments and prohibitions which were imposed upon him. The reward consequent upon obedience was the real purpose of the commandments.[68]

The laws which G.o.d gave us through the prophets consist of two groups.

The first embraces such acts as our reason recognizes to be right or wrong, good or bad, through a feeling of approval or disapproval which G.o.d planted in our minds. Thus reason demands that a benefactor should receive in return for his goodness either a kind reward if he needs it, or thanks if he needs no reward. As this is a general demand of the reason, G.o.d could not have neglected it in his own case, and hence the commandments that we should serve him, that we should not offend or revile him and the other laws bearing on the same subject.

It is likewise a demand of the reason that one should prevent the creatures from sinning against one another in any way. Murder is prohibited because it would lead to the destruction of the race and the consequent frustration of G.o.d's purpose in creating the world.

Promiscuous a.s.sociation of the s.e.xes is prohibited in order that man may be different from the lower animals, and shall know his father and other relatives that he may show them honor and kindness. Universal stealing would lead to indolence, and in the end would destroy itself when there is nothing more to steal. In a similar way we can explain all laws relating to social dealings among mankind.

The second group of laws has reference to acts which are inherently neither right nor wrong, but are made so by the act of G.o.d's commandment or prohibition. This cla.s.s may be called _Traditional_ in contrast to the first, which we shall name _Rational_.

The traditional laws are imposed upon us primarily so that we may be rewarded for obeying them. At the same time we shall find on careful examination of these laws that they also have a rational signification, and are not purely arbitrary. Thus the purpose of sanctifying certain days of the year, like Sabbaths and holy days, is that by resting from labor we may devote ourselves to prayer, to the acquisition of wisdom, and to converse with our fellows in the interest of religion. Laws of ceremonial purity have for their purpose to teach man humility, and to make prayer and the visitation of holy places more precious in his eyes after having been debarred from his privileges during the period of his uncleanness.

It is clear that we should not know how to perform the traditional commandments without divine revelation since our own reason would not have suggested them. But even in the case of the rational laws the general principles alone are known to us from our own reason but not the details. We know in general that theft, unchast.i.ty, and so on, are wrong, but the details of these matters would lead to disagreement among mankind, and hence it was necessary that the rational laws also be directly communicated to us by divine messengers.

The divine messengers are the prophets.[69] They knew that their revelations came from G.o.d through a sign which appeared at the beginning of the communication and lasted to the end. The sign was a pillar of cloud or of fire, or an extraordinary bright light, as we learn in the case of Moses.

The genuineness of a prophet's message is tested first of all by the nature of the content, and then by his ability to perform miracles. The Israelites would not have believed Moses, notwithstanding his miracles, if he had commanded them to commit murder or adultery. It is because his teaching was found acceptable to the reason that the miracles accompanying it were regarded as a confirmation of Moses's divine mission.

The Jewish Law[70] contains three elements, all of which are necessary for effective teaching. First, the commandments and prohibitions, or the laws proper; second, the reward and punishment consequent upon obedience and disobedience; and third, examples of historical characters in which the laws and their consequences are ill.u.s.trated.

But the written law would not accomplish its purpose without belief in tradition. This is fundamental, for without it no individual or society can exist. No one can live by what he perceives with his own senses alone. He must depend upon the information he receives from others. And while this information is liable to error either by reason of the informant being mistaken or his possible purpose to deceive, these two possibilities are eliminated in case the tradition is vouched for not by an individual, but by a whole nation, as in the case of the Jewish revelation.

As Saadia's emphasis on tradition, apart from its intrinsic importance for Judaism, has its additional motive in refuting Karaism, so the following discussion against the possibility of the Law being abrogated is directed no doubt against the claims of the two sister religions, Christianity and Mohammedanism.[71]

Abrogation of the law, Saadia says, is impossible. For in the first place tradition has unanimously held to this view, and in the second place the Law itself a.s.sures us of its permanent validity, "Moses commanded us a law, an inheritance for the a.s.sembly of Jacob" (Deut. 33, 4). The law const.i.tutes the national existence of our people; hence as we are a.s.sured by the Prophets that the Jewish nation is eternal, the Law must be likewise. We must not even accept the evidence of miracles in favor of a new law abrogating the old. For as we saw before, it was not primarily Moses's miracles that served to authenticate his teaching, but the character of the teaching itself. Now that the law of Moses stood the test of internal acceptability and external confirmation by the performance of miracles, its declaration of permanent validity cannot be upset by any new evidence even if it be miraculous.

