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PDF FormatNote the grammatical tense: Jews do not say merely that the soul God gave man was pure, on that day long ago when the Almighty blew into Adam’s nostrils the “spirit of life.” Rather, the soul given to each man today ispure. In other words, the Jews reciting this prayer begin their day by stressing that man does notcome into the world “estranged from God and in a state of rebellion.” On the contrary, the midrash stresses, in what could be interpreted as a pithy response to the publican, “If you should say that the evil impulse is not in your power to prevent, I [God] have declared to you in scripture, ‘Unto you is its desire, but youmay rule over it.”35
It is this confidence in our abilities, the rabbis argued, and not a focus on our abject sinfulness, that is the first necessary step toward repentance. For instance, in the amida—the central element of the Jewish liturgy, recited in silence three times a day—confession is not the first act of the worshipper. Traditional Jewish prayerbegins withpraise of God, and then turns torequests of the Divine. This is the first request:
You graciously endow man with wisdom and teach insight to a mortal. Endow us graciously from yourself with wisdom, insight, and discernment. Blessed are you, Eternal, gracious giver of wisdom.
Only then, after affirming man’s God-endowed capacity for wisdom and insight, does the Jew turn to confession and repentance:
Bring us back, our Father, to your Tora, and bring us near, our King, to your service, and influence us to return in perfect repentance before you. Blessed are you, Eternal, who desires repentance. Forgive us, our Father, for we have erred; pardon us, our King, for we have willfully sinned; for you pardon and forgive. Blessed are you, Eternal, the gracious One who pardons abundantly.
This is immediately followed by a plea for redemption:
Behold our affliction, take up our grievance, and redeem us speedily for your name’s sake, for you are a powerful Redeemer. Blessed are you, Eternal, Redeemer of Israel.
The order of the blessings is theologically instructive. The first step toward repentance, Judaism argues, is realization of the awesome abilities with which man has been endowed. Only from within this confident perspective is it appropriate to speak of overcoming our flaws and repenting our sins. Only then, after man has established his moral and intellectual stature and repented for his sins, is God asked to act as the “Redeemer of Israel.” The path to God’s presence, and ultimately to redemption, is thus founded on the dignity of man rather than on his wretchedness.
Jewish liturgy almost never speaks about an irreparably flawed and wretched humanity. The one apparent exception occurs in the ne’ila service, the climactic end to the Yom Kippur prayers, when man’s penitence reaches its most intense, desperate expression:
What are we? What is our life? What is our goodness? What is our virtue? What our help? What our strength? What our might? What can we say to you, Eternal our God and God of our fathers? Indeed, all heroes are as nothing in your sight, the men of renown as though they never existed, the wise as though they lacked knowledge, the intelligent as though they lacked insight; for most of their actions are worthless, the days of their lives are like nothing in your presence: “So that man has no preeminence above a beast; for all is fleeting.”36
Man can be beastlike; he has been so in the past and will be so again in the future. When he does not use his God-given capacity in a moral manner, man is truly insignificant, no matter how revered among other men he may be. But then, in the same breath, the prayer switches tones, and concludes as follows:
[Nevertheless,] you have chosen man at the very inception, and you have recognized him as worthy of standing before you.
Despite the depths to which humanity is capable of sinking, Judaism maintains the belief that in spite of the sin of Adam and all those who followed him, man is still worthy of standing before God. Even as man has fallen, he can rise again of his own accord.
We have in the publican, writes Luther, “a beautiful example of true Christian repentance and faith, and an excellent masterpiece of high spiritual wisdom or theology, of which the Pharisee and those like him have never received a taste or smell.”37 Luther was right to the extent that Jews have never followed the publican’s example; we ask for God’s forgiveness by telling him that we can earn his friendship, rather than by asserting that we deserve his enmity. The publican’s approach to repentance focuses on human wretchedness, Judaism’s on human worthiness.
V
Thus far we have addressed the gulf separating the Jewish and Christian approaches to redemption, messiah, and repentance. Yet there is a sense in which these differences all indicate a deeper divide, one that colors the way each religion relates to the world in which we live. This divide concerns the meaning of history itself.
Paul’s doctrine of original sin is a picture of a world gone awry, reflected in humanity’s inability to live righteously. The nineteenth century’s most famous Catholic convert, John Cardinal Newman, reflected that a brief look at the world should convince any theist of the truth of Paul’s doctrine:
If I looked into a mirror, and did not see my face, I should have the sort of feeling which actually comes upon me, when I look into this living busy world, and see no reflection of its Creator…. [To consider] the tokens so faint and broken of a superintending design, the blind evolution of what turns out to be great powers or truths, the progress of things, as if from unreasoning elements, not towards final causes, the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race, so fearfully yet exactly described in the Apostle’s words, “having no hope and without God in the world”—all this is a vision to dizzy and appall; and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery, which is absolutely beyond human solution. What shall be said to this heart-piercing, reason-bewildering fact? I can only answer, that either there is no Creator, or this living society of men is in a true sense discarded from his presence.38
Here Newman is presenting us not merely with a defense of the idea of original sin, but also with a theodicy, an approach to evil’s existence in this world. The wretchedness of man, Newman argues, and evil’s reign on this earth allow us only one of two approaches: Either God does not exist, or something has gone terribly wrong with humanity. Those who affirm the existence of God must also admit that a wrench has been lodged in the machinery that is man, fettering his conscience and his ability to do good. According to Newman, this wrench can be removed only by Jesus’ death on the cross.
In Maimonides’ Laws of Kings, by contrast, we find a thoroughly different theodicy. In reflecting upon the crimes committed by Christians and Muslims and upon the terrible and unfair suffering of the Jews, Maimonides presents us with a vision of a sinful world that is nonetheless able to become worthy of redemption:
All the prophets affirmed that the messiah would redeem Israel, save them, gather their dispersed, and confirm the commandments. But he [Jesus] caused Israel to be destroyed by the sword, their remnant to be dispersed and humiliated. He was instrumental in changing the Tora and causing the world to err and serve another beside God. But it is beyond the human mind to fathom the designs of the Creator; for our ways are not his ways, neither are our thoughts his thoughts. All these matters relating to Jesus of Nazareth and the Ishmaelite [Muhammad] who came after him only served to clear the way for King Messiah, to prepare the whole world to worship God with one accord, as it is written, “For then will I turn to the peoples a pure language, that they all call upon the name of the Eternal to serve him with one consent.”39 Thus, the messianic hope, the Tora, and the commandments have become widely known—discussed even in the far isles and among many peoples, uncircumcised of heart and flesh. They are discussing these matters and the commandments of the Tora.40
