Theodicy in Classical Judaism
The term theodicy refers to a justification of the ways of God, the proof that—despite what might appear to be the case—God's justice governs the world order. The need for such a proof comes about by reason of the character of monotheism . For, while a religion of numerous gods finds many solutions to one problem, a religion of only one God presents one to many. Life is seldom fair. Rules rarely work. To explain the reason why, polytheisms adduce multiple causes of chaos, a god per anomaly. Diverse gods do various things, so, it stands to reason, outcomes conflict. Monotheism, by contrast, explains many things in a single way. One God rules. Life is meant to be fair, and just rules are supposed to describe what is ordinary, all in the name of that one and only God. So in monotheism a simple logic limits ways of making sense of things. But that logic contains its own dialectics. If one true God does everything, then, since that God is all-powerful and omniscient, all things are credited to, and blamed on, him. In that case, God can be either good or bad, just or unjust—but not both.
Responding to the generative dialectics of monotheism , the Oral Torah systematically reveals the justice of the one and only God of all creation: God is not only God but also good. Appealing to the facts of Scripture, Rabbinic sages in the first six centuries C.E. constructed a coherent theology, a cogent structure and logical system, to expose the justice of God by arguing that the flaws in the perfectly created world are the result of human defiance of God, with the sin that results from their rebellion flawing creation and disrupting the world order. But people also have the power to initiate the process of reconciliation with God, so that, through repentance, an act of humility, they restore the perfection of the order that, through arrogance, they marred. God, in response, will renew the perfection that embodied the divine plan for creation. In this work of restoration, death that comes about by reason of sin will die, the dead will be raised and judged for their deeds in this life, and most of them, having been justified, will go on to eternal life in the world to come.
Within the framework of this story of God's justice, the theodicy of classical Judaism is worked out. But the claim that God orders the world through justice accessible to human reason confronts an everywhere acknowledged obstacle: justice seems to prevail only now and then. People's fate rarely accords with the fundamental principle of a just order but mostly discredits it. The problem is that, if the human condition embodied in Israelites' lives one by one defies the smooth explanations that intend to justify the condition of Israel in the abstract, then the entire logic of the Oral Torah fails.
How, then, to locate God's justice in the chaotic, scarcely-manageable detritus of private lives? This is accomplished through articulation of a doctrine of reward and punishment, the insistence on the justice of God in whatever happens. Within the logic at hand, reward and punishment not only precipitate, but define the teleology, of all thought. God is always God, but by no means good to all. This is stated in so many words, as is every critical proposition of the entire theological system animating the Oral Torah (Lam. Rabbah LXXXVII.i):
May we distinguish Israel from the gentiles? Not at all:
Then to whom is God good? To those who keep the Torah:
God is selective and elects those that ought to be selected, punishes and rewards those that deserve the one or the other. So God's justice is what is explained. God is good to those who deserve it and punishes those who deserve it.
Sages never for one minute doubted that the world order of justice encompassed private lives. This they stated in countless ways, the simplest being the representation of Hillel's statement encased in a fragmentary narrative (M. Ab. 2:6):
[One day he was walking along the river and] he saw a skull floating on the water and said to it, “Because you drowned others, they drowned you, and in the end those who drowned you will be drowned.”
Somewhere, somehow, the wicked get their comeuppance. The just God sees to it. But what about the righteous? Is their just reward equally certain? However dubious the former of the two propositions—the ultimate triumph of justice over the wicked when a crime or sin has been committed—that the righteous get their just reward certainly conflicted, then as now, with everyday experience. Indeed, the basic conviction of world order defined by justice violated every intuition, every perception, every reflection upon human fate, that private lives provoked. Then as now, people lived in a world of caprice and, right or wrong, discerned no justice at all.
Explaining how God's justice is worked out in private lives required a complex and diverse construction of thought. The thin, one-dimensional solution to the challenge to the theology of world order posed by gentile rule—the gentiles serve God's will in ruling Israel, thereby punishing Israel for its sin, but will themselves give way to Israel at the last—nicely served. But a much thicker explanation would be required to encompass the diverse cases all bundled together in the phrase “righteous in a bad way, wicked in a good way,” or covered by the question, “why do the wicked prosper?” For when it comes to everyday life, the anomaly represented by a random, not a just, fate, encompassed many cases, each with its own special traits, none easily resolved by appeal to a single overriding principle of reward and punishment. And the cases pressed in, near at hand, in the next house, the next room. So the human condition presented its own anomalies to the rule of the just order. Suffering, illness, and death come to all, the wicked and the righteous alike. So, responding to that cliché of everyday life, Ecclesiastes among many sages surely forbade framing easy answers and making facile distinctions.
