1. The Jewish Conception of God (Chapter 4. Jesus' Teaching: God the Remote and the Near) (Jesus and the Word) (Bultmann, Rudolf)

Here once more, in order to understand Jesus conception of God we must show its connection with the Jewish conception, at the same time differentiating between them. The distinguishing peculiarity common to both conceptions is at once clear when we contrast them with the modified conception of the Jews who were, like those in Alexandria, under the influence of Greek philosophy. There God is thought of under the concepts of law and of ideal. This corresponds to Greek thinking. For the Greek it is in the first place axiomatic that God, like other objects of the world, can be examined by the thinking observer; that there can be a theology in the exact, immediate sense. That Judaism has no such theology is due not to any incapacity or lack of development in its thought, but to the fact that Judaism has from the beginning a different conception of God; He does not in any sense belong to the world of objects about which man orients himself through thought.

One should not in this connection let himself be deceived by the observation that the abstract thinking of the Greeks made it possible for them to understand in its purity the essence of the spiritual, and that therefore mythological, anthropomorphic ideas of God were abandoned by the Greeks, while in Judaism na�ve mythological and anthropomorphic expressions about God, although they decrease, do not by any means disappear. In reality, Greek thought always regards God in the last analysis as a part of the world or as identical with the world, even when, or rather especially when, He is held to be the origin and formative cosmic principle which lies beyond the world of phenomena For here, too, God and the world form a unity within the grasp of thought; the meaning of the world becomes clear in the idea of God. Greek thought tends therefore to pantheism, which finds its final and most impressive embodiment in the Stoic philosophy. God appears as the law ruling in the universe which gives form to all phenomena�law which differs from the modern "natural law" because it is not wholly and essentially defined by the concept of cause and effect, but rather by the concept of a creative, active, form-giving power. Such a representation of God corresponds to the conception which the Greek man had of himself as a microcosm, receiving form from a law identical with the great cosmic law, a form which is present as an ideal norm in human will and knowledge.

To the different conception of man which dominates Judaism (this has been previously discussed), there corresponds a wholly different conception of God. As man is here seen to be essentially a being who wills, so God is primarily Will, and moreover sovereign, uncaused Will, which has no need to justify the willing on any rational grounds before the bar of intellect. In His relation to the world God is not the first principle, the origin, intelligible to the intellect, from which the existence of the world can be deduced; not the formative power which is immanent in all its manifestations, not the law of the world, but the creating Will. He commands, and it happens; He decrees, and it exists. (Psalm 33 :9) For His glory He created the world, and all His works must praise Him.

"They all wait for Thee,
that Thou mayest give to them in due season.
Thou givest to them, they gather it,
Thou openest Thine hand, they are satisfied with good
things.
Thou hidest Thy face, they are terrified;
Thou takest away their breath, they perish

and return to the dust, which they were.
Thou sendest forth Thy breath, they are created,
and Thou makest new the face of the earth."
(Psalm 104:27-30)

God is the Creator: this does not mean that He gave form to some already existing matter, but that He created the world according to His will. In later Judaism this idea is developed to entire clarity, and it is expressly said that God created the world out of nothing.

In relation to man, God is the sovereign Lord who deals with man according to His will as the potter with the clay, Who rejects whom He will and has mercy on whom He will. His will has prescribed for man what is good and evil. It is not an ideal, simply an expression of all that is potential in man, determining by its formative power the conduct of man. Man has only to ask what the Lord requires; he is not obliged to bring his humanity to its pure form, he must be obedient. This view finds rather crude expression in the assumption that the Law, even where it is wholly incomprehensible to man, requires obedience. There is therefore no distinction made between the physical nature in man and the spiritual, through which the lower physical nature receives its law and form. Instead the man is seen as a unity, determined by his good or evil will.

Also the Jewish idea of God is to be marked off on the negative side from any metaphysical dualism. To be sure, Persian dualism influenced the Jewish thought world in later times; for example, the figure of Satan is a Persian intrusion into Judaism. But the peculiar character of the Jewish concept of God, even when it does not reach full clarity, is preserved. God and the world do not stand over against each other as two hostile natures or substances. The idea of the Creator is never given up, and no inherent law or power is ever ascribed to the world; God is the Almighty, in spite of Satan to whom He permits temporary activity. And though God and man are sharply contrasted as Creator and creature, as the Holy One and the sinner, still this difference is never regarded as a difference between two natures, nor is the redemption of man conceived as deliverance from a lower and endowment with a higher nature. Genuine sacramental piety and genuine asceticism are therefore lacking in true Judaism, since the whole conception of nature which underlies metaphysical dualism is lacking. The world and man are creations of God, and hence not evil by nature; they have been corrupted by sin, and sin is not a condition of nature but the evil will of man. God is not for man something wholly alien by nature, not the "unknown"; He is the Creator, known through His Law, and is therefore the Judge.

