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The Modern God IdeaBarnett R. Brickner aa Rabbi, Euclid Avenue Temple , Cleveland, OhioPublished online: 24 May 2006.

To cite this article: Barnett R. Brickner (1931) The Modern God Idea, Religious Education:The official journal of the Religious Education Association, 26:10, 851-857, DOI:10.1080/0034408310261012

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The Modern God IdeaBARNETT R. BRICKNER

Rabbi, Euclid Avenue Temple, Cleveland, Ohio

I AM a liberal rabbi addressing myselffor the greater part of this brief paper

to religious liberals for whom the popu-lar God idea, as expressed in traditionaltheism, has become unsatisfactory andwho seek to inspire the young people un-der their spiritual leadership with a fresh-er and richer conception of God, one thatwill grow upon them and abide with themas they mature in soul and intellect. Ithas long been patent to liberal ministersand rabbis that the God idea fosteredeven in their own religious schools clashespowerfully with the child's advancingthought in later years. We know that theconflict between intellect and traditionalbelief ultimately works disaster for re-ligion itself. The religious school of theliberal congregation must not indulge inevasion and cannot depend upon a vaguehope that infantile notions will gracefullybe outgrown in later life.

If we wish our children to believe inGod and develop into religious person-alities, we must be prepared to share withthem such affirmations and doubts as wehonestly hold about traditional theism, as-suming, of course, that they are mental-ly right for such candor and, above all,we should impart to them a vital God ideain which we actually believe and which isthe result of our earnest seeking after re-ligious truth in a world of changing con-ception. "The seal of God is Truth" saythe Jewish sages. What concerns mevitally is to have a faith that will func-tion for me and by which I can live,rather than one that needs to live throughme.

To him who is acquainted with the de-velopment of Jewish religious thought,the idea of bringing the God conceptioninto consonance with the thought of the

age will not appear as a heretical process.He will be aware of the fact that amongthe Jewish prophets and philosophers theGod idea, far from being a fixed concept,was always remarkably fluid; in fact,throughout Jewish history various con-ceptions of God existed side by side with-out noticeable damage to the practice ofJudaism. Witness the myriad priestlyand prophetic conceptions of God in the"Old Testament" or the varied names forhim to be found in Jewish literature—Jehovah, Elohim, Shekina, Memra,Makom, Logos, Rachmana. Each one ofthese names is indicative of a differentGod conception. Maimonides and IbnDaud, who were among the leading Jew-ish philosophers during the Middle Ages,held fundamentally different conceptionsof God, though in the practice of Judaismthey differed only in some legal minutiae.And so it has been throughout Jewishlife and thought.

Particularly because I am a liberalrabbi I feel that the school of Judaism-Reform, to which I belong, and which iscommitted to the principle of develop-ment, is under an intellectual obligation tokeep the Jewish faith progressive. WhenJewish theology becomes static—ortho-dox—then not only is Judaism in jeop-ardy, but the very survival of the Jewishpeople itself is thereby threatened. TheJews survived as a people and were notconverted into a "church" because withinthe framework of their peoplehood theykept alive the sturdy principle of develop-ment and of freedom in matters touchingfaith.

Edmund Fleg hits it off very character-istically in his beautiful little essay en-titled "Why I Am a Jew" when he says"I am a Jew because the faith of Israel

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demands no abnegation of my mind. Iam a Jew because for Israel the world isnot yet finished. Men will complete it."

May I add that I am a Jew becausefor Israel the God idea is not yet finished.Men are still creating it.

As a religious liberal then, what doesGod mean to me, and how do I arrive atmy God idea?

A liberal accepts the scientific methodand outlook as the only approach to truth,alike in the field of natural phenomenonas in the domain of the spiritual world.

In modern thought we have reversedthe ancient process of finding truth.Formerly, truth was regarded as some-thing given, as something coming fromthe mind of God and of eternity, andhanded down to man and to time.

Now the process of finding truth isthrough discovery by the intellect of man.

The religious liberal appreciates, how-ever, that it is fallacious to justify one'sGod idea solely on the basis of this orthat scientific theory. He knows some-thing about the high mortality rate of sci-entific theories. The liberal's God ideais not based upon a pet hypothesis in bi-ology or in physics, but is rather the out-growth of the same scientific methodologyemployed by the physicists and the biolo-gists. His God idea is therefore notsomething fixed, but tentative, as is anytheory in the scientific field. In a worldof changing conceptions and relativity,the idea of a fixed and finished and setGod idea, the same from the beginningof time, runs contrary to the modern sci-entific spirit. The quest of God like thequest for truth is perpetual.

