Q&A: The Hiddenness of Divinity
The Hiddenness of Divinity
Question
From what I understood, you claim that God is hidden in our time. My question is: do you think He was ever revealed at some point? Say, in the period of the Patriarchs or at Mount Sinai? Did He reveal Himself to the prophets? When exactly did He disappear? A hundred years ago, or a thousand years ago?
If so, then according to your argument, the course of events is:
13 billion years ago – God creates the world in the Big Bang, and sets its laws, including evolution
About a hundred thousand years ago – Homo sapiens develops as the dominant species on earth
About three thousand years ago – God reveals Himself to Abraham – from then on He is revealed to humanity… until…
A hundred/a thousand years ago God disappears and hides from the world…
So more broadly, my questions are:
Why did He reveal Himself for a certain period and then disappear?
If He really did disappear, what is His significance today?
If He never revealed Himself at all, what is the meaning of the revelation at Mount Sinai?
Thanks,
Ayelet
Answer
Hello Ayelet.
I’ll just note regarding your opening, that the picture you described fits the traditional description perfectly. That is not my innovation. Prophecy ceased and miracles stopped roughly from the beginning of the Second Temple period.
To your questions:
- I have no idea (like many other things He does). I can offer a speculative suggestion: perhaps we matured, and therefore He stopped “holding our hand,” like a child who grows up and whose parents allow him to manage on his own.
- His significance is not connected to His appearance in the world. I do not keep the commandments in order to receive some kind of relationship from Him or so that He will act in some particular way. On the contrary, the purpose of the commandments is that we should act here in His place.
- I didn’t understand the question. He apparently did reveal Himself in the past (that is what the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and our tradition tell us). But even if not—I don’t understand what the problem would be with a one-time revelation in order to tell us what He wants from us.
Discussion on Answer
A few days ago a question similar to yours was discussed here (I can’t find the link right now). God has to reveal Himself at some stage in order to tell us what He wants. So when is He supposed to reveal Himself? Apparently when the world and human society have reached the appropriate and sufficient stage to receive those instructions and commandments. That moment arrived at the revelation at Mount Sinai. What is difficult about that? We don’t need Him. He needs us.
And in general, what does this have to do with Occam’s razor?
A rational person is supposed to accept this if there is reasonable evidence that it happened. A rational person is not supposed to decide on God’s behalf what is reasonable for Him to do and what is not.
I wrote something similar in the third notebook regarding evolution. Some wonder why God let life develop in such a convoluted way (through evolution), with a lot of waste and so on. And to that I answered that even if that path is not clear to me, the question whether God did it or not should be determined by the question of whether it is reasonable that it happened on its own. If I don’t understand why He did it, that does not mean He did not do it. It only means that I do not understand God and His ways of operating. Not really surprising, given the gap between us.
Rabbi, I’m unable to understand the arbitrary nature of revelation. At some point, within a very brief time window (relative to the time that has passed since creation), the Creator of everything decided to reveal Himself to a tiny number of human beings, whom He chose in a completely arbitrary way, so that they would pass the divine message on to their descendants (only!), and in return would merit an inheritance, and so on. After a certain period (hundreds or thousands of years), the window closed and the Creator of everything once again concealed and hid Himself.
This whole twisted setup lacks logic and continuity, and certainly does not stand up to Occam’s razor. The scale also does not sound reasonable. We didn’t need God for 13 billion years, and then suddenly He appears, and after a short period disappears. Likewise, the scale in terms of size does not sound reasonable. In an (almost) infinite universe, the Creator of the world reveals Himself in a tiny (and arbitrary) part of it to a tiny number of arbitrary creatures.
I don’t understand how you can ask a rational person to accept this as it is without casting doubt on it.