Bo (5765)

From the book Mida Tova: Articles on the Hermeneutical Principles by Rabbi Michael Avraham. Translated from Hebrew using gpt-5.4 (reasoning_effort=high, batch API).

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With God’s help — Midah Tovah — Sabbath eve of Parashat Bo, 5766

The Questions

1. Were there approaches within Jewish tradition that believed in contradictions?
2. Is it possible at all to believe in logical contradictions?
3. Between Judaism and Christianity.
4. Between logical contradictions and physical contradictions.
5. On synthetic-a-priori contradictions as a third type.
6. How did Rabbi Akiva live with two verses that contradict one another without reconciling them?

The Hermeneutical Principle

Two verses that contradict one another.

A. Summary of Last Year’s Article

“‘And it shall be for you’—to include the Passover offering of later generations, teaching that it may come only from sheep and from goats; these are the words of Rabbi Eliezer. Rabbi Yoshiyah says: Why is ‘you shall take’ stated? Because it is said, ‘And you shall sacrifice the Passover to the Lord your God, flock and herd’ (Deuteronomy 16:2). ‘Flock’ refers to the Passover offering, and ‘herd’ to the festal offering. Do you say so, or perhaps both this and that refer to the Passover offering? And how then do I uphold the verse ‘a male lamb without blemish’? [I would answer:] that refers to the Passover in Egypt, but the Passover of later generations may be brought from either this or that. Therefore Scripture says, ‘From the sheep and from the goats you shall take.’ Since there was no need to say ‘you shall take,’ why was it said? To teach that the Passover of later generations may be brought only from sheep and from goats. These are the words of Rabbi Yoshiyah.

“Rabbi Yonatan says: ‘Flock’ refers to the Passover offering, and ‘herd’ to the festal offering. Do you say so, or perhaps both this and that refer to the Passover offering? And how then do I uphold the verse ‘a male lamb without blemish’? [I would answer:] that refers to the Passover in Egypt, but the Passover of later generations may be brought from either this or that. Therefore Scripture says, ‘And you shall perform this service in this month’ (Exodus 13:5): just as you performed the service in Egypt, so shall you do for later generations. These are the words of Rabbi Yonatan.

“Rabbi Eliezer says: ‘Flock’ refers to the Passover offering, and ‘herd’ to the festal offering. Do you say so, or perhaps both this and that refer to the Passover offering? And how then do I uphold ‘a male lamb…’? [I would answer:] that refers to the Passover in Egypt, but the Passover of later generations may be brought from either this or that. Therefore Scripture says, ‘And you shall observe this thing as a statute for you’ (Exodus 12:24)—behold, the Passover of later generations has already been stated. If so, what is the meaning of ‘And you shall sacrifice the Passover to the Lord your God, flock and herd’? ‘Flock’ for the Passover offering, and ‘herd’ for the festal offering.

“Rabbi Akiva says: One verse says, ‘And you shall sacrifice the Passover to the Lord your God, flock and herd,’ and another verse says, ‘From the sheep and from the goats you shall take.’ How can these two verses stand? You must say: this is a principle in the Torah—two verses that stand against one another and contradict one another remain in place until a third verse comes and decides between them. Scripture therefore says, ‘Draw out and take for yourselves sheep according to your families, and slaughter the Passover offering’—sheep for the Passover offering, and not herd for the Passover offering.

“Rabbi Yishmael says: Scripture is speaking of the festal offering brought together with the Passover. Do you say so, or perhaps it is speaking only of the Passover offering itself? When it says, ‘a male lamb without blemish,’ the Passover offering itself has already been stated. What then is the meaning of ‘And you shall sacrifice the Passover to the Lord your God, flock and herd’? Scripture is speaking of the festal offering brought with the Passover.

“Rabbi says: Scripture is speaking of a sacrifice that may come from herd just as from flock—and what is that? A peace offering. From here they said: surplus peace offerings are offered as peace offerings, and surplus Passover offerings are offered as peace offerings.”

