Good God!

Kabbalah, an ancient mystical practice closely associated with Hasidic Judaism, uncovers a spiritual bridge that connects Ineffable God with the Kingdom of this World, i.e. our human lives. This doctrine is represented by the Tree of Life, a geometric figure that connects Godhead (Keter) with Kingdom (Malkhut) through a series of 10 steps called Sefirot. 

Between Godhead and Kingdom (above), 8 Sefirot express the aspects of God’s Goodness as it is experienced by us in the World. Etymologically, ‘God’ and ‘Good’ have separate Anglo-Saxon roots but those roots share in turn a common Proto-Germanic precursor.  

Theologically speaking, the idea that God and Good are synonymous goes back at least as far as the Book of Job in the Old Testament. There Job maintains his belief in God’s essential goodness, all real time evidence to the contrary and against the long-winded advice of his ‘spiritual advisors’. Events vindicate Job’s faith: God is Good after all! 

Good is not a pose God incidentally strikes; Good is God’s essence. ‘Good’ defines ‘God’. Good is who God is. Good is how the material, historical World experiences the Ineffable and Eternal God. Good is God, manifest to the World as Value (Beauty, etc.).  

Kabbalah refracts that Good into 8 intermediate Sefirot, connecting Godhead (Keter) with the World (Malkhut). While translations vary, these may be roughly listed as follows: 

Wisdom, Understanding, Love, Strength, Beauty, Victory, Splendor, and Foundation (aka Procreation). 

These 8 Sefirot connect Keter and Malkhut and each other via a complex network of 22 vertical, horizontal and diagonal relations. The order of these relationships is critical to the doctrine. Linked in properly, they represent the unfolding of the Good that is God in the World, reminiscent perhaps of the unfolding of the Thousand Petal Lotus in certain Eastern spiritual traditions. 

Importantly, Kabbalah organizes the 10 Sefirot into three columns: a central core consisting of Godhead, Beauty, Foundation (Procreation), and Kingdom (World), flanked by two vertical ‘wings’: Wisdom, Love and Victory on the right, and on the left, Understanding, Strength and Splendor.  

Different schools of Kabbalah label the 8 intermediate Sefirot differently, just as different sects of Christians might characterize Virtue by its various, distinct aspects. Nietzsche, for example, paid special attention to a virtue he called Nobility, but not everyone shares Nietzsche’s understanding of that term or his outsized appreciation of that value.  

This is where the Christian symbol of the Cross resonates with the Tree of Life. In the graphic above, the horizontal beam represents the divine virtues (Wisdom and Understanding) while the vertical beam represents the core: Godhead (Keter) above the crossbeam and Beauty, Foundation and Malkhut (World) below it.   

Asked to enumerate the manifestations of God’s Goodness in the World, different Christian sects would undoubtedly produce different lists – but the overall thrust of those lists would be similar. Likewise, in Kabbalah, Godhead (Keter) is understood to be manifest in the World (Malkhut) via 3 vertically arranged columns consisting of the 8 intermediate Sefirot, regardless of how each is named.  

The Roman Catholic Crucifix displays Jesus’ body nailed on that Cross. Coincidentally, his hands are fixed in the positions designated for Wisdom and Understanding by Kabbalah; his core (head, heart, reproductive organs, and feet) occupies the positions assigned to Crown (Keter), Beauty, Foundation, and World. 

Of course, Christianity and Kabbalah share a common origin (Torah) but the two traditions diverged long before the Tree of Life became the symbol of one and the Cross of the other. The resonance of the two is clearly coincidental, expect in so far as it testifies to that common origin and perhaps, to a shared sense of spirituality. 

Still, why shouldn’t Christians map the body of Christ Crucified onto the Tree of Life?  Could anything be more appropriate for the Savior of the World at the moment of its Salvation? 

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