1. None of the precious truths of Judaism has become more indispensable than the belief in divine Providence, which we see about us in ever new and striking forms. Man would succumb from fear alone, beholding the dangers about him on every side, were he not sustained by a conviction that there is an all-wise Power who rules the world for a sublime purpose. We know that even in direst distress we are guided by a divine hand that directs everything finally toward the good. Wherever we are, we are protected by God, who watches over the destinies of man as “does the eagle who hovers over her young and bears them aloft on her pinions.” Each of us is assigned his place in the all-encompassing plan. Such knowledge and such faith as this comprise the greatest comfort and joy which the Jewish religion offers. Both the narratives and the doctrines of Scripture are filled with this idea of Providence working in the history of individuals and nations.491
2. Providence implies first, provision, and second, predestination in accordance with the divine plan for the government of the world. As God's dominion over the visible world appears in the eternal order of the cosmos, so in the moral world, where action arises from freely chosen aims, God is [pg 168] Ruler of a moral government. Thus He directs all the acts of men toward the end which He has set. Judaism is most sharply contrasted with heathenism at this point. Heathenism either deifies nature or merges the deity into nature. Thus there is no place for a God who knows all things and provides for all in advance. Blind fate rules all the forces of life, including the deities themselves. Therefore chance incidents in nature or the positions of the stars are taken as indications of destiny. Hence the belief in oracles and divination, in the observation of flying arrows and floating clouds, of the color and shape of the liver of sacrificial animals, and other signs of heaven and earth which were to hint at the future.492
On the other hand, Judaism sees in all things, not the fortuitous dealings of a blind and relentless fate, but the dispensations of a wise and benign Providence. It knows of no event which is not foreordained by God. It sanctioned the decision by lot493 and the appeal to the oracle (the Urim and Thummim)494 only temporarily, during the Biblical period. But soon it recognized entirely the will of God as the Ruler of destiny, and the people accepted the belief that “the days,” “the destinies,” and even “the tears” of man are all written in His “book.”495 Thus they perceived God as “He who knows from the beginning what will be at the end.”496 The prophets, His messengers, could thus foretell His will. They perceive Him as the One who “created the smith that brought forth the weapon for its work, and created the master who uses it for destruction.”497 However the foe may rage, he is but [pg 169] “the scourge in the hand of God,” like “the axe in the hand of him who fells the tree.”498 No device of men or nations can withstand His will, for He turns all their doings to some good purpose and transforms every curse into a blessing.499
3. Naturally this truth was first accepted in limited form, in the life of certain individuals. The history of Joseph and of King David were used as illustrations to show how God protects His own. The experiences of the people confirmed this belief and expanded it to apply to the nation. The wanderings of Israel through the wilderness and its entrance to the promised land were regarded as God's work for His chosen people. The prophets looked still further and saw the destinies of all nations, entering the foreground of history one by one, as the sign of divine Providence, so that finally the entire history of mankind became a great plan of divine salvation, centered upon the truth intrusted to Israel.
Beside this conception of general Providence ruling in history, the idea of special Providence arose in response to human longing. The belief in Providence developed to a full conception of care for the world at large and for each individual in his peculiar destiny, a conviction that divine Providence is concerned with the welfare of each individual, and that the joyous or bitter lot of each man forms a link in the moral government of the world. The first clear statement of this comes from the prophet Jeremiah in his wrestling and sighing: “I know, O Lord, that the way of man is not in himself, it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.”500 Special Providence is discussed still more vividly and definitely in the book of Job. Later on it becomes a specific Pharisaic doctrine, “Everything is foreseen.”501 “No man suffers so much as the injury of a finger unless it has been decreed in heaven.”502 A [pg 170] divine preordination decides a man's choice of his wife503 and every other important step of his life.