(Mekhilta de-Rabbi Yishmael, Bo, Tractate Pisha, parasha 4, s.v. “And it shall be for you”; Midrash Tannaim to Deuteronomy 16:2, s.v. “And you shall sacrifice”)

This midrash (rabbinic interpretive text) discusses a contradiction in the laws of the Passover offering as they appear in the Torah. On the one hand, the verses in our portion instruct that it must come “from the sheep and from the goats,” that is, from the flock. On the other hand, in Parashat Re’eh the verse commands us to offer “flock and herd,” that is, from cattle as well—or at least from cattle too. The first part of the midrash presents three different ways of resolving the contradiction by distinguishing between the Passover in Egypt and the Passover of later generations, and in the end rejects that distinction, for three different reasons. The conclusion, according to all of them, is that the verse speaking of flock refers to the Passover offering, whereas the word “herd” was said only with respect to the festal offering. The Passover offering itself comes only from the flock.

Rabbi Akiva now enters and claims that there is a principle in the Torah of “two verses that contradict one another,” and that in such a case we must deliberate in light of a third verse that decides between them. The conclusion: the Passover offering comes only from the flock. We saw that Rabbi Akiva does not reconcile the two verses at all. The wording “this is a principle in the Torah” also indicates that Rabbi Akiva is trying to teach us a different hermeneutical foundation, one not found in the other opinions.¹

The principle of “two verses that contradict one another” appears at the end of Rabbi Yishmael’s list of the thirteen hermeneutical principles at the beginning of the Sifra. We saw that Rabbi Yishmael and Rabbi Akiva relate to it differently. According to Rabbi Yishmael, the third verse points us toward a mediating or conciliatory direction that helps us reconcile the two verses. According to Rabbi Akiva, the third verse tells us how to act in practice, but does not resolve the contradiction itself.

We then cited the words of Raavad in his commentary on the baraita of the thirteen hermeneutical principles—a view also brought by Rabbi Jacob Hagiz in Tehillat Hokhmah, in his discussion of the thirteenth principle—who explains that the principle of “two verses that contradict one another” underlies even the possibility of resolving contradictions in Scripture when no third verse explicitly does so. We noted that this is a reasonable and almost necessary conclusion if one understands the principle in the school of Rabbi Yishmael. By contrast, according to Rabbi Akiva a third verse is indeed required, for without a verse and without a resolution of the contradiction, we would have no way at all to decide how to act in practice.

It follows that Rabbi Yishmael’s principle is interpretive—how to explain the verses—whereas Rabbi Akiva’s principle is halakhic (Jewish law)—how to act. This explained why it is specifically Rabbi Akiva who invokes this principle here, since our case is a halakhic midrash (rabbinic legal interpretation), unlike most applications of this principle, which deal with non-legal midrashic interpretation. The principle that appears in Rabbi Yishmael’s baraita is a different one: mediation rather than decision, and therefore it is not relevant to our midrash.²

We then described the meaning of the concept of “decision” as it appears in the two Talmuds. In neither Talmud is there direct use of this hermeneutical principle, except in the broader sense assigned to it by Raavad, as noted above. Usually the meaning is not compromise or mediation, as in the school of Rabbi Yishmael, but rather decision in the modern sense—choosing one of two possibilities—as in the school of Rabbi Akiva. Yet we saw that in the discussion of “a third opinion decides,” at least according to Rashi, the concept does appear in the sense found in the school of Rabbi Yishmael, namely in the sense of compromise.

We then turned to the question: what is the novelty of this principle according to the school of Rabbi Yishmael? Without it, would we not have tried to reconcile two verses that contradict one another and remove the contradiction between them? Even more so: what did Raavad add when he found in this principle a source for the Sages’ general method of removing contradictions? Had we not been given the principle of “two verses that contradict one another,” would we really leave an incoherence standing when it lay within our power to resolve it?

It seems highly plausible that the novelty is precisely this: without the principle, we really would have left the verses in contradiction and drawn no conclusions from them. Such an attitude would indeed be unreasonable with regard to differing views of the Sages, or a contradiction between two statements of one sage. In those cases it is natural to reconcile the sayings so that they do not contradict one another, as we always do in rational interpretation—“not to leave an incoherence standing,” in Raavad’s phrase. But with respect to verses of the Torah, it may be that we are forbidden to rely on distinctions we devise on our own.

We saw that one may distinguish between a case in which the mediating distinction arises naturally from the disputed situation, and a forced interpretive construction that divides the verses artificially. In order to adopt a strained construction that will permit us to escape the contradiction, a Sinaitic tradition of the hermeneutical principle “two verses that contradict one another” is required. We noted that where the distinction is natural and compelling, Rabbi Akiva too may agree that the verses should be reconciled rather than one decided against the other.

