The Question of Foreknowledge and Free Will 3 (Column 302)
After you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
(Sherlock Holmes, The Sign of Four)
In the previous two columns I presented the contradiction between God’s knowledge of the future and our free will. I pointed out that the problem contains three components: divine knowledge, our free will, and the temporal relationship between them. We saw that, in light of this analysis, there can be four directions for a solution: to give up the assumption that we have free will (determinism); to assume that God is beyond time; to argue that even if we accept these three assumptions there is in fact no contradiction; or to give up the assumption that God knows the future. In the first column I discussed the first two possibilities and rejected them, and in the previous column I rejected the third possibility. At the end of the previous column I summarized and wrote that the conclusion so far is that there is no way to hold both beliefs together, namely, that if there is prior divine knowledge then we do not have freedom to choose in the future, and vice versa. That leaves us only with the fourth possibility that I described, and this column will deal with it. Already here I will note that in the talkbacks to the previous column significant reservations were raised regarding the rejection of the third possibility (reservations that have accompanied me for some time already), and I will return to them in the next column, where I will sum up the discussion with a broader view and raise some reservations regarding my conclusions.
D. No Divine Foreknowledge: A Renewed Analysis of the Or HaChaim’s Words
As stated, the possibility that remains for us, however implausible it may be, is the fourth: God does not know our future actions. Of course, I am speaking only about those actions that depend on free choice. Before I examine the implications of this possibility, I will bring a few sources that may calm some of the readers. I do this even though what emerges from logical reasoning does not require a source. Nor does the deviation from the (not entirely uniform) conceptual tradition really trouble me. This dubious tradition is itself the result of a logical consideration (derived from God’s omnipotence), and I will show here that this consideration is very weak. Nevertheless, because to many people the conclusion seems radical, I thought it was worthwhile to bring a few sources that support it (there are more), and afterwards to examine the conclusion and its implications. The examination I shall conduct at the end is meant to calm the instinctive reaction that can be expected toward my conclusion.
Or HaChaim
First we must recall the words of the Or HaChaim that I brought in the first column. He proposed that God withholds knowledge from Himself, thereby allowing us free choice. First of all, from the very fact that he proposes this, we can see that he accepts the contradiction between divine knowledge and free choice, and therefore seeks a solution to it. Beyond that, it follows from his words that God truly does not know. This is indeed not a violation of His omnipotence, because He Himself withheld this knowledge from Himself (and could have refrained from doing so), yet nonetheless now He lacks this knowledge, meaning that something is missing.
We saw in the first column that the solution he proposes does not actually solve the problem, since it is the very existence of the information that leads to the contradiction, even if there is no one who knows it. It seems to me that the only way to preserve the validity of the Or HaChaim’s words (according to the principle of charity)[1] is to say that his claim is that the information itself does not exist. That is, his intention was not that God puts His hands over His eyes and hides the information from Himself, but that He prevents the information from existing. In other words, not only does He not know future actions, but He has created a situation in which this information does not exist at all. This of course resolves the contradiction, but note that this is precisely the fourth possibility: God indeed does not know.
However, there is something confusing in this claim. He could have known, and therefore He is fully omnipotent, but He withheld the knowledge from Himself. One could argue that there is no problem here regarding His omnipotence, but I assume not everyone will agree. How did He prevent the information from existing? By the very fact that He granted us free choice. The existence of freedom to choose prevents the information from existing. The information is created at the moment of choice, and before that it does not exist at all. In other words, God does not place His hand over His eyes, but rather prevents the information from existing by the very fact that He gave us freedom to choose. The conclusion is that He also could not create a world in which people have free choice and at the same time He Himself knows what they are going to choose. Therefore, even this interpretation of the Or HaChaim’s words does not circumvent the limitation on God’s omnipotence. Recall that the assumption of His omnipotence is the basis for the belief that He knows everything that is going to be done in the future. If I am right, the Or HaChaim rejects this, and argues that God is indeed not omnipotent, meaning that He does not know what is going to be done (as long as we are dealing with free-will actions).
As noted, what troubles people about this conclusion is that it appears to harm God’s omnipotence (this goes “against the tradition,” heaven forfend). First, I shall again point out that even if we interpret the Or HaChaim’s words literally, there is already in them a qualification of God’s omnipotence. After all, he himself wrote that God cannot both know and allow free choice. Moreover, because of this He withheld knowledge from Himself, and thus now this knowledge is also lacking (again, a lack of perfection). That is, even according to the simple reading of the Or HaChaim’s words we must conclude that God is not perfect in the conventional sense. Note that the interpretation I suggested of his words is not essentially different in this respect. God indeed withheld knowledge from Himself, by giving us free choice. I, too, am saying that He really cannot both give us free choice and also know in advance. Therefore, I do not see any difference between this and the simple interpretation of the Or HaChaim in terms of theological discomfort. If someone is disturbed by the question of how I dare go against tradition and against the assumption of God’s omnipotence, let him ask the same question about the Or HaChaim (is he not himself part of the tradition? And what about me? You know what—think about it again in a hundred years…). Second, below I will show that this claim is weak even independently of the Or HaChaim, but before that I would like to bring the words of the Shlah.
The Words of the Shlah
The author of Shnei Luchot HaBrit (= the Shlah) states the matter more explicitly. With him we do not need an analysis based on the principle of charity, since his words are written clearly. In the introduction to his book (called “Toldot Adam”), there are ten (or sixteen—the printed edition is very confusing) “houses” (sections). One of them is “Beit HaBechira” (“The House of Choice”), where he deals with matters of free choice. The discussion is quite long and intricate, and it is very worthwhile to read all of it. Here I will only quote the relevant excerpts:
Ratzv. Now we must contemplate and examine what Maimonides (Rambam) left as a question, namely that it is a deficiency if we say that, God forbid, He does not know [things] precisely. According to what we have written—that His knowledge is [only] by knowing Himself and not knowledge from the aspect of something other than Himself—the opposite seems more plausible. For how can we say that He knows what a person will choose, since this choice is not in the hands of Heaven but is given to the person, and he rules over it, whereas His knowledge, blessed be He, is only by His knowledge of His essence? It is therefore necessary to say that His knowledge is not operative except after the choice has gone out into actuality and has made an impression above, in Him, blessed be He. Then it becomes known, for then the knowledge is by His knowledge of Himself. If so, the question is not a question at all…
Rachatz. … And I have already elaborated above (sections Ratzav–Ratzg) that will (ratzon) contains opposing things, and all paths are in it, and free choice is given to the person to arouse whichever power he wishes. “And God made man upright” (Ecclesiastes 7:29), and He commanded him not to arouse the power of evil, and from man’s sin there came [about] knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3:22). From this there flows reward and punishment, which are not conventional [external stipulations], but the reward of a mitzvah is [bound up with] the root of the mitzvah above, in its root, and the reward of a transgression is [bound up with] the transgression. All this is rooted in the matter of will, since will includes all things and their opposites. So too the Torah, which flows from this will, includes forty-nine arguments to declare impure and forty-nine to declare pure; prohibited and permitted; liable and exempt; and “these and those are the words of the living God” (Gittin 6b). For all of them are in potential in the “great voice that did not cease” (Deuteronomy 5:19); but according to the arousal from below, so is the inclination to go out into actuality. And however it may be, nothing is separated, heaven forbid, but rather one of the paths is brought out from potential into actual.
Now, before a person performs some act, whether for good or for evil, these paths are already prepared. And the proof is that the verse says in Parashat Re’eh: “See, I [God] set before you…” etc. (Deuteronomy 11:26–28), meaning: here are paths before you. From this we learn that the paths precede their realization. Likewise in Parashat Nitzavim (Deuteronomy 30:15): “See, I have placed before you today life and good…” etc., until “and you shall choose life” (ibid., v. 19). Thus there is a path of the righteous and a path of the wicked (see Psalms 1:6 and elsewhere), and all of them have their root in the supernal will, and this is knowledge, the knowledge of the essence of His will in the roots of all the chain of being. And everything a person does, he does through a supernal power; only the righteous chooses and goes along the straight, holy path, and the wicked along its opposite. According to their actions, so is their holding and cleaving, and everything depends on the arousal from below. And if man had remained upright and had not aroused the power of evil, then all those who came forth from him, generation after generation, would have been in a completely different state from what they are now, for the spring of good would have been opened and would have continued and extended from expansion to expansion, and from branch to branch. But after he sinned and opened the spring in a different way, of good and evil, the Holy One, blessed be He, showed him every generation and its seekers, its sages and its leaders, according to the nature of the springs that were now opened, how it was fitting that the extension and the branches and sub-branches should be.
It is true that because of this they are not determined, for whoever wishes to overcome and move away from this extension and wishes to open another spring from among the springs and to draw [down] according to his will, the power of choice is in his hand to prevail; only the Holy One, blessed be He, showed man—according to the opening of the spring as it is now—how the extension is fit to be. And undoubtedly there are thousands and tens of thousands of things that ought to have been according to the opening of the spring as it is now, and have changed because of choice; and many things remain as they were fit to be, as [we find regarding] “Shmuel Yarchina’a: he will be called ‘wise,’ but he will not be called ‘rabbi’” (Bava Metzia 85b), and a thousand similar matters. And if Shmuel had wished not to study Torah at all, heaven forbid, he could have chosen [so]; but he chose the good path along which he went. Many things changed because of free choice and cleaved to another spring, but all is in [accordance with] the will, for the root and source of all paths is from there.
Now examine the wording in the chapter “With What May We Light” (Shabbat 32a) cited above (section Ratzaz): it says, “This one was worthy to fall,” etc. There is a distinction between “worthy” (ra’ui) and “established” (mukhzak), as we learn in the Mishnah (Bekhorot 51b) that the firstborn takes a double portion from what is established [=actually in existence] and not from what is only “worthy” [=what is destined to come; potential property]. I mean that, according to the opening of the supernal spring, so it is “worthy” that the extension and the branches be; but it is not yet “established” until the arrival of free choice. And when free choice arrives, then knowledge above is in the category of “established”; by knowing the essence of His will He knows, and not by knowledge outside Himself—meaning, a mark is made above, whether when [man] walked in darkness and caused damage by arousing the power of judgment, or when he walked in light and illumined above. And everything returns from below to above to the supernal source; then the knowledge above is, by His knowledge of His essence, definitive and established. This is what the verse says (Genesis 22:12): “Now I know that you are a God-fearing man.” Now (“now”) implies at this moment, and “I know” implies already [knew]. Rather, the matter is that now it is established what I already knew as “worthy.”
His claim is that God knows in advance the “worthy” (ra’ui) and not the “established” (mukhzak), that is: God knows what is expected to happen given each choice of the person (these are the different paths that are prepared in advance), and He also knows what the person is expected to choose (in which of these paths). The first kind of knowledge is deterministic calculation and therefore not particularly novel. The second kind is foreknowledge, but because of free choice it is in fact not perfect. The Shlah argues that by his choice a person can change this and choose a different path from the one that was expected, and then it will indeed turn out that God’s second knowledge (not of the different paths, but of which path man will in fact choose) was not correct. God foresaw what was supposed to happen if nothing unexpected occurred (an ultimate psychological assessment), but in practice the person can always decide to “veto” (in the terminology of the well-known neuroscientist Benjamin Libet) and act differently.
