1. Man is placed in an animal world of dull feelings, of blind and crude cravings. Yet his clear understanding, his self-conscious will and his aspirations forward and upward lead him into a higher world where he obtains insight into the order and unity of all things. By the spirit of God he is able to understand material things and grasp them in their relations; thus he can apply all his knowledge and creative imagination to construct a world of ideals. But this world, in all its truth, beauty and goodness, is still limited and finite, a feeble shadow of the infinite world of God. As the Bible says: “The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all the inward parts.”690 “It is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty, that giveth them understanding.”691
2. According to the Biblical conception, the spirit of God endows men with all their differing capacities; it gives to one man wisdom by which he penetrates into the causes of existence and orders facts into a scientific system; to another the seeing eye by which he captures the secret of beauty and creates works of art; and to a third the genius to perceive the ways of God, the laws of virtue, that he may become a teacher of ethical truth. In other words, the spirit of God is “the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.”692 It works upon the scientific interest of the investigator, [pg 227] the imagination of the artist and poet, the ethical and social sense of the prophet, teacher, statesman, and lawgiver. Thus their high and holy vision of the divine is brought home to the people and implanted within them under the inspiration of God. In commenting upon the Biblical verse, “Wisdom and might are His ... He giveth wisdom to the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding,”693 the sages wisely remark, “God carefully selects those who possess wisdom for His gift of wisdom.” Even as a musical instrument must be attuned for the finer notes that it may have a clear, resonant tone, so the human soul must be made especially susceptible to the gifts of the spirit in order to be capable of unfolding them. Thus the Talmud records an interesting dialogue on this very passage between a Roman matron familiar with the Scripture, and Rabbi Jose ben Halafta. She asked sarcastically, “Would it not have been more generous of your God to have given wisdom to those that are unwise than to those that already possess it?” Thereupon the Jewish master replied, “If you were to lend a precious ornament, would you not lend it to one who was able to make use of it? So God gives the treasure of wisdom to the wise, who know how to appreciate and develop it, not to the unwise, who do not know its value.”694
3. Thus the diverse gifts of the divine spirit are distributed differently among the various classes and tribes of men, according to their capacity and the corresponding task which is assigned them by Providence. The divine spark is set aglow in each human soul, sometimes feebly, sometimes brightly, but it blazes high only in the privileged personality or group. The mutual relationship between God and man is recognized by the Synagogue in the Eighteen Benedictions, where the [pg 228] one directly following the three praises of God is devoted to wisdom and knowledge: “Thou favorest man with knowledge, and teachest mortals understanding. So favor us with knowledge, understanding, and discernment from Thee. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, gracious Giver of knowledge.”695 This petition, remarks Jehuda ha Levi,696 deserves its position as first among these prayers, because wisdom brings us nearer to God. It is also noteworthy that the Synagogue prescribes a special benediction at the sight of a renowned sage, even if he is not a Jew, reading, “Praised be He who has imparted of His wisdom to flesh and blood.”697
4. Maimonides holds that in the same degree as a man studies the works of God in nature, he will be filled with longing for direct knowledge of God and true love of Him.698 “Not only religion, but also the sciences emanate from God, both being the outcome of the wisdom which God imparts to all nations,”—thus wrote a sixteenth-century rabbi, Loewe ben Bezalel of Prague, known usually as “the eminent Rabbi Loewe.”699 The men of the Talmud also accord the palm in certain types of knowledge to heathen sages, and did not hesitate to ascribe to some heathens the highest knowledge of God in their time.700 As a mystic of the thirteenth century, Isaac ben Latif, says: “That faith is the most perfect which perceives truth most fully, since God is the source of all truth.”701 Of the two heads of the Babylonian academies, Rab and Samuel, one asserted that Moses through his prophetic genius reached forty-nine of the fifty degrees of the divine understanding (as the fiftieth is reserved for God alone), while the other claimed the same distinction for King Solomon as the result of his wisdom.702
[pg 229]5. Thus the spirit of God creates in man both consciously and unconsciously a world of ideas, which proves him a being of a higher order in creation. This impulse may work actively, searching, investigating, and creating, or passively as an instrument of a higher power. At first it is a dim, uncertain groping of the spirit; then the mind acquires greater lucidity by which it illumines the dark world; and, as one question calls for the other and one thought suggests another, the world of ideas opens up as a well-connected whole. Thus man creates by slow steps his languages, the arts and sciences, ethics, law and all the religions with their varying practices and doctrines. At times this spirit bursts forth with greater vehemence in great men, geniuses who lift the race with one stroke to a higher level. Such men may say, in the words of David, the holy singer: “The spirit of the Lord spoke by me, and His word was upon my tongue.”703 They may repeat the experience of Eliphaz the friend of Job:
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.