At the end of the discussion we cited an aggadic source from the end of tractate Makkot, where Rabbi Akiva’s response to incomprehensible phenomena such as the destruction and the desecration of God’s name caused by it is described. Rabbi Akiva does not weep but laughs, for in the absence of a resolution he prefers to live with the difficulty rather than seek forced solutions. Yet he also believes that a solution exists and will eventually be revealed. As we saw above, in his view there is a decision about how to act, but no resolution of the difficulty itself. Rabbi Akiva, it seems, lives quite well with contradictions.

B. Can One Live with Contradictions?

Introduction

The title of this chapter is identical to the title of last year’s article. We saw that when there is a contradiction between two verses, the school of Rabbi Yishmael attempts to reconcile them, with or without a third and deciding verse. Rabbi Akiva, by contrast, lives with the contradiction until a satisfactory solution is disclosed to him. It therefore seems that according to Rabbi Akiva one can live with contradictions.

This week we will try to understand whether and how one can live with contradictions. What problems are involved in doing so? What kinds of contradiction can nevertheless be resolved? And in which situations and contexts can this be done? It hardly needs saying that this subject requires a much broader framework and a far more detailed discussion; here we can only touch the surface.

Preliminary Remark: The Attitude of Torah Thought to Contradictions and Paradoxes

The title of this subsection is itself problematic. What exactly is “Torah thought”? Does it mean Kabbalah? Which Kabbalistic stream? Hasidism—which one? Medieval thought—which thinkers? The thought of the Sages—which ones? There are many shades and varieties here, and it is very difficult to make a claim in the name of “Torah thought” in general.

Specifically with regard to contradictions as well, one can find different approaches. On the one hand, there are rationalists who refuse to recognize the possibility of contradictions. On the other hand, there are those who incline more toward the esoteric and the mystical, and they will be more open to ideas about living with contradictions.

Today one hears quite a few claims that religious thought is bound up with contradictions. Such claims used to come mainly from outside, as criticism of the religious world and of faith, but over the last decades we have heard more and more such claims from within the Torah-Jewish world itself. Many argue that contradictions and paradoxes are not merely accidental features of some religious system or other, but are essentially bound up with its very consistency, for two main reasons, which do not themselves conflict:

1. Religion deals with God, and this is a being not subject to human rational and logical categories.
2. Faith, in its essence—perhaps for that very reason—is a different “discipline,” if it is a discipline at all, from philosophy. Whatever can be reached by the use of reason belongs to the domain of thought and general philosophy. Faith appears to include things that categorically do not belong to that domain, and therefore it requires “faith,” as distinct from persuasion or logical validity, which accompany rational argument.

A Remark on Christianity’s Attitude to Paradoxes

Christian thought displays a very strong tendency in this mystical direction. This tendency is expressed in Tertullian’s well-known statement:³ “I believe because it is paradoxical.” Note thoroughly: not despite its paradoxicality, but because of it. This statement rests on precisely the conception of “faith” described above.

Soren Kierkegaard likewise repeatedly describes faith as a stage that lies “above reason” and is bound up with paradox, both moral and logical. He describes human development in three ascending stages: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. The aesthetic person follows natural life. The ethical person overcomes naturalness and subjects it to the commands of reason and morality—much like Kant’s moral theory, which grounded morality in overcoming natural inclination. Of course, there are much earlier rabbinic precedents for this as well: “Who is mighty? One who conquers his impulse,” and the like. The religious person, whose typological ideal in Kierkegaard’s thought—embodied by Abraham—is called “the knight of faith,” goes beyond even that stage. He stands above rational considerations and lives within paradoxes, both moral and logical.

The late medieval Christian thinker Nicholas of Cusa made the unity of opposites into a basic theory, in his book The Coincidence of Opposites:⁴

Thus I saw how great the need is to enter into darkness in order to receive the union of opposites beyond the capacity of reason to grasp, and there to seek truth, in the place where I encounter the impossible.

