So in practice, a God subject to the world of logic and paradox is not God but a limited computer.
After all, the whole conception of Him, may He be blessed, is that He is unlimited by the laws of the physical world—so how can we limit Him by the laws of physics through logic?
Also, one could engage in casuistry, as you said, and argue that the tsunami came in the first place in order to kill those very people whom God willed to die, and that God determined in His will that they should die even if some of them were righteous and did not deserve death. So by the power of His will He determined it this way (and He could also have brought disease or something else to kill the others…). From that angle this is completely under providence (just as babies die even though they have not sinned—like the issue of the unique governance in the Ramchal, that some things happen simply because God decreed them, and that is that, for the sake of a higher purpose; see Da'at Tevunot). Because He set in motion the causal chain that made it happen.
Also, the question of divine foreknowledge and free choice, in senses that transcend time, is a sterile question. And therefore there is room for arranging things in accordance with His knowledge of every person’s choices.

If you’ve read my answers here on the site, you’ve presumably already read a response to these questions. My claim is that the laws of logic limit Him as well, and I argue that this is not a limitation at all. The laws of logic are not “laws” in the same sense that the laws of nature or the laws of the state are laws. They are tied to the essence of things, and therefore they cannot be violated. The Holy One, blessed be He, cannot make a round triangle because there is no such thing—not because there is any deficiency in His omnipotence. Omnipotence is the ability to do everything that is possible and existent, not to do what is impossible. If there is no available system of laws that produces the specific results you want, and the Holy One, blessed be He, wants a world that operates according to a system of laws, then that is a logical problem, and even He will not be able to overcome it. If you want an elaboration, search the site again (for example, about Puss in Boots).
The same applies to foreknowledge and free choice and the rest of the things you mentioned. It has all already been answered ad nauseam in many responsa.

I have reservations about the assumption that the metaphysical is necessarily logical. I think it is not of the same essence at all, so that one cannot really speak about it (Wittgenstein and Leibowitz), except perhaps by way of negation and clarifying what it definitely is not.
What is the source of that assumption? Or is there some indication that compels it?

This has nothing at all to do with different domains of reality, physical or metaphysical. Logic is a condition for thought, and as long as you are thinking about something, it is subject to logic. Otherwise you arrive at conclusions where if you think X, at the same time you can also think not-X, and in fact you are not thinking anything at all.

That’s my claim: that in fact we never speak of God’s essence and being itself, but only describe modes of governance and how He is revealed to us in consciousness; but regarding His essence itself, one should be silent. So assumptions about His essence, whether logical or non-logical, make no difference, because at that point we have already referred to the essence.
(To force the unlimited into a limit.)

There—you are speaking here about His essence and being itself (while saying that one does not speak about that). In short, everything you say in every domain is subject to logic. You cannot speak or think outside logic, and therefore the discussion of whether God Himself is subject to it is meaningless. Your picture of Him is subject to it, and that is enough. What practical difference does it make whether He Himself is subject to it or not? When you discuss whether He knows, providentially oversees, and so on, you are discussing the image of divinity as it exists for you and in your thought. That is subject to logic. Everything else is just words.

