Abraham J. Heschel's Concept of Divine Pathos

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) was a Polish-American rabbi, theologian, and philosopher who was born in Warsaw, Poland. He was a descendent of rabbis on both sides of his family. After receiving a traditional yeshiva education, he was ordained a rabbi before earning a doctoral degree at the University of Berlin in 1933. He had a second rabbinic ordination at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin in 1934. He taught at the Hochschule until 1937, when he was appointed as head of the central organization for Jewish adult education in Germany and the Jüdische Lehrhaus (Jewish House of Learning) in Frankfurt, but he was deported by the Nazis to Poland in 1938. He left Warsaw for London in 1940, and he arrived in the United States later that year. His mother and three of his four sisters were victims of the Holocaust. He taught for five years at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, and he then became Professor of Jewish Ethics and Mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York City, where he taught from 1945 until his death in 1972. 

      Heschel participated in the American civil rights movement, and he was a friend of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., with whom he marched in the third Selma to Montgomery March in 1965. He also participated in the peace movement against the war in Vietnam. He was an advocate of interfaith dialogue, and he played an important role as an official observer at the Second Vatican Council, urging the Catholic Church to promote mutual understanding and respect between Catholics and Jews and to condemn antisemitism. He was also an outspoken advocate for the rights of Jews in the Soviet Union.

      Heschel's many writings included Man is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion (1951), The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man (1951), Man's Quest for God: Studies in Prayer and Symbolism (1954), God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (1955), The Prophets (1962), and Who is Man? (1965).

      In The Prophets (1962), Heschel discusses such biblical prophets as Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Habakkuk. He says that they are more than messengers from God. They are also witnesses to the divine pathos. The divine pathos is that God is concerned about us and thus is affected by what we do or fail to do.

      For Heschel, God is not an impersonal, impassive, or indifferent being. God may be distressed or wounded by the misdeeds and thanklessness of those whom he has redeemed.¹ God can express his love, anger, disappointment, forgiveness, or mercy in response to our failings and transgressions. Thus, the divine pathos is both a disclosure of his concern and a concealment of his power.²  

       Heschel believes in a God of love, compassion, mercy, and justice. The role of the prophet is therefore to communicate to us God's expectations, laws, and commandments, to warn us against disobedience to God's will, to call us to repentance, and to give voice to God's approval, concern, anger, disappointment, and forgiveness. The role of the prophet is also to plead for us to God, acknowledging our transgressions, expressing our repentance, and asking for God's forgiveness. The role of the prophet is also to call us to righteousness and justice.

      Heschel also believes in a God who can feel both joy and anguish, both happiness and sadness, both anger and forgiveness. The God of pathos is a God who shares not only in our joys and delights, but also in our sorrows and disappointments, as well as in our suffering and vulnerability. The God of pathos is a God who can feel what we feel. He is a God who has emotions and who is emotionally engaged with us.

      The God of the philosophers is completely indifferent, says Heschel, but the God of the prophets is completely concerned. The fundamental experience of the prophet is therefore "a fellowship with the feelings of God, [and] a sympathy with the divine pathos."³ 

      The prophet is not only a witness to the divine pathos, he is also a poet, preacher, statesman, social critic, and moralist.⁴ He is a person who stands before God (Jeremiah 15:19) and who is sent to us by God. As a messenger, he delivers God's word to us, but as a witness he gives us testimony that the word is divine.⁵

      The testimony of the prophet is not always heard or appreciated by us. It's a recurring complaint by the prophets that those who have eyes do not see, and that those who have ears do not hear (Jeremiah 5:21, Ezekiel 12:2, Isaiah 43:8).⁶ However, God can open our minds and hearts. The word of God never ends, and no word is God's last word.⁷

      Heschel says that God is slow to anger, and that he has patience with us. ("The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love," says Psalm 103:8.) God's anger is subject to his own will, and it has an instrumental function, insofar as its purpose is to reveal to us that he is displeased by our offenses, and that he calls us to repent. As the prophet Micah says,

"Who is a God like thee, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger for ever because he delights in steadfast love...Thou wilt show faithfulness to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham, as thou hast sworn to our fathers from the days of old." (Micah 7:18-20).

      Heschel also says that in God

"There is no dichotomy of pathos and ethos, of motive and norm. They do not exist side by side, opposing each other; they involve and presuppose each other. It is because God is the source of justice that his pathos is ethical; and it is because God is absolutely personal...that this ethos is full of pathos. Pathos, then, is not an attitude taken arbitrarily. Its inner law is the moral law; ethos is inherent in pathos."⁸

      The divine pathos is an attitude expressing God's concern, rather than an essential attribute of his being.⁹ It is an expression of God's will and a manifestation of his freedom. It is therefore both a paradox and a mystery.¹⁰ While it manifests God's freedom, it also calls into question his self-sufficiency. If God were absolutely self-sufficient, then he would have no need for us or for the world. Because he is concerned about us, however, he is unwilling to stand aloof from us. He cares about us, and the role of the prophet is therefore to articulate and proclaim this divine pathos.¹¹

      The divine pathos also calls into question the ontological presupposition that God is immobile and immutable. If God were immobile and immutable, then he wouldn't be affected by our conduct, and he wouldn't be susceptible to pathos, because he would be wholly absolute in his being.