Already here we should note that, in contrast to all this, Rudolf Otto—also a Christian philosopher—in the introduction to the first English edition of his book The Holy, published in 1923, explicitly distances himself from the non-rationalist tendencies that had begun to take over the philosophy of religion at that time, and writes:⁵

The non-rational has now become a favorite theme for all who are too lazy to think, or too quick to evade the wearisome duty of clarifying their ideas and grounding their beliefs upon coherent thought… Not only must philosophical discussion of the non-rational itself be rational, but religious faith too is aided by conceptual expression, for only through it is it fixed as “faith”… as distinct from mere feeling.

According to him, religious thought ought to recognize and engage with the numinous,³ but not with the paradoxical.

The Basic Claim

Our main claim is that the central current of Jewish tradition does not accept this approach to faith. The main stream treats contradictions as a phenomenon to be combated, and certainly not something with which one should reconcile oneself and live. As we shall see below, the motivation for this approach is not necessarily rooted in the world of faith and theology, but in logical foundations. Because of that, we will want to interpret the sources that seem to suggest a different, more Christian, approach in a way that reconciles them with the rationalist approach described above.

Contemporary sources that lean more and more in the esoteric direction, and attribute all sorts of contradictions to the Holy One, blessed be He, and to faith, are in our view under Christian influence—direct or indirect, conscious or unconscious. We therefore need to examine their place within our tradition and our attitude toward them.

Sources from the Rishonim

In our tradition there are quite a number of sources that express the rationalist approach described above, chiefly in the literature of the Rishonim.⁴ We will not bring them all here, and will suffice with the words of Rashba and Maimonides, two of the greatest medieval authorities, as representatives of the mainstream position within Jewish tradition.

Rashba, in a responsum (part 4, no. 234), rejects belief in the impossible, yet at the same time opens the door to the continuation of the discussion. There he was asked by Rabbi Samuel ha-Salmi about the revelation at Mount Sinai: how could the entire people have merited receiving the Torah through the vision of prophecy, when it is well known that there are many levels a person must pass through in order to be fit for prophecy? As background to the question, Rashba cites philosophers who classify the granting of prophecy to one unworthy of it among the “impossibilities.”

But precisely at this point he disagrees both with the questioner and with those thinkers. On the one hand, in his view, if these were indeed true impossibilities, then one could not believe in them; here he joins the approaches we mentioned above. Yet he takes one further step and denies that granting prophecy to one unworthy of it really deserves the label “impossible.” That point, which opens the continuation of our discussion, will be taken up in the next section.

Two Kinds of Impossibility

Toward the end of the responsum, Rashba writes forcefully, in his own golden language:

In my view, the impossible is of two kinds. One is intrinsically and necessarily impossible, straightforwardly so in itself: that the side of a square should be greater than its diagonal; or that what was should not have been; and many similar cases. This is absolutely impossible in itself; no possibility can be conceived for it.

The second kind is impossible not in itself, but only from our perspective, because of the limits of wisdom and because nature prevents it. We do not find that a rock brings forth water, or that the sea splits for a time and then returns, or that the sun and moon stand still and neither circle nor move from their place, or that the sun go backward, and many similar things. The resurrection of the dead belongs to this class as well.

Yet none of this is impossible except from the standpoint of the limited wisdom of all created beings, and because of their lack of power to alter what has been stamped with the seal of nature. But according to the law of the Creator, blessed be He, it is not impossible at all; rather, it is necessitated by His wisdom, blessed be He, for no deficiency or weakness can be attributed to Him, by virtue of His wisdom, since He and His wisdom are one. We do not know His wisdom until we know His essence.

In this way all the miracles that have occurred, and that will occur, are upheld, and no doubt remains concerning anything Scripture has said in those places where we need the straightforward meaning for the preservation of faith, and what follows from it. But in places where we do not need that, if you wish you may interpret them according to wisdom—even if there is no need to do so—whether because philosophical reasoning requires it or merely out of simple preference. This is what seems to me, in general, regarding these matters.

Rashba distinguishes here between two kinds of “impossibilities”:

• Logical-conceptual impossibilities. These are contradictions that do not arise because of limitations in our thinking, but because of their own nature. Believing that a certain thing both was and was not is impossible not because of our limitations, but in itself. So too, believing that the side of a square is greater than its diagonal. All these are forms of belief for which “no possibility can be conceived.”
• Physical impossibilities. These are contradictions rooted in the nature of the world. We are unable to grasp such a phenomenon, but it is certainly possible in itself. For example, all the miracles the Holy One, blessed be He, performed for us, such as making the sun and moon stand still, and so forth.

