The Case for God

by Karen Armstrong

for … thought and object of thought are the same: The act of contemplation [theoria] is what is most pleasant and best. If, then, God is always in that good state in which we sometimes are, this compels our wonder; and if in a better this compels it yet more. And God is in a better state. And life also belongs to God; for the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and God’s self-dependent actuality is life most good and eternal. We say therefore that God is living being, eternal, most good, so that life and duration continuous and eternal belong to God; for this is God.73

  Even for the down-to-earth Aristotle, philosophy was not merely a body of knowledge but an activity that involved spiritual transformation.

  • • •

  By the beginning of the third century BCE, six main philosophical schools had emerged: Platonism, Aristotelianism, Skepticism, Cynicism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism. They all saw theory as secondary to and dependent upon practice, and all regarded philosophy as a transformative way of life rather than a purely theoretical system. Each school developed its own scholasticism, building huge doctrinal edifices of written reflection on the teaching of the sages, but these writings were secondary to the oral transmission of the tradition.74 When a philosopher expounded an authority, such as Plato or Aristotle, his chief purpose was to shape the spirituality of his pupils. He would, therefore, feel free to give the old texts an entirely new interpretation if this met the needs of a particular group. What mattered was the prestige and antiquity of the old texts, not the author’s original intention. Until the early modern period, most Western thought developed in a way that was reminiscent of the modern design technique of bricolage, where something new is constructed from an assemblage of whatever materials happen to lie at hand.

  The Hellenistic era that followed the establishment of the empire of Alexander the Great (c. 356–323) and its subsequent disintegration was a period of political and social turbulence.75 Consequently, Hellenistic philosophy was chiefly concerned with the cultivation of interior peace.76 Epicurus (341–270), for example, established a community outside Athens near the Academy, where his disciples could lead a frugal, secluded life and avoid mental disturbance. At the same time, Zeno (342–270), who lectured in the Painted Stoa in the Athenian agora, preached a philosophy of ataraxia, “freedom from pain”: Stoics hoped to achieve total serenity by means of meditation and a disciplined, sober lifestyle.

  Like Plato and Aristotle, Stoics and Epicureans both regarded science primarily as a spiritual discipline. “We must not suppose that any other end is served by knowledge of celestial phenomena,” Epicurus wrote to a friend, “than ataraxia and firm confidence, just as in other fields of study.”77 Epicureans discovered that when they meditated on the cosmos described by the “atomists” Leucippus and Democritus, they were released from needless anxiety. Because the gods themselves were produced by chance combinations of atoms, they could not affect our destiny, so it was pointless to be afraid of them.78 When they contemplated the vastness of empty space with its swirling particles, Epicureans felt they had achieved a godlike perspective. Your own life span may be short, Metrodorus, a disciple of Epicurus, told his pupils, “yet you have risen, through contemplation of nature, to the infinity of space and time, and you have seen all the past and the future.”79 Stoics also discovered that meditating on the immensity of the cosmos revealed the utter insignificance of human affairs, and that this gave them a saner perspective. They saw the whole of reality as animated by a fiery vaporous breath that Zeno called Logos (“Reason”), Pneuma (“Spirit”), and God. Instead of railing against his fate, the philosopher must align his life to this Spirit and surrender his entire being to the inexorable world process. Thus he himself would become an embodiment of Logos.

  The philosophers may have been critical of popular religion, but their way of life required an act of faith (pistis) that had to be renewed every day. This did not, of course, mean that they had to “believe” blindly in the doctrines of their school, whose truth became evident only in the context of its spiritual and moral disciplines. Pistis meant “trust,” “loyalty,” “engagement,” and “commitment.” Against all the depressing evidence to the contrary, the philosopher trusted that the cosmos was indeed rational, engaged himself in the exacting regimen prescribed by the sages, and committed daily to the heroic endeavor of living a truly philosophical life in the hope that he would one day achieve the peace of ataraxia and intellectual enlightenment.