4. This theory of predestination, however, presents a grave difficulty when we consider it in relation to man's morality with its implication of self-determination. While this question of free will is treated fully in another connection,504 we may anticipate the thought at this point. The Jewish conception of divine predestination makes as much allowance as possible for the moral freedom of man. This is shown in Talmudic sayings, such as “Everything is within the power of God except the fear of God,”505 or “Repentance, prayer, and charity avert the evil decree.”506 Thus Maimonides expressly states in his Code that the belief in predestination cannot be allowed to influence one's moral or religious character. A man can decide by his own volition whether he shall become as just as Moses or as wicked as Jeroboam.507
5. The service of the New Year brings out significantly the Jewish harmonization between the ideas of God's foreknowledge and man's moral freedom. This festival, in the Bible called the Festival of the Blowing of the Shofar, was transformed under Babylonian influence into the Day of Divine Judgment. But it is still in marked contrast to the Babylonian New Year's Day, when the gods were supposed to go to the House of the Tablets of Destiny in the deep to hear the decisions of fate.508 The Jewish sages taught that on this day God, the Judge of the world, pronounces the destinies of men and nations according to their deserts. They thus replaced the heathen idea of blind fate by that of eternal justice as the formative power of life. Then, moved by a desire to mitigate the rigor of stern justice for the frail and failing mortal, they included also God's long-suffering and [pg 171] mercy. These attributes are thus supposed to intercede, so that the final decision is left in suspense until the Day of Atonement, the great day of pardon. Some Tannaitic teachers509 find it more in accord with their view of God to say that He judges man every day, and even every hour.
Of course, the philosophic mind can take this whole viewpoint in a figurative sense alone. All the more must we recognize that this sublime religious thought of God liberates morality from the various limitations of the ancient pagan conception of Deity and the more recent metaphysical view. In place of these it asserts that there is a moral government of the world, which must be imitated in the moral and religious consciousness of the individual.
6. The belief in a moral government of the world answers another question which the medieval Jewish philosophers and their Mohammedan predecessors endeavored to solve, but without satisfying the religious sentiment, the chief concern of theology. Some of them maintain that God's foreknowledge does not determine human deeds.510 Maimonides and his school, however, say that it is impossible for us to comprehend the knowledge and power of God, and that therefore such a question is outside the sphere of human knowledge. “Know that, just as God has made the elements of fire and air to rise upwards and water and earth to sink downward, so has He made man a free, self-determining being, who acts of his own volition.”511 The Mohammedans would often give up human freedom rather than the omniscience and all-determining power of God; but the Jewish thinkers, [pg 172] significantly, with only the possible exception of Crescas,512 laid stress upon the divine nature which man attains through moral freedom, even at the risk of limiting the omniscience of God.
7. The philosophers failed, however, to emphasize sufficiently a point of highest importance for religion, God's paternal care for all His creatures. Indeed, God ceases to be God, if He has not included our every step in His plan of creation, thus surrounding us with paternal love and tender care. Instead of the three blind fates of heathendom who spin and cut the threads of destiny without even knowing why, the divine Father himself sits at the loom of time and apportions the lot of men according to His own wisdom and goodness. Such a belief in divine Providence is ingrained in the soul, and reasoning alone will not suffice to attain it. Therefore even such great thinkers as Maimonides and Gersonides go astray as religious teachers when they follow Aristotelian principles in this very intimate matter. They assume a general Providence aiming for the preservation of the species, but include a special Providence only so far as the recipient of it is endowed with reason and has thus approached the divine Intellect. A Providence of this type, the result of human reasoning, is a mere illusion, as the pious thinker, Hasdai Crescas, clearly shows.513 For the man who prays to God in anxiety or distress this bears nothing but disappointment.
The Aristotelian conception of the world has this great truth, that there is no such thing as chance, that everything is foreseen and provided by the divine wisdom. But religion must hold that the individual is an object of care by God, that “not a sparrow falls into the net without God's will,”514 [pg 173] that “every hair on the head of man is counted and cared for in the heavenly order,”515 and that the most insignificant thing serves its purpose under the guidance of an all-wise God. We use figurative expressions for the divine care, because we cannot grasp it entirely or literally.
