Читать книгу The Essential Agus - Steven T. Katz - Страница 43

M. maintained that his “Guide” was the first effort to deal with the mysteries of Creation and Providence (maasai bereshit and maasai merkava). (Moreh, Petiha; Pines, p. 16.) He scorned the works of Saadia and Halevi, as being either superficial or fallacious. To him, a “philosopher” was an Aristotelian who recognized the sway of the unvarying laws of nature. Saadia associated himself with the Moslem school of Mutazila, and Halevi reflected al Ghazzali’s critique of “the philosophers.” (Moreh, i, 71; Pines, p. 176.)

In a larger sense, Saadia and Halevi represented the “short but long road” that popular theologians prefer in all generations. Saadia’s way is that of superficial rationalism. He rejected the coarse anthropomorphism of literalists. In M.’s view, Mutazilites thought they removed materialization from their notion of God, but, they did not really, since they ascribed to Him, emotional and psychological factors. (Moreh, I, 53; Pines, p. 119.) All the references in the Torah and the Bible to physical appearances of God apply to His temporary theophanies, not to His own Being. So, there is a “created light” or divine effulgence, which the Lord employs as a manifestation of His Presence. This luminous body called Kavod or Shechinah was seen by Isaiah and Ezekiel, by “the elders of Israel,” and by some of the Sages. Similarly, the Creator formed a “created voice,” which spoke in so many words to the prophets and to Moses. In this way, Saadia managed to retain the literal significance of the anthropomorphic passages in Scripture and Talmud, without ascribing to God Himself any material qualities. But, this method is, after all, an invention of the imagination. If the “lights” and “voices” are not themselves divine, why should we assume that they attest to the truth of prophecy? What is to prevent us from rejecting them as merely visual and auditory hallucinations?—If they are not temporary and detached events but integral manifestations of the Supreme Being, His emanations or His “Garments,” then we fall back into the trap of idolatry, where all kinds of images might be said to be His representations and “incarnations.” Furthermore, truth can only be self-authenticating, an extrapolation of man’s outreach, but not an alien intrusion from another realm—a communication which man can only accept in blind faith. As a matter of fact, the “created light” and the “created voice” of Saadia became the basis of the neo-anthropomorphic school of the Ashkenazi Hassidim. They conceived of the Divine manifestations as permanent “forms” of the Deity, allowing the fevered imagination of mystics to rhapsodize on their visions of the various parts of the Divine anatomy.

M. did not altogether reject the doctrine of “created lights.” He granted that it was helpful to those whose minds were too unsophisticated to grasp the concept of an immaterial Deity. At least, this doctrine kept them from ascribing materiality to God Himself. Also, it is extremely difficult to interpret the Pentateuchal description of the gathering at Sinai, without those “lights” and “sounds.”¹ Yet, M. aimed to raise his readers to a higher philosophical level, which demands inner coherence and rejects the possibility of self-contained islands of truth, breaking into man’s consciousness.

In M.’s view, the sustained quest of man for truth, as seen for example in the works of Aristotle, is itself the product of revelation. When a person’s rational faculties attain a pitch of perfection, while his intuitive and imaginative powers are not equally perfected, he becomes a speculative philosopher. The school of Saadia was, according to M., remiss in that they accepted uncritically the premises of the Moslem Mutazilites. As a child of his age, M. believed that classical Greek philosophy was an integral part of the esoteric tradition of the biblical prophets and sages of the Mishnah.² M.’s historical knowledge was faulty, but not his reverence for the sovereignty, indeed the holiness of reason. To him, systematic and objective reasoning is the highway to truth, and God disdains those who forsake the manifest principles of truth for the sake of pleasing Him.³ The anti-intellectualist mentality of a St. Paul, a Tertullian, a Luther, a Kierkegaard, with their subjective, or “existential” “truths” was to him an abomination.

Neo-Maimonism, too, asserts that rationality is of the essence of humanity. There is more to humanity than reason can comprehend, but the irrational and the subjective cannot serve as clues to the Image of God in man. To love God is to seek to know Him, and the greater our knowledge of Him, the greater our love of Him and of all who are created in His image.⁴ And God’s love of us is manifested in our love of Him and His Kingdom on earth.