Q&A: Providence
Providence
Question
Hello Rabbi Michi,
In The Science of Freedom you referred to chaos theory, and your claim was that it is a completely deterministic system, and the whole problem is epistemological—that is, the problem lies in our inability, not an ontological problem.
Why not say that there is divine intervention within the chaotic system? After all, we find explicit divine intervention in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). Why do you avoid saying that there is intervention? Otherwise the world supposedly just goes nowhere, without any particular direction, and the Holy One, blessed be He, has no influence in the world at all.
Answer
For exactly the same reason that I don’t insert free choice there either. There is nothing special about chaos. It is an application of the laws of nature, and if I do not accept exceptions to the laws of nature, then there are no exceptions there either. Of course it is possible that the Holy One, blessed be He, is playing with us and hiding inside the chaos, but that isn’t likely and I have no indication that this is what is happening. The fact is that both in chaos and in quantum mechanics there are distributions that determine what is supposed to happen, and that is indeed how it works. That means there is apparently no divine intervention (unless He is careful to hide every time someone checks).
Of course there may be sporadic interventions, and perhaps through them He determines the direction the world is heading (I have no way of knowing whether this exists). But even if it does exist, it is very much at the macro level and very rare, not in our everyday lives.
Discussion on Answer
On the simple reading, it seems from the Torah that at least from the Roman exile until the war of the end of days, providence will not operate as a phenomenon clearly visible to the public, aside from the very fact of the fulfillment of the prophecy of the hiding of the Face and the other prophecies of rebuke. Already at the end of the Torah, the current situation is described in the following words:
“And I will surely hide My face on that day because of all the evil they have done” (Deuteronomy 31).
And He said: “I will hide My face from them, I will see what their end shall be” (Deuteronomy 32).
The motif continues in other prophets, such as Isaiah:
“And I will wait for the Lord, who hides His face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in Him” (8:17).
“Indeed, You are a God who hides Himself, O God of Israel, Savior” (45:15).
And likewise Ezekiel, when he describes the historical-theological context in which the war of Gog and Magog takes place (after the incomplete return to the Land), the explanation is:
“I dealt with them according to their uncleanness and according to their transgressions, and I hid My face from them” (39:24).
Only after the victory against all odds over the many nations will the hiding of the Face cease:
“And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring…” (Deuteronomy 30).
And likewise: “Then they shall know that I am the Lord their God, when I exiled them among the nations and then gathered them to their own land, leaving none of them there any longer. And I will no longer hide My face from them, for I will have poured out My spirit upon the house of Israel, declares the Lord God” (Ezekiel 39).
This appears in different formulations in other prophets as well (such as Hosea 3), and they all teach the same point. So one can ask how plausible it is, even without relying on the information given to us in revelation, to think that providence operates publicly in concealment until the “end of days,” or that it does not operate at all. But one who relies on biblical revelation can see that both the concealment of providence from the public eye and the partial removal of God’s protection from the people are themselves intentional acts of providence: “And when many evils and troubles come upon them, this song shall confront them as a witness, for it shall not be forgotten from the mouths of their offspring.” Our very condition in exile over many long years is extraordinary by any measure, but its purpose is punishment through the fulfillment of the prophecies of rebuke. God’s providence is learned specifically from the fact that He so to speak refrains from providential care: “And they shall know that I am the Lord, when I scatter them among the nations and disperse them through the lands” (Ezekiel 12:15).
Still, it is possible in principle that within this national, public hiding of the Face, the individual may still be able to identify personal acts of providence toward himself (that is, this is consistent with the Torah’s prophecy).
Aviya, please search here on the site. We’ve discussed this to death.
Why settle for so little? Ask why God doesn’t reveal Himself to you directly—after all, in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) He revealed Himself directly to human beings.
Why are you looking for God in chaos and in all kinds of elusive situations? Does it seem reasonable to you that God would behave like a creature that’s afraid of being discovered?
Posek, why settle for so little? Ask why the “self” doesn’t reveal itself to you directly—after all, in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) it revealed itself directly to human beings… Does it seem reasonable to you that the “self” would behave like a creature that’s afraid of being discovered?