Interpreting Rashba’s Distinction: Maimonides in the Guide

At first glance, Rashba is distinguishing between contradictions that arise from our minds and contradictions that arise from the nature of the world. But closer examination shows that he means something slightly different. Contradictions of the first kind are contradictions that cannot even be imagined in thought. These are contradictions rooted in the concepts themselves, or contradictions on the logical plane. Let us call them logical contradictions. By contrast, contradictions of the second kind are rooted in the nature of reality as we know it. They run against the laws of nature, but we have no principled difficulty imagining their occurrence. Here the problem is not conceptual or logical, but natural law. Let us call them physical contradictions.

Rashba writes that the Holy One, blessed be He, is not limited in any way, and therefore physical contradictions pose no problem for Him. He who said to the oil that it should burn can say to the vinegar that it should burn. The one who established the laws of nature can also overcome them. But with regard to logical contradictions, even the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot depart from them. He cannot create a square whose side is greater than its diagonal, for if it were so, it would no longer be a square.

The foundation of this is explicit in Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed, part 3, chapter 15:

The impossible has a fixed and permanent nature. It is not the product of an agent, and no change in it is at all possible. Therefore God is not described as having power over it. No thinker at all disagrees about this, and only one who does not understand intelligible matters can fail to grasp it… Likewise, that God should produce another being like Himself, or bring Himself into nonexistence, or become corporeal, or undergo change—all this belongs to the class of the impossible, and God is not described as having power over any of these…

It has thus been made clear that according to every opinion there are impossible things, that their existence is falsehood, and that God is not described as having power over them. There is no weakness in Him, nor any lack of power, in His not changing them, for they persist according to their own nature and are not the product of an agent. It has therefore become clear that the real point of dispute concerns those things about which one must decide to which of the two classes they belong: the class of the impossible or the class of the possible. Understand this well.

Maimonides adds that some logical impossibilities involve God’s inability to change Himself—turning Himself into matter, annihilating Himself, or even changing His own essence. An example is the terrible magician in the well-known children’s story of Puss in Boots, where the magician turns himself into a mouse and the cat devours him. The theological analogue is obvious: can God turn Himself into a human being so that we could shoot Him and destroy Him? Certainly not. So there are things that are impossible even for God Himself.⁵

The Stone That God Cannot Lift

The hackneyed philosophical difficulty about omnipotence⁶ stems from confusion exactly at this point. When person A asks person B, who attributes unlimited power to some being we shall call X,⁷ “Can X create a stone that He Himself cannot lift?”, the paradox is that whether B answers yes or no, the conclusion seems to be that X is not omnipotent.

But there is a basic fallacy here. When A asks B this question, he must work within B’s assumptions and show that those assumptions entangle B in contradiction. Let us therefore examine the question from within B’s own assumptions, and we will see that it is simply meaningless. If I assume that X is omnipotent, then there is no stone that X cannot lift. The question “Can X create a stone that He Himself cannot lift?” is therefore equivalent to the question “Can one create a stone that an omnipotent being cannot lift?” But what meaning can the expression “an omnipotent being cannot” possibly have? It is a contradictory expression, and therefore the question has no meaning.

This question is similar to asking whether the omnipotent can create a round triangle, or a square whose side is longer than its diagonal. Here too the answer is that one cannot answer a question whose terms are meaningless. Only when A succeeds in explaining to his interlocutor B the meaning of the terms in his question may he reasonably expect an answer.

Why Does This Not Contradict God’s Omnipotence?

Why, then, does such a picture not contradict the claim that God is omnipotent? The answer is that there is no restriction here on God’s omnipotence at all. In fact, this is a logical restriction on the concept of “omnipotence” as used in our language. It is a logical impossibility, and therefore even God cannot deviate from it. But the reason is not any deficiency in Him; it lies in the very impossibility of the thing. Moreover, even theoretically, if He could do such a thing, we could not know it, nor could we state it in our language or think it in our thought.⁸

One conclusion therefore emerges clearly from everything said thus far: belief in logical contradictions is problematic not because of some tradition or some Jewish or Christian approach of one kind or another. The problem is logical. Such a belief has no cognitive content at all. One who says he believes in a thing and its opposite is merely chirping like a starling; he is saying nothing whatsoever.