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.”
The Apocalypse of Ezra is especially instructive in the great stress which it lays on freedom, in connection with its chief theme, the sinfulness of the children of Adam. “This is the condition of the contest which man who is born on earth must wage, that, if he be conquered by the evil inclination, he must suffer that of which thou hast spoken (the tortures of hell), but if he be victorious, he shall receive (the reward) which I (the angel) have mentioned. For this is the way whereof Moses spoke when he lived, saying unto the people, ‘Choose life, that thou mayest live!’... For all who knew Me not in life when they received My benefits, who despised My law when they yet had freedom, and did not heed the door of repentance while it was still open before them, but disregarded it, after death they shall come to know it!”716
5. Hellenistic Judaism also, particularly Philo,717 considered the truly divine in man to be his free will, which distinguishes him from the beast. Yet Hellenistic naturalism could not grasp the fact that man's power to do evil in opposition to God, the Source of the good, is the greatest reminder of his moral responsibility. Josephus likewise mentions frequently as a characteristic teaching of the Pharisees that man's free will [pg 234] determines his acts without any compulsion of destiny.718 Only we must not accept too easily the words of this Jewish historian, who wrote for his Roman masters and, therefore, represented the Jewish parties as so many philosophical schools after the Greek pattern. The Pharisean doctrine is presented most tersely in the Talmudic maxim: “Everything is in the hands of God except the fear of God.”719 Like the quotation from R. Akiba above, this contains the great truth that man's destiny is determined by Providence, but his character depends upon his own free decision. This idea recurs frequently in such Talmudic sayings as these: “The wicked are in the power of their desires; the righteous have their desires in their own power;”720 “The eye, the ear, and the nostrils are not in man's power, but the mouth, the hand, and the feet are.”721 That is, the impressions we receive from the world without us come involuntarily, but our acts, our steps, and our words arise from our own volition.
6. A deeper insight into the problem of free will is offered in two other Talmudic sayings; the one is: “Whosoever desires to pollute himself with sin will find all the gates open before him, and whosoever desires to attain the highest purity will find all the forces of goodness ready to help him.”722 The other reads: “It can be proved by the Torah, the Prophets, and the other sacred writings that man is led along the road which he wishes to follow.”723
As a matter of fact, no person is absolutely free, for innumerable influences affect his decisions, consciously and unconsciously. For this reason many thinkers, both ancient and modern, consider freedom a delusion and hold to determinism, [pg 235] the doctrine that man acts always under the compulsion of external and internal forces. In opposition to this theory is one incontestable fact, our own inner sense of freedom which tells us at every step that we have acted, and at every decision that we have decided. Man can maintain his own power of self-determination against all influences from without and within; his will is the final arbiter over every impulse and every pressure. Moreover, as we penetrate more deeply into the working of the mind, we see that a long series of our own voluntary acts has occasioned much that we consider external, that the very pressure of the past on our thoughts, feelings and habits, which leaves so little weight for the decision of the moment, is really only our past will influencing our present will. That is, the will may determine itself, but it does not do so arbitrarily; its action is along the lines of its own character. We have the power to receive the influence of either the noble or the ignoble series of impressions, and thus to yield either to the lofty or the low impulses of the soul.
In this way the rabbis interpret various expressions of Scripture which would seem to limit man's freedom, as where God induces man to good or evil acts, or hardens the heart of Pharaoh so that he will not let the Israelites go, until the plagues had been fulfilled upon him and his people.724 They understand in such an instance that a man's heart has a prevailing inclination toward right or wrong, the expression of his character, and that God encouraged this inclination along the evil course; thus the freedom of the human will was kept intact.
