The Lonely Man of Faith

by Joseph B. Soloveitchik

Drawing from a vast reservoir of Jewish and general knowledge, Rabbi Soloveitchik brought Jewish thought and law to bear on the interpretation and assessment of the modern experience. On the one hand, he built bridges between Judaism and the modern world; yet, at the same time, he vigorously upheld the integrity and autonomy of the Jew’s faith commitment.

Rabbi Soloveitchik wants to discern whether, existentially, a person of faith can live and function in a modern technological society enamored of quantitative methods and bent on material triumphs. The challenge the Rav confronts is not secular knowledge but secular man and secular society.2 The person of faith feels lonely, estranged, alienated. What is the precise source of this loneliness, and can the feeling be overcome?

Because both personality types are willed by God, the human being must attempt the seemingly impossible—to be part of both communities, the utilitarian and the covenantal. Thus, God bids the human being to live in a dialectical fashion, oscillating between creative, victory-bent man and humble, submissive man. A person cannot throw off either part of his or her personality. “In every one of us abide the two personae.” And here is the rub: the need for oscillation means that the man of faith has no single home. He is a wanderer, striking roots in one community, only to then uproot himself and travel to another, in a perpetual cycle. This continuous oscillation is a source of loneliness—and it cannot be overcome. Because Adam the Second must, by divine mandate, enter Adam the First’s community as well, complete redemption is unattainable.

Rabbi Soloveitchik believed, as he wrote in 1944, that “religion is not, at the outset, a refuge of grace and mercy for the despondent and desperate, an enchanted stream for crushed spirits, but a raging, clamorous torrent of man’s consciousness with all its crises, pangs and torments.”4 Turmoil and sacrifice, not comfort and placidity, are, by divine edict, the hallmarks of authentic religious life. How true that is of Rabbi Soloveitchik’s lonely man.

AND YET, NOTWITHSTANDING his praise for Adam the First, Rabbi Soloveitchik believes that in contemporary times Adam the First is to blame for a new type of loneliness afflicting the man of faith. This type of loneliness is due not to the permanent nature of the human condition (“ontological” loneliness), which requires oscillation between two communities, but to specific man-made historical circumstances, the circumstances of modernity. Contemporary Adam the First rejects his dialectical nature. He regards himself as the totality of the human personality. He is narcissistic, “arrogant,” “demonic.” He cannot hear Adam the Second; he “dismisses the covenantal faith community as something superfluous and obsolete”; he ignores “the unique and strange transcendental experience which resists subservience to the cultural interests of majestic man.”

A 2006 version of Lonely Man might therefore recast some of the terms of the conflict between the Adams. But the overall dilemma—that retreat from the world is opposed to the divine will and yet today’s man of faith feels impelled to withdraw—defines the modern religious predicament forcefully. Today’s men and women of faith feel, no less poignantly than their predecessors, the need both to engage the world and to affirm themselves as individuals seeking God who integrate themselves into vibrant covenantal communities. Can they do both? It is a tribute to this work and its remarkable author that four decades later it still challenges us to ponder this question and address it with candor and sensitivity.

All I want is to follow the advice given by Elihu, the son of Berachel of old, who said, “I will speak that I may find relief”; for there is a redemptive quality for an agitated mind in the spoken word, and a tormented soul finds peace in confessing.

I am lonely because, in my humble, inadequate way, I am a man of faith for whom to be means to believe, and who substituted “credo” for “cogito” in the time-honored Cartesian maxim.

Therefore, it is my intent to analyze this experience at both levels: at the ontological, at which it is a root awareness, and at the historical, at which a highly sensitized and agitated heart, overwhelmed by the impact of social and cultural forces, filters this root awareness through the medium of painful, frustrating emotions.

What can a man of faith like myself, living by a doctrine which has no technical potential, by a law which cannot be tested in the laboratory, steadfast in his loyalty to an eschatological vision whose fulfillment cannot be predicted with any degree of probability, let alone certainty, even by the most complex, advanced mathematical calculations—what can such a man say to a functional, utilitarian society which is saeculum-oriented and whose practical reasons of the mind have long ago supplanted the sensitive reasons of the heart?

The purpose of this essay, then, is to define the great dilemma confronting contemporary man of faith. Of course, as I already remarked, by defining the dilemma we do not expect to find its solution, for the dilemma is insoluble. However, the defining itself is a worthwhile cognitive gesture which, I hope, will yield a better understanding of ourselves and our commitment.

to the man of faith, self-knowledge has one connotation only—to understand one’s place and role within the scheme of events and things willed and approved by God, when He ordered finitude to emerge out of infinity and the Universe, including man, to unfold itself.

