Q&A: The World to Come and Divine Intervention
The World to Come and Divine Intervention.
Question
Hello and greetings.
- Your view is known regarding the World to Come: that you are uncertain whether it is a tradition or something derived from the Torah (and about that you are not convinced).
And likewise your view that God does not intervene in human affairs.
If so, where is the God who does justice and judgment? Where does the rewarding of the wicked take place?
After all, God’s governance as written in the Torah is not supposed to disappear. And if it is neither in this world nor in the next, then where is it?
2. I understand that even without reward I am supposed to do what is true, but what psychological motivation is there for this? Why should I labor and enter a different kind of reality instead of remaining in illusion—suppose I am mistaken, so what? Why should I give up the desire to live a good life for the sake of an ideal (without conscience)? I don’t mean as a reward, but as a connection to what follows. And living an altruistic life does not sound reasonable.
Answer
1. I did not write that there isn’t; only that I have no idea whether there is or isn’t. Your reasoning is the accepted basis for the assumption that there is a World to Come and reward and punishment. That indeed sounds reasonable to me, but what seems reasonable to me is not something on which I build binding principles of faith.
2. See columns 120 and 122.