7 - God and the soul

Summary

The relationship between the individual and God can be considered from two points of view. In Jewish teaching the soul of each individual is unique, with its own special relationship with God, and each individual has to employ his body in giving expression to this relationship. In this chapter the soul relationship with God is examined, the next chapter the body relationship. In both chapters it is the individual qua individual that is considered apart from the relationship of the individual to God as a member of the Jewish people.

Generally in the Jewish tradition the individual soul is totally distinct from God, who creates the soul as something quite other than He. But there is to be found, among some of the Jewish mystics, the astonishing idea of the ‘divine spark’ in man, according to which, ultimately, there is something in the human soul, or, at least, in the Jewish soul, that is itself indistinct from God. It is this startling doctrine that we must here examine.

The belief that there is a special mystical ‘spark’ in every human breast can be traced back, in Western mysticism, at least to Jerome in the fourth century. Both Bonaventura and Bernard of Clairvaux speak of this mystical organ; the latter called it scintillula, a small spark of the soul, and, speaking of the nearness of God, said: ‘Angels and archangels are within us, but He is more truly our own who is not only with us but in us.’