  The rationalism of ancient Greece was not opposed to religion; indeed, it was itself a faith tradition that evolved its own distinctive version of the principles that guided most of the religious systems. Philosophia was a yearning for transcendent wisdom; it had a healthy respect for the limitations of logos and held that the highest wisdom was rooted in unknowing. Its insights were the result of practical meditative exercises and a disciplined lifestyle. In their dealings with others, the Greeks had developed their own form of kenosis and compassion, seeing the achievement of enlightenment as a joint, communal activity that must be conducted with kindness, gentleness, and consideration.

  The God of Aristotle could not be more different from Yahweh, but even though many Jews were hostile to the Hellenistic culture that was beginning to infiltrate the Near East, some were inspired by these Greek ideas, which they used to help them refine their understanding of God. In the third century BCE, a Jewish writer personified the Wisdom of God that had brought the world into being. He imagined her at God’s side, like Plato’s demiourgos, “a master craftsman … delighting to be with the sons of men.”80 She was identical with the Word that God had spoken at creation and the Spirit that had brooded over the primal Ocean.81 Word, Wisdom, and Spirit were not separate gods but aspects of the ineffable God that our frail minds were able to recognize in the marvels of the physical world and in human life—not unlike the “glory” (kavod) described by the Prophets. Later, in rather the same way, a Jewish writer living in the Hellenistic polis of Alexandria in Egypt in the first century BCE would see wisdom (sophia) as the human perception of God, an idea in our minds that was only a pale shadow of the utterly transcendent reality that would always elude our understanding: “the breath of the power of God … a reflection of the eternal light, untarnished mirror of God’s active power, image of his goodness.”82

  In Alexandria, Jews exercised in the gymnasium with the Greeks, taking part in the spiritual and intellectual exercises that always accompanied athletic training. Philo (c. 30 BCE—45 CE), a Jewish Platonist, made the immensely important and influential distinction between God’s ousia, his essential nature, and his dunamis (“powers”) or energeiai (“energies”).83 We could never know God’s ousia, but in order to adapt his indescribable nature to our limited intellect, God communicated with us through his activities in the world. They were not God itself but the highest realities that the human mind could grasp, and they enabled us to catch a glimpse of a transcendent reality beyond anything we could conceive. Philo also allegorized the stories of the Hebrew Bible in the same way as the Greeks were allegorizing the epics of Homer in order to make them conform to the philosophic ideal. He suggested that God’s master plan (logos) of creation corresponded to the world of the forms that had been incarnated in the physical universe.

  Philo was far from typical, however. Mainstream Judaism was still a temple religion, dominated by the sacrificial rituals, elaborate liturgy, and huge temple festivals that seemed to introduce Jewish participants into the presence of the divine. But in the year 70 CE, a political catastrophe forced Jews to seek a different religious focus. Two new Jewish movements emerged, both influenced, in different ways, by the Greek ethos; both were widely regarded as “schools of philosophy,” and both would develop their teachings in a manner similar to the intellectual “bricolage” of the Greek academies.

  Faith

  Early in the year 70, the Roman armies laid siege to Jerusalem. Judaea had long been restive under Roman occupation, and in 66 the rumbling discontent had exploded in outrig
ht revolt. The leaders of the Jewish war did not command universal support: many Jews believed it utterly foolhardy to take on the might of Rome. But a radical party of Zealots had overpowered the moderates, convinced that Rome was in decline and that the Jews had a good chance of success. For three years, however, the brilliant Roman general Vespasian had systematically defeated the pockets of resistance in Galilee in northern Palestine until in 70 he was made emperor and returned to Rome, leaving his son Titus in charge of the Jewish war. By May Titus had broken through the northern wall of Jerusalem, but still the Jews would not give up. When Titus’s army finally fought their way into the inner courts of the magnificent temple built by Herod the Great (c. 73–4 BCE), they found six thousand Zealots ready to fight to the death, deeming it an honor to die in defense of their temple. They fought with extraordinary courage, but when the building caught fire, a terrible cry of horror arose. Some flung themselves on the swords of the Romans; others hurled themselves into the flames. Once the temple had gone, the Jews gave up; they did not even bother to defend the rest of the city or try to recover it from other nearby fortresses. Most of the survivors simply stood numbly, helplessly watching Titus’s officers efficiently demolish what was left of the buildings. The Jews had lost their temple once before, but this time it would not be rebuilt.