Whatever we know and can know aboutGod has come to us and must continue tocome to us by what we designate in mod-ern philosophical and scientific parlanceunder the term "experience" and notthrough revelation. If we are true to thescientific outlook, even as religionists, weare bound by the proposition that there isnothing which comes to us as knowledge

that passes the sphere of experience.Though I stress experience as the

source of religious insight and truth, Ido not want to be understood as statingthat the universe has ceased to be mysteri-ous and that the scientists have penetrat-ed all mystery: First, because this doesnot happen to be true, and secondly, be-cause I realize how essential it is for thoseof us who are liberals, who stress thesocialized aspect of religion, and whokeep our eyes fixed on scientific knowl-edge, not to forget to provide for anotherside of man's nature in addition to hisrationalistic side. On the contrary, wedare not neglect to provide in our recon-struction of faith for a "sense of mys-tery"—"a feeling of reverence"—"thewill to self-surrender"—call it as youmay, which the religion of our fathers sobeautifully incorporated.

The movement for the reconstructionof religion I believe to be the most vitaland hopeful tendency in contemporarylife. Therefore, we must not let it fallby being short-sighted on the side ofmysticism.

I feel that I must make clear, too, thatby the term "experience" I do not meansimply the knowledge which comes to usby contact with the outside materialworld. Experience can be both activeand passive, outward and inward, andboth types of experiences are valid, eachin its respective field. The biologist look-ing through his microscope at a stainedglass slide and recording and classifyinghis observation—the astronomer peeringthrough his telescope and charting "theways of the stars in their heavenlycourses"—these workers in the physicalsciences touch e x p e r i e n c e in oneway.

The poet and the composer, the artistand the saint, who see visions and dreamdreams, whose inspiration is recorded inliterature, music, the arts, and in religiousliterature, they too have had profoundexperience that is valid for the human

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race, but it is experience of a differentorder.

Professor Eddington contributes an en-lightening remark in this connection. Hewrites:

The seeker who pursues significance andvalues is often compared unfavorably withthe scientist who pursues atoms and electrons.The plain matter-of-fact person is disposed tothink that the former is wandering amid sha-dows and illusions, whilst the latter is comingto grip with reality. But it is this matter-of-factperson who is mistaken. It is the scientist, andnot the poet, or the seer, who is wanderingamid shadow arid illusions, for it is conscious-ness alone that can determine the validity ofits convictions.

It is what we feel that is alone competent toguide and keep us amid the confusions of physi-cal sensation and reaction. Not our sensitivityto sense impressions, but the reaching out of aspirit from its isolation to something beyond.A response to beauty and nature and art, an in-ner light of conviction and guidance—that iswhat we know; that is reality.

Having denned what I imply by theliberal approach to religious truth, I pro-ceed now to indicate how I build up myGod idea.

Let us start by positing this funda-mental query.

Of what does human life consist andof what forces is it the product? Humanbeings do not live in a vacuum, but in aworld, and human life consists in the pro-jection of certain values, and in the fash-ioning of our lives in loyalty to them.To experience life's values, we must con-stantly make adjustments among our-selves to one another and to our total en-vironment. Some of these life valueswhich we experience as a result of thisinteraction are more important to us thanothers. The fundamental values we ex-perience are a sense that the universe isnot hostile or even indifferent to us, anda feeling of security, of well being. Aswe rise in the scale of values we experi-ence a sense of life's increasing richness,its holiness. But these very values—thesense of goodness, truth, and beauty, asPlato postulated them, or Kedushah, Holi-ness, as Moses and the Hebrew Prophetsformulated them, "Holy Shalt Thou Be,

for the Lord thy God is Holy"—thesevalues are themselves borne from theirinteraction of our human nature with thatwhich is the very nature and essence ofthe universe in which we live and ofwhich we are a part.

To what mode of behavior in the en-vironing world must we adjust ourselvesin order to possess the highest values ofwhich life is capable?

The answer which the modern religiousphilosopher gives is: That whatever themode of behavior in the cosmos may be,that in it, upon which we depend, and towhich we react, that gives us a sense ofsecurity, of well-being, and the increasingrichness and worthwhileness of life whichwe seek—that is God. That somethingmay be either completely known to us orsimply sensed. It may be either singularor plural, personal or impersonal, a some-one or a something. To put it in stillother words, God is that someone orsomething in the universe and in us whichrenders both the individual and his worldsignificant, worth while, holy, and which,when he relates himself to it, elicits fromhim the highest kind of thinking, thedeepest kind of feeling, and the noblestkind of living.