All this does not merely present the background for Jesus conception of God; it actually characterizes Jesus conception. For all these characteristics are self-evident for Jesus as a Jew, and they are clearly assumed in his preaching. However, in what has been said only a negative definition has been attempted, and we must now consider more closely the positive character of the Jewish conception of God and hence also that of Jesus.

The essential element in the Jewish conception is the peculiar conjunction of the supramundane character and transcendence of God with the dependence of the world on God or with God s direction of the world; more simply expressed, the union of the remoteness and the nearness of God. The thought that God is remote, far above the world and man, is just as necessary an element of the idea of God as the other, that He is nevertheless constantly near. The first idea is especially emphasized in later Judaism, partly because of foreign influences, but also because monotheism became more fully developed. For in ancient Israel, although it was taken for granted that Israel could invoke one God and Lord, it was equally assumed that other nations have other gods, although Yahweh, God of Israel, is the mightiest among them. In later Judaism Yahweh is on the contrary regarded as the only existing God. And this monotheism is not, as in Greece, the result of philosophical reflection, which seeks a single origin and principle, in the interest of an intellectual understanding of the world; it is the belief in the one God which brings the concept of God itself to clear expression. For so long as a plurality of gods is accepted, the idea of God is not clearly thought; God is still a being within the universe, and many such beings are conceivable.

In Jewish monotheism it is not a philosophical world view but the belief in the transcendence of God, in God the Creator, that stands out. It is also significant that the proper name of God, Yahweh, is no longer used, for this has meaning only so long as God appears as a subject among other subjects which must be distinguished from the others by a definite name. Already in the Book of Job and in Ecclesiastes, the proper name of God is lacking. God was now designated as King and Lord, as the Most High and the Holy One, that is, by expressions which were natural to the Oriental mode of speech, and are meant to express the transcendence of God over the world and man. Other epithets indeed were chosen which were based rather on reflection, and which expressed still more strongly the remoteness of God, His distance from the world: "Heaven," "Magnificence," "Majesty," "Glory"; or in reverent awe circumlocutions were used: for example, not "God has determined," but "it was determined." Such expressions appear in many of the sayings of Jesus. (E.g. Luke 15:7, 10, 18; 6:38; 12:20; 16:9)

When reflective imagination, na�ve or speculative, turns to the idea of God, images arise in Judaism as well as elsewhere to picture the relation of the transcendent God to the world. God was represented as an Oriental monarch, served by a retinue of angels who carried out His commands in the world; or under the influence of foreign mythology and speculation, semidivine powers were introduced who mediated between God and the world. These latter were confined to limited circles, while the belief in angels was generally accepted and was taken for granted by Jesus.

What is essential in the concept of God is not, however, the way in which His activity in the world was imaginatively conceived; what is essential is that the transcendent, remote God is at the same time near, that He holds in mighty hands the destiny of the world, of His people, and of each individual. This is brought out primarily in the idea of creation, which in Judaism is not a cosmological theory but the expression of the dependence of man upon God throughout his whole existence, the expression of the consciousness of being a creature before God. Moreover it stands out in this belief that God is the Lord of history, who directs it from its beginnings to an end according to His plan. Man does not stand lost in a cosmos remote from God, nor does he comfort himself with the thought that he is included as a member of the cosmic organism, whose rhythmic motion is determined by law. Instead, man stands according to the divine plan at a definite place among temporal events, which are directed toward a determined goal.

Hence the outlook of man is directed on the one hand toward the past, in which the "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" allotted blessings and chastenings to His people; and the individual knows that this history immediately concerns him, speaks to him, and determines his life by its instructions and consolations. On the other hand his outlook is directed toward the future, where God is guiding world events to their goal, exercises judgment, and lets His Kingdom appear. The tension between the concepts of the remote and the near God here reveals itself again, for God is God of the future and the present.

The unifying of these two ideas was never achieved in Judaism. The thought of the God of the future stands with one-sided emphasis and definite coloring so in the foreground that it is often not clear how this God can also be the Lord of the present. At this point dualistic imagery which entered from foreign countries, especially from Persia, exercises its influence. The whole course of time is divided into two epochs: the present age (to which past and present belong), and the future age in which the glory of God will appear. The more sharply this contrast is conceived, and the more glorious the future gleams, as the time when all powers hostile to God are annihilated, so much the more does the present appear as forsaken by God, as the time when Satan and his evil spirits work their will. Where then is the God of the present? Obviously this side of the concept of God is suppressed, and thereby the thought of the omnipotence of God is limited under the influence of dualism.

