1. As soon as man awakens to a higher consciousness of God, he realizes the vast distance between his own finite being limited by space and time, and the Infinite Being which rules everywhere and unceasingly in lofty grandeur and unlimited power. His very sense of being hedged in by the bounds and imperfections of a finite existence makes him long for the infinite God, unlimited in might, and brings to him the feeling of awe before His greatness. But this conception of God as the omnipresent and everlasting Spirit, as distinct from any created being, is likewise the result of many stages of growing thought.
2. The primitive mind imagines God as dwelling in a lofty place, whence He rules the earth beneath, descending at times to take part in the affairs of men, to tarry among them, or to walk with them.240 The people adhered largely to this conception during the Biblical period, as they considered as the original seat of the Deity, first Paradise, later on Sinai or Zion, and finally the far-off heavens. It required prophetic vision to discern that “the heavens and the heavens' heavens do not encompass God's majesty,” expressed also in poetic imagery that “the heaven is My throne and the earth My footstool.”241 The classic form of this idea of the divine omnipresence is found in the oft-quoted passage from Psalm CXXXIX.242
[pg 097]3. The dwelling places of God are to give way the moment His omnipresence is understood as penetrating the universe to such an extent that nothing escapes His glance nor lies without His dominion.243 They are then transformed into places where He had manifested His Name, His Glory, or His Presence (“Countenance,” in the Hebrew). In this way certain emanations or powers of God were formed which could be located in a certain space without impairing the divine omnipresence. These intermediary powers will be the theme of chapter XXXII.
The following dialogue illustrates this stage of thought: A heretic once said sarcastically to Gamaliel II, “Ye say that where ten persons assemble for worship, there the divine majesty (Shekinah) descends upon them; how many such majesties are there?” To which Gamaliel replied: “Does not the one orb of day send forth a million rays upon the earth? And should not the majesty of God, which is a million times brighter than the sun, be reflected in every spot on earth?”244
4. Nevertheless a conception of pure spirit is very difficult to attain, even in regard to God. The thought of His omnipresence is usually interpreted by imagining some ethereal substance which expands infinitely, as Ibn Ezra and Saadia before him were inclined to do,245 or by picturing Him as a sort of all-encompassing Space, in accordance with the rabbis.246 The New Testament writers and the Church fathers likewise spoke of God as Spirit, but really had in mind, for the most part, an ethereal substance resembling light pervading cosmic space. The often-expressed belief that man may see God after death rests upon this conception of God as a substance perceptible to the mind.247
[pg 098]A higher standpoint is taken by a thinker such as Ibn Gabirol, who finds God's omnipresence in His all-pervading will and intellect.248 But this type of divine omnipresence is rather divine immanence. The religious consciousness has a quite different picture of God, a self-conscious Personality, ever near to man, ever scanning his acts, his thoughts, and his motives. Here philosophy and religion part company. The former must abstain from the assumption of a divine personality; the latter cannot do without it. The God of religion must partake of the knowledge and the feelings of His worshiper, must know his every impulse and idea, and must feel with him in his suffering and need. God's omnipresence is in this sense a postulate of religion.
5. The second earthly and human limitation is that of time. Confined by space and time, man casts his eyes upward toward a Being who shall be infinite and eternal. Whatever time begets, time swallows up again. Transitoriness is the fate of all things. Everything which enters existence must end at last. “Also heaven and earth perish and wax old like a garment. Only God remains forever the same, and His years have no end. He is from everlasting to everlasting, the first and the last.” So speak prophet and psalmist, voicing a universal thought249; and our liturgical poet sings:
6. But the idea of God's eternity also presents certain difficulties to the thinking mind. As Creator and Author of the universe, God is the First Cause, without beginning or end, the Source of all existence; as Ruler and Master of the world, He maintains all things through all eternity; though heaven and earth “wax old like a garment,” He outlasts them all. Now, if He is to manifest these powers from everlasting to everlasting, He must ever remain the same. Consequently, we must add immutability as a corollary of eternity, if the latter is to mean anything. It is not enough to state that God is without beginning and without end; the essential part of the doctrine is His transcendence above the changes and conditions of time. We mortals cannot really entertain a conception of eternity; our nearest approach to it is an endless succession of periods of time, a ceaseless procession of ages and eons following each other. Endless time is not at all the same as timelessness. Therefore eternity signifies transcendence above all existence in time; its real meaning is supermundaneity.251
7. This seems the best way to avoid the difficulty which seemed almost insuperable to the medieval thinkers, how to reconcile a Creation at a certain time and a Creator for whom time does not exist. In the effort to solve the difficulty, they resorted to the Platonic and Aristotelian definition of time as the result of the motions of the heavenly bodies; thus they declared that time was created simultaneously with the world. This is impossible for the modern thinker, who has learned from Kant to regard time and space, not as external realities, but as human modes of apperception of objects. So the contrast between the transient character of the world and the eternity of God becomes all the greater with the increasing realization of the vast gap between the material world and the divine spirit.
