A00039 - Divine Transcendence

 A word must be said about some of the more important theological conceptions that emerge in the Apocalyptic literature.  The transcendental view of God that characterizes it has often been remarked and is obvious.  God is pictured as supreme over the world.  God dwells at an inaccessible height and is surrounded with an impassible barrier of fiery glory.  One need only read such passages as Daniel 7: 9 and following which describes "the Ancient of Days" seated upon a throne in heaven -- a throne of "fiery flames, and the wheels thereof burning fire" -- and ministered to by myriads of attendant spirits, to realize this aspect of the conception.  Such descriptions as "the Most High," "the Exalted One", "the Everlasting" and "the Eternal One" are common paraphrases for "God" (see 4 Ezra 7:33, 50, 74; Baruch 4:10, 14, 22; and Daniel 4: 31 and following), and we may compare with these the terms common in rabbinic literature, "The Holy One, blessed be he," "The Omnipotent," and similar expressions.  One effect of this conception was to stimulate the development of a rich angelology and demonology. 

One-sided stress on the transcendence of God, above and apart from the World, always involves the substitution for God's presence in the World of some sort of intermediary agency.  This again is a characteristic of popular Judaism, as it had developed in the apostolic age, and can be traced not only in apocalyptic, but also in the Targums and other late Jewish literature.  The way had been prepared by the quasi-personification of Wisdom (see Proverbs 8), and the tendency is illustrated in later literature in the way in which such agencies as the Memra ("Word"), the Holy Spirit, the Shekinah, and the figure of Metatron are spoken of. 

In the Apocalyptic literature, the role of Metatron is assumed by Enoch "the heavenly Scribe," while in the figure of the heavenly Son of man of the Similitudes of 1 Enoch 37-71, the idea of a supernatural being, second only to God himself, who shares God's throne (1 Enoch 62:3 and 5), possesses universal dominion (1 Enoch 62:6), and to whom all judgment is committed (1 Enoch 41:9 and 69:27), the conception attains its highest expression.  The whole idea of any intermediated agency between God and man later rabbinical Judaism was intensely hostile, and the rabbinical teachers strove as far as possible to eliminate it from the popular consciousness. 

It is sometimes assumed that the ideas thus current about the divine transcendence must necessarily have tended to remove God entirely from all contact with his world and to make him inaccessibly remote to the pious worshiper.  Doubtless the danger was present; but that it could be -- and was -- overcome is shown by such a passage as 4 Ezra 8:20 and following where the seer, in a prayer addressed to God, after heaping up expressions emphasizing the divine majesty and transcendence -- whose throne is beyond imagination, whose glory inconceivable, etc. -- makes a direct appeal to the divine compassion:

Hear the voice of thy servant,

Give ear to thy creature's petition, and attend to my words (v. 24)    

The danger of a one-sided stress on the transcendence of God was present, but the religious instinct was strong and vital enough to overcome it, without sacrificing the truth underlying the transcendental idea.