After this, the Shlah moves on to discuss the nature of prophecy, and writes:
And all the future events that the Holy One, blessed be He, showed to man and to Moses our teacher, peace be upon him, were all according to what was “worthy” (ra’ui) [to happen], that is, according to the preparation that was prepared to be, from the aspect of the spring that had been opened; and in this sense, “He calls the generations from the beginning” (Isaiah 41:4). However, free choice is given in potential, to predominate either for good or for evil. Many matters remained in accordance with the preparation, as they had been prepared according to what was “worthy,” and they did not overpower it through the power of free choice; and many matters changed because of free choice, by opening another spring. But all is in the supernal source, in the root of the will, and will is knowledge, for knowledge is not outside of Him.
Thus, prophecy too is only about what is “worthy” (what is expected to be) and not about what is “established” (what will actually happen). If God does not know what is “established,” then of course He cannot transmit that information to a prophet. The Shlah explains that prophecy is not pre-viewing the future (seeing what will happen) but an optimal assessment of what is expected to be. According to him, we should interpret the Mishnah in Avot, “All is foreseen, yet freedom of choice is given,” in a modern sense: not “foreseen” in the sense of something that is observed, but “foreseen” in the sense of what is slated or expected to happen (although in the language of the Mishnah such a reading is unlikely, it does not matter for our purposes). As noted, what is expected (in this sense) to be need not be what will in fact take place, because the freedom to choose is given to each person.
A good example of this is the well-known midrash that Rashi brings on the verse, “He turned this way and that, and saw that there was no man; so he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand” (Exodus 2:12):
“And he saw that there was no man” – [he saw that] no one was destined to come forth from him who would convert.
He gazed into the future and saw that nothing good would come out of that Egyptian, and therefore decided to kill him.
On the face of it, this kind of gazing into the future is not such a wondrous ability, and certainly this is not prophecy. I too could tell you what will come out of that Egyptian in the future, for in another moment Moses will kill him. It is therefore clear that nothing will come out of him, not even someone who will not convert. Obviously Moses did not foresee that nothing at all would come out of him, but rather he himself brought about that result with his own hands. So what is the difficulty in “seeing” this? Moreover, what does such foresight give Moses? In what sense is this a justification for killing the Egyptian? It seems to me that it is more correct to say that Moses did not gaze into the future but into the present. He asked himself: what will come out of this Egyptian if I leave him alive? But this is not contemplation of the future, for that future will never occur (since in another moment that Egyptian will be dead). Moses analyzed the present and asked a question about a hypothetical future: if I leave the Egyptian alive, what will come out of him? This question is not answered by viewing the future (“foreseen” in the sense of “seen” by vision) but by a good understanding of the present (“foreseen” in the sense of what is expected to occur), and that is what Moses did.
From the Shlah’s words in the last passage I quoted above, it emerges that this is not an exceptional case. Moses’ examination was not prophetic foreseeing of the future, but this is the nature of all prophecy. Prophecy given to a prophet is only what is expected to be if nothing unusual occurs; therefore it is actually a perfect contemplation of the present, and not a pre-viewing of the future. This is indeed a wondrous ability belonging to God alone, for no human being can truly know even what is expected to happen (one can estimate it with some degree of reliability, but never perfectly). God can give a perfect assessment, on the basis of the present, of what is expected to happen (He is the ultimate psychologist, with perfect information about the present structure of the human soul), but free choice always exists, and a person can in the end decide to act differently. Note that God’s knowledge does not turn out to be false in such a case, for from the outset He did not claim that this is what will happen in the future, but that this is what the present is likely to lead to. This is the expected future (the “worthy”) and not the future that will occur (the “established”).[2]
In fact, the matter is explicitly explained in Tosafot, beginning with “Teda” (“Know”), on Yevamot 50a (a passage that was so dear to Yeshayahu Leibowitz):
“Know that a prophet stands…” And if you will say: behold, had Hezekiah not prayed for himself he would have died, and the prophecy would have been nullified; rather, you must say that the prophet only prophesies what is ‘worthy’ to be, if he does not sin.
Note that here we are dealing with a good prophecy. Regarding a negative prophecy, our Sages already say that it is conditional and can be retracted, as Maimonides writes in Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah 10:4. Incidentally, Maimonides there brings an example of a good prophecy that was retracted, and this is another proof for the Shlah’s claim.
Taking Back the Reins
We can of course wonder, according to the Shlah’s view, how a prophet can be tested. As Maimonides writes there, a prophet must be tested by the fulfillment of his prophecies in order to be upheld as a true prophet. But according to the Shlah, any prophecy can turn out to be incorrect, even in the case of a true prophet. So how can we conduct such a test? We are compelled to say that, in the case of a prophecy that is being put to such a test, God takes the reins back into His hands, removes freedom from us, and restores control of the world to Himself. Of course He can do this. What He cannot do is give us free choice and still know what will happen in the future. But there is no barrier to His temporarily taking away our freedom and determining Himself what will happen. In such a case He can of course know with certainty what will happen (and not only what is expected to happen), and it will also certainly be realized. At least according to the Shlah, it is clear that this is what happens in the testing of a prophet (and indeed these are the very words of the Rav, may he live long, here). Thus, there are prophecies of such a kind that God is saying what He Himself will do, and in such a case what is said will necessarily occur. But again, this is not a foreseeing of a free-will future, because as we have seen such foreseeing is impossible. It is foreseeing a future that God Himself brings about, in which no human choice is involved. In a certain sense, even here it is a deep contemplation of the present and not a pre-viewing of the future.
This is a clear and full articulation of the fourth possibility, according to which God truly has no knowledge of what is going to occur insofar as free human choices are concerned.
What About God’s Omnipotence?
We have seen that the main motivation to say that God knows the future—something that creates the contradiction we are dealing with here—is God’s omnipotence. In the talkbacks people repeatedly argued against me that no rational argument can override this consideration. At most we do not understand how He can do it, but that is still the meaning of the claim that He is omnipotent. This assumption renders the whole discussion in these columns superfluous, since any rational argument I bring will be dismissed with the “claim” that we simply do not understand. In the previous columns and the discussions that followed them I have repeatedly said that I do not accept such an approach, since our beliefs are claims that we make, and therefore they are subject to logic. What we may posit about God changes nothing here. In the end, the issue is not God but our conception of Him, and that is subject to logic.
Therefore, if the conclusion of our rational analysis is that we have no choice but to adopt the fourth possibility, according to which God does not know the future, then of course the question arises as to how this accords with His omnipotence. Can we still conceive of Him as omnipotent (note that the question is about us, not about Him)? I will say a few things about this.
First, it is not entirely clear to me where the assumption of absolute omnipotence comes from. There is no doubt that He can do many things that human beings cannot do (like creating a world, for example). But I am not sure that there is any necessity to say that He can do everything. Even verses like “Is anything too wondrous for the Lord?!” do not necessarily mean that. The intent is that nothing beyond the scope of our conception or imagination is too wondrous for Him, but perhaps He too has limitations. Admittedly, reason suggests that if His power is immense and He is the root of all, there is no natural and obvious level at which His abilities should stop other than infinity (that is, not to stop them). Therefore, at least for the sake of the discussion, I shall assume from here on that He is indeed omnipotent.
As we saw above, God can always take the reins into His own hands. If so, His ability to bring about whatever He wishes is complete. It is true that sometimes He yields to us and relinquishes control, giving us the freedom to choose. But this too is His decision, and therefore it is hard to see this as a violation of His omnipotence. At any moment He wishes, He can stop this and carry out whatever He desires. And yet one can still argue that there is some limitation here, for there is one thing He truly cannot do: to give us free choice and at the same time also know what we will in fact do (just as we saw above in the discussion of the Or HaChaim). Is this not a limitation that undermines the assumption of His omnipotence?
What Is Omnipotence, and What Can Limit It?
Several times in the past I have argued that not every limitation undermines omnipotence. If God cannot do something that can be done, then that means He is not omnipotent. He does not possess all the abilities that we can conceive. But if there is something that cannot be done on the logical level, something that does not exist at all and cannot even be imagined, then the inability to do it is not a relevant limitation and is not a limitation at all.
Think: can God make a round triangle? Some will answer this in the negative, but in my opinion that is not accurate. The precise answer is that the question has no meaning. When you explain to me the content of the concepts that appear in the question and I understand it, I will be able to think and answer you. At present I cannot answer either yes or no, until the question is clarified. You must clarify for me what a “round triangle” is. What is the sum of its angles? Does it have corners (angles)? Are all the points on it at an equal distance from some point? After you define and clarify this creature for me, I will be able to answer you. In the meantime there is no question (because there is no such creature), and therefore we do not need an answer. Note that the need for a definition is not because without defining something we cannot speak about it. I am far from thinking that. The need for a definition arises because without it such a creature simply does not exist (it is contradictory, and not merely unclear or undefined).
The conclusion is that God’s “inability” to create a round triangle does not create a theological problem, and in fact this is not an inability. It is not true that He cannot make a round triangle. There simply is no such thing. Inability applies only to the failure to do something that exists (at least in imagination) and is logically defined. Inability to make XXYYTGGR is not inability. I simply do not understand what XXYYTGGR is. When you explain it to me, I can consider whether God can or cannot do it. A round triangle is exactly like XXYYTGGR.
The Words of Maimonides and the Rashba on Logical Impossibilities
In this column I will continue the policy of bringing sources (although there is no need for them). These ideas appear explicitly in Guide of the Perplexed III:15:
“The impossible has a fixed and permanent nature; it does not result from an agent, and it cannot change at all. For this reason, the [Divine] Name is not described as having the power [to do] it. None of the philosophers disagrees about this, and only someone who does not understand the intelligibles will be ignorant of it.”
Maimonides begins with the assertion that something that is a logical contradiction (logical impossibilities) cannot be circumvented even by God. Anyone who attributes a logical contradiction to God simply does not understand what he is talking about. This is something that is true in every possible world (according to the interpretation of alternative worlds), and therefore there is no possibility of imagining a world in which this is not so, and from here it follows that not even God can do it. Physical impossibilities, by contrast, are of course possible for God. He created the laws of nature and can circumvent, change, or suspend them.
He then argues that there may be disagreements about what counts as a logical contradiction, and whether a certain contradiction is logical or not. But once we have concluded that we are dealing with a logical contradiction, it is clear that even God is “bound by it”:
“The point of contention among all the philosophers is the reference to a certain kind of imagined things. Some philosophers claim that this belongs to the category of the impossible, concerning which the Name is not described as having the power [to do it], whereas others say that it belongs to the category of the possible whose existence depends on the power of the Name, if He wills [to bring it about].”
He then brings several examples of logical contradictions:
“An example is the union of two opposites at the same time in one subject, and the reversal of the genera, that is, the conversion of substance into accident and accident into substance, or the existence of a corporeal substance without any accident. All this is in the category of the impossible according to all the philosophers, as is [also] the matter of the Name’s ‘producing another like Him’ or ‘annihilating Himself’ or ‘becoming corporeal’ or ‘undergoing change.’ All these belong to the category of the impossible, and the Name is not described as having the power regarding any of these things.”
And afterwards he presents several cases about which one may argue whether they are physical or logical impossibilities:
“However, as to [the question] whether He can produce an accident alone without [attaching it to] a substance, there are some philosophers—the Mu‘tazilites—who think this is possible, whereas others say that it is in the category of the impossible. Even though those who say that an accident can exist without a substance do not arrive at this position by reason alone, but rather by the need to preserve certain beliefs of the Torah, they are compelled by reason to adopt this position. Likewise, producing something corporeal without matter—this is possible, according to us, but impossible according to the philosophers.”
And now more logical impossibilities:
“So, too, the philosophers say that it is impossible for Him to produce a square whose diagonal is equal to its side, or a corporeal angle which is encompassed by four simple right angles, and similar things. All these belong to the category of the impossible, though some who are ignorant of the mathematical sciences and know only the words, not the concepts, imagine them to be possible.”