For the benefit of those looking into this, attached is the afterword of the book “What God Cannot Do,” which deals entirely with rejecting the idea that God can indeed override the laws of logic (impossibilities as impossible). However, after a grueling study full of sources, the author discusses some possible line of thought when speaking about God’s essence as above, and the matter is lengthy:
On the threshold of completing this book, we may look back and take pride in the fact that we have indeed succeeded in surveying in a thorough way the problem of impossibilities in all its transformations over thousands of years of philosophy and religious thought, in Jewish literature in particular and, more generally, also in the literature of the nations. After having delved into everything our predecessors wrote, there is finally a need for us too to make our own statement, returning to the basic problem: is God subject to the laws of logic and mathematics, or not?
In my opinion, given the current state of philosophy, this is the kind of question that cannot be answered with a simple yes or no. Even so, our answer is closer to “yes” than to “no,” and I believe this is the answer that Rav Saadia, Maimonides, and the other rationalists of the Middle Ages would have given, had they lived in our time. I therefore answer that God, as we conceive Him in our human intellect, is certainly subject to logic; for our intellect itself is subject to logic and can think only in logical categories, and therefore it is unable to depict to itself anything, or any being, that is not subject to those categories. About God “as He is in Himself,” on the other hand, I do not claim that He is subject to logic, but neither do I say that He is not subject to logic. We cannot determine that God as He is in Himself is subject to logic, because contemporary philosophy sees the categories according to which the human intellect thinks as subjective conditions that characterize or limit rational beings of our own kind alone, and distances itself from the pretension of extending their applicability to objective-absolute reality. But no less than that, no one is capable of positively claiming that God in Himself is not subject to logic. Logic is the boundary of our language, thought, and perception, and every sentence that tries to go beyond this boundary contains an internal contradiction—for while it necessarily formulates itself according to logical rules, it simultaneously attempts to abolish logic, and from this it follows that it is meaningless. So then, is God in Himself subject to logic or not? He is neither subject nor not-subject, but simply beyond the horizon of our language and thought, and therefore not a possible object of conversation or inquiry; whereas the God we know, the God discussed in philosophy and religious discourse, is unquestionably subject to logic, like every other subject of human discourse, just as Rav Saadia and Maimonides taught.
The general philosophical distinction between the phenomenon and the “thing in itself” took root in modern times chiefly from Kant onward, who mediated by means of it between realism and idealism and thereby solved a whole series of open philosophical problems, foremost among them the problem of induction. Kant’s popularity today is due mainly to the development of modern physics, which, the more it advanced, the more it confirmed the sense that rather than reflecting a lawfulness existing in nature, it is primarily an interpretation—or an attempt at an interpretation—of nature, the subjective interpretation of science observing nature subject to the basic human approach, tools, and limitations that it brings with it to the investigation of nature. By contrast, the philosophical-theological distinction between the God who is revealed and “God as He is in Himself” is far older. Among the medieval Jewish rationalists the emphasis is mainly on the fact that God in Himself is inaccessible to human comprehension, and very much like Kant’s “thing in itself,” one can know of Him only that He exists, and this as an inference derived from His actions in nature. Thus, for example, Rabbenu Bahya: “For the Creator, may He be blessed, is hidden from all hidden things and far from all distant things in respect of the essence of His glory as it is to us; the intellect grasps only the matter of His existence alone… therefore we must seek the existence of the Creator, may He be blessed, through the signs of His acts in created beings, and they shall serve us as proofs concerning Him; and once His existence is established for us by this route, we must stop and not seek in our thoughts to imagine Him.” Similarly with Maimonides: “All human beings, past and future, have made clear that the Creator, exalted be He, cannot be grasped by thoughts, and no one grasps what He is except He Himself, and to grasp Him is to fail at the ultimate limit of grasping Him… as for all the rest of what appears in the books of the prophets, it is said because of Him, but they are to be understood, as we have already explained, as attributes of His actions.” In this context, Kabbalah comes even closer to the Kantian dichotomy of phenomenon and thing-in-itself. The attributes of action of the rationalists became in Kabbalah actual ontological entities, the sefirot, which are the revelation, or phenomenon, of the Infinite, that is, “God as He is in Himself,” as the Ramak explains: “And about Him we cannot speak, nor depict, nor ascribe to Him either judgment or mercy, neither rage nor anger, neither change nor limit nor any measure whatsoever… rather, what