Q&A: On Positive Commandment 1: How Can One Command Belief in Itself
On Positive Commandment 1: How Can One Command Belief in Itself
Question
Hello Rabbi.
I just wanted to clarify what I wrote in the email.
This is what you told me:
There are two different suggestions here.
1. To make the knowledge firm means to examine and deepen it, which is roughly what I said in the lecture. But still, if my conclusion is that there is no God, it is impossible to say that I have neglected a positive commandment. According to this, as I answered a question I was asked in the lecture, rabbis who say not to examine faith intellectually are leading people to neglect a positive commandment.
2. You are suggesting that this is only a definition and not a commandment. But about that I said in the lecture that this is also what I thought (that this is a definitional commandment, like positive commandments 95-96 in Maimonides), and Fixeler corrected me, because Maimonides counts this among the sixty constant commandments that a person fulfills all the time. One cannot fulfill a definitional commandment.
And here is the clarification:
1) I’m not sure it’s exactly the same thing. According to you, the problem remains: how can a commandment command me to check whether it in fact exists?
What I wanted to say is that there is a difference between knowing that there was a revelation at Mount Sinai and that there is a legitimate commandment, and (investigating in order) to know that this commandment is, in Maimonides’ words, “a cause and a reason, acting upon all that exists.”
2) My suggestion was regarding the 13 principles. For example, one who does not believe in the coming of the Messiah is considered an apikoros. The principles are not commands.
Answer
- I did not understand your suggestion or the distinction.
- Was that said independently of your first discussion? The problem is that the attitude toward an apikoros entails some quite severe sanctions. To my mind, it is doubtful to what extent such sanctions should apply to such a person.
Discussion on Answer
1. I understand. But according to your approach, it comes out that there is a commandment that is not addressed to all Jews. That is very implausible. One can speak of a non-believer as under compulsion, but not as someone who is essentially exempt from some commandment. This is not like commandments addressed only to priests or only to men, because there that is defined in the body of the commandment itself. Beyond that, there is no hint of this limitation in Maimonides’ own words either.
2. Maybe I’m mistaken, but I don’t recall asking it that way, since I know of no commandment to believe in the 13 principles. It does not appear in the count of the commandments. That is not like the commandment to believe, which is a positive commandment. So with regard to the principles, what you say is more plausible in principle, aside from the matter of the sanctions. And as for your actual point, if a person concluded that he should kill, then he is indeed not wicked. And in fact he is also not liable for death, because he is mentally under compulsion (“he thought it was permitted”). True, it is reasonable that people would deal with him in order to protect us from him, but there is no place for sanctions against him. All the more so since, regarding morality, the assumption is that every person understands that it is binding, so the presumption is that he is indeed wicked unless proven otherwise, and therefore this is only a hypothetical discussion. By contrast, regarding apikorsim there are instructions that are clearly sanctions (such as “one lowers them and does not raise them”), and there in my opinion there is no room for a similar assumption (that every person is a believer and understands that there is a God and that the principles are true).
1) So I need to clarify my words even more.
You are right that it is implausible that one positive commandment would address only a certain type of Jews without saying so.
This is what I mean:
– Question 1: To whom is the Sefer HaMitzvot addressed? Or, in another formulation: what are the minimum requirements for the commandments to apply to me?
– Answer 1: It seems to me that these two conditions are necessary and sufficient: (a) to believe in God in some form that creates an obligation to obey Him, and (b) to believe that He did in fact command the commandments. And that includes someone who does not believe in God as a cause and a reason acting upon all that exists.
Therefore, for the first positive commandment too to apply to me, it also requires conditions (a) and (b), by virtue of being one of the commandments. And this is not something specific to this commandment.
– Let us call “commandment number zero” the set of conditions (a) and (b). A trivial remark: this commandment cannot appear in the Sefer HaMitzvot, but it makes the book possible.
– Question 2: So what does all this have to do with the first positive commandment?