Finally, he notes that in fact it is at times difficult to decide whether a given case is a physical or a logical impossibility (see more on this in the next column). These matters are presented more clearly and decisively, with further examples, in Responsa Rashba, part IV, §234.
It is important to note that Maimonides does not assume that if something is impossible, this is necessarily due to our lack of understanding. He does not assume that it is clear that God can contain and do it, and the problem lies with us. For him, God too is “bound” by the laws of logic and by our logical conclusions. Of course, this “binding” is metaphorical. The laws of logic define relations between things, and thus deviation from them is not a defined thing. It is not that it is impossible to circumvent the laws of logic; rather, there simply is no such thing. The expression “outside the laws of logic” is meaningless, exactly like “round triangle.”
Are the Laws of Logic Really “Laws”?
We can formulate this differently. We use the term “law” in several contexts. There are laws of the state, there are laws of halakhah, and there are the rules of the basketball association. All of these are laws enacted by some body, and they could have been otherwise. The laws of logic were enacted by no one. There is no law that forbids a triangle from being round, and the indication of this is that there is no alternative world in which there are round triangles. The concept “triangle” by its very definition entails that it is not round. This is not a law that is, by its very definition, imposed upon reality, but a description of reality itself. Therefore, it is not correct to say that God cannot make a round triangle because this contradicts some law. The term “round triangle” is meaningless (it has no reference), and therefore one cannot address the question of whether God can or cannot make such a thing. It is therefore incorrect to see this as God’s subjugation to some law. The laws of logic are not “laws” in this sense (the use of the term “law” regarding logic is metaphorical). Likewise, it is not correct to say that God created the laws of logic just as He created the laws of physics. The laws of logic exist and stand (this is the opening sentence of Maimonides above), since they follow from the very relations between things and concepts, and thus they are not subject to determination by anyone, including God. He can of course create a triangle or cause some object not to be a triangle. But if He decided that the object will be a triangle, then its being a triangle dictates that it will not be round. Even God is “bound” by this constraint.
Discussion of the Examples
Among the examples Maimonides brings, one of the logical impossibilities is that God cannot cause Himself not to exist (not to be). He is a necessary being, and therefore it is not within His power not to exist. Again, this is not a defect in His omnipotence, but simply a contradictory and undefined state (that the necessary being does not exist). In the story of Puss in Boots, we are told of the terrible magician who met a cat and turned himself into a mouse, and the cat devoured him. In the analogue, God cannot turn Himself into a mouse or a human being, for if He turned into a human being, then I could shoot Him in the head and kill Him, thereby annihilating the existence of the necessary being. This is of course a logical oxymoron, and God too is “bound” by this logic. One might claim that perhaps He can turn into a human being, but even if I shoot Him in the head He will not die. But then He simply has not turned into a human being, for a human who is shot in the head dies. So there is no solution here. There are constraints that apply to God as well.
This is also the solution to the problem of the stone that God cannot lift (the omnipotence paradox).[3] The stone argument is a dilemma-type attack on the assumption that God is omnipotent. If He can create such a stone, then there is a stone He cannot lift, and therefore He is not omnipotent. And if He cannot create such a stone—again He is not omnipotent. The error in this seeming paradox is very similar to what we have seen so far. To attack the believer one must start from his premises and show that they lead him into contradiction. The believer’s premise is that God is omnipotent. If so, the concept “a stone that God cannot lift” is now translated into the concept “a stone that the omnipotent cannot lift.” But then it is clear that we are dealing with an oxymoron, just like a round triangle. There is not and cannot be such a stone. It is a meaningless concept. Therefore, when the atheist asks me whether God can create a stone He cannot lift, I will not answer yes and not answer no. I will simply tell him that I do not understand the concepts that appear in his question. “A stone that the omnipotent cannot lift” is an empty concept (mere wordplay), a sequence of words without reference, just like “round triangle.” God does not “have the ability” to create a round triangle or a stone that the omnipotent cannot lift. Nor can He create a wall that stops all shells and at the same time a shell that penetrates all walls (this is an example brought in the previous columns), simply because there are no such things. This is not a lack of ability on His part.
Back to Foreknowledge and Free Will
If we now return to the question of foreknowledge and free will, we can see why the fourth possibility does not pose a problem that challenges the assumption of God’s omnipotence. If information about future choices does not exist in the present, as we have seen in the fourth possibility, then the question “Does God now know what I will do in the future?” is translated into the question “Does God know non-existent information?” Does this remind you of the question of whether He can create a round triangle or a stone that the omnipotent cannot lift? Not by chance. It is precisely the same thing.
For this reason, the great aversion people feel toward the fourth possibility—that is, toward the claim that God does not know in advance what I will do—has no justification. There is no violation here of His omnipotence. What we have is a senseless demand, which He certainly cannot fulfill. It is not true that He cannot know, and it is not true that He can know. There simply is nothing to know. Not knowing non-existent information is not a limitation, and therefore it is not evidence of any deficiency in God’s abilities.
So we can relax. There is no theological problem in the claim that God does not know what I will do in the future. Therefore, we can also cease the hysterical search for other excuses. There is no need for them, for they do not solve any problem, if only because there is no problem to be solved. This is not contrary to tradition, but rather a conclusion forced upon us by simple logical reasoning. Of course, someone who thinks there is in fact no contradiction between knowledge and free choice (the third explanation we discussed in the previous column—see also below) may hold on to his position (and we will yet return to it in the next column). But anyone who adopts that possibility only because he recoils from the claim that God does not know our future actions (the fourth possibility) can calm down. There is no need to resort to far-fetched excuses, because there is no difficulty in the fourth possibility.
According to this possibility, Maimonides’ question is not a question at all. God simply does not know, and therefore we have free will and no reason to doubt it. This claim brings us back to Maimonides and the Ra’avad, and there we will close the circle.
Back to Maimonides and the Ra’avad in Hilkhot Teshuvah
In the first column (299) we saw that the Ra’avad understood that Maimonides did not offer an answer at all, but the Shlah apparently claims that Maimonides did in fact answer. In the Shlah it sounds as though he understands that Maimonides holds that God does not know our future actions.[4]
Perhaps this can be inferred from Maimonides’ own words. At the start of the previous column, the possibility arose that the “knowledge” (yedi’ah) of which Maimonides speaks is a different concept from the one we use. I rejected this, since the relevant question is whether He has the information or not, regardless of the meaning of the statement “He knows,” etc. If He has something else (which is also called “knowledge”), that is a different question and irrelevant to our discussion. Still, the question remains: what, then, is Maimonides’ answer to his own difficulty? If Maimonides is speaking of another kind of knowledge that we cannot comprehend, this does not answer the difficulty. The crucial question is whether He has knowledge in our sense (= the information) or not. If He does have the information, then necessarily we do not have free choice. Therefore, we have no choice but to conclude that indeed Maimonides is claiming that God does not have the information—in other words, that He does not have knowledge in our sense. As we saw in the discussion of the Or HaChaim, from the moment He gave us free choice, a state was created in which the information does not exist (not with Him, and as I explained, not at all). Perhaps He has some other kind of knowledge, but that is another matter. For the sake of fairness I should note that from Maimonides’ own language it is not clear if this is what he meant (but this is the principle of charity: without it, his words would be irrelevant to our discussion).
Among other things, the question that arises in light of this proposal regarding Maimonides is: what, then, is so profound and incommunicable, as Maimonides writes there? Let him say that God does not know, and that is all. This is a very simple solution, which can be stated in a few words. It is possible that the profundity he mentions pertains only to the question of how God’s lack of knowledge does not contradict His omnipotence. That is what I have explained above, and you can see that we are dealing with a subtle philosophical discussion, and therefore perhaps Maimonides did not find it appropriate to conduct it in Hilkhot Teshuvah. As we have seen, he does conduct it in the Guide of the Perplexed (though not in the context of foreknowledge and free will).
According to our suggestion, it is possible that Maimonides as well joins the party of the fourth possibility. That is, that according to him too, God does not know about future free-will actions, simply because this information does not exist. As noted, I am not certain that this is indeed Maimonides’ intent, but I do tend to think this is the correct understanding.
Let us now move on to the Ra’avad. After he attacks Maimonides for bringing the question without an answer, he finds himself compelled to suggest an answer, although he admits that it is not fully satisfying (in his view that is still preferable to leaving such a question unanswered):
“And even though there is no conclusive answer to this, it is good to attach to it some answer and say: If man’s righteousness and wickedness depended on the decree of the Creator, blessed be He, we would say that His knowledge is His decree, and the question would be very difficult for us. But now that the Creator has removed this dominion from His own hand and placed it in man’s own hand, His knowledge is not a decree but is like the knowledge of astrologers, who know from another power what this man’s ways will be.”
If we read his words carefully, it seems that there is a mixture here of two different shades: an explanation of the third type, and of the fourth type as well. The knowledge of astrologers has already been interpreted by us as alluding to the film-reel theory (see the previous column), and that is a third-type answer (namely, that there is no contradiction between knowledge and free choice). But in the continuation of his words it seems that he somehow slides toward the fourth option.
Immediately after the previous passage, the Ra’avad writes:
“And it is known that every event of man, small or great, the Creator has placed under the power of the constellations, except that He has given him intellect, by which he is capable of emerging from under the constellation. And this is the power given to man, to be good or evil. And the Creator knows the power of the constellation and its moments, whether the intellect has the power to bring him out from its hand or not, and this knowledge is not a decree. Yet all this does not completely satisfy.”
Here it appears that, indeed, man is subject to the constellations—that is, to deterministic natural laws—but at the same time he is not completely bound by them. He has intellect (= free will), which enables him to emerge from under the decrees of the constellation. What God knows about man is his power to choose between good and evil, and whether he has the strength to overcome the constellation or not. But the Ra’avad argues that such knowledge is not a decree. It seems that his intention is that God has no knowledge of whether man will actually make use of this power. We see here the Shlah’s picture, according to which God knows all the alternative futures, but does not know which of them man will choose. This is a different answer from the film-reel theory presented in his earlier sentences. With some effort we might say that this continues the third-type answer (the film analogy; but if so, it is not clear why he enters the matter of the constellations at all).
The Ra’avad concludes by repeating that these answers do not satisfy him, and he brought them only so as not to leave this question entirely unanswered.
Conclusion
We have seen four principal possibilities to reconcile the contradiction between knowledge and free will. The first two are to give up free will or to assume that God is beyond time. In the first column (299) I rejected both. The third possibility was that there is, in fact, no contradiction at all, and this was discussed in the second column (301), where I rejected it as well. What remains for us is the fourth possibility—to give up divine foreknowledge. That is what we have seen in this column. I explained here that the fourth possibility may appear frightening (it seems as though God is not omnipotent), but I think that I have ultimately shown quite clearly why there is no reason to recoil from it. There is no violation at all of His omnipotence. Therefore, there is no need to search for excuses or to accept explanations that do not convince us merely in order to escape this possibility. Beyond this, in light of what I have said here, a person can disagree with my proposal and adopt another possibility. But there is no place for shock at my departure from tradition and from the principles of faith that state that God is omnipotent. Even if I am not correct, it is not correct to say that, according to my proposal, God is not omnipotent. This conclusion neutralizes quite a bit of the emotional baggage that accompanies this discussion.
Despite the uneasy feeling that comes with the conclusion that God does not know what we will do in the future, what we have seen so far suggests that it is unavoidable. I return here to the motto of this column: once we have eliminated the impossible, what remains, however improbable, must be the truth. To conclude, I shall note that the next column will be devoted to re-examining whether what we have eliminated was, in fact, impossible. There I will present several reservations I myself have about this conclusion.
