Q&A:
Question
I read at the end of your first available book the claim (I’ll present it somewhat superficially) that God created the world because He had a kind of need for it; that is, He created us because He wanted to, and He intends something for us—and that desire indicates a need He has that we are meant to complete. In other words: commandments as a divine need / perfection according to Rabbi Kook.
I’m not able to understand how this approach makes sense. In itself it is understandable, but it points to something unclear. After all, if God is a perfect and eternal being, how can it make sense to say about Him that He has a need for our actions? Doesn’t that indicate imperfection, some flaw? And if so, isn’t that a deficient God?
And even if we say something like the claim in Kabbalah, that this is His voluntary self-contraction to make room for us—then why was that His will?
I’m not trying to find the clear positive answer, since “what have you to do with the hidden things of the Merciful One,” but I don’t fully grasp the reasoning behind the claim of need.
And on the other hand, Rabbi Soloveitchik’s claim as well, in his book And From There You Shall Seek, where he says based on Maimonides that God created the world by His will—is also not clear to me.
Answer
First, let’s assume there is a contradiction and it turns out that He is not perfect. So no—who said He is perfect?
Second, I don’t think one must say that He is not perfect, because this lack is a necessary product of perfection. The very concept of perfection is itself not well defined unless you remove this issue from it.
And third, one can ask: what was with Him before He created the world? Was He not perfect then? To that one can say that since at any moment He has the ability, whenever He wishes, to create a world that will complete Him, that is perfection. Beyond that, perfection is defined over the entire axis of time and not at each given moment, and the perfection is that at some stage He creates deficient beings who will complete Him.
Discussion on Answer
No. Simply because one who is perfect cannot perfect himself further. It’s a logical-conceptual problem.
Thank you very much, and why is this lack considered a necessary product of perfection? Because desire is a product of perfection?