– Answer 2: Now two points. (i) The first positive commandment requires me to investigate in order to find God’s true attributes, He who is the commander in whom I believe (necessarily; compare Answer 1). (ii) It is reasonable that Maimonides begins his book with this commandment. “Commandment number zero” made the book possible, and the first positive commandment continues it naturally (“commandment zero”).
– Question 3: So what about a person who does not believe in God? Do we have no claim against him?
– Answer 3: Not exactly. I think we have no halakhic claim against him. But there may be claims of another kind (rational, social, etc.). But that is a digression from the topic.
2) I hear. It is likely that I did not understand you correctly in the lecture.
I hope this is fairly clear.
1. Then you have deepened the difficulty even more. According to what you say, none of the commandments obligates someone who does not believe (without assumptions A and B). That is downright absurd. They obligate every Jew; it is just that if he did not perform them, he was under compulsion (and in my opinion he also cannot perform them without belief).
You are right. I confused the concepts.
So let me put it this way:
You asked two questions about Maimonides’ first positive commandment.
Q1) Since it is impossible to obligate someone to believe in something, how should we understand the first positive commandment (which obligates belief in God)?
Q2) Either way, the first positive commandment is irrelevant.
– If I believe in God, this obligation is of no use.
– If I do not believe in Him, then this obligation will not change anything.
I am only suggesting that the first positive commandment requires that we investigate in order to understand that God is “a cause and a reason, acting upon all that exists.” Therefore we solve problem Q1: the obligation is to investigate. And we also solve problem Q2: I can believe in God in some form that creates an obligation to obey Him, but not necessarily in Maimonides’ form (that God is “a cause and a reason, acting upon all that exists”). And that is the requirement of the first positive commandment.
And this is a plausible explanation. To whom was this commandment (“I am the Lord your God”) first addressed? To the generation of the Exodus from Egypt. Presumably they believed in God in some form that created an obligation to obey Him, but they had no idea what it means that He is “a cause and a reason, acting upon all that exists.” Apparently, according to Maimonides, that is what was required of them when the Lord said, “I am the Lord your God” (even though that is not the plain meaning of the verse…).
This positive commandment is addressed to every Jew in every generation, not only to those who left Egypt. As I wrote, it is not plausible that this positive commandment is addressed to a different group from the rest of the positive commandments. But the points have already been clarified, and the distance between us now is very small.
I didn’t say it was addressed only to those who left Egypt. It was addressed to them for the first time.
Indeed, the distance between us is small.
Thank you very much for giving me your time.
Thank you for your reply.
1) I’ll try to explain.
According to your approach:
– Who commanded the first positive commandment? God.
– To whom is the first positive commandment addressed? To every Jew, including one who does not believe in God.
– What does the first positive commandment require? To examine whether God indeed exists.
– How can it be that someone who does not believe in God is obligated to obey the demand of the first positive commandment? There is no answer.
According to my approach:
– Who commanded the first positive commandment? God.
– To whom is the first positive commandment addressed? To Jews who (i) believe in God in some form that creates an obligation to obey Him, and (ii) believe that He indeed commanded the first positive commandment. And that includes someone who does not believe in God as a cause and a reason acting upon all that exists.
– What does the first positive commandment require? To examine whether the God in whom I believe indeed has all these attributes: “as a cause and a reason acting upon all that exists.”
– How can it be that someone who does not believe in God is obligated to obey the demand of the first positive commandment? According to my approach, the question does not arise.
2) In the lecture you asked: how can it be that Maimonides commanded us to believe facts in the 13 principles?
I was only saying that with respect to the 13 principles Maimonides is not commanding, he is only defining.
I didn’t understand how this is connected to the sanctions imposed on apikorsim. If someone reached the conclusion that it is a commandment to kill every polluting person, and he killed such a person, then the killer is liable for death even though he acted after cool deliberation and was convinced of it.
An apikoros under compulsion remains an apikoros…