[1] Though I must say that from his wording it does not seem that he meant what I am suggesting here as his view.
[2] I believe I have already mentioned here a letter of Rav Shach (I think in one of the volumes of his letters, §2) about the Entebbe operation. He opposed carrying out the operation in advance, because of the great risk of failure and the loss of soldiers and hostages. After the operation succeeded, people came to him and argued that reality had proved him wrong. Rav Shach replied: I too said there was a 10% chance of success, and those ten percent came to pass. What does that prove? He was not mistaken, because from the outset he did not say what would happen, but what was expected to happen. There is much to analyze here, and I think I once did so somewhere on the site, but I cannot go into it here.
[3] Strictly speaking, even here this is not an attack on God and faith in Him, but on the consistency of the concept “omnipotence.” It is simply a proof that there is no such concept, independent of God. Of course, if there is no such concept, then we cannot use it in relation to God either.
[4] He cites Maimonides there, but it is not clear to me whether, in his view, what he is saying is an interpretation of Maimonides’ own words or an alternative proposal of the Shlah himself.
Discussion
I really liked the “Tor from Zion”
The Shlah’s answer was more or less what I had been thinking
Of course one can always engage in pilpul and go with logical paradoxes and say that the Holy One, blessed be He, knows the future but that does not prevent free choice. But according to this, the simpler option is that He prevented Himself from seeing the future and thus also prevented the information about it
and say*
I understand that you’ll address the 3rd claim (if I understood correctly, that refers to my claim and Tam’s that came up there, about our ability to understand God. Am I mistaken?) again in the next post, but in any case you wrote in this post:
“Throughout the previous posts and the discussions following them, I repeatedly said that I do not accept such an approach, since our beliefs are claims made by us, and therefore they are subject to logic. Whatever we assume about the Holy One, blessed be He, changes nothing here. At the end of the day, the issue is not the Holy One, blessed be He, but our conception of Him, and that is subject to logic.”
Why, in your opinion, can a person not understand that he does not understand? To think about concepts like infinity, or a being that is one in perfect unity — that is how I understand the Holy One, blessed be He… I understand that I cannot fully conceptualize the Holy One, blessed be He; He is beyond the capacity of conceptualization; I have no tools with which to conceptualize Him…
I truly do not see this as mere evasion; on the contrary, through reflection I arrived at and felt that there is greater depth here, but I cannot bring it down and succeed in fitting it into the narrow molds of my mind… (Like a person without a sense of taste cannot describe to us what taste is, because he has no such conceptual system… we have never been exposed except to limited beings and objects, and therefore we have no tools to conceptualize an unlimited being…)
So yes, He is subject to my logic, but my logic says: the concept exists, there is no logical contradiction in it (like a round triangle, which Nadav Shnerb once described so well when he said that it is like saying “blah blah blah”), but I understand that I do not have the tools to understand the Holy One, blessed be He, including His knowledge, for He and His knowledge are one. Is there really nothing to this argument?
It is obvious that Maimonides’ intention is claim 3 (or claim 4 as you described it, though that is less likely), and certainly not claim 2; every child understands that claim 2 answers nothing at all, and we should not attribute such nonsense to Maimonides.
Waiting eagerly for the next post.
Based on the introduction, it seems that you tend to accept the third side, as more plausible, even though we do not understand it with the toolbox available to us, and the other paradoxes already at our doorstep are enough to make clear that we will not understand everything.
As for the proofs you brought from tradition…
1. Regarding the Or HaChaim: tradition is not about each rabbi individually, great as he may be, but rather tradition is about what was actually transmitted through tradition.
Just as R. Hasdai Crescas does not pose a difficulty for the tradition, it could be that at a certain point, due to pressure and other considerations, (including pious lies to calm the masses), they chose to offer what they offered.
The main claim of the Shlah requires scrutiny, because if Moses is fit to be the leader, barring unforeseen deviations, then apparently he must do things contrary to his nature and his intellect. And what righteousness is there in a person acting from the tendency of his intellect and nature? And how is Hitler any different, who apparently, given his nature, was expected to do what he did unless there were some blatantly unnatural deviation? According to his words, it is impossible to understand why there are wicked people and righteous people.
So I do not see any remedy in someone who answered one difficulty by means of another no less difficult.
Incidentally, even the Shlah at the end of his words:
“And this is what the verse says (Genesis 22:12): ‘Now I know that you fear God.’ And ‘now’ implies now, while ‘I know’ implies already. Rather, the point is: now, in actuality, what I already knew potentially.” seems to depart from the plain meaning of Scripture.
Therefore it seems that these sources are in the category of pious lies, and as the Raavad attacked Maimonides that it would have been better simply to hide it from the people, apparently there were those who thought it preferable not to hide it but rather to throw the dust of pious lies in their eyes.
At the end of the Shlah’s words: “And many matters remained in accordance with the preparation in which they were prepared as fitting, and did not overcome it by the power of choice, and many things were changed by the power of choice.” It’s a pity he does not bring even a single example for what he says.
2. The proof from the Egyptian whom Moses killed.
Not only did no one descend from him, but someone did: the blasphemer descended from him, and from the blasphemer came Judah ben Gerim. See the commentators: that Egyptian had already left offspring in the world through Dathan’s wife, with whom he had slept, and Moses wanted to check whether he had any merit on account of his descendants, and he saw that no worthy person would come out of him. (Rabbi Baruch Rosenblum explained these matters very well this week in his talk; some of the points are brought in the book Leha’ir Lehorot Ulehaskil, on Dathan and Abiram.)
3. “He is the ultimate psychologist with perfect information about the present structure of the human soul” — I don’t understand. After all, according to your view, the physical world is deterministic, so combining the present structure of the person with the deterministic physical world yields only one possible result!!
4. The proof from Tosafot: again, everything makes sense to us only in hindsight, and that does not mean that this is what would also have happened at the moment of action; and if it had happened, apparently we would have received a different outcome from the history familiar to us.
Incidentally, to bring a difficult Tosafot with tweezers as proof is nothing but demagoguery. Should we perhaps bring proof from Tosafot Sukkah 2b that there is shade even at a height of a thousand cubits, because that is what he says? Sometimes Tosafot simply remain with a difficulty! Incidentally, my inclination is to say that Tosafot too believed in pious lies.
You yourself proposed an explanation regarding prophets because of the difficulty of how we know to verify who is a true prophet; that means you too do not accept Tosafot’s answer.
See the book What God Cannot Do, devoted entirely to impossibilities. There he explains in the chapter on knowledge and choice that Maimonides reached mystical regions and indeed held that God knows the future despite what he says in the Guide about impossibilities. I would also note that according to the Or HaChaim, the prevention of knowledge is itself part of the Lurianic tzimtzum, which also cancels His control over space, and at that very moment He decided to cancel His control over time in order to allow choice. Therefore the question of the existence of the information does not arise, because there was not a single moment since the Big Bang = the tzimtzum in which there was such information. The template of creation from the outset was to limit His knowledge, that is, to grant choice. According to this, it is already embedded in the material substrate that preceded, in the six days, the creation of man as a choosing being. And finally: I did not see any reference to the claim that God does know because He is above time and knows only after I have done the act. The information does not exist in the present at all. When God nevertheless transfers His knowledge from the future to the prophet in the present, He necessarily performs a transformation on this encoded information. That is, suppose we are in the present and know that God is already also in the future. From our point of view we know that for us the choice we will make is not known, while from His point of view it is. Does that mean the information exists? Not necessarily, because perhaps that future, for us, is like an encoded cipher that can be interpreted in many ways (depending on our choice, whichever of several possibilities we choose; all of them can emerge from that coding), and only when God decides to give the information to a prophet does He convert that coding into one specific and unique translation. Then choice is indeed negated. In fact, as noted in the book cited above, any description of revelation in time requires the timeless God to bring about such a transformation and be present within a specific temporal space. I’ll be brief. I’ll note that I have not yet read the previous post. Perhaps my remarks are superfluous
The Shlah is plainly incomprehensible, because we are basically living in the movie of what is expected according to the psychological laws of nature embedded in each person, especially if you go with the rabbi’s idea of deterministic laws of nature.
That would mean that if I offer a person the option of torture all his life versus pleasures all his life, he does not really have the option of torture, unless he is pathologically stupid. So what have we gained?!
After all, in the end, the question was: what do they want from me!!
P.S. An addition to the above. It seems that the discussion of knowledge and choice is bound up with tzimtzum in its literal sense (preventing self-knowledge) as opposed to its non-literal sense (He knows everything, and it only appears to us as though He does not). I won’t elaborate, because I understand this topic is not among your favorites (although according to my somewhat pantheistic view, God is indeed present in everything and chooses through human beings. So from His side there is no tzimtzum, and from our side there is. For even our side is His side. He also experiences the suffering existing in nature as part of His being the infinity of possibilities that must exist within Him Himself), and the matter is too lengthy for twilight
And by the way, it’s simply unbelievable how much pleasure there is in these posts. An irritating pleasure, like the enjoyment in suffering. Instead of resting before Shabbat, I find myself compelled to peek to see whether the next post has already arrived. I peek and get hurt. A restful night and gut Shabbes
Pinchas.
It seems the sting came out in the next post, may it come to us for good.
Gil.
It seems that in that case we have no choice, but are coerced by our nature, and perhaps that is what the Shlah meant…
Gil.
If I am not mistaken, the last thing you wrote above is Newcomb’s paradox brought in the previous post.
Definitely coerced. It’s addictive.
Tam, it seems to me that one can formulate things in the spirit of the public discourse of this period
Even though the court ruled that “the whole land is full of justice” and “everything is justiciable,” that does not apply to God
because our inquiry has led us to the conclusion that this is non-justiciable (because we do not have the toolbox to grasp Him, and not merely as some evasive claim that the laws of logic do not apply to Him)
Even Aharon Barak, who ruled that “the whole land is full of justice,” said this specifically about the land…
Rav Kook on questions and on truth:
http://www.up2me.co.il/v.php?file=16984261.jpg
I am not expressing a position, but the rabbi’s words here seemingly receive support from two explicit verses:
“And he said: ‘Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for *now I know* that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only one, from Me’” (Genesis 22:12)
“You shall not listen to the words of that prophet or to that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God is testing you *to know* whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.” (Deuteronomy 13:4)
True, the commentators there interpreted them in various ways; see there.
I didn’t understand your claim, Tam
What do you mean, “we’re living in a movie” of deterministic laws of nature?
His claim is exactly the opposite
That the Holy One, blessed be He, knows what I am going to choose according to deterministic laws of nature
And despite that, I can change and not act according to those laws of nature, because I have free choice
Ratzai.
How can you change?
An option of torture versus a happy life is not a real option. True, technically it could happen, but if you act according to the healthy logic He gave you, there is no reason for you to be illogical. And if you nevertheless chose torture, that shows there is something in your personality, embedded in your nature, to act against logic, even if only from time to time… and so on.
Gut Shabbos.
?
