Mordecai Kaplan’s theology is rooted in a process of reevaluating religious concepts in order to render them intellectually tenable to modern people. His theology centers upon the idea of salvation and the role that God plays in humanity’s salvation. This focus is due to his understanding of Judaism’s role in the life of the Jewish people over the past 2,000 years, i.e. that Judaism was the way of salvation for the Jewish people. He departs from traditional understandings of salvation in denying the existence of a supernatural salvation. There will be neither a heaven of eternal bliss nor a new earth or world order ushered in by the Messiah. For Kaplan, salvation refers to a process of integration (or harmony), self-fulfillment, and orientation towards ideals which foster peace and justice. Kaplan’s salvation is both personal and social, and he argues that neither can exist without the other. At the personal level, a person achieves salvation when their mind is at peace in the pursuit of “valid ideals” which creates self-fulfillment through the integration of all their beliefs and talents. Social salvation occurs through ordering society in such a way that every person is capable of achieving personal salvation, i.e. when society upholds the ideals of justice, peace, and freedom. Salvation is the central task of religion, and according to Kaplan God is the power through which salvation is possible. Kaplan argues that “in the very process of human self-fulfillment, in the very striving after the achievement of salvation, we identify ourselves with God, and God functions in us” as life’s creative forces, tendencies, and potentialities (26). The entirety of Kaplan’s theology is commentary on the basic idea that God is the power that creates salvation.

In order to fully appreciate Kaplan’s understanding of God, we must draw attention to a parallel he draws between the understanding of gravity and the understanding of God. Gravity is understood by laymen as a force which acts on the material universe, however, this understanding is mistaken. Gravity is a quality which inheres in the physical universe such that if there is matter, there will necessarily be gravity because matter causes the phenomenon we understand as gravity. Kaplan argues that the understanding of God as a person which acts on the universe from outside is similarly mistaken. Rather, he argues that God is “the sum of animating, organizing forces and relationships which are forever making a cosmos out of chaos” (76). As such God is the creative life of the universe.

This understanding challenges the understanding of a supernatural God which creates the world ex nihilo, but Kaplan does not deny God the role of creator. It is actually a central attribute of God in his theology. Kaplan is identifying God with the dynamism which animates the entirety of the universe, from galaxies to subatomic particles, as well as with all those qualities which make the existence of the universe possible, such as order and the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology. The creative power of the universe is an attribute of God, and without both the order and dynamism which underlies creation, the universe could not exist. The fact that this creative capacity is a quality of the universe does not make God less real for Kaplan. He compares this understanding of God to the modern psychological, biological, and physical understanding of human personality. Personality is a phenomenon which arises from a series of interacting systems within the mind, body, and chemical substances which constitute human beings, but most people would not be willing to claim that personality or consciousness is not real. It is in fact the fundamental means through which we experience reality. In a similar manner, identifying God as the life of the universe does not make God less real. If anything, it makes God a fundamental aspect of reality by identifying God as the underlying unity of existence.

Kaplan’s understanding of God as a creator is not simply a metaphysical conjecture. The primary function of this belief in his theology is directly linked to salvation. Because God is forever creating a cosmos out of chaos, Kaplan asserts that to believe in God is to believe that reality is constituted in such a way that salvation is achievable, i.e. that human beings are capable of achieving those things which are of greatest value to them (29). He does not explain how this is so, but he seems to assume that as part of the universe humans are being acted upon by God and brought forth out of chaos. As such, God is acting through us and upon us to bring us into a truly ordered existence, i.e. God is acting through and on humanity to create its salvation: a reimagined Messianic Era. The primary religious issue then becomes the problem of evil and suffering. If the universe is constituted in such a way that humanity can achieve its highest goals, why is there evil?

Kaplan identifies evil as chaos which is still uninvaded by the creative energy (72). Salvation is achievable when order overcomes disorder, and this necessitates human beings working with God in the process of creation. In order for human efforts to be effective, they must align themselves with God through understanding the way reality is ordered and orienting themselves to their highest ideals. While there is nothing wrong with his proposed course of action, it is obvious that Kaplan overlooked an essential aspect of evil under his own definition. If evil is simply chaos which has not been conquered by cosmos, there must always be some chaos, and thus some evil. God is the dynamic life of the universe forever creating the cosmos out of chaos, but in order to create, some chaos must be created first. One must crack and scramble eggs in order to make omelets. Stars must explode for planets and new stars to be made. And of course life can only exist through the death and consumption of other beings. Kaplan acknowledges this in his discussion of Isaiah 45:7, which attributes the creation of evil to God as well as the creation of goodness. However, in keeping with Jewish tradition, Kaplan argues the primacy of the good. Because existence could not exist without being fundamentally orderly, we have reason to trust in God as the life of the universe which is forever creating and sustaining cosmos out of chaos. While there may be areas of existence which necessitate destruction, we live in a fundamentally good universe which has the capacity to create and uphold life. This of course, goes back to his assertion that belief in God acts “as an affirmation that life has value” (29).

