A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy

by Isaac Husik

The philosophers, it is true, oppose us by maintaining that the world is eternal. But the philosophers are Greeks, descended from Japheth, who did not inherit either wisdom or Torah. Divine wisdom is found only in the family of Shem. The Greeks had philosophy among them only during the short time of their power. They borrowed it from the Persians, who had it in turn from the Chaldeans. But neither before nor after did they have any philosophers among them.

Aristotle, not having any inherited tradition concerning the origin of the world, endeavored to reason it all out of his own head. Eternity was just as hard to believe in as creation. But as he had no true and reliable tradition, his arguments in favor of eternity seemed to him to be the stronger. Had he lived among a people who had reliable traditions on the other side, he would have found arguments in favor of creation, which is more plausible than eternity. Real demonstration cannot be controverted; and there is nothing in the Bible which opposes what the reason unequivocally demands. But the matter of eternity or creation is very difficult. The arguments on one side are as good as those on the other. And tradition from Adam to Noah and Moses, which is better than argument, lends its additional weight to the doctrine of creation. If the believer in the Torah were obliged to hold that there is a primitive eternal matter from which the world was made, and that there were many worlds before this one, there would be no great harm, as long as he believes that this world is of recent origin and Adam was the first man.[184]

We see now the standpoint of Judah Halevi, for the "Haber" is of course his spokesman. Philosophy and independent reasoning on such difficult matters as God and creation are after all more or less guess work, and cannot be made the bases of religion except for those who have nothing better. The Jews fortunately have a surer foundation all their own. They have a genuine and indisputable tradition. History is the only true science and the source of truth; not speculation, which is subjective, and can be employed with equal plausibility in favor of opposite doctrines. True history and tradition in the case of the Jews goes back ultimately to first hand knowledge from the very source of all truth. The prophets of Israel constitute a higher species, as much superior to the ordinary man as the ordinary man is to the lower animal, and these prophets received their knowledge direct from God. In principle Judah Halevi agrees with the other Jewish philosophers that true reason cannot be controverted. He differs with them in the concrete application of this abstract principle. He has not the same respect as Maimonides for the actual achievements of the unaided human reason, and an infinitely greater respect for the traditional beliefs of Judaism and the Biblical expressions taken in their obvious meaning. Hence he does not feel the same necessity as Maimonides to twist the meaning of Scriptural passages to make them agree with philosophical theories.

According to this view Judah Halevi does not find it necessary with the philosophers and the Mutakallimun painfully to prove the existence of God. The existence of the Jewish people and the facts of their wonderful history are more eloquent demonstrations than any that logic or metaphysics can muster. But more than this. The philosophical view of God is inadequate in more ways than one. It is inaccurate in content and incorrect in motive. In the first place, they lay a great deal of stress on nature as the principle by which objects move. If a stone naturally moves to the centre of the world, they say this is due to a cause called nature. And the tendency is to attribute intelligence and creative power to this new entity as an associate of God. This is misleading. The real Intelligence is God alone. It is true that the elements, and the sun and moon, and the stars exert certain influences, producing heat and cold, and various other effects in things material, by virtue of which these latter are prepared for the reception of higher forms. And there is no harm in calling these agencies Nature. But we must regard these as devoid of intelligence, and as mere effects of God's wisdom and purpose.[185]

The philosopher denies will in God on the ground that this would argue defect and want. This reduces God to an impersonal force. We Jews believe God has will. The word we use does not matter. I ask the philosopher what is it that makes the heavens revolve continually, and the outer sphere carry everything in uniform motion, the earth standing immovable in the centre? Call it what you please, will or command; it is the same thing that made the air shape itself to produce the sounds of the ten commandments which were heard, and that caused the characters to form on the Tables of Stone.[186]

The motive of the philosopher is also different from that of the believer. The philosopher seeks knowledge only. He desires to know God as he desires to know the exact position and form of the earth. Ignorance in respect to God is no more harmful in his mind than ignorance respecting a fact in nature. His main object is to have true knowledge in order to become like unto the Active Intellect and to be identified with it. As long as he is a philosopher it makes no difference to him what he believes in other respects and whether he observes the practices of religion or not.[187]