I didn’t understand
In your last sentence you simply assumed your conclusion
What does it mean to choose a life of torture? Why torture? The Holy One, blessed be He, can know from my natural deterministic character that I will choose to be a complete evildoer, to eat non-kosher food all my life, and in the end apostatize and marry a gentile woman
Even so, despite that, the Holy One, blessed be He, gave me free choice… despite how difficult it is, I can also overcome that nature and be Torah-observant, and maybe even become a rabbi and benefit the public
Is it hard to overcome one’s nature? Maybe
Is it necessarily a life of torture? I don’t think so
And I don’t agree with the assumption that if a certain person manages to overcome his nature, it is because there is something special in him that the Holy One, blessed be He, planted there. In my view, the Holy One, blessed be He, planted free choice in all human beings, and everyone is expected to choose the good… (except for populations such as people with Down syndrome, Asperger’s, and the intellectually disabled, who are entirely coerced)
Shabbat shalom
torture*
Keyboard problem and pressure before Shabbat came in
Repeating and correcting once more
tortures*
Just a moment, gentlemen. There is a very important issue that needs clarification here, and it seems to be slipping under everyone’s radar, and no one seems bothered by it. Without getting at this stage into specific arguments for and against everything that has been said and written in the recent series of posts, I want to understand one thing at the macro level: is that it? Has the problem been solved? Finally? Can we close the book on the whole issue of God’s knowledge and free will? That is, after Maimonides, and R. Hasdai Crescas, and the Or HaChaim, and the Rivash, and the Maharal, and the Shlah, and Rav Ashlag, and also Yehudit Ronen, have we reached rest and inheritance? If so, then at the very least a thanksgiving feast is in order, because definitively solving an age-old problem is no small matter. But I’m actually a bit troubled by the whole thing (again, at the macro level, without for the moment justifying or refuting Rabbi Michi’s arguments). After all, each of these spiritual giants I mentioned above already solved the problem, according to his own approach. At the very least, he himself was honestly and sincerely convinced by the solution he proposed, and did not find in it holes and contradictions. And these are only a tiny few; there are many great Jewish sages who dealt with the problem, not to mention Christian theologians and other monotheists of all kinds throughout history. Moreover, generations of believers have already in practice relied on and agreed with the words of these great trees. It follows, then, that in every generation the Holy One, blessed be He, appoints for us a leader who solves the problem and calms the waters, but somehow, one way or another, in the next generation another leader already finds problems and contradictions in the words of his predecessor. He immediately rolls up his sleeves, plunges into the thick of the beam, and proposes yet another scenario for solving it, and so on and so forth… It’s a little embarrassing, isn’t it? Personally, I want to rely on the solution proposed by Rabbi Michi, but I’m a simple man: had I lived one generation after Maimonides, I probably would have been convinced by his words to exactly the same extent, without noticing the problems in his approach. What would have happened if I had been among the disciples of the Or HaChaim? Probably a rerun. After all, Rabbi Michi laid out four historical directions of reconciliation: Maimonides raised one, the Or HaChaim a second, the Rivash a third, etc.… So how do we know that fifty years from now a fifth direction won’t pop up??? This new direction will refute all four of the above with signs and wonders, bring support for its words from the statements of the Sages, reinterpret Scripture as needed, answer every refutation one by one, and with a Sherlock-Holmesian stroke of logic settle the matter anew! After all, we’ve been doing this for at least a thousand years already!!! In light of the precedents in history, we have to admit that this is a highly reasonable possibility, even an expected one. And precisely for that reason, it would be pretty depressing to fall into that trap yet again…
Regarding the Egyptian whom Moses killed.
Leviticus 24 (Parashat Emor, this week’s Torah portion). Rashi writes about the blasphemer, who was the son of the Egyptian man: “This was the Egyptian whom Moses killed.”
Shveik.
Each one adds a stone to the building, or removes one from it. We are expected to understand according to our ability; we will reach the true conclusion only in the world of truth.
An easy example is Ishmael, about whom the Holy One, blessed be He, said “where he is.” Even though it was known that he would sin.
One example among many from the Gemara (Shabbat 55a), which takes it for granted that the Holy One, blessed be He, knows future choice.
For R. Aha bar Hanina said: Never did a good decree issue from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He, and then turn to evil, except in this matter, as it is written (Ezekiel 9:4): “And the Lord said to him: Pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and mark a tav on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations committed in it,” etc. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Gabriel: Go and mark on the foreheads of the righteous a tav of ink so that the destroying angels will have no power over them, and on the foreheads of the wicked a tav of blood so that the destroying angels will have power over them. The Attribute of Justice said before the Holy One, blessed be He: Master of the Universe, how are these different from those? He said to her: These are completely righteous, and those are completely wicked.
“She said before Him: Master of the Universe, they had the ability to protest and did not protest. He said to her: It is revealed and known before Me that if they had protested, they would not have accepted it from them. She said before Him: Master of the Universe, if it is revealed before You, was it revealed to them?”
Ratzai.
I gave an extreme example in order to illustrate the problem. It is not reasonable to expect a person with material inclinations to conduct himself according to halakhic rules more suited to people with spiritual inclinations. Halakha was said equally to all, without distinction in inclinations. The very concept of righteous and wicked seems not to apply according to this assumption. Do we know what each person’s inclinations are?
In the final analysis, your argument is the round triangle. (A shell of purple length, or of meter color, etc.).
There is just one difference, and it is the significant one: a round triangle is indeed mere nonsense-words, but foreknowledge of the future by itself is an intelligible thing, and free choice by itself is also an intelligible thing. What is unintelligible is the holy combination. Here there is certainly reasonable room to say that we lack a tool in our toolbox, and therefore we do not manage to grasp it. This is entirely different from the triangle, because there no toolbox will help; at most it will change the name of the triangle.
Our problem is that if and when there is data about the future, what do they want from us? It is like a fool who thinks that if there is no data, that is a reason not to demand anything from him. Does the fact that he thinks so mean that choice does not exist?
Why assume this? Because foreknowledge clearly indicates an ability, unlike a round triangle, which indicates nothing at all. And since the deficiency is in the combination, there is room for the probability that by means of an additional tool, which exists though we do not know it, one for whom the concept of infinity exists even though we do not understand it would likewise have no problem with the conjunction of knowledge and choice.
And like the dichotomy paradox and the other paradoxes with which we continue to live even though our intellect does not understand them, it stands to reason that we are small.
A wonderful week to everyone.
Tam.
Thanks
There is no problem at all with assuming that I do not understand, but one cannot believe in a contradiction. That is not the same thing.
The tradition of Israel is that there is no future. There is no pre-written script. Therefore there is nothing to know. And you have whom to rely on. As Peshita wrote: https://mikyab.net/שות/נבואת-משה
You can see this in the plain meaning of the Torah:
And it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham …
..for now I know that you fear God.
And in plain language: since fear of Heaven is not in the hands of Heaven, God could not know what would happen and had to test Abraham. From this it follows that there is no future. And anyone who claims otherwise denies the Torah and Moses.
Another example in which the Torah reveals the way God “knows” what will be in the future on the basis of His knowledge in the present:
And Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed through him. For I have known him, so that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which He spoke concerning him.
A simple explanation: how does the Lord know that Abraham will become a great nation? By virtue of the fact that Abraham will see to it that they keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice, and the result is so that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which He spoke concerning him.
This is not seeing the future, but deliberation on the basis of what is known in the present: that through our father Abraham this will come to pass. And anyone who claims otherwise denies the Torah and Moses.
A continuation example where we see that God makes an effort so that His promise will be fulfilled (without that effort it would not have happened):
To Abraham: And He said: By Myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing … that I will surely bless you
Later to Isaac: And the Lord appeared to him and said: Do not go down to Egypt … and I will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham your father
Meaning: the Lord ensures that “I will establish” is fulfilled by guiding Isaac. In other words, it does not exist until there is “I will establish.” And anyone who claims otherwise denies the Torah and Moses.
And so throughout the Torah.
And for those who deny the Torah and require proofs from the Mishnah:
R. Akiva (after all is foreseen…):
He would say: Everything is given on collateral, and a net is spread over all the living. The shop is open, the shopkeeper extends credit, the ledger is open, the hand writes, and whoever wishes to borrow may come and borrow. The collectors make their rounds continually every day, and exact payment from a person with his knowledge or without his knowledge, and they have what to rely upon, and the judgment is a true judgment, and everything is prepared for the feast.
With emphasis on: “and whoever wishes to borrow may come and borrow.” And what is known (necessary)? “and exact payment from a person with his knowledge or without his knowledge”
But still: “and everything is prepared for the feast”
R. Elazar HaKappar:
He would say: Those who are born are destined to die, the dead are destined to be brought to life, and the living are destined to be judged; to know, to make known, and to become known that He is God, He is the Maker, He is the Creator, He is the Understander, He is the Judge, He is the Witness, He is the Litigant, and He is destined to judge. Blessed is He, before whom there is no wrongdoing, no forgetfulness, no favoritism, and no taking of a bribe, for everything is His. And know that everything is according to the reckoning. And do not let your evil inclination assure you that the grave is a place of refuge for you, for against your will you are formed, against your will you are born, against your will you live, against your will you die, and against your will you are destined to give judgment and reckoning before the King of kings of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.
With emphasis on “He is the Witness” — if He knew the future, He would not be a witness but a partner.
And what is known about the future? “and against your will you are destined to give judgment and reckoning,” and the idea of an already-existing future contradicts the whole notion of judgment and reckoning.
And who is wise? One who sees what is born. There is no future. There are things that did not yet exist in actuality and come into being. The wise person can see them in the eye of his spirit if he understands how the world works.
And more and more.
Tam, as usual I can’t manage to understand a word of what you’re saying, and what I do understand (or think I understand) seems really bizarre to me.
I understood 2. How could someone come from him if he died immediately now? What is this nonsense? Someone had already come from him earlier, not after Moses weighed in his mind whether to kill him.
I hope you understood 3, though I assume you didn’t. According to my view, a person does not act deterministically.
I didn’t understand the claim about encoded information. To say that the information exists now means that there could be a prophet who would play the boxes game with the chooser. Can the Holy One, blessed be He, do that? Then the information exists now.
It is hard for me to respond to a string of words that says nothing to me.
Exactly right
You claim that God is not limited because in fact there is no such information that He is supposed to know
But according to your view one must say that He is limited by time?
{That is, He cannot sail through the expanses of time into the future and check what will be chosen… He is limited by time…
That is, even though He created the universe, He did not create time, contrary to what people usually claim
Did I understand correctly?
I do not know what it means to sail through the expanses of time. If the intention is to obtain future information, then He is limited (or limited Himself) in order to allow choice. In any case, He is limited in that He cannot both allow us free choice and also know in advance. If I understood you correctly, then that itself is the limitation of sailing through the expanses of time.
And those who busy themselves with God’s knowledge as though He were their object of study in a brain-research laboratory come from the root of the serpent, and they are the ones who have brought troubles upon everyone, like the serpent.
Tam,
1. Did you notice that you can present a round triangle in exactly the same way you presented foreknowledge of the future and choice?
A triangle is an intelligible concept, a square is also an intelligible concept, only the combination of them is unintelligible.
2. Moreover, your very reasoning — “when the problem is in the combination, we little ones are at fault; when the problem is in the thing itself, then it is impossible” — is not
clear.
3. And not only that, I would say exactly the opposite of your words: when the problem is in the thing itself, it is something we do not understand; when the problem is a
combination, it is something impossible.
(Example — a finite thing “contradicts” infinity, yet every finite thing by its very nature defines infinity. And here we see that there are things we do not succeed in
grasping.
But a triangle, which is a concept in itself, and likewise a square, which is a concept in itself, their combination is a contradiction and therefore
impossible.)
No need to reply (the matter is clear to me; I have a position in this area), because I’m not sure you understand what you are saying (perhaps to call it — mere words?).