7. The doctrine of man's free will presents another difficulty from the side of divine omniscience. For if God knows in [pg 236] advance what is to happen, then man's acts are determined by this very foreknowledge; he is no longer free, and his moral responsibility becomes an idle dream. In order to escape this dilemma, the Mohammedan theologians were compelled to limit either the divine omniscience or human freedom, and most of them resorted to the latter method. It is characteristic of Judaism that its great thinkers, from Saadia to Maimonides and Gersonides,725 dared not alter the doctrine of man's free will and moral responsibility, but even preferred to limit the divine omniscience. Hisdai Crescas is the only one to restrict human freedom in favor of the foreknowledge of God.726
8. The insistence of Judaism on unrestricted freedom of will for each individual entirely excludes hereditary sin. This is shown in the traditional explanation of the verse of the Decalogue: “Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me.”727 According to the rabbis the words “of them that hate Me” do not refer to the fathers, according to the plain meaning of the passage, but to the children and children's children. These are to be punished only when they hate God and follow the evil example of their fathers.728 Despite example and hereditary disposition, the descendants of evildoers can lead a virtuous life, and their punishment comes only when they fail to resist the evil influences of their parental household. To illustrate the Biblical words, “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?”729 the rabbis single out Abraham, the son of Terah, Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, and Josiah, the son of Manasseh.730 Man, being made in [pg 237] God's image, determines his own character by his own free choice; by his will he can raise or lower himself in the scale of being.
9. The fundamental character of the doctrine of free will for Judaism is shown by Maimonides, who devotes a special chapter of his Code to it,731 and calls it the pillar of Israel's faith and morality, since through it alone man manifests his god-like sovereignty. For should his freedom be limited by any kind of predestination, he would be deprived of his moral responsibility, which constitutes his real greatness. In endeavoring to reconcile God's omnipotence and omniscience with man's freedom, Maimonides says that God wants man to erect a kingdom of morality without interference from above; moreover, God's knowledge is different in kind from that of man, and thus is not an infringement upon man's freedom, as the human type of knowledge would be. However, Abraham ben David of Posquieres blames Maimonides for proposing questions which he could not answer satisfactorily in the Code, which is intended for non-philosophical readers. The fact is that this is only another of the problems insoluble to human reasoning; the freedom of the will must remain for all time a postulate of moral responsibility, and therefore of religion.
1. Sin is a religious conception. It does not signify a breach of law or morality, or of popular custom and sacred usage, but an offense against God, provoking His punishment. As long as the deity is merely dreaded as an external power, not adored as a moral power ruling life from within for a holy purpose, sin, too, is considered a purely formal offense. The deity demands to be worshiped by certain rites and may be propitiated by other formal acts.732 For Judaism, however, sin is a straying from the path of God, an offense against the divine order of holiness. Thus it signifies an abuse of the freedom granted man as his most precious boon. Therefore sin has a twofold character; formally it is an offense against the majesty of God, whose laws are broken; essentially it is a severance of the soul's inner relations to God, an estrangement from Him.
2. Scripture has three different terms for sin, which do not differ greatly in point of language, but indicate three stages of thought. First is het or hataah, which connotes any straying from the right path, whether caused by levity, carelessness, or design, and may even include wrongs committed unwittingly, shegagah. Second is avon, a crookedness or perversion of the straight order of the law. Third is pesha, a wicked act committed presumptuously in defiance of God and His law. As a matter of course, the conception of [pg 239] sin was deepened by degrees, as the prophets, psalmists and moralists grew to think of God as the pattern of the highest moral perfection, as the Holy One before whom an evil act or thought cannot abide.
The rabbis usually employed the term aberah, that is, a transgression of a divine commandment. In contrast to this they used mitzwah, a divine command, which denotes also the whole range of duty, including the desire and intention of the human soul. From this point of view every evil design or impulse, every thought and act contrary to God's law, becomes a sin.
