His conviction of the dependence of all upon
God's grace is the perfect corrective of his intellectual
exclusiveness. The idea of God as the unity which comprehends
everything and causes everything is the great Jewish contribution to
thought, and binds our literature together in all its manifestations.
It characterizes and unites the poetical utterance of the Bible
prophets, the pious wisdom of the rabbis, the philosophical systems of
Philo and Maimonides.
The more sublime and exalted the conception of God, the more
imperative became the need for the thinking Jew to explain how the
perfect infinite Being came into relation with the imperfect finite
world of man and matter. How can the incorporeal God be the founder of
the material universe? How can the infinite mind be present in the
finite thought of man? How can the all-good Power be the creator of
the evil which we see in the material world and of the wickedness that
flourisheth among men? These questions presented themselves to the
Israelite after he had consummated his marvellous religious intuition,
and became the starting-point of a theology which is nascent in the
Wisdom literature of the Bible. Theology is the reasoning about God
which follows always in the footsteps of religious certitude. First,
man by his intuitive reason rises to some idea of the Godhead
satisfying to his emotion; next, by his discursive reason, he
endeavors to justify that idea to his experience in analyzing God's
operations.
Pages:
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146