Q&A: On the Question of Divine Knowledge and Free Choice — Maimonides' View
On the Question of Divine Knowledge and Free Choice — Maimonides' View
Question
Hello,
In your book No Man Rules the Spirit you (or Hillel on page 137) argue that according to Maimonides' approach there is a contradiction in the question of divine knowledge and free choice. I didn’t understand what is contradictory in Maimonides' words.
As Rabbi Kapach writes: "Our Rabbi, in the depth of his explanation, came to uproot the question from its very foundation. Our Rabbi teaches us that the whole question arises out of our ignorance of the concepts of divinity. For if we knew the Lord, God of Israel, as far as we are capable, there would be no question here at all; the entire issue arose only because we imagined and fantasized that His knowledge is like our knowledge, or some version of our knowledge" — that is, unlike the Raavad, Maimonides does give an answer.
You yourself presented the principle that we are dealing here with a kind of knowledge different from ours in another, similar context — the subject of prophecy. Only someone who has never experienced faith can ask how Abraham was sure that he had received prophecy. And likewise, a blind person cannot understand what sight is. The same applies here — there is a kind of knowledge here that we do not know. The One who invented the concept of knowledge, and who is not subject to it or to its limitations, can both know in advance and still allow choice, and there is no contradiction in that. The Holy One, blessed be He, and our knowledge are different things, unlike human beings, where there is us and there is our knowledge.
I would be glad to hear your explanation.
Thank you
Answer
I do not accept arguments of this kind. When I say something about the Holy One, blessed be He, that is a statement of mine, not His, and as such it has to conform to the rules of logic. "His knowledge is not like our knowledge" is just confusion. Either way: does He have knowledge in our sense of the term? If yes, then what have you solved? And if not, then just say that He has no knowledge, and that’s that. As I explained there, those who deal with this topic tend to mix together different questions (how He obtains the information, and if He has the information, whether we have freedom to choose).
In the context of prophecy, we are not dealing with a logical contradiction but with our lack of understanding. There is no reason to assume that we can understand everything. But in the question of divine knowledge and free choice, this is a logical contradiction, and one cannot maintain a contradiction. I clarified that distinction there more than once.
Discussion on Answer
What do you mean, I am assuming identity? When you say that the Holy One, blessed be He, knows, you mean the term “knows” in the sense it has for us. Otherwise you are just uttering words. In short: does He have knowledge in the sense accepted among us, or not?
But Rabbi, that is exactly the claim the questioner raised. The logical contradiction begins only if we assume that there is an identity between our knowledge and His knowledge. If we do not assume that, then we are left with a difficulty, not a logical contradiction.