Q&A: The Purpose of Creation
The Purpose of Creation
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I seem to remember that during the lecture series on faith / belief, you said that a priori, before the revelation at Sinai, you would have expected there to be such a revelation in order to disclose to us the purpose of creation. On the other hand, I also remember that you spoke about perfection and self-perfection as possible purposes of the Holy One, blessed be He, in creation, in the sense that He is perfected through us. But in order to achieve the goal of self-perfection, there do not necessarily have to be commandments or revelation; it would be enough for human beings to perfect themselves through the use of their free choice and their intellect, and thus the Holy One, blessed be He, would be perfected through them. So basically my question is: do there have to be revelation or commandments in order for the Holy One, blessed be He, to achieve His purpose in creation, or not, since there could be other things, like self-perfection, that do not require revelation?
Answer
He would have had to tell us that too: that it is incumbent upon us to perfect ourselves. Without revelation, I would not know what my role is. Of course, that is only one side of the coin. The other side is the tradition that comes down to us about the revelation, and within it are commandments that we would never have imagined on our own.
Discussion on Answer
I don’t think so. In principle, it is possible that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not need to, and/or does not want to, perfect Himself. Once there is revelation and the Holy One, blessed be He, imposes tasks on us, I ask myself why He needs us. Let Him do it Himself. And to that, the only possible answer is the problem of perfection and self-perfection.
Regarding the first side of the coin,
from the Patriarchs and from the testimony of the Hebrew Bible about norms before the revelation at Mount Sinai, it seems that even without revelation one can know what one’s role in the world is, no?
Okay, but even aside from the whole issue of perfection and self-perfection, there are several other possible reasons that arise from reasoning and do not require revelation:
In the writings of Rabbi Isaac Luria, two general reasons were given for the creation of the world: “that the perfection of His powers be revealed,” and “that they recognize His greatness.” Or, as they say in Chabad: the Holy One, blessed be He, desired to have a dwelling in the lower realms. Aren’t these sufficient even without revelation?
Eitan,
from the Hebrew Bible the exact opposite emerges clearly and distinctly. Every time someone searches for meaning, it begins with a connection to the Holy One, blessed be He, and with His command. Adam, Abraham, Moses, the people of Israel. When Abraham searches for meaning, it begins with the Creator and His commands (which preceded the giving of the Torah). All of these are revelations.
Oren,
those reasons may be possible (I have no idea where he derives them from), but even if they are correct, I would still need revelation in order to know them. And certainly I would need the details of how His powers are revealed or how a dwelling for Him is created in the lower realms. What is incumbent upon me.
Take, for example, what is written in Maimonides:
How is the way to love Him and fear Him?
When a person contemplates His deeds and His wondrous and great creations, and sees from them His wisdom, which is beyond compare and end, he immediately loves, praises, glorifies, and longs with a great longing to know the great Name, as David said: “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.”
That is, it is possible that the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world so that His creatures would arrive at love and fear of Him through contemplation (of creation itself); and all this does not necessarily require revelation, does it?
But that itself is something He would need to tell me. Otherwise, I might love Him (or maybe not), but I would not act in order to love Him. Love of God is also a commandment, not merely a natural state or an experience.
But there are commandments that can be understood through reasoning without revelation. Something like what Rabbi Shimon Shkop says regarding the law of civil ordinances, and his question: from where do we know that one must fulfill what is written in the Torah? That is, just as there is a logical basis for the idea that one must fulfill God’s commandments, there is also such a logical basis for the idea that one must know God through contemplation of His creation.
I’ll repeat the same claim once again: precisely because one can understand them on one’s own, that is certainly not the purpose of creation. That understanding is connected to a properly ordered social structure. The whole idea of Rabbi Shimon’s law of civil ordinances is that it is not a religious value but a moral-social value.
I do not know the value of knowing God through contemplation of creation even after there was revelation. In my view, that is an invention of Maimonides. I certainly would not infer it from reasoning, and certainly not that it is my role and that this is what repairs the world and fulfills the purposes of the Holy One, blessed be He, in creation.
But it seems that this whole idea of perfection and self-perfection as the purpose of creation comes from reasoning, not from any revelation saying that this is our role.