8. The Bible in the Song of Moses compares divine Providence to the eagle spreading her protecting wings over her young and bearing them aloft, or urging them to soar along.516 The rabbis elaborate this by referring to the twofold care which the eagle thus bestows, as she watches over those who are still tender and helpless, shielding them from the arrows below by bearing them on her wings, but inspiring the maturer and stronger ones to fly by her side.517 In the same way Providence trains both individuals and generations for their allotted task. A little child requires incessant care on the part of its mother, until it has learned how to eat, walk, speak, and to decide for itself, but the wise parent gradually withdraws his guiding hand so that the growing child may learn self-reliance and self-respect. The divine Father trains man thus through the childhood of humanity. But no sooner does the divine spirit in man awaken to self-consciousness than he is thrown on his own resources to become the master of his own destiny. The divine power which, in the earlier stages, had worked for man, now works with him and within him. In the rabbinic phrase, he is now ready to be a “co-worker with God in the work of creation.”518 Only at those grave moments when his own powers fail him, he still feels in the humility of faith that his ancient God is still near, “a very present help in trouble,” and that “the Guardian of Israel neither slumbereth nor sleepeth.”519
[pg 174]Philosophy cannot tolerate the removal of the dividing line between the transcendent God and finite man. Hence the relation of man's free will and divine foresight cannot be solved by any process of reasoning. But when religion proclaims a moral government of the world, then man, with his moral and spiritual aims, attains a place in Creation akin to the Creator. Of course, so long as he is mentally a child and has no clear purpose, Providence acts for him as it does for the animal with its marvelous instinct. Through His chosen messengers God gives the people bread and water, freedom and victory, instruction and law. The wondrous tales describing the divine protection of Israel in its early life may strike us as out of harmony with the laws of nature, but they are true portrayals of the experience of the people. Whatever happened for their good in those days had to be the work of God; they had not yet wakened to the power hidden in their own soul. Their heroes felt themselves to be divine instruments, roused by His spirit to perform mighty deeds or to behold prophetic visions. It is God who battles through them. It is God who speaks through them. Both their moral and spiritual guidance works from without and above. At this stage of life autonomy is neither felt nor desired. When man awakens to moral self-consciousness and maturity, this inner change impresses him as an outer one; the change in him is interpreted as a change in God. He feels that God has withdrawn behind His eternal laws of nature and morality which work without direct interference, and in his new sense of independence he thinks that he can dispense with the divine protection and forethought. As if mortal man can ever dispense with that Power which has endowed him with his capacity for worthy accomplishment! Thus in times of danger and distress man turns to God for help; thus at every great turning point in the life of an individual or nation the idea of an all-wise Providence imbues him with [pg 175] new hope and new security. And in all these cases the great lesson of providential direction is typified in the history of Israel as related in the Bible.
10. The idea of Providence, indeed, belongs also to certain pagan philosophers, who observed the great purposes of nature which the single creature and the species are both to serve. The Stoics in particular made a study of teleology, the system of purposive ends in nature. Philo adopted much from them in his treatise on Providence. Later the popular philosophic group among the Mohammedans, the so-called “Brothers of Purity,” based their doctrines of God and His relation to the world on a teleological view of nature. In fact, the Jewish philosopher and moralist Bahya ben Pakudah has embodied many of their ideas in his “Duties of the Heart.”520
Jewish folklore—preserved in rabbinic literature—has also attempted a popular explanation of the obscure ways of Providence, in strange events of nature as well as the great enigmas of human destiny. Thus the flight of David from Saul affords the lesson of the good purpose which may be served by so insignificant a thing as a spider, or by so dreadful a state as insanity.521 Vast numbers of the Jewish legends and fables deal with adversities which are turned into ultimate good by the working of an all-wise Providence.522