There is no doubt that the term “image of God” in the first account refers to man’s inner charismatic endowment as a creative being. Man’s likeness to God expresses itself in man’s striving and ability to become a creator.

Therefore, Adam the first is interested in just a single aspect of reality and asks one question only—“How does the cosmos function?” He is not fascinated by the question, “Why does the cosmos function at all?” nor is he interested in the question, “What is its essence?” He is only curious to know how it works. In fact, even this “how” question with which Adam the first is preoccupied is limited in scope. He is concerned not with the question per se, but with its practical implications. He raises not a metaphysical but a practical, technical “how” question.

The man of dignity is a weighty person. The people who surround him feel his impact. Hence, dignity is measured not by the inner worth of the in-depth personality, but by the accomplishments of the surface personality.

The natural community is born of a feeling of individual helplessness.

today individuals are not so powerless--so has the desire for community decreased? is this a problem?

Eve vis-á-vis Adam the first would be a work partner, not an existential co-participant. Man alone cannot succeed, says Adam the first, because a successful life is possible only within a communal framework. Robinson Crusoe may be self-sufficient as far as mere survival is concerned, but he cannot make a success of his life. Distribution of labor, the coordinated efforts of the many, the accumulated experiences of the multitude, the cooperative spirit of countless individuals, raise man above the primitive level of a natural existence and grant him limited dominion over his environment. What we call civilization is the sum total of a community effort through the millennia.

Cathartic redemptiveness, in contrast to dignity, cannot be attained through man’s acquisition of control of his environment, but through man’s exercise of control over himself. A redeemed life is ipso facto a disciplined life.

Adam the second was formed from the dust of the ground because the knowledge of the humble origin of man is an integral part of Adam’s “I” experience. Adam the second has never forgotten that he is just a handful of dust.

Adam the first met the female all by himself, while Adam the second was introduced to Eve by God, who summoned Adam to join Eve in an existential community molded by sacrificial action and suffering, and who Himself became a partner in this community. God is never outside the covenantal community.

EVEN THOUGH, AS we said before, the man of faith is provoked, like Adam the first, by the cosmos about which he is inquisitive, the covenant, not the cosmos, provides him with an answer to his questions.

When man who just beheld God’s presence turns around to address himself to the Master of creation in the intimate accents of the “Thou,” he finds the Master and Creator gone, enveloped in the cloud of mystery, winking to him from the awesome “beyond.” Therefore, the man of faith, in order to redeem himself from his loneliness and misery, must meet God at a personal covenantal level, where he can be near Him and feel free in His presence.

Abraham, the knight of faith, according to our tradition, sought and discovered God in the starlit heavens of Mesopotamia. Yet, he felt an intense loneliness and could not find solace in the silent companionship of God, whose image was reflected in the boundless stretches of the cosmos. Only when he met God on earth as Father, Brother, and Friend—not only along the uncharted astral routes—did he feel redeemed. Our sages said that before Abraham appeared majestas dei was reflected only by the distant heavens, and it was a mute nature which “spoke” of the glory of God. It was Abraham who “crowned” Him the God of earth, i.e., the God of men.1

Does the loving bride in the embrace of her beloved ask for proof that he is alive and real? Must the prayerful soul clinging in passionate love and ecstasy to her Beloved demonstrate that He exists? So asked Soren Kierkegaard sarcastically when told that Anselm of Canterbury, the father of the very abstract and complex ontological proof, spent many days in prayer and supplication that he be presented with rational evidence of the existence of God.

Prayer is basically an awareness of man finding himself in the presence of and addressing himself to his Maker, and to pray has one connotation only: to stand before God.

the Halakhah, which constantly demands from man that he translate his inner life into external facticity—

The foundation of efficacious and noble prayer is human solidarity and sympathy or the covenantal awareness of existential togetherness, of sharing and experiencing the travail and suffering of those for whom majestic Adam the first has no concern. Only Adam the second knows the art of praying since he confronts God with the petition of the many.

Prayer likewise consists not only of an awareness of the presence of God, but of an act of committing oneself to God and accepting His ethico-moral authority.

God hearkens to prayer if it rises from a heart contrite over a muddled and faulty life and from a resolute mind ready to redeem this life. In short, only the committed person is qualified to pray and to meet God. Prayer is always the harbinger of moral reformation.

In the natural community which knows no prayer, majestic Adam can offer only his accomplishments, not himself.