Everything begins with the insistence that people are responsible for what they do, therefore for what happens to them, as much as the people Israel dictates its destiny by its own deeds. Justice reigns, whatever happens. The reason that individuals (therefore, groups formed by individuals) are responsible for their own actions is that they enjoy free will. People are constantly subject to divine judgment; they have free choice, hence may sin; God judges the world in a generous way; but judgment does take place (M. Ab. 3:15):
God may foresee what is to happen, but people still exercise free will. The individual's attitude and intentionality make all the difference. Because people are not coerced to sin, nor can they be forced to love God or even obey the Torah, an element of uncertainty affects every life. That is the point at which human will competes with God's. It follows that, where humans give to God what God wants but cannot coerce, or what God wants but cannot command—love, generosity, for instance—there, the theology of the Oral Torah alleges, God responds with an act of uncoerced grace. But in all, one thing is reliable, and that is the working of just recompense for individual action. Expectations of a just reward or punishment, contrasting with actualities, therefore precipitate all thought on the rationality of private life: what happens is supposed to make sense within the governing theology of a just order.
People are responsible for their own actions. But who bears responsibility when an infant dies, or a woman in childbirth, or a man before his appointed time (prior to sixty in the Talmud's estimation)? And how do sages reasonably explain the anomalies round about, those manifested by Scripture and embodied in the here and now of everyday life? Several distinct explanations serve, depending on the circumstance. In one, the individual's fate is said to be bound up with that of the group, Israel, or of the particular generation; in a second type of explanation, a specific malady or affliction is associated with a particular sort of sin; and other approaches appear as well. Since, moreover, old age, sickness, suffering, and death come to all, sages do not concede that these common mediators of fate are punishment for sin at all.
The doctrine of reward and punishment is spelled out in close detail. First let us take up the matter of punishment for specific sins or crimes. Here is a clear statement that individuals shape their own fate. The person afflicted with the ailment described at Lev. 13-14, here translated as “plagues” or “plague of leprosy,” has brought the illness upon himself by gossiping, and Scripture contains ample proof of that fact (Sifra CLV:i.8):
Not only gossip, but other sins bring on specific penalties, arrogance too:
A gossip is penalized by an attack of whatever disease, if any, is represented by the word “plagues” or by the skin-ailment under discussion here. God has spelled out in the Torah both sins and the penalty attaching to them. So what happens to the individual will naturally be explained as a consequence of what he has done.
Suffering forms an atonement for sin, which by definition is to be desired. First, suffering on its own constitutes a form of expiation and atonement, no less than an offering in the Temple in olden times. Second, suffering alerts people to their having sinned, telling them to find out what sin they committed and to repent for it. The prophets said the same thing as the sages. Such suffering represents an act of benevolence and is to be desired; it requires no justification beyond its own purpose. Sifre Deut. XXXII:V.5ff. states:
Suffering serves a just purpose and does not have to be explained further. Now a sequence of statements underscores the benevolence of God, expressed when he brings suffering to the sinner:
Suffering forms a mark of God's special engagement with the person:
Suffering forms a covenant with God, no less than the covenant at Sinai or at circumcision :
That conception broadens the range of discourse. Now the entire repertoire of positive categories contributes, for suffering also serves as the prerequisite of certain gifts that Israel is given, the Torah, the land of Israel, and the world to come, the three most important components of Israel's public life then depending upon the condition of the Israelite:
Another approach to the same matter, also finding that suffering forms an act of divine grace, compares suffering to the offerings on the altar: with the Temple in ruins, suffering forms the counterpart to the sacrifices offered when the Temple stood. As the latter atoned for sin, so the former atones for sin. That turns suffering into a valued occasion, not to be rejected or explained away but appreciated. Suffering as punishment for sin is to be valued, because through suffering one atones. Hence a doctrine of suffering encompasses not only the cause—rebellion—but also what is achieved—humility, yielding repentance. Suffering as divine chastisement and instruction thus is to be received gratefully (no. 5, above). Not only does suffering yield atonement, it also appeases the way offerings do.
Suffering forms the equivalent to a sacrifice, a means of atonement for sin. Why should suffering be valued as a medium of atonement? For it provokes introspection and serves as a source of reflection on the sins one has committed, so providing the occasion for repentance, which yields atonement. Accordingly, the most important reason that suffering is precious is that it changes one's attitude. When suffering comes, it brings about submission to God, a point demonstrated here (Sifre Deut. 32):
The first responses fail, because they merely commiserate and compliment the sufferer, which hardly addresses the issue of suffering at all:
The three miss the point. The fourth hits the bulls-eye:
The proof for the announced proposition derives from a specific case of Scripture:
From such a perspective, suffering represents not an anomaly in, but a confirmation of, the theological logic that begins with the principle of God's justice and benevolence. Suffering helps individuals help themselves, returns them to God, precipitates their repentance. What more can one ask of a just God than the opportunity to shape one's own will?