1. A leading objection to the belief in divine Providence is the existence in this world of physical and moral evil. All living creatures are exposed to the influence of evil, according to their physical or moral constitutions and the peculiar conditions of their existence. Heathenism accounts for the powers of darkness, pain and death by assuming the existence of forces hostile to the heavenly powers of light and life, or of a primitive principle of evil, the counterpart of the divine beings. But to those who believe in an almighty and all-benign Creator and Ruler of the universe, the question remains: Why do life and the love of life encounter so many hindrances? Why does God's world contain so much pain and bitterness, so much passion and sin? Should not Providence have averted such things? The answer of Judaism has already been stated here, but we need further elaboration of the theme that there is no evil before God, since a good purpose is served even by that which appears bad. In the life of the human body pleasure and pain, the impetus to life and its restraint and inhibition form a necessary contrast, making for health; so, in the moral order of the universe, each being who battles with evil receives new strength for the unfolding of the good. The principle of holiness, which culminates in Israel's holy God, transforms and ennobles every evil. As the Midrash explains, referring to Deut. XI, 26: “If thou but seest that both good and evil are placed in thy [pg 177] hand, no evil will come to thee from above, since thou knowest how to turn it into good.”523
2. The conception of evil passed through a development parallel with that of the related conceptions which we have just reviewed. At first every misfortune was considered to be inflicted by divine wrath as a punishment for human misdeeds. Nations and individuals were thought to suffer for some special moral cause; through suffering they were punished for past wrong, warned against its repetition in the future, and urged to repentance and improvement of their conduct. Even death, the fate of all living creatures, was regarded as a punishment which the first pair of human beings brought upon all their descendants through their transgression of the divine command. The Talmudic sages clung to the view of the Paradise legend in the Bible, when they held that every death is due to some sin committed by the individual.524
This view, which was shared by paganism, was accompanied by a higher conception, gradually growing in the thinking mind. As a father does not punish his child in anger, but in order to improve his conduct, so God chastens man in order to purify his moral nature. Good fortune tends to harden the heart; adversity often softens and sweetens it. In the crucible of suffering the gold of the human soul is purified from the dross. The evil strokes of destiny come upon the righteous, not because he deserves them, but because his divine Friend is raising him to still higher tests of virtue. This standpoint, never reached even by the pious sufferer Job, is attained by rabbinic Judaism when it calls the visitations of the righteous “trials of the divine love.”525 Thus evil, both physical and spiritual, receives its true valuation in the divine economy. Evil exists only to be overcome by the [pg 178] good. In His paternal goodness God uses it to educate His children for a place in His kingdom.
3. According to the direct words of Scripture good and evil, light and darkness, emanate alike from the Creator. This is accentuated by the great seer of the Exile,526 who protests against the Persian belief in a creative principle of good and a destructive principle of evil. The rabbis, however, ascribe the origin of evil to man; they take as a negation rather than a question the verse in Lam. III, 38: “Do not evil and good come out of the mouth of the Most High?” Thus they refer this to the words of Deuteronomy, “Behold, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil; choose thou life!”527
Such medieval thinkers as Abraham Ibn Daud and Maimonides did not ascribe to evil any reality at all.528 Evil to them is the negation of good, just as darkness is the negation of light, or poverty of riches. As evil exists only for man, man can overcome it by himself. Before God it has no essential existence. Unfortunately, such metaphysics does not equip man with strength and courage to cope with either pain or sin. The same lack is evident in that modern form of pseudo-science which poses as a religion, Christian Science, which has made propaganda so widely among both Jews and non-Jews. Christian Science declares pain, sickness, and all evil to be merely the “error of mortal mind,” which can all be dispelled by faith; such a view neither strengthens the soul for its real struggles nor convinces the mind by an appeal to facts.529
4. Frail mortals as we are, we need the help of the living God. Thus only can we overcome physical evil, knowing [pg 179] that He bears with us, feels with us, and transforms it finally into good. We need it also to overcome moral evil, in the consciousness that He has compassion upon the repentant sinner and gives him courage to follow the right path. The modern philosophers of pessimism had the correct feeling in adopting the Hindu conception, and emphasizing the pain and misery of existence, repeating Job's ancient plaint over the hard destiny of mankind. The shallow optimism of the age would rather conceal the dark side of life and indulge in outbursts of self-sufficiency. Yet if we measure it only by a physical yardstick, life cannot be called a boon. Against shallow optimism we have the testimony of every thorn and sting, every poisonous breath and every destructive element in nature's household, as well as all vice and evil in the world of man. The world does not appear good, unless we measure it by the ideal of divine holiness. If God is the Father watching over the welfare of every mortal, all things are good, because all serve a good purpose in His eternal plan. Every hindrance or pressure engenders new power; every sting acts as a spur to higher things. Short-sighted and short-lived as is man, he forgets too easily that in the sight of God “a thousand years are as a single day,” world-epochs like “watches in the night,” and that the mills of divine justice grind on, “slowly but exceeding small.” But one belief illumines the darkness of destiny, and that is that God stands ever at the helm, steering through every storm and tempest toward His sublime goal. In the moral striving of man we can but realize that our every victory contributes toward the majestic work of God.530
