Elijah Benamozegh

“ But how does the redemption work in Judaism? By making of man himself; of his conscience; soul, and will, the first, chief, and—I had almost said—the only means of his renovation, in summoning him to open his mind and heart to the teachings, exhortations, light and warmth emanating from the divine word, so that the whole inner man be transformed, his strength aroused, his powers expanded, and he himself alone brought to work, under the eye and hand of God, for his own salvation. ”

“ So that here, as elsewhere, morality shares the fate of the law; and, if new legal relations are about to be established in the new society—for, according to Jesus himself, in the new world are to be no more marriages—new moral relations must be thenceforth the guide of our conduct. But the abolition of the law, the death and resurrection of Jesus—the causes, as we have just seen, of doubt and weakness in the Christian ethics—themselves contain what compromises, no less-seriously, morality. ”

“ Nothing but a guest, a divine one indeed, but one which thro' lack of entertainment could not bring to our spiritual hearths those treasures of blessing with which it is laden. One cannot, then, but perceive how eminently favorable are Jewish doctrine, its incarnate Word and Redemption to man's dignity which they raise, to his moral energy which they arouse, to his interior transformation—alone reliable, because it is his own work—to his true justification, the fruit of a slow, inward labor, that leaves no dark corner of the mind or conscience unpenetrated by the divine light! ”

“ It is faith; faith as the highest virtue enjoined on mankind, faith opposed as such not only to science, to vain disputes, to vain jargon, as we have elsewhere observed, but also faith opposed as such to works; that is to say,—if one believes in Jesus, the God—Messiah, in his personal divinity and mission, in the efficacy of his death, in his resurrection, he has no longer need of works to obtain salvation. ”

“ Paul has a theory which Georgias, Hobbes, or the deceased Proudhon, the inventor of anarchy, would not have disowned, and which, once admitted, would be the coup de grace to all justice, all law, all morality, all society—namely, that not only is the Law a result of the first sin, but that it constitutes and is the cause of our sins—that without the Law there is no sin, and that consequently you have but to suppress the Law to make sin disappear. Nothing can be more-exact than the statement: It is through the Law that we know sin. ”

“ But the last act of this great drama, the return to Adam's condition, to paradise, took place at the era of the resurrection, when men, improved by the regenerating works of the Law, by the trials of life, by the slow and progressive initiation of actual existence, should assume bodies like Adam's before his sin. Until then the regeneration is not complete, sin has not abandoned his prey; the chain by which it holds us falls off indeed, link by link, but the last link is broken only by the tomb. Must Christianity wait so long? ”

“ The merits that justify, that procure pardon, are ever those of another, namely, of Jesus. Never does man himself conquer them by the sweat of his brow; they are imputed to him. Ever will remain this vast difference between Christianity and Judaism, viz: that the Redemption of the latter is altogether interior; that its Passion, Condemnation, Death, Garden of Olives, Praetor and Golgotha, are internal facts, the sphere of all being the mind and heart of man, where the Word is ceaselessly sacrificed for the benefit of humanity, upon the altar that man erects. ”

“ Innocent as Adam, ignorant as he, because the fatal fruit is considered as never having been eaten, subjected not to the real laws that rule the present physical world, but to those of the sinless world, to those that shall rule it after the resurrection, to fictitious laws, to an imaginary world, to this resurrection that ought to be inaugurated by Jesus, how should we be less free, less capable of sin and evil than Adam himself, had he never tasted the forbidden fruit? ”

“ We should be sorely grieved, could it be thought for an instant that we wished to calumniate the Christian ethics. No one disputes the truth of what we are about to say. Christians of every sect and color agree, that Paul, the great Christian legislator and moralist, teaches the doctrine of justification by faith without works. But the principle thus laid down appeared so revolting, so opposed to the noblest instincts of the human heart, so contrary to the sentimental morality Christianity was preaching, that restrictions were soon made to narrow its scope. ”

“ All relations about to cease, all ties to be broken, society to disappear, and this ephemeral life to have, perhaps, no morrow; all affections, wants, tears, rights, duties, the living, throbbing reality of life sacrificed to an abstraction, to a chimera, to a rabbinical subtlety of Saul's—is such a system-calculated to win people inevitably to the performance of duty, to a respect for all rights, to a veneration for the affections? ”

“ If we might anticipate what we have to say respecting the Law, we should say that Jesus, thinking the era of the Messiah identical with that of the resurrection or universal regeneration, believed he was on the eve of legitimately abrogating the Law, when the dead, just before rising from their graves, should assume immortal bodies. ”

“ What does logic teach? That one may be a materialist and addicted to all carnal excesses in two different ways. Matter may be paid an extravagant worship, be thought alone worthy of our care and love, be considered as the whole of man, over whom it should hold despotic sway, and that no rein or restriction should be put on its demands. But the materialism of which we speak is of another kind; it is when a super-refinement of spiritualism cuts assunder the constituent parts of our being, and by care and effort detaches the spirit from its earthly shrine ”