is fitting for us to know is that at the beginning of emanation the Infinite—King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He—emanated ten sefirot which are from His essence, united with Him, and He and they are all one perfect unity… and we may give a fine parable… to water that is divided into vessels, and the vessels differ in color: this one white, this one red, this one green, and so on… and in truth no change of color belongs to the water, but through the differing vessels they take on that color accidentally, not essentially, and that accident is with respect to the observers, not with respect to the water itself.” This idea was developed still further in the Ari’s doctrine of contraction, according to which we perceive being only after the initial contraction of the light of the Infinite, “for the supreme light above above without end, which is called Infinite—its name testifies about it that there is no grasp of it at all, neither in thought nor in reflection, and it is stripped and separate from all thoughts.”
What led philosophers and theologians to insist so strongly, and to warn so strongly, that God in Himself cannot be grasped? Rabbenu Bahya and Maimonides were troubled primarily by the issue of God’s attributes, which according to their view compromises His unity and incorporeality: “For whatever we ascribe to the essence of His glory in the way of attributes cannot escape being either essential attributes or accidental attributes”; and “it is as though inquiry has led you to the fact that the attributes imply that God, exalted be He, is one substratum to which some predicates are attached… and thus He is two in definition, even if one in existence.” Since the source of human language and thought is only sensory experience, every attempt to use them to speak of God’s essence will lead to anthropomorphizing Him, and therefore it is better to forbid such an attempt altogether. This was also the motive of the early kabbalists, who argued that “whoever has understood the matter of the unity of the Infinite—what it is, and that it is removed from attributes and changes and bodily definitions—will understand without any doubt that there is no place for Torah and commandments and prayers and sacrifices without the existence of the sefirot.” However, all these claims are, in the end, only logical claims; if our philosophers and theologians had had the privilege that later kabbalists allowed themselves, namely to claim that God—and certainly God in Himself—is not subject to logic at all, then all those enormous efforts invested in saving God’s unity and incorporeality from the threats of human language would be entirely unnecessary. It would have been much simpler to claim, for example, that although from a logical standpoint attributes do indeed imply “that God, exalted be He, is one substratum to which some predicates are attached,” this need not trouble us when speaking of a God who is “beyond logic,” and therefore can be described by attributes without becoming the substrate that bears them. But of course such a move never entered the minds of our predecessors. For them it was a first principle that however exalted and lofty God is, He still remains subject to the basic rules of logic, and insofar as discourse about Him according to those rules leads to anthropomorphism, there is no alternative but to forbid such discourse.
The issue of God’s attributes does not trouble philosophers today, but given the state of philosophy in our time, as noted, we can give new meaning to our predecessors’ prohibition on speaking about God “as He is in Himself.” Today it is forbidden to speak about anything “as it is in itself”; that is, we recognize that our perception of reality in general is not objective but subjective, shaped from the outset according to the patterns we brought with us beforehand, chiefly the basic logical laws according to which our thought operates, and which do not necessarily bind the thought of other possible rational beings. If so, then all the more so we are forbidden to impose conditions on, or limit, God “as He is in Himself,” or even to speak about Him at all. In this way we can finally achieve a fine compromise between the medieval rationalists and the mystics of modern times. In principle, then, Rav Saadia and Maimonides are correct that “what is impossible has a fixed nature; God is not described as having power over it,” but in light of the advance of philosophy today, it is better in this context to restrict ourselves to the God who is revealed to us, the God of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and prophecy, of Torah and commandments, of prayers and sacrifices. The revealed God is unquestionably subject to logic, for it is only through logic that He is revealed to us—to our intellect, spirit, and thought—which are incapable of grasping and containing even a finger’s breadth beyond their logical limits. By contrast, we may agree with the mystics’ central claim, that “the first intelligibles have no access to the simple will that brought them forth, and they are in His hand like clay in the potter’s hand,” insofar as we are speaking of God “as He is in Himself.” Regarding God in Himself, we do not claim that He is subject to logic, just as we do not claim that He is not subject to logic; we do not know, and cannot know, whether our logic has meaning beyond human reason or not, but even if not, the limits our logic imposes on us make impossible the very possibility of thinking about what can or cannot happen beyond it, and even the possibility of thinking about the very existence of such a “beyond.” And if indeed, as the mystics claim, God is the one who created our logic, then in principle our thought can reach only as far as that moment of creation, and no further. About the moment of the creation of logic, just as about the moment after logic ends, it is indeed fitting to invoke the Mishnah in tractate Hagigah that the Rema of Pano brought in this very context: “Whoever reflects on four things—it would have been better for him not to have come into the world: what is above, what is below, what was before, and what will be after.” It is a great pity that the Rema of Pano did not heed in this context what his own mouth had spoken.