God is also experienced through the attribute of holiness in Kaplan’s theology. For Kaplan, holiness is a quality which is conferred upon objects, people, places, and times by a person or people which signifies its supreme worth to the person or group (82). To declare God holy is to affirm that life is supremely worthwhile, not evil or vain (81). Through affirming the goodness of life certain ideals are being associated with God, particularly the values of justice, peace, freedom, and righteousness (morality). These ideals are fundamentally human concerns, which leads Kaplan to argue that by identifying these ideals with God “we are carrying out in modern times the implications of the conception that man is created in God’s image.” He further states that “there is something divine in human personality, in that it is the instrument through which the creative life of the world effects the evolution of the human race” (89). Human beings affirm certain ideals as holy because they make life meaningful, and we thus recognize God in the human personality and acknowledge the inherent worth of human life. Furthermore, because these ideals are the means of human salvation, God is understood to act through human moral striving to bring about salvation.

The focus on holiness allows Kaplan to bring the universal understanding of God as the creative life of the universe down to a specifically human dimension. This furthers his understanding of God as the power of salvation by identifying the role of God in human life at an existential level. To affirm that life has meaning is to believe in God and vice versa. However, this concept of God is still working at the general, universalist level rather than a specifically Jewish one. This leads to Kaplan’s interpretation of covenant, specifically the Jewish covenant.

To understand Kaplan’s understanding of the covenant, one must first know his theory about the nature of Judaism, i.e. that Judaism is a religious civilization. This civilization is the sum of all the cultural expressions of the Jewish people including religion, languages, literature, art, folk customs, foods, and holidays. Kaplan’s understanding of the Jewish covenant is one rooted in the basic concept that no person is spiritually or materially self-sufficient. A person’s values and ideals are products of the civilization in which that person lives. Therefore, a civilization must be organized in such a way that it functions as a means to salvation, and it should be considered holy (meaningful and worthwhile) by its members. Judaism must then act as the vehicle of salvation for the Jewish people, and the covenant between God and Israel is conceived as the “sense of creative possibilities of Jewish life” (96). The Jewish people work with God in order to create meaningful lives, drawing on tradition and modern experience. This understanding of the covenant eliminates the idea of the “chosen people,” which Kaplan thought to be unethical chauvinistic nationalism, by assuming every civilization should operate as a means of salvation for its own people. Thus all people would have a covenant with God.

Kaplan’s understanding of Judaism as a civilization also breaks with the older Jewish understanding of tradition. In traditional Judaism, halakha is binding and minhagim must be respected as near binding unless some circumstance arises to contravene it. In Kaplan’s understanding of tradition, however, tradition operates similarly to memory (97). It can recall information from the past as well as store information for later use should the need arise to aid in the life of the group. He argues that our “responsibility to our forefathers is to consult them, not to obey them” (98). This moves halakha as well as all the Jewish traditions of the past to advisory status while allowing a wide degree of latitude in Jewish living so long as the decisions of the group arise organically in response to tradition and current situations.

While this understanding of the covenant is much more democratic and humanistic, it does lead Kaplan to affirm a purpose for the Jewish people. Just as individual people are not self-sufficient, neither are the Jewish people as a whole independent from the other nations of the world. Therefore, Kaplan believes this places an obligation on the Jewish people and the people of other cultures to enter into creative dialogue and exchange with one another. Through this process, the peoples of the world can learn the best that each group has to offer and learn to live in peace. God’s kingdom, i.e. the Messianic Era, is established through the covenants of each group, with each culture contributing to the good of humanity (102). Through creative and respectful cultural and intellectual exchange, Kaplan believes humanity’s salvation can be achieved.

The theology that Kaplan expounds in his book The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion is constructed around the Jewish holidays. He views the holidays as natural vehicles for Jewish teaching, and attaches particular theological significance to each one as it relates to the idea that God is the power that creates salvation. The core concepts laid out above were those which he attached to Shabbat, the most important and frequent holiday in the Jewish calendar. Because of the centrality of Shabbat to Jewish life, it is clear that Kaplan understood these concepts to be the most important and fundamental aspects of his theology. Creation, holiness, and covenant are the central concepts of Shabbat, and each can teach something about the nature of God to modern Jews. God creates good out of evil, cosmos out of chaos. God gives sanctity to life through human personality and ideals. And our connections to one another, our ancestors, descendants, and tradition operate as the means of salvation in Jewish life by offering the resources necessary to make life holy. Recognizing God’s saving power in creation, human life, and the covenant is the bedrock of Kaplan’s theology for modern Judaism.