3. Sin arises from the weakness of the flesh, the desire of the heart, and accordingly in the first instance from an error of judgment. The Bible frequently speaks of sin as “folly.”733 A rabbinical saying brings out this same idea: “No one sins unless the spirit of folly has entered into him to deceive him.”734 A sinful imagination lures one to sin; the repetition of the forbidden act lowers the barrier of the commandment, until the trespass is hardened into “callous” and “stubborn” disregard, and finally into “reckless defiance” and “insolent godlessness.” Such a process is graphically expressed by the various terms used in the Bible. According to the rabbinical figure, “sin appears at first as thin as a spider's web, but grows stronger and stronger, until it becomes like a wagon-rope to bind a man.” Or, “sin comes at first as a passer-by to tarry for a moment, then as a visitor to stay, finally as the master of the house to claim possession.” Therefore it is incumbent upon us to “guard” the heart, and not “to go astray following after our eyes and our heart.”735
4. According to the doctrine of Judaism no one is sinful by nature. No person sins by an inner compulsion. But [pg 240] as man has a nature of flesh, which is sensuous and selfish, each person is inclined to sin and none is perfectly free from it. “Who can say: I have made my heart clean, I am pure from any sin?”736 This is the voice of the Bible and of all human experience; “For there is not a righteous man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not.”737 The expression occurs repeatedly in Job: “Shall mortal man be just before God? Shall a man be pure before his Maker?”738 Even Moses is represented in numerous passages as showing human foibles and failings.739 In fact, “the greater the personality, the more severely will God call him to account for the smallest trespass, for God desires to be ‘sanctified’ by His righteous ones.”740 The Midrash tells us that no one is to be called holy, until death has put an end to his struggle with the ever-lurking tempter within, and he lies in the earth with the victor's crown of peace upon his brow.741 When we read the stern sentence: “Behold, He putteth no trust in His holy ones,”742 the rabbis refer us to the patriarchs, each of whom had his faults.743 Measured by the Pattern of all holiness, no human being is free from blemish.
5. In connection with the God-idea, the conception of sin grew from crude beginnings to the higher meaning given it by Judaism. The ancient Babylonians used the same terminology as the Bible for sin and sin-offering, but their view, like that of other Semites, was far more external.744 If one was afflicted with disease or misfortune, the inference was that he had neglected the ritual of some deity and must appease the angered one with a sacrificial offering. Any irregularity in the cult was an offense against the deity. This became more moralized with the higher God-idea; the god [pg 241] became the guardian of moral principles; and the calamities, even of the nation, were then ascribed to the divine wrath on account of moral lapses. The same process may be observed in the views of ancient Israel. Here, too, during the dominance of the priestly view the gravest possible offense was one against the cult, a culpable act entailing the death penalty—asham, or “doom” of the offender. We shudder at the thought that the least violation of the hierarchical rules for the sanctuary or even for the burning of incense should meet the penalty of death. Yet such is the plain statement of the Mosaic law and such was the actual practice of the people.745
The more the prophetic conception of the moral nature of the Deity permeated the Jewish religion, the more the term sin came to mean an offense against the holiness of God, the Guardian of morality. Hence the great prophets upbraided the people for their moral, not their ceremonial failings. They attacked scathingly transgressions of the laws of righteousness and purity, the true sins against God, because these originate in dullness of heart, unbridled passion, and overbearing pride, all so hateful to Him. The only ritual offenses emphasized as sins against God are idolatry, violation of the name of God and of the Sabbath, for these express the sanctity of life.746 Except for these points, the prophets and psalmists insisted only on righteous conduct and integrity of soul, and repudiated entirely the ritualism of the priesthood and the formalism of the cult.747 This view is anticipated by Samuel, the master of the prophetic schools, when he says:
As soon as we realize that obedience to God's will means right conduct and purity of soul, we see in sin the desecration of the divine image in man, the violation of his heavenly patent of nobility.