No wonder, then, that the Oral Torah's framers, focused as they are on the patriarchs as paradigms for their children, Israel, and enduring sources for a heritage of virtue, go so far as to invoke the fathers as the founders of suffering. Here, the patriarchs themselves ask God to bestow old age, suffering, and sickness, because the world needs these things. These components of the human condition not only do not form challenges to the logic of God's just governance of the world but express that very benevolence that infuses justice (Gen. Rabbah LXV:IX.1):
So much for old age, but what about what goes with it, the suffering of infirmities? Here Isaac makes his contribution, now being credited with that very conception that explains the justice of human suffering:
Finally, what of sickness, the third in the components of human fate? That is Jacob's contribution, and the wisdom and good will of God come once more to full articulation in suffering:
We proceed now to a further case of the same classification, now chronic illness and its origin in the wisdom of the saints, now Hezekiah:
Old age, suffering, and sickness do not represent flaws in creation but things to be desired. Each serves a good purpose. All form acts of divine mercy. The mode of explanation appeals to reason and practical considerations attached thereto.
Still, matters do not come out even; all die, but not everyone suffers premature death or sickness. Much more galling: sometimes wicked people live long, healthy, and prosperous lives, happily making everyone around them miserable, then die peacefully in their sleep at a ripe old age. And—then or now—one need not visit a cancer ward to find misery afflicting genuinely good and pious people. So while the doctrine of the benevolence expressed by sickness, suffering, and old age serves, it hardly constitutes a universal and sufficient justification. And, however reasonable suffering may be shown to be, in the end reason hardly suffices in the face of the raw agony of incurable illness. That is why, in sages' view, further responses to Job, Jeremiah, and Ecclesiastes are called for. One further effort to bring suffering within the framework of the rational, to show the justice of the matter, is called forth. Specifically, the same anomalies in the just order encompassing private life may come about for yet another reason, which is, God's own plan: when the righteous suffer, God is testing them (Gen. Rabbah LV:II.1f.):
This is now embodied in metaphors drawn from the potter, the flax maker, and the farmer:
We conclude the exercise with the juxtaposition of the base-verse, Gen. 22:1, and the intersecting-verse, Ps. 11:5, at the meeting of which the point just now stated was triggered:
The suffering of the righteous pays tribute to their strength and is a mark of their virtue. That is shown by appeal both to analogies (potter, flax maker, householder) and Scripture. Suffering shows God's favor for the one who suffers, indicating that such a one is worthy of God's attention and special interest.
That suffering is a valued gift explains the critical importance of the theological principle that one should accept whatever God metes out, even suffering. In a context defined by the conviction that suffering forms a gift from a benevolent and just God, we cannot find surprising that a person's loving God should involve accepting punishment as much as benefit. This is stated in so many words (M. Ber. 9:4A-E):
Accordingly, the correct attitude toward suffering entails grateful acknowledgment that what God metes out is just and merciful. The same matter is amplified in the following exegesis of the same verses of Scripture (Sifre Deut. XXXII:V.1-12):
People are expected to accept suffering as a mark of divine favor and love, as an indication that God has special confidence in them, or that God has a particular purpose in dealing with them as he does. If the patriarchs asked for sickness, old age, and other forms of suffering, all the more reason gratefully to accept as a mark of divine justice the miseries of the human condition.
So the sages mounted argument after argument. They framed and found scriptural bases for doctrine after doctrine. All this was to try to persuade themselves that somehow the world conformed to rationality defined by justice. True, the claim that anguish and illness, premature death and everyday suffering fit under the rules of a reasonable world order, the insistence that when the wicked prosper, justice still may be done—these propositions, necessary to the system, may well have transcended the here and now and conformed to a higher reality. But still, when all is said and the day is done, the doctrine of suffering could not encompass all cases, let alone persuade everybody who raised the question, why me? why now? Nor did sages so frame matters as to suggest they found theology's panglossean solutions, if necessary, wholly sufficient let alone compelling. True, suffering is to be accepted as a mark of God's grace, a gift, an occasion, a mode of atonement and reconciliation with God. True, the patriarchs found much good in human fate and asked God to arrange matters as they are. And yet—and yet the fact remains that some suffer more than others, and, not uncommonly, the wicked prosper and the righteous do not.