As homo absconditus, Adam the second is not capable of telling his personal experiential story in majestic formal terms. His emotional life is inseparable from his unique modus existentiae and therefore, if communicated to the “thou” only as a piece of surface information, unintelligible. This story belongs exclusively to Adam the second, it is his and only his, and it would make no sense if disclosed to others. Can a sick person afflicted with a fatal disease tell the “thou,” who happens to be a very dear and close friend, the tale of a horror-stricken mind confronted with the dreadful prospect of death? Can a parent explain to a rebellious child, who rejects everything the parent stands for, his deep-seated love for him? Distress and bliss, joys and frustrations are incommunicable within the framework of the natural dialogue consisting of common words.

the element of the tragic is not fully eliminated from the destiny of the man of faith even after joining the covenantal community. We said at the very beginning of this essay that the loneliness of the man of faith is an integral part of his destiny from which he can never be completely liberated. The dialectical awareness, the steady oscillating between the majestic natural community and the covenantal faith community renders the act of complete redemption unrealizable. The man of faith, in his continuous movement between the pole of natural majesty and that of covenantal humility, is prevented from totally immersing in the immediate covenantal awareness of the redeeming presence, knowability, and involvement of God in the community of man.

To be sure, this alternation of cosmic and covenantal involvement is not one of “light and shade,” enhanced activity and fatigue, as the mystics are accustomed to call their alternating experiences, but represents two kinds of creative and spontaneous activity, both willed and sanctioned by God.* Let us not forget that the majestic community is willed by God as much as the covenantal faith community. He wants man to engage in the pursuit of majesty-dignity as well as redemptiveness.

I would also add, in reply to such a question, that many a time I have the distinct impression that the Halakhah considered the steady oscillating of the man of faith between majesty and covenant not as a dialectical but rather as a complementary movement. The majestic gesture of the man of faith, I am inclined to think, is looked upon by the Halakhah not as contradictory to the covenantal encounter but rather as the reflex action which is caused by this encounter when man feels the gentle touch of God’s hand upon his shoulder and the covenantal invitation to join God is extended to him. I am prompted to draw this remarkable inference from the fact that the Halakhah has a monistic approach to reality and has unreservedly rejected any kind of dualism. The Halakhah believes that there is only one world—not divisible into secular and hallowed sectors— which can either plunge into ugliness and hatefulness, or be roused to meaningful, redeeming activity, gathering up all latent powers into a state of holiness. Accordingly, the task of covenantal man is to be engaged not in dialectical surging forward and retreating, but in uniting the two communities into one community where man is both the creative, free agent, and the obedient servant of God.

In every one of us abide two personae—the creative, majestic Adam the first, and the submissive, humble Adam the second.

Had God placed Adam in the majestic community only, then Adam would, as it was stated before, never be aware of existential loneliness. The sole problem would then be that of aloneness—one that majestic Adam could resolve. Had God, vice versa, thrust Adam into the covenantal community exclusively, then he would be beset by the passional experience of existential loneliness and also provided with the means of finding redemption from this experience through his covenantal relation to God and to his fellow man. However, God, in His inscrutable wisdom, has decreed differently. Man discovers his loneliness in the covenantal community, and before he is given a chance to climb up to the high level of a complete covenantal, revealed existence, dedicated in faith to God and in sympathy to man, man of faith is pushed into a new community where he is told to lead an expanded surface existence rather than a covenantal, concentrated in-depth existence. Because of this onward movement from center to center, man does not feel at home in any community. He is commanded to move on before he manages to strike roots in either of these communities and so the ontological loneliness of man of faith persists. Verily, “A straying Aramean was my father.”*

The heart of the matter.

His efforts are noble, yet he is not ready for a genuine faith experience which requires the giving of one’s self unreservedly to God, who demands unconditional commitment, sacrificial action, and retreat. Western man diabolically insists on being successful. Alas, he wants to be successful even in his adventure with God. If he gives of himself to God, he expects reciprocity. He also reaches a covenant with God, but this covenant is a mercantile one. In a primitive manner, he wants to trade “favors” and exchange goods. The gesture of faith for him is a give-and-take affair and reflects the philosophy of Job which led to catastrophe—a philosophy which sees faith as a quid pro quo arrangement and expects compensation for each sacrifice one offers. Therefore, modern man puts up demands that faith adapt itself to the mood and temper of modern times.

Faith is born of the intrusion of eternity upon temporality.

Modern Adam the second, as soon as he finishes translating religion into the cultural vernacular and begins to talk the “foreign” language of faith, finds himself lonely, forsaken, misunderstood, at times even ridiculed by Adam the first, by himself.

Lehi's vision comes to mind.

The strangest metamorphosis occurred. Within seconds, the old Elisha disappeared and a new Elisha emerged.

Is modern man of faith entitled to a more privileged position and a less exacting and sacrificial role?