1. Judaism insists with unrelenting severity on the absolute unity and incomparability of God, so that no other being can be placed beside Him. Consequently, every mention of divine beings (Elohim or B'ne Elohim) in either the Bible or post-Biblical literature refers to subordinate beings only. These spirits constitute the celestial court for the King of the World.531 All the forces of the universe are His servants, fulfilling His commands. Hence both the Hebrew and Greek terms for angel, Malak and angelos, mean “messenger.” These beings derive their existence from God; some of them are merely temporary, so that without Him they dissolve into nothing. Although Scripture uses the terms, “God of gods” and “King of kings,” still we cannot attribute any independent existence to subordinate divine beings. In fact, Maimonides in his sixth article of faith holds that worship of such beings is prohibited as idolatry by the second commandment.532 Thus the unity of God lifts Him above comparison with any other divine being. This is most emphatically expressed in Deuteronomy: “Know this day, and lay it to thy heart, that the Lord He is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath; there is none else,”533 and “See [pg 181] now that I, even I, am He, and there is no god with Me; I kill and make alive; I have wounded and I heal, and there is none that can deliver out of My hand.”534 The same attitude is found in Isaiah: “I am the Lord that maketh all things, that stretched forth the heavens alone, that spread abroad the earth by Myself” “I am the Lord and there is none else; beside Me there is no god.”535 Such conceptions allow no place for angels or spirits.
2. It was certainly not easy for prophet, lawgiver, or sage to dispel the popular belief in divine beings or powers, which primitive Judaism shared with other ancient faiths. No sharp line was drawn at first between God and His accompanying angels, as we may infer from the story of the angels who appeared to Abraham, and the similar incidents of Hagar and Jacob.536 The varying application of the term Elohim to God and to the angels or gods is proof enough of the priority of polytheism, even in Judaism. The trees or springs, formerly seats of the ancient deities, spirits, or demons, were now the places for the appearance of angels, shorn of their independence, looking like fiery or shining human beings. Popular belief, however, perpetuated mythological elements, ascribing to the angels higher wisdom and sometimes sensuality as well. Such a case is the fragment preserved in Genesis telling of the union of sons of God to the daughters of men, causing the generation of giants.537 Obviously the old Babylonian “mountain of the gods,” with its food for the gods, became in the Paradise legend the garden of Eden, the seat of God;538 and the Psalmist still speaks of the “angels' food,” which appeared as manna in the wilderness.539 On the whole, the sacred writers were most eager to allot to the angels a very subordinate position in the divine household. [pg 182] They figure usually as hosts of beings, numbered by myriads, wrapped in light or in fleeting clouds. They surround the throne or chariot of God; they comprise His heavenly court or council; they sing His praise and obey His call.
Scripture is quite silent about the creation of these angelic beings, as on most purely speculative questions. At the very beginning of the world God consults them when He is to create man after the image of the celestial beings. For this is the original meaning of Elohim in Gen. I, 26 and 27 and V, 1: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”; “And God created man in his own image, in the image of godly beings He created him.” This view is echoed in Psalm VIII, verse 6: “Thou hast made him a little lower than godly beings.” In Job XXXVIII, 7, both the morning stars and the sons of God, or angels, “shout together in joy” when the Lord laid the foundations of the earth.540
3. In Biblical times—which does not include the book of Daniel, a work of the Maccabean time—the angels and demons were not invested with proper names or special functions. The Biblical system does not even distinguish clearly between good and evil spirits. The goat-like demons of the field popularly worshiped were merely survivals of pagan superstitions.541
In general the angels carry out good or evil designs according to their commands from the Lord of Hosts. They are sent forth to destroy Sodom, to save Lot, and to bring Abraham the good tidings of the birth of a son.542 On one occasion the host of spirits protect the people of God; on another they annihilate hostile powers by pestilence and plagues.543 At one time a multitude appear, led by a celestial chieftain; at another [pg 183] a single angel performs the miracle. In any case the destroying angel is not a demon, but a messenger of the divine will. Originally some of these primitive forces were dreaded or worshiped by the people, but all have been transformed into members of the celestial court and called to bear witness to the dominion of the Omnipotent.