  In the years leading up to the war, there had been an extraordinarily diverse eruption of Jewish religiosity, which had blossomed into multifarious sects, each convinced that it alone was the authentic voice of Judaism.1 New scriptures were written. Despite the efforts of Ezra and other reformers, there was still no Jewish orthodoxy. Some of the sects even spoke of abolishing the Sinai revelation and starting again. But everybody agreed that the temple was of prime importance. Some were critical of the temple establishment, which they felt had been corrupted by the Roman occupation; the Qumran ascetics and the related sect of the Essenes held aloof from the cult but looked forward to a new temple that God would build when he had vanquished the wicked. In the meantime, their own communities would become a symbolic shrine and their members would observe the laws of priestly purity. The Pharisees attended regular temple worship, but they also observed the purity laws and temple rituals in their own homes; their spirituality revolved around an imaginary, virtual temple, and they tried to conduct their entire lives as though they were literally standing before the Shekhinah, the divine presence in the temple’s inner sanctum, the Holy of Holies. The Christians, who believed that their teacher Jesus of Nazareth had been the Messiah, had reservations about the temple but still participated in its liturgy. Even though Jesus had been crucified by the Romans in about 30 CE, his disciples believed that he had risen from the tomb and would soon return in glory to inaugurate the Kingdom of God. In the meantime, the Christian leaders lived in Jerusalem in expectation of his coming, and worshipped as a body in the temple every day.

  The destruction of the temple sent shock waves throughout the entire Jewish world. Only two of the sects that had developed during the Late Second Temple period would survive the catastrophe. Toward the end of the siege, Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, leader of the Pharisees, had himself smuggled out of the city in a coffin to get past the Zealot guards at the gates. Once outside, he made his way to the Roman camp and asked the emperor’s permission to settle with a group of scholars in the coastal town of Yavneh to the south of Jerusalem. After the fall of the city, a community of scribes, priests, and Pharisees gathered there and, under the leadership of Yohanan and his pupils Eliezer and Joshua, began the heroic task of transforming Judaism from a temple faith to a religion of the book. The Torah would replace the Holy of Holies, and the study of scripture would substitute for animal sacrifice. But in the first years after the disaster, the Pharisees simply could not believe that the temple was gone forever; they began to collect and preserve all its ancient traditions so that they would be ready for the new temple and the resumption of the cult.2

  Rabbi Yohanan and his colleagues belonged to the more flexible strand of the Pharisee movement. His teachers had been disciples of the great Hillel (c. 80 BCE—30 CE), who had emphasized the importance of the spirit rather than the letter of Mosaic law. In a famous Talmudic story, it was said that Hillel had formulated a Jewish version of Confucius’s Golden Rule. One day, a pagan had approached Hillel and promised to convert to Judaism if Hillel could teach him the entire Torah standing on one leg. Hillel replied: “What is hateful to yourself, do not to your fellow man. That is the whole of the Torah and the remainder is but commentary. Go learn it.”3 It was a provocative and daring piece of exegesis. Hillel did not mention any of the doctrines that seemed central to Judaism—the unity of God, the creation of the world, the Exodus, Sinai, the 613 commandments of the Torah, or the Promised Land. The essence of Jewish teaching was the disciplined refusal to inflict pain on other human beings: everything else was only “commentary.”

  Rabbi Yohanan had absorbed this lesson. Shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem, when he and his companions had occasion to walk past the ruined temple buildings, Rabbi Joshua had been unable to contain his grief: “Woe is it that the place, where the sins of Israel find atonement, is laid waste.” But Rabbi Yohanan replied calmly, “Grieve not, we have an atonement equal to the Temple, the doing of loving deeds, as it is said, ‘ I desire love and not sacrifice.’ “4 Kindness would replace the temple ritual; compassion, one of the pillars on which the world depended, was the new priestly task. Compassion was also the key to the interpretation of scripture. As Hillel had pointed out, everything in the Torah was simply a “commentary”—a mere gloss—on the Golden Rule. Scholars had a mandate to reveal the core of compassion that lay at the heart of all the legislation and narratives of the Bible—even if this meant twisting the original meaning of the text. In this spirit, Rabbi Akiva, Yohanan’s successor, insisted that the chief principle of the Torah was “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”5 Only one of the rabbis disagreed, preferring the simple sentence “This is the roll of Adam’s descendants,” because it revealed the unity of the entire human race.6