The whole idea of God is hence endangered; for it has lost its meaning, if God is not thought of as the Power which determines man in his present existence. And this danger becomes greater, the more God s revelation of the future is expected and longed for, the more complaint is made about the suffering of the present. At the same time also the future becomes less a real future�by which is meant a future which determines the present because as its own future it is indissolubly connected with it. Rather the future is unrelated to the present, something which might possibly not be, and its not being would make no change in the present; something which is coming some time, but which so far as its essential nature is concerned could already have been some time; indeed the speculation is widespread that the blessings of salvation pre-exist and are already present in heaven. And on the other hand the future is still less a real future if man has it already in his control, so that it is subject to his own fantasies and wishes; that is, if he does not take seriously the truth that the future, being new, calls for the new man.

Under these conditions it is easy to understand that a real connection between the God of the future and the God of the present is often not to be found, or that if it is asserted, the prophecies in which God is looked upon as God of the present generally display the character of theoretical speculation. Of course it is asserted that the Creator of the world and the Judge of the world are one, that in the future there will be fulfilled simply what God has already decreed at the beginning of the world, that God rules all times and what happens in time, and is so far God of the present. But how far the God of the future actually rules man s present, in such a way that man in his present existence is determined by the God of the future�this does not often appear clearly. Rather, the pronouncements which speak of God s present activity are often without relation or even in contradiction both to the expectations of the future and to the estimate of the present, dualistic and pessimistic as that estimate is.

But in spite of the figure of Satan in Judaism, the belief in God s providence as permeating the occurrences of the present world was never given up. The edifying tale of old Tobit and his son Tobias shows how wonderfully God s providence guides the life of the faithful. Numerous passages praise this providence, which gives food to man and beast, which does not allow a bird to be snared without the will of heaven. Moreover the re- mote God is always accessible to the faithful in prayer, and is addressed as Father by the praying congregation, as well as by individual saints. Such confident faith in the God of the present is shown typically in the fifth Psalm of Solomon:

"Lord God, I will praise Thy name, full of joy,
in the midst of those who know Thy righteous judgments.
For Thou art kind and merciful, the refuge of the poor.
If I cry to Thee, Thou wilt not be silent.
For none take spoil from the mighty,
who then would take from all that Thou hast created,
unless Thou gavest it?
For man and his lot are weighed by Thee,
and he obtains no more than Thou hast determined for
him, O God.
In our tribulation we call upon Thee for aid,
and Thou wilt not refuse our prayer, for Thou art our
God.
Let Thy hand not lie heavily upon us,
lest we in our need fall into sin.
And even if Thou help us not, we do not cease to come
to Thee,
for if I hunger, I cry to Thee, O God, and Thou wilt
give to me.
Thou feedest the birds and the fishes;
while Thou givest rain in the desert, so that grass
springs up,
Thou providest food in the field for all animals,
and when they hunger, they raise their faces to Thee.
Kings and princes and people Thou feedest, O God,
and who is the hope of the poor and needy except Thee,
O Lord?
Yes, Thou wilt hear, for who is kind and gracious like
Thee ?
Rejoice the souls of the poor, and open Thine hand in
pity.
The kindness of man is niggardly and desires reward,
and if he gives twice without grumbling, it is a marvel.
But Thy gift is great, full of goodness, and rich,
and he who hopes in Thee will have no lack of good
things.
Over the whole earth, O Lord, spread Thy mercy and
Thy kindness."

Man stands, then, in a certain tension between present and future, with no clear unity in his conception of God. This tension between present and future, which is shown in the attempt to combine hope for the future and belief in a present providence, also appears in another form�a form which allows the possibility of a unified conception of God to be more clearly seen: that is, God is thought of as the future Judge of the present. Primarily of course God, in so far as He is the Judge, is the God of the future. He will one day recompense men according to their deeds; then it is that

"The Age which now sleeps awakes, and the temporal
itself passes away.
The earth gives back those who rest therein,
the dust releases those who sleep in it,
the vaults restore the souls entrusted to them.
The Most High appears on the throne of judgment.
Then comes the end,
and compassion passes away,
pity is far off,
and long-suffering is withdrawn.
My judgment alone will remain,
the truth will stand,
faith will triumph.
The reward follows,
recompense appears,
good deeds awake,
evil deeds sleep no more.
Then appears the pit of torment,
and on the other side the place of new life.
The fires of Gehenna become visible,
and on the other side the paradise of blessedness." (4 Ezra 7:31-36)

The outlook of man is here directed to the future which will bring him punishment or reward. God is just, and already shows His justice in the fate of nations and of men; but His justice will be revealed clearly and decisively only on the judgment day. God is also gracious and merciful, and indeed He gives even now, full of kindness and mercy, good gifts to those who ask Him; but His mercy will be revealed fully and decisively only on the judgment day, when He will pardon those who are worthy. But what can a man expect ? with what comfort himself ? Who will be among the condemned, who among the graciously pardoned? Both as just and as gracious, God is essentially God of the future, and the future is wholly uncertain.