The true belief in God is different in scope and aim. What God is must be understood not by means of rational proofs, but by prophetic and spiritual insight. Rational proofs are misleading, and the heretics and unbelievers also use rational proofs—those for example who believe in two original causes, in the eternity of the world, or in the divinity of the sun and fire. The most subtle proofs are those used by the philosophers, and they maintain that God is not concerned about us, and pays no attention to our prayers and sacrifices; that the world is eternal. It is different with us, who heard his words, his commands and prohibitions, and felt his reward and his punishment. We have a proper name of God, Jhvh, representative of the communications he made to us, and we have a conviction that he created the world. The first was Adam, who knew God through actual communication and the creation of Eve from one of his ribs. Cain and Abel came next, then Noah and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and so on to Moses and the Prophets, who came after him. All these called him Jhvh by reason of their insight. The people who received the teaching of the Prophets, in whom they believed, also called him Jhvh, because he was in communication with men; and the select among them saw him through an intermediate agency, called variously, Form, Image, Cloud, Fire, Kingdom, Shekinah, Glory, Rainbow, and so on, proving that he spoke to them.[188]

As the sun's light penetrates different objects in varying degrees, for example, ruby and crystal receive the sun's light in the highest degree; clear air and water come next, then bright stones and polished surfaces, and last of all opaque substances like wood and earth, which the light does not penetrate at all; so we may conceive of different minds varying in the degree to which they attain a knowledge of God. Some arrive only as far as the knowledge of "Elohim," while others attain to a knowledge of Jhvh, which may be compared to the reception of the sun's light in ruby and crystal. These are the prophets in the land of Israel. The conception involved in the name "Elohim" no intelligent man denies; whereas many deny the conception of Jhvh, because prophecy is an unusual occurrence even among individuals, not to speak of a nation. That is why Pharaoh said (Exod. 5, 2), "I know not Jhvh." He knew "Elohim," but not Jhvh, that is a God who reveals himself to man. "Elohim" may be arrived at by reasoning; for the reason tells us that the world has a ruler; though the various classes of men differ as to details, the most plausible view being that of the philosophers. But the conception of Jhvh cannot be arrived at by reason. It requires that prophetic vision by which a person almost becomes a member of a new species, akin to angels. Then the doubts he formerly had about "Elohim" fall away, and he laughs at the arguments which led him to the conception of God and of unity. Now he becomes a devotee, who loves the object of his devotion, and is ready to give his life in his love for him, because of the great happiness he feels in being near to him, and the misery of being away from him. This is different from the philosopher, who sees in the worship of God only good ethics and truth, because he is greater than all other existing things; and in unbelief nothing more than the fault of choosing the untrue.[189]

Here there is clearly a touch of religious poetry and mysticism, which reveals to us Halevi's real attitude, and we have no difficulty in understanding his lack of sympathy with what seemed to him the shallow rationalism of the contemporaneous Aristotelian, who fancied in his conceit that with a few logical formulæ he could penetrate the mysteries of the divine, when in reality he was barely enabled to skim the surface; into the sanctuary he could never enter.

Though, as we have just seen, Halevi has a conception of God as a personal being, acting with purpose and will and, as we shall see more clearly later, standing in close personal relation to Israel and the land of Palestine, still he is very far from thinking of him anthropomorphically. In his discussion of the divine attributes he yields to none in removing from God any positive quality of those ascribed to him in the Bible. The various names or appellatives applied to God in Scripture, except the tetragrammaton, he divides, according to their signification, into three classes, actional, relative, negative. Such expressions as "making high," "making low," "making poor," almighty, strong, jealous, revengeful, gracious, merciful, and so on, do not denote, he says, feeling or emotion in God. They are ascribed to him because of his visible acts or effects in the world, which we judge on the analogy of our own acts. As a human being is prompted to remove the misery of a fellowman because he feels pity, we ascribe all instances of divine removal of misery from mankind to a similar feeling in God, and call him merciful. But this is only a figure of speech. God does remove misery, but the feeling of pity is foreign to him. We call therefore the attribute merciful and others like it actional, meaning that it is God's acts which suggest to us these appellations.