4. The belief in angels served two functions in the development of monotheism. On the one hand, it was a stage in the concentration of the divine forces, beginning with polytheism, continuing through belief in angels, and culminating in the one and only God of heaven and earth. On the other hand, certain sensuous elements in the vision of God by the seers had to be removed in the spiritualization of God, and it was found easiest to transform these into separate beings, related to Deity himself. Thus the fiery appearance of God to the eye or the voice which was manifested to the ear were often personified as angels of God. This very process made possible the purification of the God idea, as the sublime essence of the Deity was divested of physical and temporal elements, and God was conceived more and more as a moral and spiritual personality. Hence in Biblical passages the names of God and of the angel frequently alternate.544 The latter is only a representative of the divine personality—in Scriptural terms, the presence or “face” of God. Therefore the voice of the angel is to be obeyed as that of God himself, because His name is present in His representative. A similar meaning became attached later on to the term Shekinah, the “majesty” of God as beheld in the cloud of fire. This was spoken of in place of God that He might not be lowered into the earthly sphere. For further discussion of this subject, see chapter XXXII, “God and Intermediary Powers.” In fact, we note that the post-exilic prophets all received their revelations, not from God, but through a special angel.545 They no longer [pg 184] believed that God might be seen or heard by human powers, and therefore their visions had to be translated into rational thoughts by a mediating angel.
5. Persian influence gave Jewish angelology and demonology a different character. The two realms of the Persian system included vast hosts of beneficent spirits under Ahura-Mazda (Ormuzd) and of demons under the dominion of Angro-mainyus (Ahriman). So in Judaism also different orders of angels arose, headed by archangels who bore special names. The number seven was adopted from the Persians, while both names and order were often changed. All of them, however, were allotted special functions in the divine household. The pagan deities and primitive spirits which still persisted in popular superstition were given a new lease of life. Each force of nature was given a guardian spirit, just as in nature-worship; angels were appointed over fire, water, each herb, each fountain, and every separate function of life. A patron angel was assigned to each of the seventy nations of the world mentioned in the genealogy of Noah.546
Thus the celestial court grew in number and in splendor. A beginning was made with the heavenly chariot-throne of Ezekiel, borne aloft by the four holy living creatures (the hayoth), surrounded by the fiery Cherubim, the winged Seraphim, and the many-eyed Ofanim (wheels).547 This was elaborated by the addition of rows of surrounding angels, called “angels of service,” headed by the seven archangels. Of these the chief was Michael, the patron-saint of Israel, and the next Gabriel, who is sometimes even placed first. Raphael and Uriel are regularly mentioned, the other three rarely, and not always by the same names. The Irin of Daniel—known as “the Watchers,” but more precisely “the ever-watchful Ones”—are [pg 185] another of the ten classes of angels included. Below these are myriads of inferior angels who serve them. Their classification by rank was a favorite theme of the secret lore of the Essenes, partly preserved for us in the apocalyptic literature and the liturgy. The Essenic saints endeavored to acquire miraculous powers through using the names of certain angels, and thus exorcising the evil spirits.
This secret lore seems to be patterned after the Zoroastrian or Mazdean system. It is noteworthy that the most prominent angelic figure is Metatron, the charioteer of the Merkabah or chariot-throne on high, which is merely another form of Mithras, the Persian god of light, who acts as charioteer for Ahura Mazda.548 Two other angels are mentioned as standing behind the heavenly throne, Akathriel, “the crown-bearer of God,” and Sandalphon, “the twin brother” = Synadelphon.
