WHEN A MAN makes himself guilty of so many distortions of fact, when he judges with such pretense to authority on the basis of such bottomless ignorance of the subject, when he levels such unbridled accusations against another religion and another people, as does Toynbee in his treatment of Judaism and Jewry, it is not enough to show up his ignorance, his mistakes and misrepresentations. One must also attempt to answer the question: Why does he do it?
Toynbee’s picture of Judaism and Jewry has very little to do with either of them; it is determined mainly by his attitude toward some of the basic issues of human existence in general and his evalation of Christianity in particular.
1. TOYNBEE’S NEED FOR A MUNDANE JEWISH MESSIANISM
The writing of the Study must have taken its author a considerable number of years. The impact of the material and moral catastrophes that have shaken our world since the early 1930’s is felt in most of the pages of the latter parts of Toynbee’s work. Many of the great issues of all history became acute problems of the day while Toynbee was writing. As he wrote, so he struggled with his philosophy of history—often changing his views and all the time himself changing. There are at least two Toynbees in the ten volumes. The break is most obvious between Volumes V and VI.
The violently negative tone toward Judaism, which dominates the sixth volume and compares so unfavorably with what is said previously and even contradicts it, is a symptom of the change that must have occurred in Toynbee himself. One may recognize it in the vital variation in the interpretation of the, by now, familiar concept of Transfiguration. As we have seen, Transfiguration is a focal point in the entire Toynbean philosophy. It is the only solution to the problem of the breakdown and disintegration of a civilization and society. In Volume V, Transfiguration is “a change in spiritual climate” which is brought about by “a form of transference of the field of action from the Macrocosm to the Microcosm,” which is identical with “the criterion of the growth of a civilization.”1V/394. According to this definition, Transfiguration is a task for man to undertake and fulfill. In Volume VI, however, Toynbee reaches the conclusion that Transfiguration is the perceiving of the Kingdom of God, effected by the operation of the Spirit; transfiguring the world, the Spirit redeems it. At the same time, Transfiguration is a mystery that is beyond our understanding; it is a mystery because it is an act of God and an effect of God’s presence.2VI/149-157. Whatever may be the meaning of all this, it is obvious that Transfiguration is not a task that can be performed by man. Man cannot save or redeem himself; “salvation belongeth unto the Lord” alone. Unless the would-be savior of mankind is “in some sense divine” he will be impotent to execute his mission. Therein lies the significance of the Christian doctrine that Jesus is identical with the Godhead.
It appears that with Toynbee this is not just theology or dogmatic faith; it is the conclusion he reaches from his study of history. He is a historian disillusioned with man and civilization. The crimes, the failures, the beastly inhumanity that crowd the annals of man’s history, prove to Toynbee that human nature is basically perverse. Therefore whatever man may undertake in order to save himself always fails. Liberalism’s idol is Homunculus; that of Communism, Leviathan. “Democracy” is “this disinterred Attic blessed word”; it and Industrialism constitute the twin demons of the West; it only pays lip service to Humanitarianism. Western parliaments are “these parliamentary corporate despots.” Civilization is no permanent transfiguration of the essence of human nature, but merely a brittle “cake of custom”; nor is progress possible. History has been, thus far, mainly “the abominable Age of Civilization, Human Sacrifice, Slavery, and War.” Man can do nothing well, and all his hope is in salvation from God.3See, e.g., IX/621, 593, 444, 8, 573; VIII/273; VII/560-1; IX/555. There are also some passages where Toynbee attempts to leave man some share in his own salvation by making Transfiguration dependent on a kind of cooperation between God and Man. And thus A Study of History from the sixth volume onward ceases to be what the title indicates and becomes “History as a Study in Salvation.” Mr. Toynbee acknowledges this change of course by saying:
“… our study has carried us to a point at which the civilizations in their turn, like the parochial states of the Modern Western World at the outset of our investigation, have ceased to constitute intelligible fields of study for us and have forfeited their historical significance except insofar as they minister to the progress of Religion.…”4VII/449.