[pg 100]At this point arises a still greater difficulty. The very idea of creation at a certain time becomes untenable in view of our knowledge of the natural process; the universe itself, it seems to us, extends over an infinity of space and time. Indeed, the modern view of evolution in place of creation has the grave danger of leading to pantheism, to a conception of the cosmos which sees in God only an eternal energy (or substance) devoid of free volition and self-conscious action.252 We can evade the difficulty only by assuming God's transcendence, and this can be done in such a way as not to exclude His immanence, or—what is the same thing—His omnipresence.
8. Both God's omnipresence and His eternity are intended only to raise Him far above the world, out of the confines of space and time, to represent His sublime loftiness as the “Rock of Ages,” as holding worlds without number in “His eternal arms.” “Nothing can be hidden from Him who has reared the entire universe and is familiar with every part of it, however remote.”253
1. Judaism recognizes two distinct types of divine attributes. Those which we have so far considered belong to the metaphysical group, which chiefly engage the attention of the philosopher. They represent God as a transcendental Being who is ever beyond our comprehension, because our finite intellect can never grasp the infinite Spirit. They are not descriptions, but rather inferences from the works of the Master of the world to the Master himself. But there are other divine attributes which we derive from our own moral nature, and which invest our whole life with a higher moral character. Instead of arising from the external necessity which governs nature in its causes and effects, these rest upon our assumption of inner freedom, setting the aims for all that we achieve. This moral nature is realized to some extent even by the savage, when he trembles before his deity in pangs of conscience, or endeavors to propitiate him by sacrifices. Still, Judaism alone fully realized the moral nature of the Deity; this was done by investing the term “holiness” with the idea of moral perfection, so that God became the ideal and pattern of the loftiest morality. “Be ye holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.”254—This is the central and culminating idea of the Jewish law.255
2. Holiness is the essence of all moral perfection; it is purity unsullied by any breath of evil. True holiness can be [pg 102] ascribed only to Divinity, above the realm of the flesh and the senses. “There is none holy but the Lord, for there is none beside Thee,” says Scripture.256 Whether man stands on a lower or higher level of culture, he has in all his plans and aspirations some ideal of perfection to which he may never attain, but which serves as the standard for his actions. The best of his doings falls short of what he ought to do; in his highest efforts he realizes the potentiality of better things. This ideal of moral perfection works as the motive power of the will in setting for it a standard; it establishes human freedom in place of nature's compulsion, but such an ideal can emanate only from the moral power ruling life, which we designate as the divine Holiness.
3. Scripture says of God that He “walketh in holiness,”257 and accordingly morality in man is spoken of as “walking in the ways of God.”258 “Walk before Me and be perfect!” says God to Abraham.259 Moses approached God with two petitions,—the one, “Show me Thy ways that I may know Thee!” the other, “Show me, I pray Thee, Thy glory!” In response to the latter God said, “No man can see Me and live”, but the former petition was granted in that the Lord revealed Himself in His moral attributes.260 These alone can be understood and emulated by man; in regard to the so-called metaphysical attributes God will ever remain beyond human comprehension and emulation.
4. In order to serve as vehicle for the expression of the highest moral perfection, the Biblical term for holiness, Kadosh, had to undergo a long process of development, obscuring its original meaning. The history of this term gives us the deepest insight into the working of the Jewish genius towards the full revelation of the God of holiness. At first the word [pg 103] Kadosh261 seems to have denoted unapproachableness in the sense in which fire is unapproachable, that is, threatening and consuming. This fiery nature was ascribed by primitive man to all divine beings. Hence the angels are termed “the holy ones” in Scripture.262 According to both priestly practice and popular belief, the man who approached one of these holy ones with hand or foot, or even with his gaze, was doomed to die.263 Out of such crude conceptions evolved the idea of God's majesty as unapproachable in the sense of the sublime, banishing everything profane from its presence, and visiting with punishment every violation of its sanctity. The old conception of the fiery appearance of the Deity served especially as a figurative expression of the moral power of God, which manifests itself as a “consuming fire,”264 exterminating evil, and making man long for the good and the true, for righteousness and love.