      Heschel defends himself from the charge of anthropomorphism (ascription of human attributes to God) or anthropopathism (ascription of human emotions to God) by saying that attributing absolute concern and unconditional love to God isn't attributing human characteristics to God, but rather attributing to God characteristics that are more divine than human.

      Moreover, he says that "the notion of God as a perfect Being is not of biblical origin."¹² To say that God has no emotions, because emotions are affective states that are displayed by humans, is to try to anesthetize him. The anesthetization of God would reduce him to a mystery whose will is unknown to us, and who has nothing to say to us.¹³ But God does indeed care about us, and thus the prophets had to use anthropomorphic language in order to convey a reality that transcends the limits of language.

       It should be noted that the terms logos, ethos, and pathos may be used to refer to three different rhetorical strategies or modes of persuasion, as described by Aristotle. While logos is an appeal to reason, ethos is an appeal to the speaker's authority, and pathos is an appeal to the emotions.

      Heschel notes that in modern usage, the words "pathos" and "pathetic" also convey the idea of something sorrowful or pitiable, so the sense in which he uses the word "pathos" differs from its most common meaning in modern usage.
      The nature and meaning of the divine pathos may be a mystery, but the prophet Amos says,

"Surely, the Lord God does nothing, without revealing his secret to his servants, the prophets. The lion has roared; who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken; who can but prophesy?" (Amos 3:7-8).

      And the prophet Micah says,

"But as for me, I will look to the Lord, I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me. Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be my light. I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him, until he pleads my cause and executes judgment for me. He will bring me forth to the light; I shall behold his righteousness" (Micah 7:7-9).

      Is the God of pathos then a tragic God? If we, through our transgressions, fail to show God that we are grateful for all that he has given us, then is God's unconditional love for us both tragic and sublime? A suffering God is also a tragic God. His pathos may arise from his tragic suffering.

      But if we can be redeemed, then perhaps the human situation and the situation in which God calls us to return to him are not ultimately tragic. Perhaps our recognition of his concern for us and our faith in him are his ultimate triumph. Perhaps our redemption from our misdeeds and our partnership with God in our struggle for peace and justice are his ultimate victory.

FOOTNOTES 

¹Abraham J. Heschel, The Prophets (New York: HarperCollins, 1962), p. 39.

² Ibid., p. 299.

³Ibid., p. 31.

⁴Ibid., p. xxii.

⁵Ibid., p. 27.

⁶Ibid., p. 241.

⁷Ibid., p. 247.

⁸Ibid., pp. 290-291.

⁹Ibid., p. 297.

¹⁰Ibid., p. 299.

¹¹Abraham J. Heschel, Man is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion (New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, 1951), p. 244.

¹²Heschel, The Prophets, p. 352.

¹³Ibid., p. 354.

The Śūraṅgama Sūtra

The Śūraṅgama Sūtra ("Heroic March" or "Heroic Progress" sutra) is a Mahayana Buddhist sutra that Śramaṇa Paramiti (Dharma Master Paramiti) brought back from India to China, where he translated it into Chinese at Chih Chih Monastery in Guangzhou in 705 CE. The original Sanskrit text is not extant. Since the 8th century CE, many commentaries on it have been written, including those of Chan Master Han Shan (Hānshān Déqīng, 1546-1623) and more recently the  Venerable Masters Xuyun (1840-1959), Yuanying (1878-1953), and Hsuan Hua (1918-1995). 

      Most of the Śūraṅgama (Shurangama) Sutra consists of a dialogue between Buddha and his disciple Ananda before an assembly of bhikkhus (monks), arhats, and bodhisattvas. The Buddha's teachings in the sutra include discourses on the illusory nature of phenomena, the unreality of the self, the sources of misconceptions about the nature of reality, and the path to enlightenment.

      The Buddha explains that all phenomena are manifestations of mind, and that they have no inherent existence. They do not exist inherently because they are not self-caused or self-existent. All phenomena depend on causes and conditions of existence, and they are therefore empty of self-existence. They appear to exist inherently, but their appearance is illusory. The way they appear to us is not the way they are in true reality. 

      Emptiness (sūnyatā) is the true nature of all things. Emptiness (voidness) is also a door to liberation. It is the realization of the illusory nature of all existence, and the realization that all things are empty of inherent existence and self-nature.

      All phenomena (things, dharmas) arise from conditions and cease because of conditions. Thus, they are devoid of self-nature, and they lack any real, permanent, or essential attributes that would distinguish them from other phenomena. They do not exist on their own, and they are all interdependent.

