frailty, our nothingness. But, as this feeling deepens, we begin to sense our belonging to a high, overarching realm of meaning; we find that we are embraced by a structure of value and truth; it is in Him, the Absolute, that we live and move and have our being.
Thus, religion can only affirm the supreme worth of man’s spirit—the quest of truth, goodness, reality, and harmony, but it cannot articulate its insight without succumbing to human limitations and errors, failings which reflect the pressures, privations, and prejudices of the particular place or time. “The Torah spoke in the language of man.”3 Our living faith can only assert that God exists, not what He is; that His Will is akin to man’s, when man is most loving and self-giving, but it cannot give detailed specifications; that man is potentially Divine, not what he can do to attain this end. We have to recognize the distinction between the psychological kind of faith and its social manifestations.
Unfortunately, the spokesmen of religion have frequently arrogated to their rites and doctrines the seal of absolute certainty. They have elaborated the aspect of self-assurance into intricate theologies and ignored the corrective feelings of privation, at least insofar as the collective tradition was concerned. Hence, the bifurcation between Faith and Reason in the nineteenth century. The quest for truth was left to the philosophers, while the religionists contented themselves with religious feelings and the rhetoric of symbolism. Philosophers became professional “no-sayers,” to the riddles of existence, and religionists, “yes-sayers”; while the disaffected and the disillusioned reverted to the crass idolatries of primitive man.
In three ways, the creative tension in the human soul rebels against the modern idolatry of ideologies. First, it removes the Absolute from the realm of mundane affairs. Only God is Absolute, and all our human plans, designs, and programs are of relative worth and adulterated truth. Hence, it might serve to prevent the ideological mass stampede that is the perpetual danger in a society dominated by the agencies of mass communication. The conservative role of religion is probably more needed in our restless, revolutionary age than the dynamic role, just as on a crowded highway, good brakes are more important than good accelerators. Second, this dynamic equilibrium returns us to the source of all creative activity, the individual, for the image of God is revealed in him, not in the state or in any social class, nor in any institution. Third, it calls upon us to recognize the inner unity of religious faith and the rational quest. In substance it points to the dynamic progressive character of all that is human. We must never be content to stand still, as if perfection were already here. At any one time, the human advance is a slow and pedestrian affair, a walking along a way, while the Vision of Perfection lures man onward. “Seek Me, and live, saith the Lord.”4
Essentially, the ethic of religious humanism is a blend of two forces, the one symbolized by Socrates, the other by Amos. Both were path-breakers. They were alike, in a profound sense, though the father of classical philosophy represented the voice of reason, while the founder of literary prophecy spoke in the name of faith. Both Titans of the spirit conveyed to their contemporaries the psychic syndrome of doubt, a higher faith, and a continuous quest.
Socrates questioned the certainties of the teachers of his day—the dogmas of the traditionalists and the nihilism of the Sophists. Yet he “knew” that the quest of truth and goodness was not an illusion. He defended the faith that somehow goodness, truth, and beauty belong to the structure of reality. And he gave his life to prove the supreme worth of the quest of truth, for, as Plato put it, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Amos too exemplified a similar, threefold approach—doubt in the efficacy of the priestly ritual, faith in the justice of God, and the ineluctable duty to “seek” God, in order to live. To be sure, the pathos of prophecy is at the opposite pole from the serenity of the philosopher. So, to the prophet, the voice of God was as the terrifying roar of a lion, while to Socrates, the intimation of Divine guidance was conveyed by a “daemon,” the faint echo of a distant call.
A PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE
In the development of a philosophy of life for the individual, the tension between the Vision and the Way provides the general perspective. The Way for us today in the Western World is to be found in the accumulated wisdom in our common heritage. While our philosophy and literature have become infinitely more complex than those of the Greek world, the essential outlines of human wisdom have not been greatly altered. The counsels of the ancient Sages are still valid—the avoidance of extremes, the “golden mean,” the sense of balance, the endeavor to “give all men their due,” to be a good citizen, and to know ourselves. Above all, it is to order one’s personality and one’s work so as to permit the serene joy of contemplation.
We might describe this classical view as the attempt to see life in its wholeness, and to order all things accordingly.
Within our own personality, the sense of the whole guards us against the medieval nightmare of dualism and the modern disease of alienation. In the ages of faith, the body and all its impulses were assumed to be evil, corrupted by “original sin” and subject to the wiles of Satan. Accordingly, man was to be forever embroiled in a battle against his lower nature. While Judaism did not surrender to the spell of this dismal doctrine as completely as medieval Christianity, it did feel the effects of this philosophy, and its lingering after-effects are recognizable even today.
The sense of the whole leads us to accord to every impulse its due place. Man is urged to cultivate all the facets of his personality, to esteem beauty as much as truth, the health of the body as well as the soundness of the mind, the competition in the arena as much as the dialogues in the forum. The goal is to become Headam Hashalem, the Perfect or the Complete Man.
This ideal appears to be self-centered in an age of mass-conformity. Is it not sinful to lavish one’s energy on one’s own self? But if we do not concern ourselves with the improvement of our understanding and the refinement of our sensibilities—old-fashioned as these goals may appear—we shall not acquire a firm base for our social ideals. The river cannot rise above its source. So, there cannot be in the mass that which is not in the individual’s composing it. To love one’s neighbor as oneself makes sense only when one does love oneself—intelligently. Without a reasoned self-love, social idealism is certain to deteriorate into some kind of technocratic Utopia, where the wheels of society as a whole hum most efficiently, but where the individual is no more than a bolt or a nut.
The sense of alienation that our literary artists have been describing for half a century is essentially the inhospitality of our society to the life of the soul. Those who strive to polish the mirror of their soul, the better to reflect the Divine, are bound to feel alien among people who are content to be mirror-images of one another. In the “lonely crowd” of “other-centered” people, the mass is all and the individual is nothing. There is then no unforgivable sin, save that of straying too far from the Gallup-poll. But, if the faceless mob should become aware of its power and shake off the reins of restraint, it will gallop to destruction. Hence, the need of keeping alive the classical ideal of wisdom—the man who is as well-governed and motivated as the ideal republic. Said Plato in The Laws: “If you ask what is the good in general of education, the answer is easy; education produces good men and good men act nobly. . . .”
For the Greeks, the individual was incomplete apart from the state. Man is by nature a political being, Aristotle insisted; hence, he is complete only when he fulfills his role as a citizen: “In addition to the full development of his personality, a person should train himself to serve the state. . . .” The citizen should be molded to suit the form of government under which he lives.5
In Judaism, man is made complete, not so much by loyalty to the state, as by the love of God. The Divine mystery is within the individual, as well as between him and his neighbor. Man is fully himself only when he detaches himself from the mass so as to reflect in his being “the image of God.” “Complete ye shall be,” says the Torah,