Q&A: God’s Inability to Become More Perfect
God’s Inability to Become More Perfect
Question
In lesson 10 of “God and the World,” the Rabbi distinguished between
- a logical impossibility—for example, nobody can turn a square into a triangle; that is meaningless;
- and God’s inability to become more perfect, whereas we can become more perfect and He cannot.
But in my humble opinion, this too is a logical contradiction, because nobody—not even us—can perfect what is already perfect, since it is already perfect.
We can become more perfect because we assume that we are lacking, so there is no problem there; but to perfect the perfect is simply meaningless.
Answer
Rabbi Kook argues that, surprisingly (absurdly?), we actually can perfect the perfect. Because the perfect is not really completely perfect (it still lacks the ability to become more perfect, and that is accomplished through us). In other words: there is no such thing as something perfect.
Discussion on Answer
Not sure. If there is an omnipotent being that is not perfect, then it can also improve. We need to check whether such a thing is possible.
There is no such thing as perfect, because it does not have the ability to become more perfect—just as there is no such thing as omnipotent, because it does not have the ability to be without ability. No?
“In other words: there is no such thing as something perfect.”
Translated into plain Hebrew: God is indeed, by definition (including Rabbi Kook’s definition), “perfect,” and indeed there is such a God—but actually, there isn’t.
My heart, my heart goes out to that God.
The fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot contradict the laws of logic does not detract from His level of perfection.
Yishai, were you responding to me..?
If so, I’m not clear on what your comment has to do with what I said.
What Yishai means to say is (probably to Dvir) that the inability of the omnipotent to be without ability is not similar to the inability of the perfect to become more perfect. First, being without ability is not a perfection and not an ability, so even if that is true, there is no flaw here in omnipotence. Second, there we are dealing with a straightforward logical contradiction, whereas with perfection—not necessarily.
The fact that people play around with the concept of God as if it were plasticine, and decide for Him what He can and cannot do, only proves that we are dealing with an imaginary object that people are trying to shape according to their whims—with no connection whatsoever to reality.
So then there is also no such thing as “omnipotent.”