No one may sympathize with Mr. Toynbee over his disillusionment with the human race more sincerely than the Jew; what for Mr. Toynbee is a study of history the Jews have witnessed and suffered and endured in their own lives through the ages. Yet no one will appreciate better than the Jew the irony that a man possessed of such disillusionment and pessimism concerning human nature should turn on Judaism and Jewry. The deeper the disappointment and the more sincere the sorrow of such a man, the more will he resent and reject almost everything Judaism and the Jew stand for in history. The authentic Jew knows failure, his own as well as that of the rest of mankind; he has seldom had opportunity to be much impressed with man, but he never despairs of him. Because the Jew believes in God, he cannot but—in spite of all history—through God believe in man too.
Toynbee is a religious man, but his religion is motivated by despair. His theology of disillusionment compels him to recognize only a mundane Judaism. If it is assumed that Transfiguration is within the grasp of man and is reflected in the ethos of gentleness, the Maccabean and Zealot militancy may be seen as a departure from the higher Judaism of a previous period. But once Transfiguration becomes the mystical “renting of the veil” in the Temple, effected by God and revealing His Presence and His Kingdom, it is obvious that prior to that miraculous epiphany the True God could not have been known. It is this position that leads Toynbee to create what we have termed his “psychological” version of Judaism. The act of Transfiguration was the epiphany of Christianity; ergo, the Judaism preceding it could have been only a tribal religion with a provincial deity at its center. Since there can be no other Savior than the God Incarnate, Messianism prior to Jesus must have been pure mundane militancy for the sake of a national kingdom and world dominion. All that Judaism could accomplish was to stumble by way of Futurism to the very threshold of Transfiguration.5Most revealing are Toynbee’s vacillations on Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai’s role. At the close of the presentation of his “psychological” version of Judaism, he is very definite that the School of Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai and the Christian Church differ in essentials from “mundane” Quietism and Zealotism alike. For the Rabbi and the Church “have ceased to set their heart upon the old mundane purpose of futurism and have put their treasure, instead, in a purpose which is not Man’s but God’s and which therefore can only be pursued in a spiritual field of supra-mundane dimensions.” See VI/128 and above Ch. I, section 2. In an earlier volume, the Rabbi’s ethos is described as being in the spirit of Jesus. See V/75-6, 390; but especially the Annex, ibid., 588, on the Ambiguity of Gentleness, where Toynbee differentiates between the non-violence of a quietist Agudath Israel, the tactical non-violence of Gandhi and the strategic non-violence of Jesus and Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai. But in the latter part of the Study Toynbee reverses himself completely—as usual with him in such cases, without any further explanation—and identifies Rabbi Johanan with a specific manifestation of Zealotism. After the crushing defeat of the militant Zealots, says Toynbee, “the gentle vein of Jewish Zealotism came into its own at last when Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai responded to the tremendous challenge of the fall of Jerusalem … by endowing Jewry with an inertly rigid institutional framework and a passively obstinate psychological habitus….” See VIII/585. Far from acquainting Jews with the purposes of God, to be pursued “in a spiritual field of supra-mundane dimensions,” he taught them Judaism as “a social drill”—see ibid. 599—for the sake of the purely mundane ambition of preserving Jewish communal identity in a politically impotent diaspora. Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai could not have changed between Volumes V and VI and Volume VIII of the Study; but Toynbee has. As long as Transfiguration meant the transference of action from the Macrocosm to the Microcosm, the adoption of the ethos of gentleness—Toynbee’s position in Volume V—it remained within the ken of men, and Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai could also have been a protagonist of Transfiguration. Once, however, Transfiguration became an “otherworldly mystery,” brought about by the direct action of God through the epiphany of Jesus and otherwise inaccessible for human beings—Toynbee’s position in Volume VI—Rabbi Johanan could of course no longer be considered a “transfigurationist”; having been the key figure in Jewry after the fall of Jerusalem, he is turned into a “gentle Zealot,” who is responsible for the preservation of a mundane Jewry. In Volume VI, which is the bridge in the Toynbean transformation, he is still permitted—not very logically, though—to have experienced Transfiguration, most probably because Toynbee himself, not fully realizing the consequences of his new theory, still clings to the “old” Rabbi of Volume V. It is an oversight, which is soon mended.