Q&A: A Personal God and the “Broad Front” Argument
A Personal God and the “Broad Front” Argument
Question
I wanted to ask two questions, and I’d also be glad if you could point me to videos / things you’ve written on the subject.
- As a deist, I believe with fairly high probability in the existence of a creating being or reality. Therefore, ideas like providence and intervention by that being in my life, whether actively or in a way that bends the basic laws that apply in the reality I experience, are hard for me to swallow. Since you are a believer, I assume that you also believe in a personal God… I was wondering whether you have also dealt with this issue of the personal God (and not the philosophical God), and whether there are logical justifications for this view? Or, in the world of faith, as faith, is there no place for logical explanations according to your approach?
2. It seems that many Jews distinguish Judaism from other religions by using the “broad front” argument. Again, since you are Jewish, I tend to believe that you think all other religions (other than Judaism) are human inventions, and therefore you surely hold a good answer to the question of why choose Judaism and not another religion. I’d be happy if you could explain what this argument means, in what way it makes Judaism unique, and whether Norse, Native American, or other folk traditions are not equally valid arguments. What is it in the broad front argument that serves as such a strong tie-breaker that, in many people’s view, raises Judaism to “first place”? Are there additional arguments that Jews use in order to ground Judaism (for example, an argument that comes up often—that the complexity of the Five Books of Moses makes it unlikely that they were written by a human being)? What do you think about that?
3. One question out of curiosity—do you really believe that the Five Books of Moses were in fact written by Moses (apart from the last verses…) and that the entire text was transmitted from a divine being literally? What do you think about the field of academic biblical criticism (that is, the study of the Hebrew Bible using scholarly tools)?
With great appreciation,
Answer
1. You are mixing concepts. Deism is belief in a philosophical God, not a religious one, but that has no necessary connection to the question of whether He is personal (I have to note that His “personality” is a very vague concept, but I won’t get into that here). There could be a personal God who has no religious demands, but merely created the world. In addition, I didn’t understand the “therefore” in your words. Because you are a deist, it is hard for you to accept an involved God? The direction is the reverse: because it is hard for you to accept an involved God, you are a deist.
And here are some implications: I, as a theist who believes in a personal God, also find it difficult to accept His involvement in the world, and therefore I tend not to accept it. I wrote about this in several columns here on the site, and in more detail in my trilogy. The first deals with arguments for the existence of God (the philosophical God) and the move to religious commitment. The second deals with Jewish thought (including immanence and involvement in the world and the like).
The main justification for His being personal is the description of Him that appears in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh).
In the world of faith there is certainly room for logical and philosophical arguments. I claim more than that: without faith, there is no room for such arguments at all. Rationality is impossible without belief in God. On that, see the fourth discussion in my book The First Existent (the first in the aforementioned trilogy).
2. I do not have a clear position regarding other religions; I only think that even if there is something to them, that does not matter very much to me. As a Jew, I am committed to my religion. If I understood what you meant by the broad front argument, then I definitely think it carries weight. If the other monotheisms accept Judaism and continue it onward, then there is broad agreement regarding it, and that is a matter of consensus. There is a presumption that this is true, and now any continuation proposed on top of it requires proof. The burden of proof is on them. At the end of my book The First Existent (fifth discussion), I dealt with this.
This cannot be compared to the credibility of Norse or other folk tales, even apart from the broad front argument. There it is clear that we are dealing with mythologies, and no one claims otherwise. There are other aspects as well; see there.
The complexity of the Five Books of Moses does not strike me as a good argument. If only because I do not see any special complexity in it at all. On the face of it, it is not a very special or interesting composition, and were I not to believe in its divine origin I would not relate to it at all. Even today I do not study it, because it may be holy, but it is not really interesting or relevant to me.
3. Regarding that too, I do not have a clear position. I think there was a revelation at Mount Sinai and that something was given there. I do not know exactly what was given, and that does not matter very much either. For me, commitment to this text is a result of that event, but its authenticity is not a condition for that commitment. This is explained in my trilogy.
I am quite skeptical about academic biblical criticism, as I am about the humanities in general. The theories there are usually not very well grounded, and are saturated with speculation and agenda. What people usually attribute to religious thought is often found in those fields, mostly in academia. That does not mean these things have no value at all, but their conclusions are questionable in my eyes. I emphasize that my position is not connected to defending faith or undermining the faith-related challenges found in those fields, but rather to their nature (the humanities). If it turns out that everything is correct, I have no problem with that, as you can understand from the previous paragraph.
In short, some of the points you raised are addressed here on the site in several places (and it’s hard for me right now to search through so many topics. You are welcome to search, and I am sure you will find a lot of material). In an orderly way, you can find my approach in the first two books of my trilogy: The First Existent, and No Man Has Power over the Spirit.
Discussion on Answer
The existence of a philosophical God does not entail religious commitment. But if a philosophical God exists, that is a step in the direction of religious commitment. I have written about this at length in several places, and especially in my book The First Existent.
Indeed, I tend to think that He does not intervene in the laws of nature, at least as a matter of policy. Of course He is capable of it, and He may decide otherwise, but in light of what I see around me, it seems that He does not do so.
