Question

Our teacher, our rabbi,
1. In lesson 5 of the series “The Holy One, Blessed Be He and the World,” regarding the case from the Talmudic text that “liability is brought about through one who is liable,” with that one who had become liable to exile and that one who had become liable to death… one way or the other, even if this was done unintentionally, in the language of the Talmudic text, there is still divine involvement here and guidance of the situation so that this one will be killed and that one will become liable to exile. Maybe this does not undermine free choice because it is an unintentional act, but in the end the person who died still died before his time, because if not for this rolling of the situation from Heaven, that person could have gone on living… Likewise regarding Nachmanides’ answer about conspiring witnesses who were exposed after the “defendant” had died.
2. In that same lesson, the Rabbi said, and quoted from Maimonides, that according to his view there is no divine providence/involvement at all — not in human actions, not in natural phenomena, and not even in miracles. How does that fit with Maimonides in Guide for the Perplexed, part 3, where he lists 5 views of providence (the Epicureans, Aristotle, the Ash’arites, the view of our holy Torah, and the view of Maimonides), for seemingly his approach in the introduction to Perek Helek is exactly Aristotle’s approach, which says that the Holy One, Blessed Be He, only created the world and the laws of nature and then cut off contact. If so, why would Maimonides list his own view as the fifth position? His view in Perek Helek does not fit with his view in Guide for the Perplexed, where he claims that there is individual providence over human beings when he says that providence “applies only to individual human beings.”
3. I would be glad if the Rabbi would point me to a source or explain why, in his view, change in God or an arousal of will is not a defect in His perfection or infinity but rather an advantage on His part (which goes back to the issue of the perfect and the perfecting itself), because Maimonides’ whole difficulty in attributing will to Him (which indicates some sort of lack) or change is based on the axiom — from Maimonides’ perspective — that by definition there can be no change or will in God. And Maimonides is careful to say not the will of God but the wisdom of God. Although even according to Maimonides’ own view, which says that everything was already embedded in the laws of creation at the very beginning, including the miracles, it is still not clear how he explains the actual moment of creation itself, because there there must necessarily be intervention in time and an arousal of will?!
4. Regarding “weakness of the will,” with the example of repentance, for instance, why do we need to strain and say that the only possible way that seems reasonable to the Rabbi for resolving the “one way or the other” claim — regarding whether the factor that causes repentance is external to the person and imposed on him, or whether it is immanent within the person, in which case it happened independently because the person himself wanted it — is by saying that there probably is no real dichotomy and there is some kind of cooperation between the human being and God, in the sense of “one who comes to purify himself is assisted” or “open for Me an opening like the eye of a needle…” and so on.
Why can’t we say that a person who repents — at least some of them — used to be religious/traditional in the past, and they still believe in God and the Torah, and they are simply in the category of people who cast off the yoke, not ideological secularists; and the reason they were secular until now was only because their impulse overcame them and they gave in to the temptations of this world. And when they decided to repent, it was because they had really believed in it all along but simply had not put it into practice… without attributing that specifically to outside intervention.
And what is the problem with saying that a person is made up of many desires, and when he gives in and eats chocolate at the very time he had decided to go on a diet, that only means that this specific desire — to be thin — was weaker than the desire that it taste good to him at that moment, and therefore he ate the chocolate. It is true that in the end, bottom line, at the moment when he ate the chocolate, that is what he really wanted (at that moment alone), and his choice was the product of his own desire, not of some outside factor or any other factors. What is wrong with assuming that there are, for example, different kinds of desires: an immediate desire and a long-term desire? Like with a religious person who really wants to pray Shacharit every day, but in practice stays in bed and only gets up at noon… I don’t think you can say that he didn’t really want to pray Shacharit. Maybe the problem is only in the formulation of the “weakness of the will” argument as opposed to “weakness of the specific will,” for example…
5. I wanted to know what the practical difference is between the view of our Torah (the Sages), as brought in Guide for the Perplexed, and Maimonides’ own view. From what I understood, both agree that there is general providence over nature, and individual providence over the human being, and that the degree of providence depends on the person’s conduct. Only the difference between them is the criterion for the degree of providence.
That is, according to the Sages, the criterion is a person’s righteousness/wickedness, and according to Maimonides, his wisdom/ignorance. If my reading is accurate, can one say that according to Maimonides, a person who is careful with every commandment, major and minor alike, but not מתוך his own understanding, not because he reached it through inquiry and contemplation, but only by force of habit because that is how he grew up and what he saw at home, or out of blind faith without investigation — can one say that he is not under providence or not really religious?!
And the question also arises from the other side: can one say that in essence the Sages also agree with Maimonides, for even a person’s righteousness or wickedness (which is measured by how careful he is with the Torah’s commandments) is the fruit of his rational decision whether to intellectually accept the claims about the truth of the Torah and belief in God — perhaps except for a person who truly does not think and does everything merely out of habit, as “a commandment of men learned by rote” — so that in the end everything rises and falls on our intellect, including faith… (as Rabbi Shimon Shkop said, whom the Rabbi likes to quote)?!

Forgive the length…
I’ve been wrestling with these questions for a long time. I would appreciate it if the Rabbi could answer everything and address all the points, or at least refer me to sources…
P.S.!
I should note that I have almost all of the Rabbi’s books, and I really love your lectures and deeply appreciate your work. I think that in our generation, and in the spirit of the times, this is the most important thing there is to be engaged in,
in the sense of “Know what to answer,” since there are so many opinions and lines of reasoning, and it is very easy to get lost in the labyrinth of the world of thought.
It is important to hear, learn, and give space to somewhat more intellectual and “professional” interpretations, as opposed to the “shallow” reasoning of many rabbis or Torah “thought” people, such as the “kiruv professionals,” which has already taken root in the thinking of many religious people of our generation. Moreover, at times this shallowness makes our faith and our views an object of mockery and scorn among our secular brothers who have read a little and then challenge us in return…
May your strength be for Torah!
Thank you very much!