Man[72] alone of all created things was given commandments and prohibitions, because he is superior to all other creatures by reason of the rational faculty which he possesses, and the world was created for him. Man's body is small, but his mind is great and comprehensive. His life is short, but it was given him to a.s.sist him to the eternal life after death. The diseases and other dangers to which he is subject are intended to keep him humble and G.o.d-fearing. The appet.i.tes and pa.s.sions have their uses in the maintenance of the individual and the race.

If it is true that G.o.d gave man commandments and that he rewards and punishes him according to his conduct, it follows that unless we attribute injustice to G.o.d he must have given man the power to do and to refrain in the matters which form the subject of the commandments. This is actually the case and can be proven in many ways. Everyone is conscious of freedom in his actions, and is not aware of any force preventing him in his voluntary acts. The Bible testifies to this when it says (Deut. 30, 19), "I have set before you life and death ...

therefore choose thou life," or (Malachi 1, 9), "From your hand has this thing come." Tradition is equally explicit in the statement of the Rabbis (Berakot 33b), "Everything is in the hands of G.o.d except the fear of G.o.d." To be sure G.o.d is omniscient and knows how a given individual will act in a given case, but this does not take away from the freedom of the individual to determine his own conduct. For G.o.d's knowledge is not the _cause_ of a man's act, or in general of a thing's being. If that were so, all things would be eternal since G.o.d knows all things from eternity. G.o.d simply knows that man will choose of his own free will to do certain things. Man as a matter of fact never acts contrary to G.o.d's knowledge, but this is not because G.o.d's knowledge determines his act, but only because G.o.d knows the final outcome of a man's free deliberation.

Since it is now clear from every point of view that G.o.d does not interfere with a man's freedom of action, any pa.s.sages in the Bible which seem to indicate the contrary are not properly understood, and must needs be interpreted in accordance with the evidence we have adduced from various sources including the Bible itself. Thus when G.o.d says (Exod. 7, 3) "I will harden the heart of Pharaoh," it does not mean, as many think, that G.o.d forced Pharaoh to refuse to let Israel go.

The meaning rather is that he gave Pharaoh strength to withstand the plagues without succ.u.mbing to them, as many of the Egyptians did. The same method should be followed with all the other expressions in the Bible which appear to teach determinism.

A man's conduct has an influence upon the soul, making it pure or impure as the case may be.[73] Though man cannot see this effect, since the soul is an intellectual substance, G.o.d knows it. He also keeps a record of our deeds, and deals out reward and punishment in the world to come.

This time will not come until he has created the number of souls which his wisdom dictates. At the same time there are also rewards and punishments in this world as an earnest of what is to come in the hereafter.

A man is called righteous or wicked according as his good or bad deeds predominate. And the recompense in the next world is given for this predominating element in his character. A righteous man is punished for his few bad deeds in this world, and rewarded for his many good deeds in the world to come. Similarly the wicked man is paid for his good deeds in this world, while the punishment for his wickedness is reserved. This answers the old problem of the prosperity of the wicked and the misery of the righteous in this world.

There are also sufferings of the righteous which are not in the nature of punishment for past conduct, but in view of the future so as to increase their reward in the world to come for the trials they endured without murmuring. The sufferings of little children come under this head.

On the other hand, a sinner is sometimes well treated and his life prolonged for one of the following reasons: To give him time to repent, as in the case of Mana.s.seh; that he may beget a righteous son, like Ahaz, the father of Hezekiah; to use him as G.o.d's tool to punish others more wicked than he--witness the role of a.s.syria as Isaiah describes it in chapter ten of his prophecies; for the sake of the righteous who is closely related to him, as Lot was saved for the sake of Abraham; or in order to make the punishment more severe later, as in the case of Pharaoh.

That there is another world after this one in which man is rewarded and punished can be proved from reason, from Scripture and from tradition.[74] It is not likely from what we know of G.o.d's wisdom and goodness that the measure of happiness intended for the soul is what it gets in this world. For every good here is mixed with evil, the latter even predominating. No one is really content and at peace in this world even if he has reached the top of the ladder of prosperity and honor.

There must be a reason for this, which is that the soul has an intuitional longing for the other world which is destined for it. There are many things from which the soul is bidden to abstain, such as theft, adultery, and so on, which it desires, and abstention from which causes it pain. Surely there must be reward awaiting the soul for this suffering. Often the soul suffers hatred, persecution and even death for pursuing justice as she is bidden to do. Surely she will be rewarded.