This adjustment between the individualand his world, which produces his aware-ness of God, is not something instinctivealone. It is something cultivated, for itcan be frustrated. It comes only whenthe individual consciously and deliberate-ly attunes his own mode of thinking andliving to that which is the very nature ofthe universe.

I, as a Jew, find that the concept ofKedushah,—Holiness—is the analogue ofthe modern conception of God. The Ideaof Holiness personified was God, as theJewish prophets and sages conceivedHim. To them the experience of theworthwhileness of life as an end in itselfwas as ultimate as the experience ofBeauty, Truth and Goodness was to theGreeks.

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Modern thought holds further that wecannot find this God by abstract logic. Hecan only be experienced through concreteliving. Beginning with the highest valueswhich our hearts long to possess, we seekexperimentally to adjust ourselves to ourenvironment so as to secure these values.It is a process of through man to God.Let this not be confused with humanism,which stops abruptly with man and isagnostic about God. My way of thinkingfollows through man to God. Moralitybecomes from this point of view the veryheart of religion, and God becomes thesanction, source, and the authority for themoral life.

In a sense, then, we are leaning towardan understanding of religion which makesit the outgrowth of man's deepest experi-ence, namely, his attempt to identify him-self with his world. It is man's innerconsciousness of his spiritual life reach-ing forth into the world to interpret itsvalues, discover its ends, fulfill its idealsin the light of its own reality, and seekingits worthwhileness.

In this sense, religion becomes identicalwith life—the universal life force—theelan vital which "concretizes" (to useProfessor Whitehead's phrase) in termsof the world as we know it—natural andspiritual. It is spirit rolling through allthings, come at last to spiritual conscious-ness and purpose in the human soul.

This conception of God is the logicaloutcome of modern philosophy and sci-ence.

The older theism was always confront-ed with many unanswerable riddles.Among them was the puzzling questionthat the theists have never satisfactorilyanswered, "how a God who is all good-ness could create a world in which evilexists to the point of even threateningGod himself." Especially difficult and ir-reconcilable was the problem "how a Godwho is pure spirit could have created aworld of matter from which because ofits very nature God must be divorced."Philosophers from Aristotle to this day

have struggled in an attempt to reconcilethis dichotomy. In medieval Jewishphilosophy Maimonides who was anAristotelian and a dualist struggled un-successfully in an attempt to reconcile thecreato ex nihil of Genesis with his dual-ism.

Modern philosophy, however, which isidealistic in character with its emphasison "meaning and value" rather than on"facts," and modern science, especiallythe recent trends in physics which reduceall matter to spirit and everything to mind,have both come as a powerful ally toreligion.

I have become in my own philosophicalthinking a thoroughgoing idealist, whichis, I venture to say, the only possible phil-osopher for one who is a religionist.

The corner has been turned. Modernphysics, instead of leading to skepticismand to materialism and a mechanistic con-ception of the universe as it did in thelast century, is now heading to the ren-aissance of religious conviction.

Few people, for instance, realize what arevolutionary effect the discovery of radi-um played in overthrowing materialismand mechanism. The speck of radium,isolated by the Curies, sufficed to obliter-ate the barrier that separated matter fromenergy and opened up the hitherto sealedatom to the astonished eyes of physicists.Suddenly man discovered himself as akind of average-sized unit between thetwo infinities—the vast solar system ofthe sun and planets and the minute solarsystem of the atom.

Here was the filter of the intellectcleaned by Descartes, purified by Kant,and set by Henry Poincare, on the threepinpoints of certitude. Here was thefilter of reason, letting through the mostperfect and gorgeous of dreams. Matter,a painted veil, vanished away at the pene-trating gaze of science, and in its steada firmament of solar systems, as awe-in-spiring in their infinite smallness as is theMilky Way and its infinite vastness, is re-vealed, not to the wild imagination of the

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poet but to the sober and cold judgmentof the physicist.

For me, then, it is clear that not onlythe scientific method, but the content ofmodern philosophy and science makesGod an intellectual and spiritual necessity.The question now is: What is this Godlike, and whither will He lead ?

