Q&A: A Gift for You from the Chazon Ish
A Gift for You from the Chazon Ish
Question
Faith and Trust, chapter 1, section 9 (it was omitted there but printed in the end of the Chazon Ish’s book on Tohorot):
And this is what he writes: “There are people of imagination who ask: what do we gain if we agree that the world has a creator, when we are forced to agree that the Creator of the world exists and that there was no time for His beginning, and His existence is eternal? So the question returns to its place: how can something exist without coming into being?
But imagination has no understanding. For every existent thing that has measure and limit, length and area, we can picture in our minds its absence. And all beings of this kind must necessarily have a time for their existence, and they have a beginning; and whatever has a beginning has coming-into-being, and whatever has coming-into-being has something that brought it into being.
But there are existents that have neither measure nor area, and they exist necessarily, and their nonexistence cannot be conceived. These are intelligibles, such as two times two are four, and the intelligible proposition that the diagonal is longer than the side, and the like among intelligible truths, for the intelligible has none of the characteristics of bodily things. And there is no time for their existence; they were never born and will never die. Their existence is not sensed except in the soul that was given to man to understand and comprehend. And such an existent is what brings all existents into being, but no concept of His essence can be formed, for He, blessed be He, possesses power….”
Answer
I don’t agree with any of his claims.
2+2=4 is not an existent thing, so there is no room to ask who created it.
The need for causality does not apply only to material objects.
And finally, I do not agree that only something finite in time needs to have a creator.
Discussion on Answer
Also in your arguments with atheists,
they always ask the same “the question returns to its place” point that the Chazon Ish mentions,
and they argue against your claim that there is no such thing as an infinite regress, that we also do not know of a creator that was itself created,
just as we do not know of matter that was created by itself.
And they also do not understand what creation ex nihilo is.
But seemingly, the theory of evolution has no explanation for the jump from inanimate matter to “life,” and for them that is in the category of a mystery.
So here we do recognize creation ex nihilo — why can’t that serve as proof against them for creation ex nihilo?
Regarding 2+2=4, on the contrary: he brings it as an example of a concept that does not require a beginning in time because it is necessary. And he argues that in the same way, God is a necessary existent and does not require a cause.