5. The divine attribute of holiness has accordingly a double meaning. On the one hand, it indicates spiritual loftiness transcending everything sensual, which works as a purging power of indignation at evil, rebuking injustice, impurity and falsehood, and punishing transgression until it is removed from the sight of God. On the other hand, it denotes the condescending mercy of God, which, having purged the soul of wrong, wins it for the right, and which endows man with the power of perfecting himself, and thus leads him to the gradual building up of the kingdom of goodness and purity on earth. This ethical conception of holiness, which emanates from the moral nature of God, revealed to the prophetic genius of Israel, must not be confused with the old Semitic conception of priestly or [pg 104] ritual holiness. Ritual holiness is purely external, and is transferable to persons and things, to times and places, according to their relation to the Deity. Hence the various cults applied the term “holy” to the most abominable forms of idolatry and impure worship.265 The Mosaic law condemned all these as violations of the holiness of Israel's God, but could not help sanctioning many ordinances and rites of priestly holiness which originated in ancient Semitic usages. Hence the two conceptions of holiness, the priestly or external and the prophetic or ethical, became interwoven in the Mosaic code to such an extent as to impair the standard of ethical holiness stressed by the prophets, the unique and lofty possession of Judaism. Hence the letter of the Law caused a deplorable confusion of ideas, which was utilized by the detractors of Judaism. The liberal movement of modern Judaism, in pointing to the prophetic ideals as the true basis of the Jewish faith, is at the same time dispelling this ancient confusion of the two conceptions of holiness.
6. The Levitical holiness adheres outwardly to persons and things and consists in their separation or their reservation from common use. In striking contrast to this, the holiness which Judaism attributes to God denotes the highest ethical purity, unattainable to flesh and blood, but designed for our emulation.
The contemplation of the divine holiness is to inspire man with fear of sin and to exert a healthful influence upon his conduct. Thus God became the hallowing power in Judaism and its institutions, truly the “Holy One of Israel” according to the term of Isaiah and his great exilic successor, the so-called Deutero-Isaiah.266 Thus His holiness invested His people with [pg 105] special sanctity and imposed upon it special obligations. In the words of Ezekiel, God became the “Sanctifier of Israel.”267
The rabbis penetrated deeply into the spirit of Scripture, at the same time that they adhered strictly to its letter. While they clung tenaciously to the ritual holiness of the priestly codes, they recognized the ideal of holiness which is so sharply opposed in every act and thought to the demoralizing cults of heathenism.268
7. Accordingly, holiness is not the metaphysical concept which Jehuda ha Levi considers it,269 but the principle and source of all ethics, the spirit of absolute morality, lending purpose and value to the whole of life. As long as men do good or shun evil through fear of punishment or hope for reward, whether in this life or the hereafter, so long will ideal morality remain unattained, and man cannot claim to stand upon the ground of divine holiness. The holy God must penetrate and control all of life—such is the essence of Judaism. The true aim of human existence is not salvation of the soul,—a desire which is never quite free from selfishness,—but holiness emulating God, striving to do good for the sake of the good without regard to recompense, and to shun evil because it is evil, aside from all consequences.270
8. The fact is that holiness is a religious term, based upon divine revelation, not a philosophical one resting upon speculative reasoning. It is a postulate of our moral nature that all life is governed by a holy Will to which we must submit willingly, and which makes for the good. How volition and compulsion are with God one and the same, how the good exists in God without the bad, or holiness and moral purpose without unholy or immoral elements, how God can be exactly opposite to all we know of man,—this is a question which [pg 106] philosophy is unable to answer. In fact, holiness is best defined negatively, as the “negation of all that man from his own experience knows to be unholy.” These words of the Danish philosopher Rauwenhoff are made still clearer by the following observations: “The strength in the idea of holiness lies exactly in its negative character. There is no comparison of higher or lesser degree possible between man's imperfections and God's perfect goodness. Instead, there is an absolute contrast between mankind which, even in its noblest types, must wrestle with the power of evil, and God, in whom nothing can be imagined which would even suggest the possibility of any moral shortcoming or imperfection.”271 As the prophet says, “Thou art too pure of eyes to look complacently upon evil,”272 and according to the Psalmist, “Who shall ascend into the mountain of the Lord, and who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart.”273