6. Sin, then, is in its essence unfaithfulness to God and to our own god-like nature. We see this thought expressed in Job:749
Thus the source of sin is the human heart, the origin of all our thinking and planning. We know sin chiefly as consciousness of guilt. Man's conscience accuses him and compels him to confess, “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned.”750 Not only the deed itself, but even more the will which caused it, is condemned by conscience. Such self-accusation constantly proves anew that there is no place for original sin through the fall of Adam. “I could have controlled my evil desire, if I had but earnestly willed it,” said King David, according to the Talmud.751
7. Sin engenders a feeling of disunion with God through the consciousness of guilt which accompanies it. It erects a “wall of separation” between man and his Maker, depriving him of peace and security.752 Guilt causes pain, which overwhelms him, until he has made atonement and obtained pardon before God. This is no imaginary feeling, easily overcome and capable of being suppressed by the sinner with impunity. Instead, he must pay the full penalty for his sin, lest it lead him to the very abyss of evil, to physical and moral death. Sin in the individual becomes a sense of self-condemnation, [pg 243] the consciousness of the divine anger. Hence the Hebrew term avon, sin, is often synonymous with punishment,753 and asham, guilt, often signifies the atonement for the guilt, and sometimes doom and perdition as a consequence of guilt.754 Undoubtedly this still contains a remnant of the old Semitic idea that an awful divine visitation may come upon an entire household or community because of a criminal or sacrilegious act committed, consciously or unconsciously, by one of its members. Such a fate can be averted only by an atoning sacrifice. This accords with the rather strange fact that the Priestly Code prescribes certain guilt offerings for sins committed unwittingly, which are called asham.755
8. But even these unintentional sins can be avoided by the constant exercise of caution, so that their commission implies a certain degree of guilt, which demands a measure of repentance. Thus the Psalmist says: “Who can discern errors? Clear Thou me from hidden faults.”756 He thus implies that we feel responsible in a certain sense for all our sins, including those which we commit unknowingly. The rabbis dwell especially on the idea that we are never altogether free from sinful thoughts. For this reason, they tell us, the two burnt offerings were brought to the altar each morning and evening, to atone for the sinful thoughts of the people during the preceding day or night.757
9. At any rate, Judaism recognizes no sin which does not arise from the individual conscience or moral personality. The condemnation of a whole generation or race in consequence of the sin of a single individual is an essentially heathen idea, which was overcome by Judaism in the course of time through the prophetic teaching of the divine justice and man's moral responsibility. This sentiment was voiced by Moses [pg 244] and Aaron after the rebellion of Korah in the words: “O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one man sin, and wilt Thou be wroth with all the congregation?”758 In commenting upon this, the Midrash says: “A human king may make war upon a whole province, because it contains rebels who have caused sedition, and so the innocent must suffer together with the guilty; but it does not behoove God, the Ruler of the spirits, who looks into the hearts of men, to punish the guiltless together with the guilty.”759 The Christian view of universal guilt as a consequence of Adam's sin, the dogma of original sin, is actually a relapse from the Jewish stage to the heathen doctrine from which the Jewish religion freed itself.
10. According to the Biblical view sin contaminates man, so that he cannot stand in the presence of God. The holiness of Him who is “of eyes too pure to behold evil”760 becomes to the sinner “a devouring fire.”761 Even the lofty prophet Isaiah realizes his own human limitations at the sublime vision of the God of holiness enthroned on high, while the angelic choruses chant their thrice holy. In humility and contrition he cries out: “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; For mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”762 The prophet must undergo atonement in order to be prepared for his high prophetic task. One of the Seraphs purges him of his sins by touching his lips with a live coal taken from the altar of God.
Under the influence of Persian dualism, rabbinical Judaism considers sin a pollution which puts man under the power of unclean spirits.763 In the later Cabbalah this idea is elaborated until the world of sin is considered a cosmic power of impurity, opposed to the realm of right, working evil ever [pg 245] since the fall of Adam.764 Still, however close this may come to the Christian dogma, it never becomes identical with it; the recognition is always preserved of man's power to extricate himself from the realm of impurity and to elevate himself into the realm of purity by his own repentance. Sin never becomes a demoniacal power depriving man of his divine dignity of self-determination and condemning him to eternal damnation. It ever remains merely a going astray from the right path, a stumbling from which man may rise again to his heavenly height, exerting his own powers as the son of God.