Of course, all this applies to belief in logical contradictions. Such contradictions generate terms that have no meaning—in other words, these linguistic entities do not represent concepts. Physical contradictions, however, that is, claims that run contrary to the laws of nature, are not meaningless, and one can certainly believe in their existence. One can likewise believe in divine acts that override the laws of nature, since these statements do have meaning, and therefore clear cognitive content.

The conclusion is that even if someone comes and says he believes in logical contradictions, all he is doing is moving his lips; he is not saying anything. At this level there is no room for differing “approaches,” as we suggested at the beginning. Belief in contradictions can refer only to physical contradictions, exactly as Rashba and Maimonides wrote.

The Problem of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom

Let us now take as an example the problem of foreknowledge and free choice, as presented by Maimonides in Laws of Repentance 5:5 and elsewhere.⁹ The Shelah, in his introduction, in the section called Beit Ha-Behirah, suggests that God in fact does not know the future, for otherwise we would not possess free choice; he claims that this is also Maimonides’ intention. Something similar was written by the author of Or Ha-Hayyim in his commentary at the end of Parashat Bereshit. Both assume that this is a logical contradiction, and therefore there is no possibility of accepting both sides of it. What, then, will those say who are willing to adopt both of these beliefs together?

According to them, our tradition requires us to accept both horns of the dilemma. If so, this cannot be a logical contradiction. As we saw above, such contradictions cannot even be formulated, let alone accepted. It therefore seems that we are dealing here with a third type of contradiction, lying between logical-conceptual impossibilities and physical impossibilities.

Indeed, the problem of foreknowledge and free choice plainly does not belong to the class of physical contradictions. Even without any empirical data about the behavior of the world and its laws, we understand that one cannot simply adopt both the claim that God knows everything in advance and the claim that our actions are left to us to choose and perform as we see fit. The conclusion is that this contradiction is a priori—that is, prior to experience. By contrast, physical contradictions are a posteriori contradictions, that is, contradictions based on experience.

On the other hand, this does not seem to be a logical-conceptual contradiction, since the concepts “foreknowledge” and “free choice” each have an independent meaning. This is not a matter of a thing and its negation in the strict logical sense, and it is hard to say that the combination “foreknowledge and free choice” has no meaning whatsoever. One may perhaps characterize the difference by saying that logical-conceptual impossibilities are combinations of terms that have no meaning at all. The meaning of one is simply the negation of the other, and one cannot understand the first without understanding the second. By contrast, in the combination “foreknowledge and free choice,” each of the terms has a clear meaning independent of the other, and therefore the combination as a whole also has meaning. The claim that we believe in that combination has cognitive content. Thus, the contradiction between God’s foreknowledge and human freedom is not an analytic contradiction—that is, one that arises from the concepts involved themselves—but it is a priori, in that it does not depend on empirical facts.

A Third Type of Contradiction: The Synthetic A Priori Contradiction

The conclusion is that the contradiction between divine foreknowledge and human freedom does not stem from the laws of logic or from the meanings of the concepts, and therefore it is not logical-analytic. On the other hand, it does not arise from the laws of nature, and therefore it is not physical. Our conclusion was that this is a contradiction of some intermediate status. But what, then, is such a contradiction based on? If not on the laws of nature and not on any empirical observation, and also not on a logical-conceptual analysis of the concepts involved, then it must arise from some rational intuition. Such an intuition is apparently prior to experience, but it is not located on the plane of pure logic.

In Kantian terms, one may say that this contradiction is a priori—prior to experience—but not analytic, that is, not derived solely from analysis of the concepts. The term opposed to “analytic” in Kant is “synthetic.” If an analytic claim is one derived from analyzing the concepts involved, then a synthetic claim is one that, in order to be known and understood, requires supplementation—some additional information added in synthesis. Where does that information come from? As we have seen, not from experience, and not from the laws of logic. Apparently it comes from our a priori rational intuition.

A contradiction of this kind is called in the book Two Carts and a Balloon (gate 12) a synthetic-a-priori contradiction. Many have denied that any such combination exists, but Kant defined it and even argued—wrongly, in our view—for its existence. The expression “synthetic a priori” points to a kind of judgment that is not merely conceptual analysis, but also not the result of empirical observation. It is a judgment of reason, prior to experience, yet adding information beyond what is contained in the concepts involved. In other words: it is a claim about the world, but it is not learned from observation; it precedes experience. Accordingly, a synthetic-a-priori contradiction is a claim about something that cannot exist in the world, even though no observation of the world is needed in order to assert that.

