In such manner men of former ages received a religious revelation, a divine message.
6. The divine spirit always selects as its instruments individuals with special endowments. Still, insight into history shows that these men must needs have grown from the [pg 230] very heart of their own people and their own age, in order that they might hold a lofty position among them and command attention for their message. However far the people or the age may be from the man chosen by God, the multitude must feel at least that the divine spirit speaks through him, or works within him. Or, if not his own time, then a later generation must respond to his message, lest it be lost entirely to the world.
The rabbis, who knew nothing of laws of development for the human mind, assumed that the first man, made by God Himself, must have known every branch of knowledge and skill, that the spirit of God must have been most vigorous in him.[705] They therefore believed in a primeval revelation, coeval with the first man. Our age, with its tremendous emphasis on the historical view, sees the divine spirit manifested most clearly in the very development and growth of all life, social, intellectual, moral and spiritual, proceeding steadily toward the highest of all goals. With this emphasis, however, on process, we must lay stress equally on the origin, on the divine impulse or initiative in this historical development, the spirit which gives direction and value to the whole.
Chapter XXXVII. Free Will and Moral Responsibility
1. Judaism has ever emphasized the freedom of the will as one of its chief doctrines. The dignity and greatness of man depends largely upon his freedom, his power of self-determination. He differs from the lower animals in his independence of instinct as the dictator of his actions. He acts from free choice and conscious design, and is able to change his mind at any moment, at any new evidence or even through whim. He is therefore responsible for his every act or omission, even for his every intention. This alone renders him a moral being, a child of God; thus the moral sense rests upon freedom of the will.[706]
2. The idea of moral freedom is expressed as early as the first pages of the Bible, in the words which God spoke to Cain while he was planning the murder of his brother Abel: “Whether or not, thou offerest an acceptable gift,” (New Bible translation: “If thou doest well, shall it not be lifted up? and if thou doest not well,”) “sin coucheth at the door; and unto thee is its desire, but thou mayest rule over it.”[707] Here, without any reference to the sin of Adam in the first generation, the man of the second generation is told that he is free to choose between good and evil, that he alone is responsible before God for what he does or omits to do. This certainly indicates that the moral freedom of man is not impaired by hereditary sin, or by any evil power outside [pg 232] of man himself. This principle is established in the words of Moses spoken in the name of God: “I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore choose life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed.”[708] In like manner Jeremiah proclaims in God's name: “Behold I set before you the way of life and the way of death.”[709]
3. From these passages and many similar ones the sages derived their oft-repeated idea that man stands ever at the parting of the ways, to choose either the good or the evil path.[710] Thus the words spoken by God to the angels when Adam and Eve were to be expelled from Paradise: “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil,” are interpreted by R. Akiba: “He was given the choice to go the way of life or the way of death, but he chose the way of death by eating of the forbidden fruit.”[711] R. Akiba emphasizes the principle of the freedom of the will again in the terse saying: “All things are foreseen (by God), but free will is granted (to man).”[712]
4. At the first encounter of Judaism with those philosophical schools of Hellas which denied the freedom of the human will, the Jewish teachers insisted strongly on this principle. The first reference is found in Ben Sira, who refutes the arguments of the Determinists that God could make man sin, and then goes on: “God created man at the beginning, endowing him with the power of self-determination, saying to him: If thou but willest, thou canst observe My commandments; to practice faithfulness is a matter of free will.... As when fire and water are put before thee, so that thou mayest reach forth thy hand to that which thou desirest, so are life and death placed before man, and whatever he chooses of [pg 233] his own desire will be given to him.”[713] The Book of Enoch voices this truth also in the forceful sentences: “Sin has not been sent upon the earth (from above), but men have produced it out of themselves; therefore they who commit sin are condemned.”[714] We read similar sentiments in the Psalms of Solomon, a Pharisean work of the first pre-Christian century:[715] “Our actions are the outcome of the free choice and power of our own soul; to practice justice or injustice lies in the work of our own hands.”