9. The idea of holiness became the preëminent feature of Judaism, so that the favorite name for God in Rabbinical literature was “the Holy One, blessed be He,” and the acme of all ceremonial and moral laws alike was found in “the Hallowing of His name.”274 If the rabbis as followers of the Priestly Code were compelled to lay great stress upon ritual holiness, they yet beheld in it the means of moral purification. They never lost sight of the prophetic principle that moral purity is the object of all human life, for “the holy God is sanctified through righteousness.”275
1. Scripture speaks frequently of the anger and zeal of God and of His avenging sword and judgment, so as to give the impression that “the Old Testament God is a God of wrath and vengeance.” As a matter of fact, these attributes are merely emanations of His holiness, the guide and incentive to moral action in man. The burning fire of the divine holiness aims to awaken the dormant seeds of morality in the human soul and to ripen them into full growth. Whenever we to-day would speak of pangs of conscience, of bitter remorse, Scripture uses figurative language and describes how God's wrath is kindled against the wrongdoing of the people, and how fire blazes forth from His nostrils to consume them in His anger. The nearer man stands to nature, the more tempestuous are the outbursts of his passion, and the more violent is the reaction of his repentance. Yet this very reaction impresses him as though wrought from outside or above by the offended Deity. Thus the divine wrath becomes a means of moral education, exactly as the parents' indignation at the child's offenses is part of his training in morality.
2. Thus the first manifestation of God's holiness is His indignation at falsehood and violence, His hatred of evil and wrongdoing. The longer men persist in sin, the more does He manifest Himself as “the angry God,” as a “consuming fire” which destroys evil with holy zeal.276 The husbandman cannot [pg 108] expect the good harvest until he has weeded out the tares from the field; so God, in educating man, begins by purging the soul from all its evil inclinations, and this zeal is all the more unsparing as the good is finally to triumph in His eternal plan of universal salvation. We must bear in mind that Judaism does not personify evil as a power hostile to God, hence the whole problem is only one of purifying the human soul. Before the sun of God's grace and mercy is to shine, bearing life and healing for all humanity, His wrath and punitive justice must ever burst forth to cleanse the world of its sin. For as long as evil continues unchecked, so long cannot the divine holiness pour forth its all-forbearing goodness and love.
3. On this account the first revelation of God on Sinai was as “a jealous God, who visiteth the sins of the fathers upon the children and the children's children until the third and fourth generation.” So the prophets, from Moses to Malachi, speak ever of God's anger, which comes with the fury of nature's unchained forces, to terrify and overwhelm all living beings.277 Thus Scripture considers all the great catastrophes of the hoary past,—flood, earthquakes, and the rain of fire and brimstone that destroys cities—as judgments of the divine anger on sinful generations. Wickedness in general causes His displeasure, but His wrath is provoked especially by violations of the social order, by desecrations of His sanctuary, or attacks on His covenant, and His anger is kindled for the poor and helpless, when they are oppressed and deprived of their rights.278
4. Thus the divine holiness was felt more and more as a moral force, and that which appeared in pre-prophetic times to be an elemental power of the celestial ire became a refining [pg 109] flame, purging men of dross as in a crucible. “I will not execute the fierceness of Mine anger,” says the prophet, “for I am God and not man, the Holy One in the midst of thee, and I will not come in fury.”279 So sings the Psalmist, “His anger is but for a moment; His favor for a life-time.”280 In the same spirit the rabbis interpreted the verse of the Decalogue, “The sin of the fathers is visited upon the children and children's children only if they continue to act as their fathers did, and are themselves haters of God.”281
The fact is that Israel in Canaan had become addicted to all the vices of idolatry, and if they were to be trained to moral purity and to loyalty to the God of the Covenant, they must be taught fear and awe before the flame of the divine wrath. Only after that could the prophet address himself to the conscience of the individual, saying:
Here we behold the fiery element of the divine holiness partly depicted as a reality and partly spiritualized. The last of the prophets compares the divine wrath to a melting furnace, which on the Day of Judgment is to consume evildoers as stubble, while to those who fear the Lord He [pg 110] shall appear as the sun of righteousness with healing on its wings.283