When I think of God, I conceive ofHim in terms of mind, of spirit. He is forme the expression and synthesis of thevital life force, in terms of all the lawsand stable principles, all the permanentform and order of the world. I find Himin the quiet testimony of truth, beauty,love, goodness, peace, joy, self-sacrificeand consecration which point to anotherkind of world within the one we see andtouch—a world of Spirit, of Intelligence,of Order, of Organizing Power.

God is for me the Spirit of Life, mov-ing through order to the fulfillment ofsome purpose though as yet we may notbe quite certain what that purpose is.God is for me more the goal towardwhich we move than the source fromwhich we spring. In the light of thetheory of emergent evolution, He is thespirit of life in the process of unfolding,evolving from unconsciousness to con-sciousness, from instinct to reason, fromchaos to order, full of yet uncomprehend-ed possibilities, but fulfilling itself in thecreatively evolutionary process of theworld. The testimony of God's evolutionI find in the spiritual unfolding of man-kind from a protozoan to a Plato.

This conception of God, in some re-spects, reflects the older Jewish idea ofGod as an exemplar of all the moral vir-tues. According to Jewish ethics we areenjoined to link ourselves to God, v'atemhadvekim. For all that man is, God is;all the vision and all the idealism, theimpulse for the better and higher life,all the aspiration in the human breast,the heroism that is simply the courageand the faith to hold on to life one min-ute longer, because one perceives init a sense of worthwhileness and believes

in its improvability; all of this spiritualnature in man is a "concretization" ofthat life force which is cosmic in theuniverse, and which builds toward per-sonality.

For even as these qualities constitutethe soul of the individual and make himunique when compared to all other livingcreatures, so I believe that regnant in theuniverse are those spiritual forces whichtake shape and are formulated in termsof men's values and ideals as man re-lates himself to the Soul in the universe,which I call God.

Now, if you want to designate what Icall the soul of the universe and God interms of personality, then you may doso, being cognizant constantly that whatyou are speaking about is simply mind,idea, soul, which is, in reality, known onlyto us in qualitative terms, not as some-thing finished, set, pattern-like in its na-ture, but something fluid, living, develop-ing, that is in us because it is in the uni-verse.

I do not find it objectionable to haveGod formulated in terms of personality,because personality is the highest expres-sion of the functioning of the universe.But when we speak of God in personalterms, as sometimes even the most vig-orously intellectual among us do, let us becognizant that it happens not when we arerational, but usually when we are underthe stress of some overwhelming andemotional strain. For when we are in-tellectual and formulating the God ideain religio-philosophical terms, we arecareful not to permit our language toover-reach our logical formulations. ThenGod is conceived of as idea—mind—inabstract terms. But when we are over-come by some deep emotional experienceand we refer to God as Father, as friend,as helper, when we turn to Him becausethere is no one else to turn to, and westretch out our hands and invoke Hishelp, then we ought to know that the lan-guage we are using is poetry, so muchimagery, and nothing else.

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The question will be asked me "Howcan I pray to such a God?" My answeris "that I pray very devoutly, even thoughfor me prayer has ceased to be theological.It is not Tephillah (petition) but Tehillah(adoration). Anyone who makes a care-ful study of the Jewish prayer books willrealize that in the main the Jewish pray-ers have been of the latter rather than ofthe former type. For me, prayer hasbecome meditation upon the best weknow, communion with the noblest thatthe human mind is able to comprehend,and reaching out from what we are towhat we yearn spiritually to become. Inmy prayers I do not barter with God, orseek to persuade Him to do anything. Irather essay to persuade myself and thosewhom I can lead in prayer to cultivatespiritual kinship with the highest in lifewhich the world tempts us, all too often,to forget. The purpose of prayer as Isee it is not to change the will of God,but to make us fulfill it. This is prayerviewed from the viewpoint of its psycho-logical and social significance.

The reason so many people do not pray,I find, is the same as the reason why somany people have given up their ardentbelief in a personal God and all the otherorthodoxies. It is not that they do nothave a need for God or are notprayerful. They feel rather the futilityof the older conception of prayer as peti-tion, and God as "listening ear." Eventhough they may still formally remainattached to the synagogue and church,they nevertheless indict these institutionsfor their failure to grow and keep pacewith the expanding conceptions of Godand prayer.

Nothing is more essential in these daysof religious unrest than for religious lib-erals to express in a literary way theirpoint of view, which is not only radicallydifferent from the fundamentalists, but isat variance with the point of view andthe emphasis of the secular humanists.People are demanding to know what genu-ine religious liberals—not those who are

simply pouring new wine into old bot-tles—mean when they speak about Godand prayer and immortality and the souland free will. Unfortunately, the relig-ious liberals in the various denominationsare as yet unorganized, and in the maininarticulate in a literary way, but the timehas come for them to band themselves to-gether and to formulate clearly that towhich they have given so much thinking.