The dichotomous division of contradictions into analytic and physical assumes that there is nothing in between. Our claim, however, is that there is something in between: between those two spheres—the logical and the empirical—there is an intermediate sphere.

Returning to the Question of the Rationality of Faith

This may be the real sting in religious faith. We saw above that the Christian tendency to bind faith together with life in contradiction stems from the notion that God is omnipotent and not subject to any law. Likewise, their conception of “faith” itself leads them to think that it contains something beyond ordinary rational-philosophical thought. As we saw, God can indeed bend the laws of nature, but those are not genuine impossibilities. On the other hand, He cannot bend the laws of logic, which are true impossibilities. So where, if anywhere, can one speak of His ability to overcome impossibility? In other words: where do the concepts of divine omnipotence enter, and where is our faith required in addition to thought and judgment? If anywhere, then only on the synthetic-a-priori plane.

There is no reason in the world that a nonbeliever should accept the reality and possibility of a combination that constitutes a synthetic-a-priori contradiction.¹⁰ After all, it is still a contradiction. Moreover, even a contradiction to the laws of nature will not generally be acceptable to him. A person whose faith is “Christian” in character proposes the opposite pole: belief in logical contradictions. But in the Jewish tradition—and, indeed, as any reasonable person must understand—faith cannot transgress logic, contrary to Christian illusions. It can, of course, transgress physics, and in our view it can also transgress our a priori rational intuitions. As explained in Two Carts and a Balloon, faith is in fact the only reasonable basis for the synthetic a priori in general.

Is Rabbi Akiva “Christian” in His Approach?

As we saw above, Rabbi Yishmael uses the hermeneutical principle of “two verses that contradict one another” in a rationalist way. He finds an explanation and reconciles the two contradictory verses. We also saw that even according to his view there is reason for this hermeneutical principle to be transmitted to us by tradition, because we would not have ventured to adopt strained interpretations to reconcile verses without Sinaitic authorization. But how does all this fit with Rabbi Akiva’s approach? As we saw, Rabbi Akiva prefers to live with the contradiction in the world of ideas, and only on the plane of halakhic decision does he take a decisive position. Is Rabbi Akiva, then, “Christian” in his approach? Does he accept the possibility of contradictions and of living within them?

The medieval commentators raise a similar difficulty concerning the Talmudic statement regarding disputes among the Sages—“These and those are the words of the living God” (Babylonian Talmud, Eruvin 13b; Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 6b). At first glance this sounds like a postulate instructing us to live with contradiction.

But first we should notice that many commentators really do ask how this is possible, and they offer various explanations for it.¹¹ Precisely from this one sees even more clearly the rationalist character of the main stream within Jewish tradition.

Maharal and Rabbi Tzadok, for example, explain this statement by means of the Talmudic passage (Babylonian Talmud, Eruvin 13b) that says that in every issue there are 150 reasons for prohibition and 150 reasons for permission, and all are true. It is the weighing of those reasons that leads to the halakhic ruling and the decision; see also Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 34b, and our article for Parashat Shemot, 5766. But even after the ruling has been given, all the reasons in every direction remain in existence and remain true.

Beyond that, there is no contradiction at all in saying that within one sugya there are different reasons leading to opposing conclusions: from the standpoint of reason A the halakha should be X, and from the standpoint of reason B it should be Y. The final decision results from various processes of weighing, and even those can themselves be disputed.

It seems that Rabbi Akiva means precisely something of this sort. There is no reason to assume that he advocates logical contradictions or the tricks of Christian dialectic. His claim is that if there are two contradictory verses, then presumably there are reasons pointing in both directions, and the Torah wishes to teach us both of them. Still, the need remains to decide the halakha, so that we know how to act. Here a third verse must appear and show us the way.

In our example, Rabbi Akiva apparently holds that the Torah teaches us that there is a value in offering the Passover from cattle, and also a value in offering it from flock. In the end, however, only one sacrifice is brought, and therefore a decision must be made. The third verse teaches us that in practice we must bring it from the flock and not from the herd. The other reasons remain on the theoretical plane; they belong to Torah study, but not to direct practical observance.¹²

Footnotes