Kaufmann Kohler > Quotes

“While the Law insists upon the exclusive worship of the one God of [pg 057] Israel, the narratives of the beginnings in the Bible have a different tenor. They take the lofty standpoint that the heathen world, while worshiping its many divinities, had merely lost sight of the true God after whom the heart ever longs and searches. This implies that a kernel of true piety underlies all the error and delusion of paganism, which, rightly guided, will lead back to the God from whom mankind had strayed.”
― Kaufmann Kohler, Jewish Theology: Systematically and Historically Considered

“The rabbis are all the more emphatic in their assertions that the Torah merely intends to assist the simple-minded, and that unseemly expressions concerning Deity are due to the inadequacy of language, and must not be taken literally.”
― Kaufmann Kohler, Jewish Theology: Systematically and Historically Considered

“While the Jewish concept of faith underwent a certain transformation, influenced by other systems of belief, and the formulation of Jewish doctrines appeared necessary, particularly in opposition to the Christian and Mohammedan creeds, still belief never became the essential part of religion, conditioning salvation, as in the Church founded by Paul. For, as pointed out above, Judaism lays all stress upon conduct, not confession; upon a hallowed life, not a hollow creed.”
― Kaufmann Kohler, Jewish Theology: Systematically and Historically Considered

“Judaism denies most emphatically the right of Christianity or any other religion to arrogate to itself the title of “the absolute religion” or to claim to be “the finest blossom and the ripest fruit of religious development.” As if any mortal man at any time or under any condition could say without presumption: “I am the Truth” or “No one cometh unto the Father but by me.” 22 “When man was to proceed from the hands of his Maker,” says the Midrash, “the Holy One, Blessed be His name, cast truth down to the earth, saying, ‘Let truth spring forth from the earth, and righteousness look down from heaven.’ ” 23 The full unfolding of the religious and moral life of mankind is the work of countless generations yet to come, and many divine heralds of truth and righteousness have yet to contribute their share.”
― Kaufmann Kohler, Jewish Theology: Systematically and Historically Considered

“Reason must serve as a corrective for the contents of revelation, scrutinizing and purifying, deepening and spiritualizing ever anew the truths received through intuition, but it can never be the final source of truth.”
― Kaufmann Kohler, Jewish Theology: Systematically and Historically Considered

“Both the Creation stories and those of the beginnings of mankind assume as undisputed the existence of God as the Creator and Judge of the world. Arguments appealing to reason were resorted to only in competition with idolatry, as in Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, and Deutero-Isaiah, and subsequently by the Haggadists in legends such as those about Abraham.”
― Kaufmann Kohler, Jewish Theology: Systematically and Historically Considered

“According to Rabbinical tradition, the broken tablets of the covenant were deposited in the ark beside the new. In like [pg 005] manner the truths held sacred by the past, but found inadequate in their expression for a new generation, must be placed side by side with the deeper and more clarified truths of an advanced age, that they may appear together as the one divine truth reflected in different rays of light.”
― Kaufmann Kohler, Jewish Theology: Systematically and Historically Considered

“The name Jehovah, however, has no place whatsoever in Judaism. It is due simply to a misreading of the vowel signs that refer to the word Adonai, and has been erroneously adopted in the Christian literature since the beginning of the sixteenth century.”
― Kaufmann Kohler, Jewish Theology: Systematically and Historically Considered

“All these passages and many others 71 show what a prominent place the principle of love occupied in Judaism. This is, indeed, best voiced in the Song of Songs: 72 “For love is strong as death; the flashes thereof are flashes of fire, a very [pg 033] flame of the Lord. Many waters cannot quench that love, neither can the floods drown it.” It set the heart of the Jew aglow during all the centuries, prompting him to sacrifice his life and all that was dear to him for the glorification of his God, to undergo for his faith a martyrdom without parallel in history. [pg 034]”
― Kaufmann Kohler, Jewish Theology: Systematically and Historically Considered

“Paul's doctrine of a new covenant to replace the old 114 conflicts with the very idea of the covenant, and even with the words of Jeremiah.”
― Kaufmann Kohler, Jewish Theology: Systematically and Historically Considered

“But no proof, however convincing, will ever bring back to the skeptic or unbeliever the God he has lost, unless his pangs of anguish or the void within fill his desolate world anew with the vivifying thought of a living God.”
― Kaufmann Kohler, Jewish Theology: Systematically and Historically Considered

“The unity of God brings harmony into the intellectual and moral world; the division of the godhead into different powers or personalities leads to discord and spiritual bondage. Such is the lesson of history, that in polytheism, dualism, or trinitarianism one of the powers must necessarily limit or obscure another. In this manner the Christian Trinity led mankind in many ways to the lowering of the supreme standard of truth, to an infringement on justice, and to inhumanity to other creeds, and therefore Judaism could regard it only as a compromise with heathenism.”
― Kaufmann Kohler, Jewish Theology: Systematically and Historically Considered

“As a matter of fact, when the true object of religion is the hallowing of life rather than the salvation of the soul, there is little room left for sectarian exclusiveness, or for a heaven for believers and a hell for unbelievers. With this broad outlook upon life, Judaism lays claim, not to perfection, but to perfectibility; it has supreme capacity for growing toward the highest ideals of mankind, as beheld by the prophets in their Messianic visions.”
― Kaufmann Kohler, Jewish Theology: Systematically and Historically Considered

“He that planted the ear, shall He not hear? He that formed the eye, shall He not see? He that chastiseth the nations, shall He not correct, even He that teaches man knowledge?”
― Kaufmann Kohler, Jewish Theology: Systematically and Historically Considered

“The truth of the matter is that the aim and end of Judaism is not so much the salvation of the soul in the hereafter as the salvation of humanity in history. Its theology, therefore, must recognize the history of human progress, with which it is so closely interwoven.”
― Kaufmann Kohler, Jewish Theology: Systematically and Historically Considered

“JHVH is no longer the national God of Israel. The Talmud guards against the very suspicion of a “Judaized God” by insisting that every benediction to Him as “God the Lord” must add “King of the Universe” rather than the formula of the Psalms, “God of Israel.”
― Kaufmann Kohler, Jewish Theology: Systematically and Historically Considered

“This is the substance of the addresses of the great seer of the Exile in chapters XL to LIX of Isaiah, in which he exposes the gods of heathendom to everlasting scorn, more than any other prophet before or afterward. He declares these deities to be vanity and naught, but proclaims the Holy One of Israel as the Lord of the universe. He hath “meted out the heavens with the span,” and “weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance.” Before Him “the nations are as a drop of the bucket,” and “the inhabitants of the earth as grasshoppers.” “He bringeth out the hosts of the stars by number, and calleth them all by name,” “He hath assigned to the generations of men their lot from the beginning, and knoweth at the beginning what will be their end.” 160 Measured by such passages as these and such as Psalms VIII, XXIV, XXXIII, CIV, and CXXXIX, where God is felt as a living power, all philosophical arguments about His existence seem to be strange fires on the altar of religion. The believer can do without them, and the unbeliever will hardly be convinced by them. 4.”
― Kaufmann Kohler, Jewish Theology: Systematically and Historically Considered