5. The idea as expressed by the prophets, then, was that God's anger will visit the wicked, and particularly the ungodly nations of heathendom, and that He shall judge all creatures in fire.284 This was significantly altered under Persian influence, when the Jew began to regard the world to come as promising to the righteous greater bliss than the present one. Then the day of divine wrath meant doom eternal for evil-doers, who were to fall into the fiery depths of Gehenna, “their worm is never to die and their fire never to be quenched.”285 This became the prevailing view of the rabbis, of the Apocalyptics and also of the New Testament and the Church literature.286 The Jewish propaganda in the Hellenistic literature, however, combined the fire of Gehenna with the Stoic, or pagan, view of a general world-conflagration, and announced a general doomsday for the heathen world, unless they be converted to the belief in Israel's one and holy God, and ceased violating the fundamental (Noachian) laws of humanity.287
6. A higher view of the punitive anger of God is taken by Beruriah, the noble wife of R. Meir,288—if, indeed, the wife of the saintly Abba Helkiah did not precede her289—in suggesting a different reading of the Biblical text, as to make it offer the lesson: “not the sinners shall perish from the earth, but the sins.” From a more philosophical viewpoint both Juda ha Levi and Maimonides hold that the anger which we ascribe to [pg 111] God is only the transference of the anger which we actually feel at the sight of evildoing. Similarly, when we speak of the consuming fire of hell, we depict the effect which the fear of God must have on our inner life, until the time shall come when we shun evil as ungodly and love the good because it is both good and God-like.290
1. In one of the little known apocryphal writings, the Testament of Abraham, a beautiful story is told of the patriarch. Shortly before his death, the archangel Michael drove him along the sky in the heavenly chariot. Looking down upon the earth, he saw companies of thieves and murderers, adulterers, and other evil-doers pursuing their nefarious practices, and in righteous indignation he cried out: “Oh would to God that fire, destruction, and death should instantly befall these criminals!” No sooner had he spoken these words than the doom he pronounced came upon those wicked men. But then spoke the Lord God to the heavenly charioteer Michael: “Stop at once, lest My righteous servant Abraham in his just indignation bring death upon all My creatures, because they are not as righteous as he. He has not learned to restrain his anger.”291 Thus, indeed, the wrath kindled at the sight of wrongdoing would consume the sinner at once, were it not for another quality in God, called in Scripture long-suffering. By this He restrains His anger and gives the sinner time to improve his ways. Though every wicked deed provokes Him to immediate punishment, yet He shows compassion upon the feeble mortal. “Even in wrath He remembereth compassion.”292 “He hath no delight in the death of the sinner, but that he shall return from his ways and live.”293 The divine holiness does not merely overwhelm and consume; its essential [pg 113] aim is the elevation of man, the effort to endow him with a higher life.
2. It is perfectly true that a note of rigor and of profound earnestness runs through the pages of Holy Writ. The prophets, law-givers, and psalmists speak incessantly of how guilt brings doom upon the lands and nations. As the father who is solicitous of the honor of his household punishes unrelentingly every violation of morality within it, so the Holy One of Israel watches zealously over His people's loyalty to His covenant. His glorious name, His holy majesty cannot be violated with immunity from His dreaded wrath. There is nothing of the joyous abandon which was predominant in the Greek nature and in the Olympian gods. The ideal of holiness was presented by the God of Israel, and all the doings of men appeared faulty beside it.
But its power of molding character is shown by Judaism at this very point, in that it does not stop at the condemnation of the sinner. It holds forth the promise of God's forbearance to man in his shortcomings, due to His compassion on the weakness of flesh and blood. He waits for man, erring and stumbling, until by striving and struggling he shall attain a higher state of purity. This is the bright, uplifting side of the Jewish idea of the divine holiness. In this is the innermost nature of God disclosed. In fear and awe of Him who is enthroned on high, “before whom even the angels are not pure,” man, conscious of his sinfulness, sinks trembling into the dust before the Judge of the whole earth. But the grace and mercy of the long-suffering Ruler lift him up and imbue him with courage and strength to acquire a new life and new energy. Thus the oppressive burden of guilt is transformed into an uplifting power through the influence of the holy God.