      All phenomena are actually like flowers in the sky, illusory appearances that we misperceive because of our ignorance,

      The three meditative studies (or expedient practices) that lead all Buddhas in the ten directions¹ to enlightenment are śamatha (the meditative study of all as void or immaterial), samāpatti (the meditative study of all as unreal), and dhyāna (the meditative study of the mean between delusion and enlightenment). This threefold study aims to remove ignorance, and its most suitable point of departure is the One Mind (which is the source of both delusion and enlightenment).² 

      Meditation (dhyāna) is also one of the six pāramitās (perfections). The six pāramitās are generosity (dāna), moral conduct (sīla), patience (kṣānti), perseverance (viriya), meditation (dhyāna), and wisdom (prajñā). 

      The six perfections are practiced in order to cross over from the shore of mortality (saṃsāra, the karmic cycle, the cycle of birth and death) to the other shore (nirvāṇa, the cessation of saṃsāra).³ Nirvāṇa (the cessation of desire or craving) is also the extinction of the three poisons or unwholesome roots: rāga (greed or sensuality), dvesha (hatred or aversion), and avidya (ignorance or delusion).⁴ 

      When we cling to the illusory body and mind made up of the five aggregates, we fail to know the One Mind or True Mind. The five aggregates are form (rūpa), sensations or feelings (vedanā), perceptions (saṃjñā), mental formations (sanskaras), and consciousness (vijñāna).

      The five aggregates form the illusory self or ego, and they include everything that we experience in the mental and physical world. Each of them may be an object of clinging, and each may also be a source of falsehood and delusion. While clinging to them causes suffering, dissolving them leads to enlightenment.

      Clinging or attachment to the illusory self or ego may be coarse (when it arises from discrimination related to the sixth and seventh consciousnesses) or subtle (when it arises from the store of previous experiences that give rise to the illusory perception of an ego).⁵ 

      The eight consciousnesses are the six sense consciousnesses (the visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, and mental consciousnesses), the deluded consciousness (kliṣṭamanovijñāna), and the storehouse consciousness (ālāyavijñāna), which is the basis of the other seven.

      Wrong views, such as belief in the reality of the self or ego, belief in permanence and annihilation, and denial of the law of causality are causes of suffering (dukkha). The four mistakes or misapprehensions are mistaking impermanence for permanence, mistaking suffering for happiness, mistaking something having no identity for something having an identity, and mistaking something impure for something pure.

      The two inversions are (1) the wrong use of a clinging mind, which people mistake for their own nature, and (2) attachment to causal conditions, which screen the basically bright essence of consciousness. The non-rising of these inversions is the Tathāgata's (The Enlightened One's) true state of samādhi (meditative absorption or concentration).⁶ 

      Delusion can be caused by mistaking birth and death, arising and ceasing, beginning and ending for reality. Thus, delusion leads to transmigration through illusory realms of existence. When the discriminating mind is mistaken for self-nature, the true mind of enlightenment is screened and obscured by delusion.⁷

      The Eternal Mind or One Mind is beyond birth and death, and it is the common source of all Buddhas and all living beings.⁸ It transcends all dualities and all discriminations regarding the appearances of things. Thus, the subject and the object, the self and the nonself, "is" and "is not," being and nonbeing, existence and non-existence, thisness and thatness are all unreal and illusory.

      The Buddha ties six knots in a flowered cloth, symbolizing the obstructions that can block the path to enlightenment, and he explains that both tying and untying the knots (delusion and liberation) come from the same cause, the mind.⁹ The six knots represent the six sense organs (sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell, and mind) that can be sources of illusion. The six entrances of illusions into the mind are the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body, and the intellect. If we disengage the sense organs and disentangle the knots that obstruct our path to enlightenment, then we realize that all phenomena are void.¹⁰ 

      Bodhisattvas (enlightened beings) remain in harmony with all beings in the ten directions. They work for the welfare of all living beings, and before their own liberation, they set their mind on freeing others. Their own enlightenment and their enlightenment of others are therefore free from contradiction. Their preaching is free from all clinging (upādāna), and their teaching reveals the non-duality of all Dharma doors.¹¹

      Of the ten highest stages of bodhisattva attainment, the last stage is that in which the bodhisattva provides sheltering clouds of compassion for all those who are suffering and are seeking nirvāṇa. This is the stage of Dharma clouds (Dharmamegha).¹²

      The Buddha always responds to the needs of others, like the tide that never fails to rise and fall.¹³ Thus, he rescues others from suffering, ensuring their liberation and attainment of enlighenment.

FOOTNOTES

¹The ten directions are north, south, east, west, northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest, up (above), and down (below).

²The Śūraṅgama Sūtra, with commentary (abridged) by Chan Master Han Shan, translated by Upāsaka Lu K'uan Yu (Charles Luk) (London: Rider & Company, 1966), pp. 3, 116.

³Ibid., p. 242.

⁴ Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr., The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2014).

⁵The Śūraṅgama Sūtra, translated by Upāsaka Lu K'uan Yu, pp. xviii-xix.

⁶Ibid., pp. 13-14.

⁷Ibid., p. 14.

⁸Ibid., p. 19.

⁹Ibid., p. 117.

¹⁰Ibid., p. 121.

¹¹ Ibid., pp. 168-169.

¹²Ibid., p. 172.

¹³Ibid., pp. 146-147.