Whenever this formulation comes andit should come soon, it must translate it-self in terms of religious worship and,what is even more important, such a re-construction of theology must precedethe reorganization of the curriculum ofour liberal religious schools and the train-ing of its teachers.

I wish in closing this paper to indicatesome of the pedagogic implications ofwhat I have been saying above.

First, the dualism that is now in voguebetween the pulpit utterances of the re-ligious liberal and that which is taughtas religious truth in his religious schoolmust be abolished. The instruction inreligion imparted in such a school mustbe brought into conformity with the pul-pit's new theology. I have personally hadfrequent complaints from progressively-minded parents in my own congregation,many of them college trained people, be-cause they have become conscious of thisdualism. The things which the childrenbring home from Sunday school turn outto be at variance with what the parentshave heard me utter from the pulpit. Lib-eral ministers have not yet reduced theirtheology to writing beyond the sermonstage. They have not begun to rewritethe textbooks for the Sunday schools orto train their teachers. The result is thatthe older textbooks which inculcate ideasthat the children will have to unlearn arestill in use and the teachers go about theirteaching in the sweet old way.

Secondly, there is a paradox about allreligious instruction. On the one handtraditional theology presents a readymade and finished system to be trans-

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mitted to the child from the kindergartenthrough graduation. It is graded in termsof chronological development. On theother hand modern pedagogy insists onpresenting material that is graded psy-chologically in terms of the range of thechild's experience. It insists that thechild learns best not by listening in andmemorizing tests but through experimen-tation and through doing—activity. All ofus know how futile it is to try to spoon-feed theology to children.

The principal trouble with the theolog-ical method is that it brings up children toaccept beliefs rather than to question andto work out their religious conceptions.The old method evades difficulties andglosses over theological problems promis-ing that they will become clear in lateryears, whereas the whole insistence ofmodern pedagogy is to invoke the initia-tive of the child and to call into play itscritical judgment. To teach the childto think is more important than to teachhim to believe. Liberals in religion mustreconstruct their religious schools alongthese lines.

Thirdly, if I had my way, God wouldnever be taught as a theological concep-tion. My idea is to lead children to aknowledge of God through teaching ofideals that can be brought within therange of their experience and which growout of their daily lives.

I would list these ideals and then gradethem according to the psychological levelsof the different age grades of the children.I would bring to bear in the support ofthese ideals that which is best in the lit-erature of the Bible, the Talmud, and theliteratures and folklore of all peoples,ancient and modern.

And as the child develops he would be-come aware of the urge to progress whichhas been at work in the human race andmore especially in the lives of its bestspirits. He would then come to think ofGod as that force in life which makeslife purposeful, worth while, holy. When

he gets along to the place where he cangrasp the unity of all nature and see theinner power working through and in allof life, then he has reached the placewhere he can understand something ofwhat we mean by God.

Fourthly, we must give up teachingthe Bible in chronological order and as asource book out of which to quarry ourtheological beliefs. Instead we mustteach the Bible as inspirational literature.We must present it as a record of thespiritual experiences of a great race. Thisimplies instruction that will take cogni-zance of biblical science. I for one amweary of seeing teachers who are poorpreachers using the biblical stories astexts for their moral lessons. I wouldrather hear the children read the Book ofBooks for the sake of the spiritual joythat comes from hearing the cadences ofits lovely sentences. I would rather watchthen ask embarrassing questions about theBible stories, than to see it converted intoa manual of moral texts. Unless we canteach the Bible so that it becomes a bookof great religious insight to which peoplewill turn for consolation when in de-spair, for inspiration when on the wingof a great undertaking, then it is just aswell that we should not teach it at all.

Fifthly, I should very much like to seeour service of worship for children recon-structed. All too frequently it is simplya reproduction on a smaller scale of thestiltedness of the adult service. Toomuch of the vocabulary, especially in thehymns, is anthropomorphic.

Above all, let us strive in our contactwith young people in the religious schoolto be unto them friendly guides approach-ing them in the spirit of ethical affection.Let us work with them in a common en-deavor, seeking to develop those finerqualities in human nature that aid men infacing the emergencies of life withstrength and with courage, with faith andwith hope.

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