3. The predominance in God of mildness and mercy over punitive anger is expressed most strikingly in the revelation to Moses, when he had entreated God to let him see His ways. [pg 114] The people had provoked God's anger by their faithlessness in the worship of the golden calf, and He had threatened to consume them, when Moses interceded in their behalf. Then the Lord passed by him, and proclaimed: “The Lord, the Lord, God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy unto the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin; and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and upon the children's children, unto the third and unto the fourth generation.”294 Such a passage shows clearly the progress in the knowledge of God's nature. For Abraham and the traditions of the patriarchs God was the righteous Judge, punishing the transgressors. He is represented in the same way in the Decalogue on Sinai.295 Was this to be the final word? Was Israel chosen by God as His covenant people, only to encounter the full measure of His just but relentless anger and to be consumed at once for the violation of this covenant? Therefore Moses wrestled with his God. Filled with compassionate love for his people, he is willing to offer his life as their ransom. And should God himself lack this fullness of love and pity, of which even a human being is capable? Then, as from a dark cloud, there flashed suddenly upon him the light of a new revelation; he became aware of the higher truth, that above the austerity of God's avenging anger prevails the tender forgiveness of His mercy; that beyond the consuming zeal of His punitive justice shines the sun-like splendor of His grace and love. The rabbis find the expression of mercy especially in the name JHVH (i.e. “the One who shall ever be”) which is significantly placed here at the head of the divine attributes. Indeed, only He who is the same from everlasting to everlasting, and to whom to-morrow is like yesterday, can show forbearance to erring [pg 115] man, because in whatsoever he has failed yesterday he may make good to-morrow.
4. Like Moses, the master of the prophets, so the prophet Hosea also learned in hard spiritual struggle to know the divine attribute of mercy and lovingkindness. His own wife had proved faithless, and had broken the marital covenant; still his love survived, so that he granted her forgiveness when she was forsaken, and took her back to his home. Then, in his distress at the God-forsaken state of Israel through her faithlessness, he asked himself: “Will God reject forever the nation which He espoused, because it broke the covenant? Will not He also grant forgiveness and mercy?” The divine answer came to him out of the depths of his own compassionate soul. Upon the crown of God's majesty which Amos had beheld all effulgent with justice and righteousness, he placed the most precious gem, reflecting the highest quality of God—His gracious and all-forgiving love.296 Whether the priority in this great truth belongs to Hosea or Moses is a question for historical Bible research to answer, but it is of no consequence to Jewish theology.
5. Certainly Scripture represents God too much after human fashion, when it ascribes to him changes of mood from anger to compassion, or speaks of His repentance.297 But we must bear in mind that the prophets obtained their insight into the ways of God by this very process of transferring their own experience to the Deity. And on the other hand, we are told that “God is not a man that He should lie, neither the son of man that He should repent.”298 All these anthropomorphic [pg 116] pictures of God were later avoided by the ancient Biblical translators by means of paraphrase, and by the philosophers by means of allegory.299
6. According to the Midrashic interpretation of the passage from the Pentateuch quoted above, Moses desired to ascertain whether God ruled the world with His justice or with His mercy, and the answer was: “Behold, I shall let My goodness pass before thee. For I owe nothing to any of My creatures, but My actions are prompted only by My grace and good will, through which I give them all that they possess.”300 According to Judaism justice and mercy are intertwined in God's government of the world; the former is the pillar of the cosmic structure, and the latter the measuring line. No mortal could stand before God, were justice the only standard; but we subsist on His mercy, which lends us the boons of life without our meriting them. That which is not good in us now is to become good through our effort toward the best. God's grace underlies this possibility.
Accordingly, the divine holiness has two aspects, the overwhelming wrath of His justice and the uplifting grace of His long-suffering. Without justice there could be no fear of God, no moral earnestness; without mercy only condemnation and perdition would remain. As the rabbis tell us, both justice and mercy had their share in the creation of man, for in man both good and bad appear and struggle for supremacy. All generations need the divine grace that they may have time and opportunity for improvement.301
7. Thus this conception of grace is far deeper and worthier of God than is that of Paulinian Christianity; for grace in Paul's sense is arbitrary in action and dependent upon the acceptance [pg 117] of a creed, therefore the very reverse of impartial justice. In Judaism divine grace is not offered as a bait to make men believe, but as an incentive to moral improvement. The God of holiness, who inflicts wounds upon the guilty soul by bitter remorse, offers also healing through His compassion. Justice and mercy are not two separate powers or persons in the Deity, as with the doctrine of the Church; they are the two sides of the same divine power. “I am the Lord before sin was committed, and I am the Lord after sin is committed”—so the rabbis explain the repetition of the name JHVH in the revelation to Moses.302