“ But besides the world, there is a power called logic, which, sooner or later, draws from every principle all the conclusions it involves. Xow, it can be fearlessly asserted, that from contempt of the body, of the flesh, as it was understood and practised by Christianity, must one day come the vilest materialism, the most unbridled licentiousness, the most shocking immorality. Doubtless, there appears to be nothing so paradoxical, so incredible as the union of contempt for the body with sensuality. ”

“ The Pharisees say: "With the dead is liberty (from the Psalms) , when one is dead he is freed from precepts." It is almost incredible, but this is the sole pivot upon which the words and thoughts of Paul incessantly turn, in the thousand places where he speaks of the liberty of the dead. Here is the origin, the cause of one of the boldest fictions that ever emanated from the human mind—a fiction, the consequences of which were incalculable. ”

“ What did the Pharisees understand by the resurrection? Beyond doubt it took in not only human bodies called to a new life, furnished with superior organs and powers, but also the whole of nature in a general renovation, in a new birth that was to change the aspect of nature; and it would be, doubtless, both a curious and instructive study to compare this doctrine with its ancient or modern imitations. The Pharisaic school, in accord on this point, differed as to the time of the general resurrection, and as to its connexion with the Messianic era. ”

“ In short, the redemption of Judaism is altogether from within, because its Word is so too, because its dogma, ethics and worship have no reality or sphere here below, except so far as man seizes, assimilates and realizes in himself the perfections they contain. ”

“ For let it be well understood, here is not a reason of philosophy which, by its own strength, has formed a system of ethics purely rational; nor yet a dawning reason, that distinguishes what comes from its own nature from within, from what comes to it from without—but the reason of antiquity, of all time, of every kind, that admits and recognizes a revelation. ”

“ Why should it descend to concern itself about a miserable animal? Why should it dwell with a thing so full of care, turmoil and disorder, to be its governor and guide? This is how an excessive contempt for the flesh ends in materialism, as we have just seen that the vilest materialism springs from too great an esteem and consideration for the flesh. This is the teaching of logic. Does experience speak less loudly? ”

“ Now we know what was the "Pneumatic" of the Gnostics: man, above law, usages, virtue, for whom all is good, all allowable, since his soul, in spite of any liberty the body may assume, can contract, henceforth, no stain, having an existence quite apart from the flesh that surrounds it. We do not quite assert that the spiritualism of Paul was of this kind; or that the contempt of the body and of its works was pushed by him to this point ”

“ Much more; the sin of Adam, the cause of the Law with the Cabalists and Paul, is expiated by the death of Jesus; he dies, is buried, and his disciples are likewise with him. Our flesh has been condemned to suffer for all in Jesus. There is then no more condemnation for those who are in Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit. ”

“ But the fiction continues: These faithful, dead and buried with Jesus, rise with him; our flesh, too, is considered as risen with Jesus. We are dead to the Law that we may belong to another, viz., to him who is risen from the dead; and Jesus, our brother, is the first born from the dead. No doubt possible. For Jesus, and, after him, for his disciples, the era of the resurrection, the renewing of nature, the resurrection of bodies was about to commence ”

“ Here, then, we have all title to recompense, all meritorious works declared null. This is not all: "But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness," [3] Thus, no doubt is possible—without works, and however wicked, one's faith alone in him who justifies the wicked, saves. Do we want more? Hear Paul, in continuation: "Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputed righteousness without works, saying: 'Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered. ”

“ A great proof, doubtless, of the nobleness of our nature, but likewise a perilous flight, a fatal separation! since the seductive liberty gained for the spirit sets free also all the vilest instincts of the animal. ”

“ On that new earth, in the midst of new beings and new conditions, the thought of God, the law of God, self-sufficing and naturally self-conserving, would change in its applications as it changes even here below, according to circumstances, to bodies, to relations, as it is applied to world, sun or star. ”

“ What they clearly testify is the strange abuse that is made of a simple fiction, and the consequence drawn from it with incredible coolness, viz.: the abolition of the Law. But in this tomb of the Law—in this inaction of the dead, shall not morality itself be annihilated? ”

“ They are that Paul, who wants faith without works, is the greatest enemy to the ceremonial law; and that, on the other hand, James, perhaps the most conservative apostle and the advocate of the necessity of works, is also the most favorable to the law. ”

“ We understand very well the difficulty that a modern will have in admitting these conclusions. We admit that the religious instinct, the pure morals, the sacred traditions which Christianity drew from the Synagogue, fought effectually against the power of logic, against the enticement to the licentiousness which these doctrines authorized. ”

“ We may, with advantage, as a counter-test, compare both with their type, Cabalistic spiritualism. We may boldly affirm that the tripple distinction of the Gnostics, and the spiritual of Paul become quite intelligible only by linking them with the equivalent Cabalistical doctrine. The Cabalists say that man has a threefold nature ”