6. A striking contrast exists between the simple habitation in the sky depicted in the prophetic and Mosaic books, and the splendor of the heavenly spheres according to the rabbinical writings. The Oriental courts lent all their grandeur to the majestic throne of God, on which He was exalted above all earthly things. The immense space between was filled in by innumerable gradations of beings leading up to Him. There was no longer a question how far these other beings shared the nature of God; His dominion was absolute. Still a new question, not known to the Bible, arose, as to when the angelic world was created and out of what primordial element. At first a logical answer was given, that the angels emanated from the element of fire. Later the schoolmen, trying to dispose of the angels as possible peers or rivals of the eternal God, ascribed their creation to the second day, when the heaven was made as a vault over the earth, or to the fifth [pg 186] day, when the winged creatures arose.549 On the whole, the rabbis denied every claim of the angels to an independent or an eternal existence. Just because they firmly believed in the existence of angels and even saw them from time to time, they felt bound to declare their secondary rank. Only the archangels were made from an eternal substance, while the others were continually being created anew out of the breath of God or from the “river of fire” which flowed around His throne. Thus even the realm of celestial spirits was merged into the stream of universal life which comes and goes, while God was left alone in matchless sovereignty, above all the fluctuations of time.
On the other hand, the rabbis opposed the Essenic idea of assigning to the angels an intermediary task between God and man, and deprecated as a pagan custom the worship or invocation of angels. “Address your prayer to the Master of life and not to His servants; He will hear you in every trouble,” says R. Judan.550 Some of the teachers even declared that any godly son of Israel excels the angels in power. It is certainly significant, as David Neumark has pointed out, that the Mishnah eliminates every reference to the angels.551
7. In spite of this, none of the medieval Jewish philosophers doubted the existence of angels.552 Indeed, there was no reason for them to do so, as they had managed to insert them into their philosophic systems as intermediary beings leading up to the Supreme Intelligence. All that was necessary was to identify the angels of the Bible with the “ideas” of Plato or the “rulers of the spheres,” the “separate intelligences” of Aristotle. By this one step the existence of angels as cosmic powers was proved to be a logical necessity. The ten [pg 187] rulers of the spheres even corresponded with the ten orders of angels in the cosmography of the Jewish, Mohammedan, and Christian schoolmen. The only difference between the Aristotelian and the rabbinical views was that the former held the cosmic powers to be eternal; the latter, that they were created.
In both Biblical and rabbinical literature the angels are usually conceived of as purely spiritual powers superior to man. Maimonides, however, following his rationalistic method, declared them to be simply products of the imagination, the hypostases of figurative expressions which were not meant to be taken literally. To him every force and element of nature is an angel or messenger of God. In this way the entire angelology of the Bible, including even Ezekiel's vision of the heavenly chariot (the Merkabah), in becoming a part of the Maimonidean system turns into natural philosophy pure and simple.553 Of course, Saadia, Jehuda ha Levi, and Gabirol do not share this rationalistic view. To them the angels are either cosmic powers of an ethereal substance, endowed with everlasting life, or living beings created by God for special purposes.554
The later Cabbalistic lore extended the realm of the celestial spirits still more, creating new names of angels for its mystical system and its magical practices. Yet in this magic it subordinated the angels to man. In fact, it followed Saadia largely in this, making man the center and pinnacle of the work of creation, in fact, the very mirror of the Creator.555
8. For our modern viewpoint the existence of angels is a question of psychology rather than of theology. The old Babylonian world has vanished, with its heaven as the dwelling [pg 188] place of God, its earth for man, and its nether world for the shades and demons. The world in which we live knows no above or beneath, no heaven or hell, no host of good and evil spirits moving about to help or hurt man. It sees matter and energy working everywhere after the same immutable laws through an infinitude of space and time, a universe ever evolving new orbs of light, engendering and transforming worlds without number and without end. There is no place in infinite space for a heaven or for a celestial throne. A world of law and of process does not need a living ladder to lead from the earth below to God on high. Though the stars be peopled with souls superior to ours, still they cannot stand nearer to God than does man with his freedom, his moral striving, his visions of the highest and the best. Through man's spiritual nature God, too, is recognized as a Spirit; through man's moral consciousness God is conceived of as the Ruler of a moral world; but this same process at once does away with the need for any other spirits or divine powers beside Him. God alone has become the object of human longing. Man feels akin to His God who is ever near; he learns to know Him ever better. He can dispense with the angelic hosts. As they return to the fiery stream of poetic imagination whence they emerged, nebulous figures of a glorious world that has vanished, man rises above angel and Seraph by his own power to the dignity of a servant, nay, a child of God. Indeed, as the rabbis said, the prophets, sages, and seers are the true messengers of God, the angels who do His service.556