In other words: there are things that exist even though they are not visible to the naked eye—and that is true both at the sub-particle level and on the plane of consciousness. Ask any meditation master and he’ll explain to you that you won’t come to know the experience of the “self” (as opposed to the persona or the “I”) unless you practice properly, and a lot. But for those who walk this path, there is unquestionable evidence about the free and joyful nature of the “self” united with the whole of being. What I’m claiming (not my self!) is that God is similar to this—the technique for sensing Him has been lost to most human beings, but for those whose state of consciousness is open there are divine revelations and visions just like in the biblical period. I’m talking about channelers, mediums in the West, and sorcerer-priests and shamans in Africa, America, and the countries of the East. Now Copenhagen will argue that these are false prophets! More power to you—but the difference between them and the true prophets, outwardly and inwardly (in their immediate experience), is razor-thin. And in the end it is likely that there is a broad spectrum between false prophecy and true prophecy, and that the matter is not binary. To all the ranters: please don’t bring proofs from rabbinic literature or the medieval authorities (Rishonim), because prophecy has to be explained by people/texts for whom this reality is not foreign.
With God’s help, 21 Adar I 5779
To Gil—greetings,
The difference between the fantasies and hallucinations of the “prophets” of idol worship and the prophecy of the prophets of Israel is far greater than the distance between heaven and earth. The difference between true prophecy and false prophecy is like the difference between truth and falsehood—total opposites.
It may be possible to learn relaxation and concentration techniques from them, but for understanding the essence of prophecy we have only what emerges from deep reflection on the plain meaning of the words of the prophets, over which the Sages and our early rabbis toiled. They also inherited from the prophets traditions of mystical contemplation such as “the Account of Creation” and “the Account of the Chariot,” and even with the cessation of prophecy there did not cease from them revelations of “divine inspiration,” “the revelation of Elijah,” and the like.
We will reach prophecy only through the guidance of the last of the prophets: “Remember the Torah of Moses My servant, which I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel—statutes and ordinances” (Malachi 3:22).
And when we cleave to the Torah of Moses, and engage in it in fellowship, as it is written: “Then those who feared the Lord spoke one with another” (3:16), and we seek Torah from one of whom it may be said: “My covenant was with him, life and peace, and I gave them to him for the fear with which he feared Me, and he stood in awe of My name. True Torah was in his mouth, and no wrong was found on his lips; he walked with Me in peace and uprightness, and turned many away from iniquity… for he is a messenger of the Lord of Hosts” (2:5-7)—then we will merit the fulfillment of the vision: “Behold, I am sending you Elijah the prophet…” (3:23).
With blessing, S.Z. Levinger
You’re describing psychotic states in which a person disconnects from reality and tries to activate the pleasure mechanism in an unnatural way as a result of meditation. And anyone who disconnects from reality will feel free. That comes from foolishness, not wisdom. And naturally, when a person feels pleasure he imagines that he has discovered himself. And that is far from the truth.
Human beings’ attitude toward those psychotic states—those are exactly the states the Torah warns against, in matters of sorcery, ghosts, spiritists, and the like.
It seems you understood everything backwards.
Levinger and The Last Decisor—I completely agree
Except for stories about divine inspiration and revelations of Elijah after the canonization of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), which in my opinion should be doubted
Levinger, I don’t disagree all that much. Copenhagen, your agreement is important to us. Posek: give your intellect a vacation and meditate. A lot. From between your eyelashes it’s obvious that you don’t know what you’re talking about. And when it comes to something so cardinal, that doesn’t do you credit. This isn’t just another field of conversation. All your philosophy, without deep familiarity with meditation, is equivalent to the blah-blah of an art critic who doesn’t know how to hold a paintbrush. Worse than that. It is like a blind, color-blind, eyeless dog trying to understand Monet. Now you can disagree, and I won’t fight you on that regarding the connection between meditation and true or false prophecy. We do not know what prophecy is. But to dismiss the very category—that is embarrassing and painful.
I’ve already done it several times, without much success. But from conversations with others who were experienced in the matter, it became clear to me that for the most part these are weak-minded or feeble-minded people who come to try it because they have no idea about themselves or what they want to do in life.
To you I’d recommend trying meditation combined with ayahuasca. You won’t get deeper than that.
I also don’t think this is ontological freedom, and therefore not something from which to infer freedom of the will. Rather, the very epistemological problem allows the Holy One, blessed be He, to intervene within the deterministic system without being “exposed.”
Why do you claim the influence is so small? After all, a very small influence creates a system of exponential growth. An example is the “butterfly effect,” which represents a particular case in which the flapping of a butterfly’s wings may create small changes in the atmosphere that ultimately cause a tornado to appear (or alternatively prevent it from appearing). The flapping wings represent a small change in the system’s initial conditions, which causes a chain of events leading to a large-scale phenomenon. If the butterfly had not flapped its wings, the system’s trajectory might have been significantly different. I’m saying this in light of the view that in the Torah the Holy One, blessed be He, exercises providence even openly [at least on a straightforward reading].