So the doctrine of suffering on its own could not, and did not, complete the Oral Torah's account of the confrontation with the key-dilemma of sages' theology of world-order, the anomalies that manifestly flaw private lives, viewed in comparison and contrast with one another. Say what they would, sages in the end had to complete the circle: some do not get what they deserve, whether for good or for ill, and, if their time is replicated in our own, those some were very many. To that protean problem sages found in their larger theology a commensurate and predictable response.
Sages identified with adherence to Torah the promise of life eternal, with idolatry the extinction of being. This would come about at the last days, which will correspond with, and complete, the first days of creation. Justice will be done only when the world is perfected. With that conviction's forming the foundation of their very definition of world order, divided between those who will overcome the grave, Israel with the Torah, and those who will not, the gentiles with idolatry, sages found in hand a simple solution. The righteous suffer in this world and get their just reward in the world to come, but the wicked enjoy this world and suffer in the world to come. Since the theology of the Oral Torah to begin with distinguished the Torah and life from idolatry and death, what happens in this world and in this life does not tell the whole story. And when that entire story is told, the received formulation of the problem of evil no longer pertains, and the final anomalies are smoothed out.
Since that theology contemplated a world beyond the grave—the world to come, in which individuals would resume the life they knew, but now for eternity—that conviction provided a solution to the problem of the prosperity of the wicked and the misery of the righteous. By insisting that this world does not tell the whole story of a private life, sages could promise beyond the grave what the here and now denied. The simplest statement of that position is at B. Hor. 3:3 I./11a:
The righteous will enjoy the world to come all the more, and the wicked will suffer in the world to come all the more; the one has saved up a reward for eternity, the others have in this transient world already spent such reward as they may ever get. But that still begs the question:
Raba acts in the model of Abraham facing God before Sodom! But he has a better solution, making still more radical claim:
Raba's solution takes account of the theory of atonement through suffering. The righteous atone in the here and now; that is why they suffer. Then the world to come is all the more joyful. Now follows a story that shows how disciples of sages enjoy in this world such benefit as the wicked ought to have had in the world to come, and the rest follows.
To grasp how, in massive detail, ultimate justice pervades the here and now, the premise of this passage should not be missed. It is that of a steady-state moral economy: a finite store of rewards and punishments awaits the righteous and the wicked alike, so what comes to the one is denied the other. World order defined by reasoned justice serves to justify—show God's justice in—even humble, everyday experience. It follows that the rules that govern and account for everyday experience are supposed to make sense of the nonsense of the present age.
But sages were no fools, and hope for the at-present-intangible future did not dim their dark vision of the ordinary experience of life, its nonsense, its anomalies. While pursuing philosophical modes of thought, in the end sages valued sagacity beyond reason, however compelling. For all their insistence upon the rule of God through a just order, sages accepted that beyond the known and reasonable lay the unknowable, the realm of God beyond the part set forth in the revealed Torah. They affirmed, in the end, their own failure, which makes them plausible and human in their claims to account for much, if not all, of the anguish of which private lives even of the most holy of men are comprised. In the end we all die, and who knows how long the interval until the resurrection? So sages last word on the reasonable rule of the just order consists of a single imperative: humility, the gift of wisdom, not of wit. Here is a passage that generations of Talmud-students have found sublime, the statement of all things, all in all (B. Men. 3:7 II.5/29b):
God rules, and people, in the end, cannot explain, account for the rationality of, everything God decrees. Sages offer more than reasonable explanations for the perceived violation of justice. They offer also the gift of humility in the form of is silence. That forms the barrier before the ultimate terror—not understanding, not making sense of things.
Accordingly, sages placed humility before God above even the entire theological enterprise with its promise of explanation, understanding, and justification. But the last word must register: that God's decrees, however inexplicable those decrees to the human mind, bear the comforting message that God cares. And since the premise of the mystery of suffering is formed by the conviction of God's justice, that God cares also means God loves. And it is a love for humankind, taken care of one by one, a love so deep as not to leave anybody ever unattended—even Aqiba in his martyrdom, but especially ordinary folk, when they suffer, when they bleed, when they die, as all do.
Jacob Neusner, The Theology of the Oral Torah (Kingston and Montreal, 1998).
Citation:
Neusner, Jacob. "Theodicy in Classical Judaism." Encyclopaedia of Judaism. General Editors Jacob Neusner , Alan J. Avery-Peck and William Scott Green . Brill, 2006. Brill Online. <http://www.brillonline.nl/public/theodicy>