We said that we are proposing a compromise between the rationalists and the mystics on the question of impossibilities, but in fact, as I have already written, our compromise is much closer to the rationalist side; we are only reformulating it in accordance with the conclusions of modern philosophy, which no longer presumes to see the human intellect as necessarily reflecting objective reality. It is important to emphasize this, because as we have seen, there were also two modern mystics who expressed themselves in a somewhat similar direction, seemingly proposing to interpret the Ari’s doctrine of contraction as the creation of logic, and thus to accept impossibilities as limiting God after the contraction, but not before it. This line is found in Rabbi Kook, who wrote several times: “The primordial contraction, the gathering in of absolute power, caused the revelation of the law of the impossible”; “From the side of the root of roots, the light of the Infinite in its fullness, there is no place for any impossibility… in the foundation of the trace, the place of made chaos, the created nothing, the emanated void, there was prepared the foundational restricting prevention of impossibilities”; “The philosophical notion of impossible things that cannot be described as within divine power comes from the foundation of the trace.” Likewise, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson once suggested that “what is written in several books of the Jewish philosophers… that impossibilities have a fixed nature within the law of the Creator—their intention is to the Creator, may He be blessed, insofar as He contracted Himself within the bounds of intellect.” But as I have already explained, identifying the Lurianic contraction with the creation of logic may remain merely a homiletical sharpening; the main test is whether one really absorbs and internalizes that in such a situation it is forever impossible, in any way whatsoever, to go beyond the contraction and beyond logic and yet still speak about God “as He is in Himself,” as though before He “contracted Himself within the bounds of intellect.”
When we say that about God in Himself we cannot say anything, we mean this seriously. Even when we consider the possibility that our logic does not bind God in Himself, we are not trying to imagine how God might behave in such a state, freed from logic, and certainly we are not picturing God actually performing anti-logical tricks. In fact, we do not dare—and are not able—even to claim positively that perhaps God in Himself is not subject to logic. That very sentence, “God in Himself is not subject to logic,” is absurd and self-contradictory from the outset, since on the one hand it relies on logic and accepts the law of contradiction, at least in the sense that the phrase “God is not subject to logic” is different from the phrase “God is subject to logic”; and at the same time it tries to undermine that very logic on which it relies, and to claim that God is not subject to it. But if God is not subject to logic, then He can also be subject to logic and at the same time not subject to logic, and still subject to logic; in short, we have said nothing. Therefore we do not say, “God in Himself is not subject to logic”; rather, we try cautiously to find a way to formulate the possibility that our logic, within which we are imprisoned, is not absolute and that there is a world outside it—although even if such a world exists, we will never be able to become acquainted with it so long as we continue in our existence as human beings.
To what can this be compared? Perhaps to creatures in a two-dimensional world, who are unable to imagine for themselves a three-dimensional reality, but may perhaps raise the possibility of the existence of an additional dimension, just as Einstein’s theory teaches us that the universe is four-dimensional, even though no person can imagine more than three. And still the parable is not fully analogous to the case at hand, because the four dimensions were nevertheless successfully described as variables in mathematical equations, whereas logic—even if we assume that it is indeed limited to human beings alone—has a boundary of such a total character that it does not allow any kind of glimpse, even theoretical, beyond it, even if nowadays we can with difficulty hypothesize the very existence of such a beyond. A better parable: is the value of a rational function at a point where its denominator becomes zero an even number or an odd number? And the answer is: neither even nor odd; rather, when the denominator becomes zero, the function is simply undefined. Exactly similarly, when I am asked whether God in Himself is subject to logic or not subject to logic, I reject both options and answer that for me everything outside logic is simply undefined—that is, meaningless; and although I cannot rule out the possibility that another rational being might indeed find meaning in such a thing, from my side there is no point in even trying to guess what that meaning would be.
