Q&A: God's Intervention
God's Intervention
Question
With God's help,
Hello,
I wanted to ask whether contradictions and problems could arise regarding the following issue.
God is “omnipotent” — also in dimensions far beyond our own.
Does God act in the world through miracles that are wrapped in physical explanations that we can understand? I don’t have a good way to explain this, but for example: a miracle that did not take place and was not a physically possible scenario, and then when it did take place, retroactively and without any satisfactory explanation, human beings would be able to understand the already “known” physical explanation that caused it to happen.
Is that possible?
If it is possible, would it involve contradictions that follow from it?
Thank you very much!
Answer
I didn’t understand a word.
Discussion on Answer
I hope you understand what you wrote, because I don’t. This isn’t about something I don’t understand, but about something contradictory.
Thank you very much for the responses.
This reminds me of the issue of divine foreknowledge and free choice.
It’s not clear to us how the Holy One, blessed be He, knows everything and yet we still have free choice.
What one can understand is that the Holy One, blessed be He, is beyond this world.
We are in this world, and therefore we have no ability to understand how foreknowledge and free choice can coexist.
We can, however, understand that maybe such an option exists.
So too with what I presented: the Holy One, blessed be He, is omnipotent; He does not really need to deviate from the laws of the world in order to perform miracles.
He can perform miracles within the laws of the world, without our suspecting that it is a miracle.
And He can perform “real” miracles, beyond the laws of the world, so that we know it is a miracle.
Again, thank you, and sorry if I just caused a headache and wasted your time.
What your words here mean is the following: admittedly there is a contradiction, but maybe we do not understand and there is no contradiction here. That is not a resolution of the contradiction.
And more generally, see this article: https://mikyab.net/%D7%9B%D7%AA%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%9E%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%94%D7%90%D7%9D-%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%94-%D7%91%D7%A1%D7%AA%D7%99%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%92%D7%99%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%99%D7%90-%D7%90%D7%A4%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%AA1
It’s hard to explain, because it doesn’t make sense according to the logic we operate by.
But I’ll try.
The Creator of the world is omnipotent.
He created us, and gave us the ability to understand things that operate according to the laws He established.
A person cannot walk and run at the same time, because that doesn’t make logical sense.
We understand that there are situations with law-like regularity in nature, such that by discovering it, one can predict continuing behavior.
What if the Holy One, blessed be He, performs “natural” miracles — I’m not talking about “supernatural” ones — and at the same time gives us the option of understanding the nature hidden behind things.
Let’s take an extreme example: a person who cannot walk and run at the same time. Right now there is no logical possibility for such a thing, but suppose it will happen in another 5 minutes, and we will know the logic behind it. Of course the example is extreme, but really, God is omnipotent; He can do something that goes against our basic understanding, and cause us to understand it, beyond any doubt.