The second kind of involvement you mentioned does not exist, because it is not essentially different from the first kind. I have also written a great deal about that. Any divine intervention is, by definition, a change in the laws of nature, because there are no gaps in nature. You can see about this in the series that begins with column 459, and especially there in columns 463–4.
The question of the meaning of the commandments and prayers in such a view has also been discussed by me at length in several places. Regarding the commandments, there is no problem at all, since I do not observe commandments in order to get something from the Holy One, blessed be He. As Leibowitz said, someone who wants medical care or a livelihood should turn to the health fund or to Yitzhak Tshuva. God directs us toward the correct conduct in order to create a more repaired and complete world (not necessarily morally, but in many other respects as well). Therefore there is no connection between the question of His involvement in the world and the question whether one must and should observe commandments. They should be observed in order to create a repaired world. The question of prayer is more complicated. This is mainly about the requests in prayer, which are only one part of it. The other parts (praise and thanksgiving, etc.) pose no problem even in my view. As for the requests, they are indeed not meaningful if He is not involved. When I reach the conclusion that there is clearly no involvement, I will not say the requests. At the moment that is not the case, and therefore I cannot cancel the requests on the basis of a non-final conclusion. What I do is limit them to cases in which there is no natural solution, and to others who may need this. I do not ask Him for anything for myself (though so far I have not been in acute situations that had no natural solution).
These are weighty questions that have been discussed here at great length, so it is hard for me to conduct a discussion about them, certainly all together.
1. If divine intervention of the first and second kinds as we defined them does not occur, does that not lead to the conclusion that there is no system of reward and punishment? Or does the punishment that comes to a person who acts against the way of the Torah find expression in the fact that the initial “rules of the game” that were set up operate in such a way that that person’s condition worsens by virtue of his violating the rules of the game that were meant to benefit him?
2. What does it mean to say: I was born Jewish and therefore I am obligated to be Jewish? After all, only in the Jewish view am I considered Jewish… That is a justification using Jewish tools. Why would it not also be correct to say that I am obligated to a Buddhist or Christian view as well? After all, every worldview sees its own value system as the truest one, and all the rest as human invention… What are the chances that דווקא the religion I was born into is the religion that tells the “correct” religious story? (In probabilistic terms, a pretty negligible chance…)
3. What does repairing the world mean? How do you get from an intellectual agreement that a philosophical God exists to religious commitment and to the idea that I have to repair the world?
2. Again regarding the non-involvement of the divine factor in the life of the individual—can one make the leap and say that His non-intervention in the laws of nature means that there is no individual providence?
3. What do you think about the following “default setting” question: is a person born a believer, or is he born an atheist and only after effort can a believing stance be developed in him? Maybe it is actually easier for a person to adopt a religious worldview (and evidence for that is the ease with which children believe without doubt), whereas the atheist who looks at the world critically and rationally is actually the next developmental stage. After all, chronologically, to the best of my knowledge, the atheist stage came later…
With great appreciation,
1. Correct, in this world. About this the Sages said: “There is no reward for a commandment in this world.”
2. First, one uses probabilistic tools only between equally balanced possibilities about which you have no information. You can examine the options substantively and decide. If Judaism seems plausible to you, then you choose it regardless of probabilities and likelihoods. What are the chances that the president of the United States today is named Joe? Slim. But what can I do—I know that this is indeed his name. It is always possible that my examination is biased and flawed, but a judge has only what his eyes see. By the way, not every worldview necessarily sees itself as the truest one. There are certainly quite a few worldviews that see several options as true, and each person is supposed to act according to the path into which he was born.
3. Read the book.
2 (?). There is no active providence, only passive providence (that is, observing what happens). That is not a leap, but a description of the same claim in different words.
3 (?). Atheism came later because it is false. Once everyone understood that there is a God (mainly because He revealed Himself), but at some stage the nonsense of the atheists arrived. As Oscar Wilde (?) said, there are absurdities so great that only intellectuals can say them and believe them. In my estimation, a person is born a believer, and secular education steers him and brainwashes him into denying this. See the fourth discussion in my book The First Existent. Some of this is in column 456–7.
For Gil’s curiosity: if you’d like, there is a person named Yehoshua Inbal whose main occupation is critiquing biblical criticism, and in my humble opinion he does an exceptional job.
Thank you for the reply,
The move from the existence of a philosophical God to religious commitment is definitely the leap that has always seemed puzzling to me. Why does recognizing the existence of a philosophical God obligate me, religiously, to observe commandments and a religious way of life? I’ll look into the subject more deeply… but I’d also be glad to read, perhaps briefly, what your position is on this question.
On another point you raised: the personal God in whom you believe does not intervene in the world by bending the laws of physics (as I understand you). Do you believe it is possible that He intervenes by arranging circumstances and creating coincidences that lead to the desired outcomes in a way that does not bend the laws of physics? Does the second mode of intervention I mentioned not also constitute a bending of physics, in that it “intervenes” in the randomness of chemical / mechanical / biological processes…
If the involvement of the divine being in the life of the individual is negligible—whether because the being chooses not to intervene or because it cannot—does that not make observance of commandments completely unnecessary? Prayer? If “God has abandoned the land,” what is the point of continuing to praise Him or act under His authority?
Thank you!