From this it follows that we can never arrive at any point of contact with the mystics, who are indeed willing to admit that they cannot understand how God can overcome logic, but insist that they nevertheless understand what they are saying when they claim that God can do so. Those who hold this absurd view have concrete examples of possible anti-logical tricks by God, such as changing the past or making a part larger than the whole, and according to them God has performed and performs such miracles in our world quite literally—from the Talmudic miracles of “the place of the Ark did not take up space” or “Remember and Keep were said in a single utterance,” which in their view are to be understood literally, all the way to a miracle of this kind in the twentieth century, when according to Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, God—as the One “able to do even impossibilities”—clothed Himself in the body of his father-in-law, Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson, and “from the perspective of the matter of impossibilities, no difficulties are relevant at all.” We find this approach utterly insane, and certainly it has nothing whatsoever to do with the compromise we proposed. For the God who acts in the world and performs miracles is not God in Himself, concerning whom, as stated, we have no grasp whatsoever, but the revealed God; and about the revealed God you cannot claim in one breath that He “contracted Himself within the bounds of intellect” and then continue speaking about Him without intellect. On the contrary: the very plausibility of the possibility we are nevertheless willing to allow—that perhaps God in Himself is not subject to logic—depends on our internalizing that for us, human beings, this hypothesis is meaningless, except that one cannot rule out the possibility that another rational being would find meaning in it. But when someone nevertheless insists on pouring meaning into this hypothesis for us as well, he is really shooting himself in the foot. For if for you, a logical being, there is indeed some meaning to the statement “the place of the Ark did not take up space” in its literal sense, or in general to the statement “God can overcome logic,” then it follows immediately that these statements somehow do not really contradict logic; for if they did, how could a logical being contain them? But if in the end these statements do not contradict logic, then you have in fact lost everything you wanted. For you intended to claim precisely that these statements do contradict logic—that is, that they are completely meaningless for you—and precisely by that you thought to exalt your God, who nevertheless is not powerless with regard to them. In other words: do you want God in Himself, at least, not to be subject to logic? Then first acknowledge openly that the revealed God, the God whom alone you know and about whom alone you can speak, is indeed subject to logic. Only then, when you truly internalize the meaning of your words about the limited human intellect, will you be able to attain at least the one point beyond that is possible for a person limited by his own logic—the recognition that perhaps this logic is not absolute, even though it cannot be imagined.
From here we can continue to develop our idea even further. The solution we propose to the problem of impossibilities, then, is not a merely post facto compromise forced upon religion from outside as the result of philosophical necessity, but on the contrary, an idea worthy of adoption precisely out of religious motivation. Those who truly magnify, exalt, and elevate God are not the mystics and their confused doctrine, but rather we ourselves, for only our assertion that the God revealed to us is subject to the laws of logic makes possible the hypothesis that God in Himself, about whom we know nothing, may nevertheless not be subject to those laws. And more than that: if indeed it is true, as the mystics claim, that “the first intelligibles have no access to the simple will that brought them forth,” then in fact the opposite of the mystical claim emerges. For if God created man as a logical being, that means that this is precisely God’s will: that man think as a logical being. If God chose to reveal Himself to us through logic, that means that this is precisely how He wished to appear to us, how He wished us to perceive and grasp Him—as a logical God. Who then is so foolish as to try to rebel against God and outsmart Him, wanting specifically to attain what God wanted us not to attain? God Himself determined that even if He in Himself is not limited by logic, we will grasp Him only within those limits. Anyone who tries to go beyond them and imagine God free of the chains of logic is therefore acting not only against the most basic criterion of humanity, but chiefly against God Himself.
Torrents of ink have been spilled in trying to interpret the mysterious biblical story in which Moses asked God, “Show me, please, Your glory,” and was answered: “You cannot see My face, for man shall not see Me and live… and you shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen.” According to the thesis we have proposed, things appear simpler than ever. God answered Moses that man can grasp the revealed God, the one defined within the limits of logic; but God in Himself, the one above logic, can never be known—“for man shall not see Me and live”: a human being cannot go beyond logic and remain human, for logic defines the limits of humanity shaped by God.

