Q&A: Divine Revelation.
Divine Revelation.
Question
Hello Rabbi!
In the book The First Being, on page 464 and onward, you wrote about the issue of revelation.
You didn’t elaborate very much on why it is likely that there was a revelation; rather, you wrote that this is self-evident, and that it is more reasonable to believe it happened than that it didn’t. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I felt you didn’t expand enough on the topic…
I would be very glad if you could elaborate more on why it is reasonable that there was indeed a revelation, please.
Answer
I explained this there in detail in the book. I wrote that if God created a world, it is reasonable to assume He did so for some purpose. I further added that it is not reasonable that morality is that purpose. From this it follows that there must be a revelation that tells us what our purpose here is. And after that, a tradition reaches us saying that there indeed was a revelation. That combination means that it is likely that there really was one.
Discussion on Answer
I explained it briefly here and at length there. We cannot arrive at it on our own, because it is not morality.
I join the claim that the “need for revelation” is a point you expanded on less in the chain from deism to theism. I want to sharpen that the problem I had in understanding your answer is that you yourself raise an objection against the explanation you give (the anthropomorphism objection), and answer it later in the book, and that confused me a bit.
From what I understand from your answer above and from going back over the book, the question and answer are as follows:
On p. 459 it says that it cannot be that the Creator has only a moral demand of us; there must also be a religious purpose. And from this it follows that it is likely there would be a revelation in which we hear the content of this religious demand. So you yourself raise a possible objection that this involves anthropomorphizing God (that He needs, like us, to explain His desires), and you solve it partially by saying that this anthropomorphism is a generalization it is reasonable to make in the absence of other examples.
On p. 473: after we have seen arguments for the plausibility of the revelation tradition, this strengthens the earlier claim that revelation is to be expected.
The question that occurs to me now is whether there isn’t some circularity in the addition on p. 473. I would have agreed to make do with what you said on p. 459, but is it “legitimate” to get reinforcement for the claim that revelation is a priori plausible from some event that happened?
There is no circularity here at all. It is a convergence of arguments. There is some weight to the tradition, and there is weight to the a priori argument regarding revelation. Each of these two by itself may not be entirely decisive. But now, when a tradition reaches me, it is strengthened and strengthens the a priori argument. Together they lead to the conclusion that there was a revelation.
Let me sharpen that. The tradition does not strengthen the a priori argument, although that too is possible. Together, they strengthen the claim that God revealed Himself.
It could be that God wants us to behave in a certain way, but He also wants us to arrive at that on our own and not through His direct revelation. I don’t see why it is necessary that there be a revelation just because God created us for some particular reason.