I know this doesn’t matter for your position in the discussion, but since you also discussed Maimonides’ view, I’ll quote him so there won’t be any mistake about his opinion… He writes just as I and Tam wrote above: Guide for the Perplexed, Part III:
“In sum, what I say and maintain is that just as we do not apprehend the true reality of His essence, though we nevertheless know that His existence is the most perfect existence, into which no deficiency, no change, and no affection can enter in any way, so too, although we do not know the true reality of His knowledge, since it is identical with His essence, we nevertheless know that He does not sometimes know and sometimes not know; that is, no knowledge at all is ever newly acquired by Him, nor does it increase, there is no end to His knowledge, and none of the beings is hidden from Him, and His knowledge of them does not nullify their natures.
Rather, the possible remains with the nature of possibility, and all the contradictions that appear in all these matters are due to the perspective of our knowledge, which has no share in His knowledge except in name alone.”
“Furthermore, what has become clear to me from the verses of the Torah is that His knowledge, may He be exalted, of the existence of a certain possible thing that will be, does not remove that possible thing from the nature of possibility at all; rather, the nature of possibility remains in it, and knowledge of what will be among possible things does not necessitate its coming to be in one of the two possibilities.
This too is one of the foundations of the Torah of Moses, concerning which there is no doubt and no dispute. For otherwise it would not have said, ‘And you shall make a parapet for your roof,’ and similarly, ‘lest he die in battle and another man take her.’
And so it is throughout the Torah: commandment and prohibition all return to this foundation, namely, that His knowledge of what will be does not remove the possible from its nature. This is a great difficulty according to the grasp of our limited intellects.”
“Understand this, for I say that it is wondrous indeed and a correct view; if you examine it closely, you will not find in it anything erroneous or misleading, nor will absurdities overtake it, nor will we attribute deficiency to God thereby.”
I’ll try again.
1. It seems that a considerable number of those you brought believed in pious lies.
A. Because their claims are not intelligible logically. B. Because their claims are implausible. For example, R. Hasdai: it is not plausible that the religious person would believe that we are living in a movie. And likewise the Shlah: it is not plausible that everything is merely foreseeable, because there are countless sources showing that everything is known, and not merely foreseeable. Moreover, what is foreseeable on the basis of a person’s psychological nature plus deterministic matter ought to yield only one result, and if an exceptional result is obtained, apparently that too is some part of the fellow’s nature, from time to time to act contrary to what seems likely.
2. Regarding the Egyptian, it is explicit that someone did come from him, except that this refers to previous acts of intercourse. And if a righteous person would come from him, then he would have the merit of his offspring after him.
3. I included it in 1
4. I said that you yourself rejected Tosafot on rational grounds, and one should not bring proof from Tosafot who remain with an unresolved difficulty. As an example, I brought Tosafot on Sukkah 2b, who takes it that there is shade even above a thousand cubits if there is a width of four cubits, and this is simply not true in reality. So whoever brings proof from there for whatever matter it may be, we will ask him first to explain Tosafot’s plain intention, and only afterward bring proofs.
Have a good rest of the week.
Tam.
P.M., hello. Even though you did not want a response, my nature compels me and I have no choice in the matter…
1. True, triangle is an intelligible concept, and so is square, but the words “triangular square” mean nothing; they are mere words.
Different is the case of foreknowledge and free choice, which do not constitute a contradiction in the essence of the concept itself; rather, the contradiction concerns the possibility of both together. And here there is room to say that if the magician comes he may succeed in combining them. In a round or square triangle, the magician can only change the names or fool us, but the concept triangle will remain a triangle with three corners even if we call it a circle.
2. I didn’t understand the point about infinity?
After all, the reality of the universe compels the point that it had no beginning, because even if there was a big bang at some point, what was before it? And if so, then we are in an infinite regress and it is impossible that we arrive at any particular time, because we are continually drawn backward in time.
But what can we do? Reality is stronger than we are, and this compels that we are not capable of understanding everything. Therefore it is more correct to project our lack of understanding onto the reality we experience as well, namely free choice, and likewise not to limit our Creator by saying that He does not know the future, because the future is not a round triangle, but rather beyond the comprehension of our minds.
Tam.
There is another possibility. And it is the correct one.
That there is no future (that is, no foreknowledge, and God plays dice) and no free choice.
And the Torah comes to correct man so that he will choose correctly. But the choice is not free. And the will is not free. Therefore we make efforts in education.
And those who want and run and bustle about and search and invent and discover how and in what manner human beings in general, and they in particular, have any choice that is free, are nothing but captives of the impulse of pride.
With God’s help, Chesed she-beHod 5780
To the Last Posek – greetings,
If the Creator does not know the future because it does not yet exist – how is there prophecy?
Regards, Sh. Tz.
Prophecy is the way in which the Lord instructs human beings what is fitting or unfitting to do, and thereby what is fitting or unfitting to come about.
And in reality, most prophecies intended for their own time failed in practice again and again. Therefore new prophets were needed. Stiff-neckedness (and its consequences) is an inseparable part of the entire history of Israel.
There is much more to elaborate, but this is not the place.
One can add to the sources you mentioned also Gersonides in the sixteenth benefit on Parashat Vayera.
And what if we change the wording of the question:
Does the Holy One, blessed be He, know information that will exist in the future?
I do not think the question is meaningless — it has a very clear meaning — we are speaking about information of which we know how to say something: it will exist in the future.
It can also be formulated this way:
Since beyond being omnipotent, the Holy One, blessed be He, is also omniscient, the question would be:
Does the omniscient being know information that will exist in the future?
Since it is clear to me that the third solution — the one that assumes the ability to know the future — is a good and reasonable solution, I also see no problem in formulating the question as I did. If so, it seems to me that there is a contradiction here to His being omniscient, contrary to the purpose of the post.
What one might try to say is that this is information that will exist in the future but does not exist in the present — and God simply does not “look,” as it were — but that is only on the assumption that His knowledge is something He has to activate intentionally, and perhaps the very possibility of His knowing already raises the problem of the existence of information, as you yourself already wrote.
Just to sharpen a sentence I omitted — if He is omniscient, it is obvious that the future too is part of the definition of “all.”
Tam
Again, you’re a bit unclear
Halakha was indeed said to everyone, both to people with a tendency toward materiality and to people with a tendency toward spirituality. Of those with a tendency toward spirituality (by the way, what exactly is a tendency toward spirituality? You can also find “spiritual tendency” among charlatan mystics, idolatrous sects like the Hare Krishnas, and confused talk of sexual immorality and abomination among people like Ohad Mizrachi and the like, so for the sake of discussion I’ll assume that when you said “tendency toward spirituality” you meant a tendency to engage in the search for truth? an aspiration to fulfill religious obligations?) In any case, halakha does indeed address all Jews with the demand to observe the 613 commandments, both those for whom it comes easily and pleasantly and those for whom it is super difficult, just as observance of the 7 basic Noahide commandments is expected of all human beings, both those born into a monotheistic culture, for whom it is easy to reach the basic level of truth expected of them, and those born into an idolatrous culture. Of the former it is expected to adhere to their natural tendency, and of the latter it is expected to overcome the difficulty nevertheless and fulfill their obligations in the world. And that is exactly why free choice exists: it says that every person has the ability to choose the good (except for very exceptional cases of complete coercion, such as mental impairment and the like, which, in my humble opinion, halakha has already defined as a shoteh, exempt from all commandments; and even regarding the 7 Noahide commandments, if I am not mistaken, Maimonides writes that although strictly speaking any gentile who refuses to accept the seven commandments is executed, one does not touch among them a person defined as a shoteh).
I have no idea how the empirical fact that there are people who tend more to choose evil and people who tend more to choose good contradicts the claim that a person has free choice
And I am deliberately not bringing into the discussion people who are coerced in their beliefs, in Rabbi Michi’s phrase from the Radbaz, because that is another topic
tend*
aspiration to fulfill religious obligations *
By the way, it is quite possible that you are touching here somewhat on another discussion, namely whether a Jew is expected at all to be some especially exalted person, a kind of enthusiastic pious superman whose whole soul is deeply bound up with the Holy One, blessed be He, and every commandment makes him thrill and burn with enthusiasm. So I will only say that I am not such a Jew, and yet I observe halakha simply out of obligation. In all my life I have not seen in halakhic literature any duty to be attached to spirituality and to be a person who “tends toward spirituality” (and I do not deny the wonderful virtue or the appreciation I have for Jews who did manage to reach that level), but according to my limited understanding there is no specific halakhic command instructing all Jews to conduct their lives in this manner
And in this connection I’ll refer you to a nice article by Nadav Shnerb (who commented here on the site a few days ago) called “And the Pious Shall Stumble by Them”
And the rest, go and learn
“We have to admit that this is a highly reasonable possibility” — but weren’t there also highly reasonable possibilities in previous generations that later generations came and showed are not reasonable at all?
While reading, I was bothered by why you assume there is a logical contradiction between God’s knowledge and the possibility of choice. After all, divine knowledge comes from His traversing to the future, and it seems there is no one who thinks God is bound by the limitation of time; and it is obvious that He can be in the future and see what you chose.
And if you nevertheless hold that if there is an entity that can draw information from the future then free choice is impossible [? and this has already been remarked on by me and others in previous posts], one cannot infer from that that God does not know [for in saying that you limit Him within the limitation of time, which is certainly a limitation of His power. It is impossible that He could traverse to the future and not see the choice that was made], but rather the opposite: that man has no real choice. And that, of course, you certainly agree cannot be accepted. So the conclusion from the difficulty you set up is a conclusion that cannot be accepted.
Please explain your conclusion more clearly — can God not see [directly] the future? Can God not see the random quantum collapse and tell a human being what the outcome will be [that is, if we assume it is a random and not deterministic distribution, so that from our perspective the information does not yet exist at all]? And if He can see future things dependent on utterly random factors, why should He not be able to know future choice in this way as well?
How do you explain the verses that show that God knows whether a person will sin, such as His statement that the land of Canaan cannot yet be conquered because the sin of the Amorites is not yet complete until three more generations; and likewise He showed Abraham the conduct of Egypt toward Israel [Maimonides raises this difficulty and answers that no individual was compelled to sin… strange]; and likewise His entire conduct with Moses as a baby appears as though He knew in advance that he would be the leader; and likewise what was mentioned above, that He said He chose Abraham because He knew that he would command his children, etc.; and presumably if we search we will find more, and certainly from the words of the Sages in the Gemara and Midrashim it is possible to find clearly that this was not their view [such as what He said regarding David, “I have one precious thing among them” — that He knew that King David would come out of Moab, and more].
I don’t understand this form of argument… After all, I brought arguments in favor of my conclusion. You speak generally about traversing and so on, and I have no way to deal with such general statements. To criticize, you need to take my arguments and point out where the flaw in them lies. In short, I do not assume this; I show it. Just note the fourth post, where I presented several reservations. There is no point in repeating those points, which have already come up.
I meant that one cannot say that God does not know without also saying that God cannot see the future. And since God is not subject to the limitations of time, it follows necessarily that He does know. So according to your view we are forced to conclude that there is no choice, not that God does not know.
But then again I saw the next post [and indeed you raised there several points that were argued against you], and I saw that regarding this claim you argued that God indeed cannot see in the future things that do not currently exist [that is, even if one can get to the future, one cannot see there something that has not yet been determined in the present], and if so, you are right.
But as far as I understood, those who speak about time travel to the future are speaking about seeing the future in its entirety and not only deterministic phenomena [which will change a thousand times through free agents, so in essence there is nothing to see]. I am not a physicist who can argue with you, but if the understanding is like theirs — that one can see everything that will be in the future [including the outcomes dependent on future choices] — then God necessarily sees my future choice. So according to your view one must assume that there is no choice, and that is not a logical impossibility but a tremendous difficulty for a central tenet of religion, as Maimonides wrote.