That is all.

I have several comments, but this is not the place. I’ll just say that the relation between God as He is in Himself and His manifestations is not like the relation between other things and their appearance to us (the phenomenon). God’s attributes are either attributes of action (in which case there is no connection to Kant), or entities separate from Him (sefirot, partzufim, and worlds) that merely represent Him and are not just a translation of properties into the language of consciousness as with other objects.

And one more comment. Modern physics does not strengthen Kant’s view but weakens it. Quite a bit has already been written about Kant’s Newtonian conception of space and time, which in his view are transcendental—that is, imposed on us by the structure of our cognition. That was thrown into the dustbin of history with relativity and quantum theory (even if those theories themselves are mistaken. The very use of them refutes Kant).
And there is much more to say about this…

First of all, a renewal of the issue of Kant.
I’ll try to explain my claim with a short example.
Before that, regarding providence, I wouldn’t rule out that first of all it is, in my view, a matter of faith that is above reason and knowledge, based on the texts and the tradition, and only afterward do I try to reconcile it with logic, if possible.
As for logical contradictions and God, there is something like that in physics. (I haven’t really studied this much; I saw it on a science program.) People talk about it a lot, mainly regarding black holes, that under certain conditions like a black hole a person would be in a paradoxical state—neither alive nor dead.
And from this they say that beyond this universe, if there are other universes, they would in practice not be universes of the laws of physics and therefore not of logic either, so that what here is a paradox and cannot exist would there not apply as a limitation at all.
It’s true that the God that comes to mind is limited by logic, but that is because He comes to mind, and the mind itself is a limited tool in the nature of this universe, which operates according to logic (at least as we perceive it). But beyond this universe we don’t have to assume that God will necessarily be limited by logic. And by the very fact that we discuss Him we already reduce Him to an idea of God that is limited, since it is part of limited consciousness as part of a limited universe.
A logical God, in my opinion, necessarily cannot be the creator of universes, because He is concretized and limited, and therefore apparently there is some cause prior to Him and we enter an infinite regress.
(But that is already an assumption from experience of the world.)

I have no business with beliefs that are above reason and knowledge. In my opinion, neither do you, but in any case I see no point in dealing with words that neither of us knows what they mean. I explained what I had to explain.
As for physics, these are nonsensical things, but this is not the place to elaborate. I’ll just say that no scientific theory can contain contradictions, because from contradictions one can derive any conclusion whatsoever, and therefore a contradictory theory simply says nothing.

Understood, thank you.

Rabbi Michi, excuse my ignorance: how does modern physics weaken Kant’s view?
Kant argues that space and time are forms of intuition about the world and are not found in the object itself. Then Einstein came and said that time is relative. Can’t one simply say that relative time is our form of intuition of the world?

As I explained, Kant argued that space and time are categories imposed on us and therefore cannot change. In his view we do not derive them from the world but from ourselves. In modern physics, the picture of space and time changed by virtue of empirical findings, and that proves: (a) that it is not imposed on us, and (b) that it is derived from observation of the world.

More power to you, thank you very much.

Hello Rabbi,
After all that was said here, including “you are discussing the image of God in your thought, and there He is subject to logic. And what difference does it make whether He Himself is subject to it or not,” has not the ground been pulled out from under the proof from epistemology?
If one cannot say anything about the world as it is in itself (for example, that the laws of logic, mathematics, and causality apply there as well), how can one continue to argue for a correspondence between cognition and the world?
Maybe I misunderstood, but I got the impression from your words that logic is true only within our cognition, and that it is not necessary to claim this about the world.

Thank you,
Natan

I wrote exactly the opposite. As for the relation between our cognition and the world, see here:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%94%D7%91%D7%A0%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%A2%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%9D/