Even when a person is punished with death for a crime committed in this world, the same death is inflicted for one crime as for ten crimes.

Hence there must be another world where all inequalities are adjusted.

It is also evident that the men of the Bible believed in a hereafter.

Else why should Isaac have consented to be sacrificed, or why should G.o.d have expected it? The same applies to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, who preferred to be thrown into the fiery furnace rather than fall down in wors.h.i.+p before the golden image of Nebuchadnezzar; and to Daniel who was thrown into the den of lions for disobeying the order of the king and praying to G.o.d. They would not have done this if they did not believe in another world, where they would be rewarded for their sufferings in this one.

Tradition and the Rabbinical literature are filled with reference to a future world. We need mention only one or two. In the Ethics of the Fathers (ch. 4) we read that this world is like the vestibule to the other world. Another statement in the Talmudic treatise Berakot (p. 17a) reads that "in the world to come there is no eating and drinking, nor giving in marriage, nor buying and selling, but the righteous sit with their crowns on their heads and enjoy the splendor of the Shekinah."

With regard to the condition of the soul after death and the nature of reward and punishment in the next world, there is a variety of opinions.

Those who hold that the soul is corporeal or that it is an accident of the body believe it is destroyed with the death of the body. We have already refuted their opinion. Others, like the Platonists, the Dualists and the Pantheists, who believe in the pre-existence of the soul either as a separate ent.i.ty or as a part of G.o.d, hold that after the death of the body the soul returns to its original condition. Our belief as stated above (p. 37) is opposed to this. But there are some calling themselves Jews who believe in metempsychosis, that the soul migrates from one person to another and even from man to beast, and that in this way it is punished for its sins and purged. They see a confirmation of their view in the fact that some persons exhibit qualities which are characteristic of lower animals. But this is absurd. The soul and the body form a natural unit, the one being adapted to the other. A human body cannot unite with the soul of an animal, nor an animal body with a human soul. They try to account by their theory for the suffering of little children, who could not have sinned in their own person. But we have already explained that the suffering of children is not in the nature of punishment, but with a view to subsequent reward, and they must admit that the first placing of the soul in the body and giving it commandments is not in the nature of compensation for any past merit, but with a view to later reward. Why not then explain the suffering of children in the same way?[75]

As the body and the soul form a natural unit during life and a man's conduct is the combined effort of the two const.i.tuent parts of his being, it stands to reason that future reward and punishment should be imposed upon body and soul in combination. Hence the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, which is alluded to in the Bible and made into a religious dogma by the Rabbis, has support also in the reason.[76] Many objections have been advanced against it, but they can be easily answered. The strongest objection might seem to be that which attempts to show that resurrection is a logical contradiction. The argument is that the elements making up a given body during life find their way after the death of the person into the body of another, to which they are a.s.similated and of which they form a part. Hence it is impossible to resurrect two bodies out of the material common to both.

But this argument is untrue to fact. Every human body has its own matter, which never enters into the composition of any other body. When the person dies and the body decomposes, each element returns to its place in nature, where it is kept until the resurrection.

But there is another event which will happen to Israel before the time of the resurrection. In accordance with the promises of the Prophets we believe that Israel will be delivered from exile by the Messiah.[77]

Reason also supports this belief, for G.o.d is righteous, and since he has placed us in exile partly as a punishment for wrongdoing, partly for the purpose of trying us, there must be a limit to both.

Messiah the son of David will come, will deliver Jerusalem from the enemy and settle there with his people. When all the believing Israelites have been gathered from all the nations to the land of Palestine, then will come the resurrection. The Temple will be rebuilt, the light of the Shekinah will rest upon it, and the spirit of prophecy will be vouchsafed to all Israel, young and old, master and servant.

This blessed period will last until the end of time, _i. e._, until this world will give place to the next, which is the place of reward and punishment.

We describe the future habitation and status of the soul as Garden of Eden (Paradise) and Gehenna.[78] The former expression is intended to suggest happiness, there being nothing pleasanter in the world than a garden. The term Gehenna is a.s.sociated in the Bible with Tofteh, which was a place of impurity not far from the Temple. In reality, however, G.o.d will create a substance which will combine light and heat in such a way that the righteous will enjoy the light only, while the wicked will be tortured by the heat. All this Saadia infers from Biblical pa.s.sages.