Are the laws of logic necessary reality?
Understand me, Cardigan: as far as I’m concerned, I see Rabbi Michi’s solution as a great answer to the problem (true, it requires a lot of intellectual acrobatics, one has to tie up many loose ends, and find new interpretations, but that doesn’t bother me). I’m just afraid that in another two generations some other Torah scholar will come along and find a completely new solution that will knock out all his predecessors, and then retroactively make me look like a complete idiot… I’m just a little worried, that’s all.
Necessary reality is said of an entity, not of a law. A law can be necessary or not. The laws of logic are necessary. I wrote about this here in detail in the post.
Source correction — Rashba’s responsum is Part IV, siman 234, not 334 (which does not exist)
There is also discussion of the topic in Part I (413–414, 418)
In two places (Guide for the Perplexed II:22, III:25), Maimonides seems more lenient and argues that the Holy One, blessed be He, acts rationally and does not do every single thing that is not essentially impossible (in which case the answer could be that even if He were able to create a stone He could not lift, it is something there is no reason for Him to do — because that would be a weakness, not a power — and therefore He does not do it, even before the question whether He is capable)
Thanks.
The question about the stone is whether He can, not why He doesn’t do it.
To that I completely agree. Whenever I deal with various kinds of philosophy, and also with matters of science, I wonder greatly what the next generation will discover and where the dogmatic slumber lies in which we are all immersed without noticing. I swear that sometimes I think that if I were given one wish, I would jump 200 years ahead to read the books that will be written anew (and anyone who recalls the story about the peddler who asked the king to remove the competing peddler is not mistaken).
Hello Rabbi,
Following up on our conversation…
From what I understood from the post, all of our reality can be described by means of concepts; the laws of logic define the relations between the concepts, and therefore bind them and also all of reality. In other words, logic constrains not only our perception of reality but reality itself. The question is how one can be sure that every existent thing in reality can be conceptualized or well-defined. I’m not sure my question is clear, so I’ll try to expand below.
An example of a case that is easy to define: a triangle — one can define a triangle as a polygon with 3 sides that lives in a plane. From this definition all the other properties that exist in a triangle also follow, and therefore it is a good definition.
An example of a case where the process of definition is more complex: an electron — one can define an electron as an elementary subatomic particle with negative electric charge and a mass equal to such-and-such, etc., but from this definition all the other properties of the electron (its dynamics) do not follow. About 100 years ago it was discovered that the electron is a particle (that is, it behaves like a billiard ball). Afterwards it was discovered that it also sometimes behaves like a wave. This created confusion that was resolved with the discovery of Schrödinger’s equation, which contains within it both the wave-like behavior and the particle-like behavior, and it seemed that it conceptualized the electron well. Afterwards they understood that an electron can also be created from photons or annihilated, and Schrödinger’s equation does not describe those possibilities. Dirac came to our aid, and through “second quantization” improved the definition of the electron so that it would also include the possibility of being created or annihilated by photons. In this case one sees that it was not simple to define the electron, but in the end it seems to have succeeded.
The question is whether we will necessarily succeed in defining everything that exists in reality. How will we define soul or spirit? And what about the Holy One, blessed be He? And if we cannot define certain things well (a definition from which all properties follow), how can we infer that the laws of logic are valid regarding them (regarding the full range of their properties, and not only the properties that the definition captures)?
Thanks,
Yehuda
I really do not think every concept can be defined. It cannot be that it can, since definitions of concepts themselves rely on concepts. Therefore, at the foundation of the conceptual system there must be some primitive concepts that do not rely on others. True, Quine argued that our understanding of concepts is built as a web and not linearly (one on top of another). But none of that matters.
Logic compels our thought entirely independently of definitions. Therefore there is no point in speaking about what is outside logic. Quantum matters and electrons have no bearing on the discussion in any way that I can see.
In my opinion logic compels reality as well, because logic is not a law external to things. It is a constraint in the very essence of the things themselves. A triangle cannot be round, entirely independently of the constraints of my thought. But as I said, in any case it is impossible to speak about this, so there is no point in hair-splitting over it.
A question for the rabbi.
You write that the concept of a triangle that is round has no meaning at all, and therefore the question is irrelevant.
But suppose I accept the premise that God created logic as well, and therefore the reason such a concept has no meaning is simply that God did not create it. Accordingly, if He had created the realm of intellect in such a way that such a concept existed, then it really would exist.
(Basically I am trying to understand where the error lies: is it in the fact that there is no such concept, or in the fact that logic subordinates it? And if the latter, why indeed can one not say that He created the intellect?)
I hope the question is clear enough. In any case, thanks.
Everything you said here consists of sentences that you yourself say and think (this is not a description of reality but of your perception of reality), and therefore they have no meaning. We cannot speak about such concepts. Therefore, even if you utter the words: “God created logic,” this does not have much meaning. These are just words, at least from our point of view. It is roughly like saying that God invented meaning, and then speculating about what happens without meaning. Without meaning, these very sentences themselves also have no meaning.
I wanted to ask:
After it has been said that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not know the future, the intention is that right now He does not know, but after the thing happens He will know. That is, information will be added to the Holy One, blessed be He, after the thing occurs (“Now I know…”).
Doesn’t this statement basically assume that the Holy One, blessed be He, is affected by time in the same way that we are affected?
After all, the meaning is that He supposedly changes in the future (knowledge is added to Him). So why is that not in itself a logical problem?
It comes out that there exists a concept of time (which is a material, physical concept) separate from the Holy One, blessed be He, namely as the space in which the Holy One, blessed be He, acts (for we would never think of saying this about spatial space, that the Holy One, blessed be He, was here and then went somewhere else).
After all, we are not speaking merely figuratively. The intention here is truly to say that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not know now, and only afterward He knows.
I didn’t understand. What is the problem with saying that He changes?
For example, from the point of view that time is physical: all matter is in this space, but how can one say of the Holy One, blessed be He, that He is supposedly inside time (and not merely acts within it)?
Admittedly, I truly cannot understand what it means to exist outside time, just as I cannot understand what it means to exist outside space, but still, with regard to the Holy One, blessed be He, I say by way of negation that He is not inside time and space.
I don’t understand anything. What does it mean that time is physical? What does it mean that the Holy One, blessed be He, is inside time? You are using words or expressions that I do not understand.
Time is not an abstract logical concept; it is something physical (without getting into the definition of what it is, for our purposes it is enough to say that it is not an abstract logical concept), like the universe, which is the place in which we live.
After all, it is impossible to say that when the Holy One, blessed be He, arrives in New York City, He will know more than He knows now. So what is the difference between that and saying that in ten hours the Holy One, blessed be He, will know more?
It is certainly possible to say that when the Holy One, blessed be He, arrives in Tel Aviv, new things will become known to Him. It is just that He is in Tel Aviv, and therefore He already knows them. By contrast, future information has not yet been created, and therefore there is no obstacle to saying that He does not know it now. It is like saying that when the information exists in Tel Aviv, if the Holy One, blessed be He, existed only in Haifa, He would not know it.
But why is it obvious to me that He is in Tel Aviv, while it is not obvious to me that He is in the future? What is the difference?
That is, it’s not that I know He is in Tel Aviv; I simply know that it makes no sense to say He is not there. And the reason is that He is not in a place at all, so it makes no sense to say that He is in Haifa and not in Tel Aviv, or in all places but not in Tel Aviv.
So seemingly, in exactly the same way, since analogically time is like place (it is not an abstract concept but a physical space), it makes no sense to say that the Holy One, blessed be He, is now in the present and not in the future (just as all creatures are in the present and not in the future).
I would not ask this if time were an abstract logical concept, but we know that this is not so. Rather, even in our understanding, time is a physical space (there is no need to get into definitions; it is enough that it is physical).
I don’t understand the meaning of the statement that time is physical.
The information does not exist now, and therefore one cannot yet know it. You ask what the difference is between time and space? There are differences. Time flows and space is static. Time flows forward and space is symmetrical and isotropic in all directions.
If you wish, you may say that He is present along the entire time axis, and therefore He indeed knows the information at that time, but does not know it at this time. That sounds to me a bit like wordplay, but perhaps it will help you more.
I don’t know how to explain it better, and I do not understand what the problem is.
But no one is claiming to understand the meaning of such a sentence.
All they are saying is that there is a point at which the domain of intellect begins, and we live within that domain, so we have no grasp whatsoever of what is beyond it.
I wanted to note that the fourth possibility was stated explicitly by the first Raavad in his book HaEmunah HaRamah, at the end of the second treatise, which preceded Maimonides by several decades.
The rabbi noted that it is clear from Maimonides, in his discussion of impossibilities, that it cannot both be that the Holy One, blessed be He, knows and that there is choice. And the rabbi wrote that Maimonides did not write this explicitly about choice and knowledge, but rather in a general way. Yet it seems to me that in the chapters on providence (Guide III:17) Maimonides did in fact include the contradiction between knowledge and choice, and because of this contradiction he rejects the Mu‘tazilite view, according to which the Holy One, blessed be He, knows everything:
“Contradictions also follow from their doctrine, for they believe that He, may He be exalted, knows every thing, and that man has power. This leads to what becomes clear upon the slightest reflection as self-contradictory.”
Today I went through the Rivash’s explanation in 118, and the Or HaChaim on Genesis 6:3,
and I was puzzled,
I would be glad for your answer
Rivash 118 says:
“There is a great difference between the opinion of the sage Rabbi Levi, of blessed memory, and the opinion of the Raavad, of blessed memory. For Rabbi Levi’s opinion is that God’s knowledge, may He be exalted, does not encompass what a person will do by his free choice before that act comes into actuality… Whereas the opinion of the Raavad, of blessed memory, is that the blessed God knows everything from two sides: He knows what is ordered for him by the constellations, and He knows the power of the intellect — whether it has the power to extricate him from the hand of the constellation; and whether this man’s intellect is stronger than his constellation or his constellation stronger than his intellect. In this way He knows what that person will do before he does it. And since it remains in man’s power to do good or evil, this knowledge is not a decree, but is like the knowledge of astrologers, who know by another power what this man’s deeds will be. So too, the blessed God knows, from the side of the power of the constellation and from the side of the power of the intellect, what this person will do — whether he will emerge from the power of the constellation or not. This appears to be the opinion of the Raavad, of blessed memory. And still the rabbi, of blessed memory, was not appeased by this and wrote: ‘And all this does not satisfy me at all.’” End quote.
On the Rivash there is a difficulty —
He wants to say that according to the Raavad the Creator knows “whether this man’s intellect is stronger than his constellation or his constellation stronger than his intellect.”
And the difficulty is clear: even if a person’s intellect is stronger than his constellation, it is still impossible for the Creator to know what he will decide.
And if the Rivash disagrees about this, then it follows that the Rivash holds that man has no choice; rather, if he was born with an intellect stronger than the constellation, then he is compelled in one direction, and vice versa. So what has he gained?
The Or HaChaim on Genesis 6:5 says:
“But the words of Maimonides are fundamental, for the mode of God’s knowledge is not grasped by us; and who can compare to God by taking knowledge from that which resembles Him. And I will enlighten you: God can withhold the knowledge grasped in His knowledge so that He does not know it, when the Master wishes — something man has no power to do, that knowledge should reach him and yet he should not know it. This is what Maimonides hinted at when he said: ‘And the mind of man cannot apprehend,’ etc., for how could it be that knowledge should reach Him of itself and be withheld from itself?… He wisely arranged that God should do this so that the claim of the wicked should not apply, who would say: His knowledge compels, since once God knew that this so-and-so would transgress as he did, the matter by itself became necessary to be, even though God did not decree that it be so… Therefore God withheld this knowledge of the deeds of the wicked.
