By William Berkson
In the last post in this series I explained why science will always leave the door open to belief in a God who gives unity and purpose to nature and to humanity, and a God, who, when we experience the sacred, can inspire us. But can God have the qualities of God as portrayed in the Torah and the Talmud?

The most troubled question about God throughout most of Jewish history has been of God's Providence, or caring intervention in the world on behalf of individuals and groups, especially the people Israel. The Torah clearly reports (in Exodus and Deuteronomy) that at Sinai God promised us prosperity--a bountiful harvest--and children if we obey his laws, and horrible punishments if we don't. However, during the revolt of the Maccabees, many devout Jews were killed. This seemed to violate the covenant at Sinai. In reaction to this bitter experience, I have read, the Pharisee branch of ancient Judaism adopted the idea that we can only expect just reward and punishment in a future life after death, olam haba, the world to come.

Even before the Maccabees and Hanukkah, the book of Job--which has no discussion of reward in an afterlife--is a profoundly troubled meditation on the meaning of the sufferings of the innocent.

A further challenge came from the ancient Greek (Stoic) idea of the "cosmos", that the world runs according to orderly laws. This would seem to exclude special intervention by God contrary to natural law, or in other words to exclude miracles. The idea of the cosmos was sufficiently accepted by the Pharisees and Rabbis that a passage in Pirkei Avot tries to reconcile the miracles in the Torah with natural law. The passage (Avot 5:9) says that all the seemingly miraculous events--the magical staff of Moses, the mouth of the talking donkey, etc.--were created in the twilight before Shabbat on the last day of creation.

Classical or rabbinic Judaism basically tried to have it all ways. The idea of the cosmos, orderly nature, was accepted while at the same time to deal with the problem evil diverse concepts of the afterlife and judgment were accepted.  One idea was of an 'end of days' at which time bodily resurrection and judgment would take place. -This idea had existed in Persian religion, Zoroastrianism. Another idea, found in Greek thinking, was that the body and soul are separate (an idea not found in the Torah). And the soul will go to heaven while the body is in the grave. A third idea was that a Messiah would help usher in an end of days. As Maimonides pointedly notes, the sages in fact did not agree on what the full picture was. In practice all the different concepts were mixed together.

This lack of a coherent theology did not bother the rabbis for two reasons. First, it did not really matter to Judaism how exactly God's judgment was carried out. The important thing was that God did command and judge. Furthermore we were supposed to serve out of love, rather than fear, and so punishment in an afterlife was a back up idea, but not the main thing. Secondly, with the exception of the Epicureans, nobody doubted that God created the world and was running it in some fashion. The pagans believed in many Gods, not one, but those many Gods also could intervene in human affairs at will. So while there was an issue with God's justice, which the afterlife was supposed to address, few doubted divine intervention in the world.

This general acceptance of divine intervention changed due to three historical events. The first was the success of modern science, beginning with Newton. The Rabbis had accepted that there was a normal order nature, but also that God could influence it somehow. The new Newtonian science seemed to carry with it a 'no exceptions' clause; the laws of nature could run nature without any outside help. Laplace famously expressed this view when Napoleon asked him why he didn't have God in his book on the solar system. He replied, "I don't have need of that hypothesis." This view led to the rise of positivism, the substitution of science for religion.

However, for most people, the marvels of living nature still spoke to the Designer and Creator of nature and humanity. This millennia old acceptance of 'the argument from design' was struck a grievous blow by Darwin. Or to be more exact, it was Darwin plus the idea of genetics, known as 'neo-Darwinism' that struck the blow. For in this combination, the idea arose that life could have evolved by accident, without any purpose in the universe.

This idea of evolution without a purpose was around by the early twentieth century. But this was after Classical Reform was in place. Kaufmann Kohler, who wrote the Pittsburgh Platform (1885), and led the Hebrew Union College until 1920, was a firm believer in both evolution and Providence, God's supervision of the world. Indeed, the idea of purposeless evolution is today only a research program, an aspiration, and not an existing complete theory. And in surveys most people in America believe in both evolution and God. Nonetheless, the possibility that humanity could have evolved without a purpose was basically inconceivable before Darwin, and neo-Darwinism. The conceivability of purposeless evolution gave non-believers a new and powerful argument.

The third blow to the idea of Providence was of course the Holocaust. In theory of course you could answer it with reward in the afterlife. But the whole thing was so massive and monstrous and heinous that it pretty much silences efforts to give a 'providential' answer.
Already in the first part of the twentieth century Mordechai Kaplan tried developing a theology without Providence in it. And recently When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Harold Kushner, which takes a similar approach, is probably the best selling book of Jewish theology. And I dare say that now a majority of Reform rabbis do not believe in an interventionist God.

This quiet rejection of Providence is a huge thing for Judaism. Traditionally, a denier of God was called one who believed that there is "no Judgment and no Judge." Yet that it seems that is where most liberal rabbis--am I am guessing that includes Conservatives--are now, and certainly where the laity is.

So to recapitulate, earlier I argued that: 1. Judaism needs God to inspire us; and 2. Science will always leave the door open to a God who gives unity and purpose to the world. And here I am arguing that most contemporary Jews cannot accept the traditional interventionist God, or in other words God's Providential care of us as individuals.

So the question is, can this non-interventionist God inspire us and guide us concerning ritual, ethics, and community?  As Larry Kaufman indicated here on RJ.org, we have to go beyond "don't ask, don't tell" on these issues, if we are to have a strong Reform Judaism in the future.

In the next post I will consider how a non-interventionist God can strongly support and inspire liberal Judaism. 

(Note: You can call up my previous posts, and the other posts of any other blogger here, by clicking the person's name.)   

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