This is why the conduct of man, which should be nothing but obedience in the present moment, easily takes on the character of something accomplished for the future, and thereby loses its character of decision. It becomes a good work among other works; for the more good works there are, the more acquittal in the judgment is to be hoped for. Thus the man loses easily the consciousness of standing before God in the decisive "Now," and becomes fearful of the day when he will stand before God. An overwhelming sense of sin therefore takes possession of the religious man; his thought struggles with the problem of sin. How did sin come into the world? Whence comes its power? How is it possible that so many men should be lost? Especially in the apocalypse of 4 Ezra these questions are discussed. And from the feeling of the insecurity of salvation arise the confessions of sin and prayers of repentance which are so typical of later Judaism. Ever and again it is repeated, "We have sinned before Thee!" "With a broken heart and a humble spirit, may we find acceptance." And the last refuge is to regard even this confession of sin, this penitential prayer, as a good work, as a means by which to insure God s grace.

"We and our fathers have lived in the works of death,
but Thou, even because we are sinners, art called Merci-
ful.
For even because we have not works of righteousness,
Thou wilt, when Thou hast compassion on us, be called
Gracious.
For the righteous, who have laid up many works with
Thee,
will receive reward for their works.
But what is man, that Thou shouldst be angry at him?
What is the race of mortals, that Thou couldst bear
resentment toward it ?
For in truth there is none born of woman who sins not,
no one of those who have lived, who has not trans-
gressed;
then indeed are Thy justice and Thy kindness manifest,
O Lord,
when Thou pitiest those who have no treasure of good
works." (4 Ezra 8:31-36)

Here it is shown clearly that the idea of sin is not radically conceived, so long as the idea of the possibility of good works persists along with it, so long as the confession of sin can be something which makes sin pardonable, so long as man is not seen as wholly and in everything a sinner before God. The idea of sin is not radically conceived, if along with it there is room for the thought: a man cannot know how great the sins are in proportion to the good works; if the thought prevails that in the future judgment good and evil works are to be weighed against each other. The uncertainty in which a man here finds himself is not the consciousness of his utter nothingness before God, but a wavering between fear and hope. The God of the future is not really God of the present; for in the present the man is still conscious of an effort to escape the judgment of God, of a possibility of justifying himself before God; he does not see himself standing in the present before the God who judges.

Likewise the idea of the grace of God is not radically conceived; for God s grace appears here as a kindly overlooking of sins, standing in opposition to His justice, as it were overcoming His justice. Radically thought, on the contrary the grace of God belongs inseparably with His righteous judgment; for His grace does not ignore sin, but forgives it. It is precisely to the sinner that God is gracious, that is, to him who stands condemned by His justice. God s grace is not radically thought, so long as it is conceived as a possibility in the future instead of being grasped as a reality in the present; for what right would a man have to assert the grace of God, if he did not see it revealed as a concrete reality in his own life? Otherwise he is merely representing God as a human being who will perhaps give preference to grace over justice. In the Jewish prayer of penitence, therefore, the man who is hoping for God s pity is not comforted by laying hold of the revealed grace of God, but is consoling himself by a despairing clutch at a questionable possibility. The God of the future is not really God of the present, for the man does not see the God of grace at all in the present.

And yet precisely when God is seen as Judge and man as sinner, there is a possibility of a unified conception of God; a possibility of closing the chasm between God distant and God near at hand, between future and present, between hope and belief in providence. For then it is understood that the remoteness of God is nothing other than His remoteness from the sinner, and therefore a remoteness into which man is forced by the very fact that here and now he stands before God. Then it can be recognized that the need and suffering of the world are the sinner s need and suffering, and so do not stand in contradiction to the providence of God, and that the right to affirm the providence of God exists only for him to whom the God of the present is at the same time God of the future.

For Judaism, at all events, pessimistic dualism is endurable because in fact man is regarded as a sinner before God, and God as the Holy One and the Judge. But certainly Judaism did not achieve a really unified idea of God, because neither the idea of sin nor the idea of God s grace is radically conceived. It is not only mental activity, clear logic, or more persistent thinking that is needed in order to conceive these ideas radically; for the concepts of sin and grace have their origin not in theoretical reflection, they are the expression of man s experience that the reality of his own existence is determined by sin and grace. And this understanding of himself does not depend on an act of thought, but is a part of life itself.