But the deeds of the righteous were not withheld from knowledge… And with respect to the righteous there is no place for the claim that His knowledge compels, for that claim concerns recompense, and behold God desires to reward, and no one argues against himself. Not so with the punishment of the wicked, who would come with a claim in order not to receive punishment; therefore God guarded this matter.
And one cannot argue and say: had God looked upon them so that they would be righteous, they too would have acted righteously, for this claim does not exempt them from the particular free choice given into their hand, and they chose evil and rejected good of their own will.”
On the Or HaChaim there is a difficulty —
He is basically saying that the truth is as Maimonides says: that even though the Creator has foreknowledge, nevertheless there is choice, and we do not understand — in his words, “the words of Maimonides are fundamental, for the mode of God’s knowledge is not grasped by us, and who can compare to God by taking knowledge from that which resembles Him.”
But because there should not be an opening for human beings to say that if the Creator has foreknowledge then there is no choice, He decides to hide His knowledge, and thus human beings will calm down.
But with all due respect, this is absurd. Do the wicked now know that He does not know? Has the Creator informed them of this? Fine; apparently the Or HaChaim thinks that when the wicked see “And He regretted” in the Torah, they will understand that the Creator does not know in advance (and apparently the verses that seem to indicate otherwise they will not see, and Maimonides above they surely will not see either).
And then the Or HaChaim asks: so then we will ask about the righteous, whom God does know, and therefore people will think that His knowledge compels them too (because they do not manage to understand Maimonides’ move). The Or HaChaim says: no problem — being compelled to do good is not a problem. In his words: “And with respect to the righteous there is no place for the claim that His knowledge compels, for that claim concerns recompense.”
The Or HaChaim continues and asks: then the wicked will claim this is unfair, because if He had known our deeds, we too would have been compelled to do good. The Or HaChaim answers: no matter, they in any case did evil by their own choice, and their complaint is against themselves.
And all this is astonishing — who could believe such a report? Do the wicked know this whole move? Do human beings think through all this? He discusses all this only with himself. Or perhaps he means that the wicked will come before the rabbi to complain against the Creator, that it is unfair that He does not compel them to be good, and the rabbi will answer them: nevertheless, you did evil by your own choice, so what is your complaint? Then indeed the wicked will understand that they have no claim??
Only why, according to his view, do the wicked not think of a simple question: after all, in their understanding the Creator does not know in advance, so how does He know from which human beings to hide His knowledge of their deeds, and from which not?
What is this whole strange move? It remains a riddle.
And what is this strange sentence in the Or HaChaim:
“God can withhold the knowledge grasped in His knowledge so that He does not know it… it is possible that knowledge should reach Him of itself and be withheld from itself… as if this exists in this respect”… “And the mind of man cannot apprehend… how.”
I would be glad for an explanation
Thank you very much
What I had to explain, I explained in the series of posts. I will add that most of what is written on this issue is empty verbiage, misunderstandings, and conceptual confusions. I have no interest in engaging in after-the-fact justifications for this kind of verbiage.
I only wanted to know whether you agree with my difficulty on the Rivash and the Or HaChaim, or perhaps I misunderstood them
I didn’t study it deeply, but on the face of it, yes.
And now, after we have removed the possibility of understanding Maimonides as the Or HaChaim does, I will try to explain Maimonides’ approach.
In my opinion, even though Maimonides already mentioned what is agreed upon by all (except Christians and Hasidim), namely that the Creator cannot do logical contradictions, when it came to the paradox of knowledge and choice he chose to believe in both, as though this were a kind of logical contradiction. And the reason is this: as is known, even creation ex nihilo is under philosophical dispute whether this is a logical contradiction and therefore impossible. Philosophers like Plato took this approach, for example, and likewise Ezra the Kabbalist in his commentary on Song of Songs in the Mossad Harav Kook edition, where he explicitly says one must believe like Plato that there was a primordial hyle, because creation ex nihilo belongs to the class of impossibilities for the Creator, see there. Maimonides rejected this because it contradicts the Torah, as he said in the Guide (even though he agreed to view this conception somewhat leniently and wrote that nevertheless it is not heresy to believe like Plato). And even though to the plain observer creation ex nihilo indeed seems like a logical contradiction — “something” from its opposite, namely from “nothing,” is plainly irrational — and indeed even the Yaavetz in Mitpachat Sefarim says that in this the philosophers were right, because something from nothing is impossible. Only he follows the path of other kabbalists and not Ezra of Gerona, and says that what “from nothing” means is from the Creator Himself, from His essence: the sefirot that emanated from Him are like a flame hidden in the coal; and according to the one who says the sefirot are divinity, see there. And both are living words of heresy, as is known. (And already other kabbalists attacked this conception of those kabbalists, but fell into the confusion of vessels, another heresy, and therefore their predecessors refused it, and the Ria”m already wrote about this.)
But for our purposes, in any event, Maimonides, who rejected this and held that the Creator indeed can create something from nothing in some way or other [and in my opinion the “simple” explanation is this: after all, who created Him? How was He created? That is, how has He always existed without anyone creating Him? What is this maddening thing? This is a million times more problematic than creation ex nihilo, so just as we do not understand that and nevertheless believe in His wondrous existence, so too we may believe in creation ex nihilo. (Incidentally, those who believe in a primordial hyle not created by the Creator thereby give that inanimate primordial hyle a wondrous existential power like the Creator’s. Bizarre. And Maimonides also wrote, in his discussion of the Creator’s impossibilities, that He cannot create another god like Himself. So according to them, there is supposedly some other inanimate entity like Him in a certain respect, much less plausible.)], and therefore likewise in the paradox of knowledge and choice Maimonides believes in the wondrous and incomprehensible power of the Creator, because as is known the power of choice is also, in a certain respect, something from nothing, assuming of course that we are not determinists. So everything comes beautifully together for Maimonides, and he did not contradict himself.
In summary — just as we do not understand His own independent, eternal, non-contingent, beginningless existence, and likewise the creation of the world ex nihilo, so too with the wonder of human choice, which for us, insofar as we are not determinists, is also something from nothing.
And if we add, according to Maimonides, that the Creator created time with the creation of the world, and time was not always there (because He is above time — again, a concept with no intelligible meaning for us), then also this wonder, that He created the world at some point/in time while there was at that stage no concept of time at all, so that this bizarre transition from something to nothing and from no-time to time is again inconceivable — and from Maimonides’ perspective this is not a logical contradiction but a necessity of faith.
For, as is known, all our discussions and the discussions of all philosophers throughout the generations on this and similar matters are only in the category of hypotheses and speculations, and an attempt to pose and choose what is least implausible, as is known from the words of Thomas. Maimonides held that this is the least implausible, in light of our need to take into account our faith in the Creator and in free choice.
Indeed, what will the kabbalists answer, those who rejected creation ex nihilo in its plain sense? What will they hold regarding the paradox of choice? Perhaps like R. Hasdai, the disciple of the Ran, and others among our sages, who indeed doubted the reality of human choice; or like other of our teachers who denied the Creator knowledge of choice on the grounds that this is a logical contradiction.
Your response, our teacher?
How does this explanation of mine in Maimonides strike you?
I no longer remember what we were discussing here, and your lengthiness makes it hard for me to respond.
It is not connected at all to what we were discussing
It stands on its own
Only to explain how Maimonides, who is against logical contradictions like everyone else, nevertheless chose, in the paradox of choice, a way that seems to be a logical contradiction
Please, please read it; it’s light and flowing, and it seems to me you’ll enjoy it
Thank you
I’m sorry that you aren’t reading it
In any case, something else
From the whole sugya of changes in nature in halakha, even in matters where it is said to be a law given to Moses at Sinai (and there are many examples), and even in matters where that is the plain meaning of the verse
one clearly sees not like Maimonides, but rather that the Holy One, blessed be He, indeed does not know future events
And I saw that people point out that even Onkelos, whose way is to distance corporeality from the Creator, in the Akedah of Isaac left it in its plain sense: “now I know that you fear God”
I just now saw (from Rabbi Raphael Berdugo, one of the great sages of Morocco, a dayan and decisor, in his book May Menuchot, on the Akedah passage)
that he also concludes as you do, and proves against Maimonides from Maimonides himself. Fine words, and I said I would not withhold good from its owner.
“And we shall explain somewhat of the verses of the Akedah. Behold, all the commentators have wearied themselves to find an opening regarding the matter of the tests found in Scripture — that the Lord, may He be blessed, tests His creatures in some way — after it is one of the principles of faith that He, may He be exalted, examines hearts, probes kidneys, and sees the future. So how could He be uncertain about anything to the point that He would need to test [in order] to know? And all of them strained in explaining this matter, as you will see…
But I shall speak the truth and not fear, for what is required by the plain sense of the verses in their proper setting is that His knowledge, may He be blessed, of future things is ‘truth and faithfulness,’ if that future is not necessitated as a matter of possibility [choice] by Him. But if His wisdom, may He be blessed, required that that matter be possible — as with righteousness and wickedness, which His wisdom decreed should be in human choice — then no knowledge at all can apply to it prior to its occurrence. For if it is bounded by knowledge, it is not in man’s choice. And this, in my limited opinion, belongs to the ‘class of the impossible’ mentioned by our Rabbi in the Guide (III, chapter 15)…
Thus I, the small one, say that His knowledge, may He be blessed, of future things in matters of righteousness and wickedness together with freedom of choice are two opposites in one subject, which belongs to the class of the impossible. And our Rabbi too concedes this — I mean, he concedes that they contradict one another.
Only that he, of blessed memory, thinks it belongs to the class of the possible, except that we suffer it and do not know how it can be. Of this it is said (Isaiah 55:9): ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.’ And he elaborated on this in the Guide, in Madda, and in his Eight Chapters; see there.
And I did not understand his opinion, of blessed memory: since the end of the answer is ignorance, who permitted us to place this in the class of the possible? For after all, the very same answer he gave to the contradiction between knowledge and possibility could just as well be given to everything in the class of the impossible. And the matter requires study.
And while I was searching in this to find myself a companion, the Lord happened to place before me, and I found myself a great companion and teacher, the true philosopher Rabbeinu Levi ben Gershom, of blessed memory… And we may also attribute this view to our master and great one, the light of our eyes, Rashi, of blessed memory…
I stand at the middle gate between the two sides, and I saw one of the ancients butting westward and northward, standing against Ralbag, of blessed memory… words that are forbidden to hear against the great Rabbi Ralbag, of blessed memory, to whom among all the sages of Israel after him there is none comparable… and this proves nothing at all. On the contrary, I am close to saying that this verse supports Ralbag’s view, and what the rabbi thought to be an accusation is itself a defense.
And in my limited opinion, there is a verse in the Torah in support of that view, namely…
And in my limited opinion, this belief is sweeter than honey and the honeycomb, for knowledge of a possible thing is not conceivable at all, and the opposite of it undermines the whole Torah in general, because it contradicts the entire principle of choice. And may the Rock of Israel save us from errors:
And it is true that the masses of aggadot of our Sages in the Gemara and Midrashim [seem to imply] that God knows the sins committed in the end, and they expound countless derashot, and that God knew they would make the calf, and knew that the Temple would be destroyed, and the like. And all this, in my limited opinion, is impossible…
And I, the small one, say: if we believe this belief, the force of the Torah is weakened, and Heaven forbid the world was created in vain, since God sees the future possibilities. And one who probes this a bit deeply will see that the matter is true.”
Regarding note 2, see –
Columns 20, 27, 87, and 210, and perhaps there are others that I missed