  In Rabbinic Judaism, the religion of Israel came of age, developing the same kind of compassionate ethos as the Eastern traditions. The rabbis regarded hatred of any human being made in God’s image as tantamount to atheism, so murder was not just a crime against humanity but a sacrilege: “Scripture instructs us that whatsoever sheds human blood is regarded as if he had diminished the divine image.”7 God had created only one man at the beginning of time to teach us that the destruction of a single life was equivalent to annihilating the entire world; conversely, to save a life redeemed the whole of humanity.8 To humiliate anybody, even a slave or a goy, was a sacrilegious defacing of God’s image9 and a malicious libel denied God’s existence.10 Any interpretation of scripture that bred hatred or disdain for others was illegitimate, while a good piece of exegesis sowed affection and dispelled discord. Anybody who studied scripture properly was full of love, explained Rabbi Meir; he “loves the Divine Presence (Shekhinah) and all creatures, makes the Divine Presence glad and makes glad all creatures.”11

  The rabbis continued to use terms such as the Glory (kavod), Shekhinah, and Spirit (ruach) to distinguish their inherently limited, earthly experience of God from the ineffable reality itself. Their new spiritual exercises made the divine a vibrant and immanent presence. Exegesis would do for them what yoga did for Buddhists and Hindus. The truth they sought was not abstract or theoretical but derived from the practice of spiritual exercises. To put themselves into a different state of consciousness, they would fast before they approached the sacred text, lay their heads between their knees, and whisper God’s praises like a mantra. They found that when two or three of them studied the Torah together, they became aware of the Shekhinah in their midst.12 One day, when Rabbi Yohanan was studying the Torah with his pupils, the Holy Spirit seemed to descend upon them in the form of fire and a rushing wind.13 On another occasion, Rabbi Akiva heard that his student Ben Azzai was expounding the Tora
h surrounded by a nimbus of flashing fire. He hurried off to investigate. Was Ben Azzai attempting a dangerous mystical flight to the throne of God? “No,” Ben Azzai replied. “I was only linking up the words of the Torah with one another, and then with the words of the prophets and the prophets with the Writings, and the words rejoiced, as when they were delivered from Sinai, and they were sweet as at their original utterance.”14 As Ezra had indicated so long ago, scripture was not a closed book and revelation was not a distant historical event. It was renewed every time a Jew confronted the text, opened himself to it, and applied it to his own situation. The rabbis called scripture miqra: it was a “summons to action.” No exegesis was complete until the interpreter had found a practical new ruling that would answer the immediate needs of his community. This dynamic vision could set the world aflame.

  Anybody who imagines that revealed religion requires a craven clinging to a fixed, unalterable, and self-evident truth should read the rabbis. Midrash required them to “investigate” and “go in search” of fresh insight. The rabbis used the old scriptures not to retreat into the past but to propel them into the uncertainties of the post-temple world. Like the Hellenistic philosophers, Jews had started to build an intellectual “bricolage,” creatively reinterpreting the available authoritative texts to carry the tradition forward. But already they had moved instinctively toward some of the great principles that had inspired the other major traditions to find a transcendent meaning amid life’s tragedy. They too now stressed the centrality of compassion and were developing a more interior spirituality.

  But during the Second Temple period, midrash had been a minority pursuit. It would take the rabbis about twenty years to make any serious impact on the wider Jewish community. It was not easy to make textual study attractive to the masses. How could it possibly compete with the dramatic temple rituals? By the late 80s and 90s, as we shall see later in this chapter, the hard work of the rabbis and their colleagues at Yavneh finally paid off, but in the first years after the disaster, another Jewish sect seemed to be making more headway.