Q&A: Talking About God
Talking About God
Question
What does the Rabbi think about the following statement by Rabbi Cherki:
“God cannot be defined even as existing or not existing.
All the arguments about whether there is a God or there is no God are meaningless,
because the concepts of being and non-being do not apply to one who is the source of both being and non-being.
Therefore, the statement ‘there is no God’ is perhaps even more accurate than the statement ‘there is a God,’ but it too is incorrect, because ‘nothingness’ is like being at degree zero.
So if we are talking about the metaphysical concept, then it is above every concept, and I don’t think it is possible to speak about it at all.
The only thing one can perhaps speak about is the question of revelation.”
Answer
In my view, these are nonsensical remarks. He is conflating statements about existence with descriptions. I do not necessarily reject his descriptions either (like the kabbalists, who advocate positive attributes, against Maimonides’ doctrine of the negation of attributes), but regarding His existence one certainly can and should say that He exists. How does he explain Maimonides’ words, “to know that there is a First Being”? What does “there is” mean—that He is not? In what sense is someone who believes in God different from someone who does not believe in Him?
The same old mistake appears in Anselm’s ontological argument, which treats existence as an attribute (and therefore sees existence as part of a thing’s perfection). And the same mistake appears in Leibniz’s principle of the identity of indiscernibles (which claims that two objects with the same set of properties are one and the same object. He assumes that existence is one of the properties).
Discussion on Answer
When I say that He exists, I mean that He exists. When you say “reality,” it depends what you mean. If you mean everything that exists, then that includes the Holy One, blessed be He. If you mean everything that exists apart from Him, then it does not include Him. Tautological, of course. There is no point in dealing with this kind of chatter.
But it still seems incorrect to say about God that He exists, because when I say that something exists I am talking about reality and saying that it is included within it, but God created reality, so He does not exist within it.