Question

Hello,
So this is how Rabbi Cherki explains Maimonides’ view on the issue of divine knowledge and free choice, and I wanted to know whether you accept this explanation.
When Maimonides comes to discuss the issue of knowledge and free choice in the introduction to Tractate Avot, he states: “Therefore, hear from me what I say to you, and examine it very carefully—for it is the truth without any doubt.” Maimonides emphasizes that there is a fundamental line of thought in his words, one that saves a person from the deficiencies of the other approaches. Let us consider his words in the Laws of Repentance (5:5):
“Know that the answer to this question is longer than the measure of the earth and broader than the sea, and many great principles and lofty mountains depend on it. But you must know and understand this matter that I say: the Holy One, blessed be He, does not know with a knowledge that is external to Him, as human beings do, for they and their knowledge are two. Rather, He, may His name be exalted, and His knowledge are one. And the mind of man cannot comprehend this matter clearly… Since this is so, we have no power to know how the Holy One, blessed be He, knows all creatures and deeds. But we know without doubt that a person’s actions are in the person’s own hands, and the Holy One, blessed be He, does not pull him nor decree upon him to do such-and-such…”
One could understand Maimonides’ answer to be that this is such a deep question that we simply have no ability to answer it.
However, from a careful reading of Maimonides’ words, it is clear that Maimonides wanted to provide an answer to this question: according to him, there is no need to look for an answer to this question, because the question itself is not correct. Deep questions can be approached in two ways: one way is to say, this is a good question, and then examine whether we have an answer to it or not; the second way is to say, the question as asked cannot be called a question. If someone asks, for example, whether an orange is bitter or sweet—that is a valid question, and one should look for an answer. But if he asks whether the light of a lamp is bitter or sweet—that is not a question, because “bitter” and “sweet” are categories of the sense of taste, while light belongs to the sense of sight.
So too regarding the question of knowledge and free choice. From Maimonides’ words it emerges that he is coming to deny the very possibility of the question: one cannot ask whether free choice contradicts God’s knowledge, because a human being cannot know what God’s knowledge is. Maimonides draws on Aristotle’s words in his book Metaphysics, where he argued that divine knowledge is identical with God Himself and is not some external addition of information. Just as a person cannot grasp the essence of God, he cannot grasp the essence of His knowledge, and therefore he is prevented from assuming that there is a contradiction between that concept and free choice.
Let us put it differently: according to Maimonides, any statement about the essence of God cannot be a positive statement, because then a system of comparison is created between God and the world. The attributes by which we describe the Creator are “negative attributes”—we deny of God the deficiencies that we find in the world (and in fact it would also have been proper to deny of Him even the virtues, since they too are deficiencies in relation to Him, except that human language permits the use of terms of praise for the sake of human worship). Therefore we can determine with certainty that everything is known before the Creator, because that is a negating attribute—nothing is hidden from Him—but we have no ability to understand the statement, “the Creator knows.” One cannot use the concepts of “knowledge” and “lack of knowledge” with respect to One who is beyond both knowledge and lack of knowledge. If a child were asked, for example, whether in his opinion it is worth being prime minister, he might ask: do they play marbles in the prime minister’s house? That is the criterion by which he would consider the question. Clearly that is not the right measure, but that is his level of understanding. So too, speaking about God’s knowledge or non-knowledge points to great distance from Him, because human concepts are limited in relation to the infinite.
When a person says something about God, he needs to take himself with a grain of salt. The well-known debate over whether there is a God or there is no God is really a petty discussion, because divinity cannot be contained within the human concepts of “existence” and “non-existence.” Just as one cannot say about the Holy One, blessed be He, that He is sweet or bitter, one cannot say of Him that He exists or does not exist. It would be ridiculous if someone claimed, “My friend is a heretic, because he does not believe that God is a kilometer tall…” The moment a person says in complete seriousness that he thinks there is a God, he automatically arouses opposition in another person who feels that this is an incorrect sentence. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (the first Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel and one of the greatest spiritual figures of modern Judaism, 1865–1935) explains in many places that this is the primary role of heresy—to refine the childish notions people have of the divine concept. On the other hand, heresy does not respond by saying that the sentence ‘There is a God’ is incorrect, but rather says: ‘There is no God’—and that sentence is equally incorrect. Therefore King David said in Psalms (65:2): “To You, silence is praise.” On the subject of God’s essence, silence is better.