Q&A: God's Involvement in the World
God's Involvement in the World
Question
From what I understood from the Rabbi,
God does not intervene in the world, since intervention means changing the laws of nature, and if we see that nature follows its regular course,
then there is no intervention.
The Rabbi further argues that there is no such thing as intervention within nature, because intervention means that without the intervention A would have happened, and after the intervention B happened.
But I want to ask the following:
After all, both in the Torah and in the Hebrew Bible there are many cases where it says that the Holy One, blessed be He, does something in the world
(for example, hardening Pharaoh's heart, bringing the kingdom of Babylon against the kingdom of Judah, bringing Cyrus to Israel,
David's punishments because of his actions, and many more examples),
without any statement there about some change in the laws of nature, but rather in human choices.
Apparently,
this would not have looked in the land like a miracle,
but simply like a natural choice.
The point is that because it is written in the Hebrew Bible, we know that there was divine involvement there.
If so,
why not simply think that the Holy One, blessed be He, intervenes as He did in the past,
except that instead of changing the laws of nature,
He influences reality through influencing human choices? It is just that because there is no prophecy, we do not know when. But one should not rule out divine intervention,
since most of the interventions described in the Hebrew Bible are of this kind.
What does the Rabbi think?
Answer
This has already been asked here several times. First, it's possible. I've written more than once that even within nature He may perhaps be involved sporadically. But it's not likely. If He decided not to be involved in the world through nature, why would He be involved through human choices? If He only wants to remain hidden, that can also be done hidden within nature. In short, you gain nothing from this suggestion, except making your testimony more remote.
Discussion on Answer
I understand what the Rabbi is explaining, but my question is this:
If we see in the Hebrew Bible that there are many cases in which God's action in the world is carried out through human beings and not through a change in nature, why does the Rabbi rule out the possibility that today intervention happens through human beings?
When people today interpret the Holocaust as a divine act,
the Rabbi rules this out by saying that there was no change in nature, and therefore it is not a divine act.
The problem with that claim is that even in the Hebrew Bible there are events in which God's act was not a change in the laws of nature,
but in the Hebrew Bible we see that He caused human beings to act in a certain way.
For example:
"The Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them from His presence"
or
"Until the Lord removed Israel from His presence, as He had spoken through all His servants the prophets."
Here events are described that from a human point of view would most likely have looked like natural acts of choice,
but we know that the Holy One, blessed be He, was the one who caused them.
So the question is:
How can one dismiss the claim that the Holy One, blessed be He, acts in reality simply without changing the laws of nature, but rather through human choices?
As for Elisha,
I agree that there there are examples of changes in the laws of nature,
I'm simply arguing that there is another kind of divine intervention,
one that affects human choices,
which in our eyes does not look like divine intervention, but according to the Hebrew Bible we know that there really was intervention that caused people to act the way they did.
I don't know what wasn't clear in what I wrote. I answered this, and I have nothing to add.
How does the Rabbi explain the following verse:
"The Lord will bring upon you and upon your people and upon your father's house days such as have not come since the day Ephraim departed from Judah—the king of Assyria."
Will there be divine intervention here?
Will God take away human beings' choices?
Does this happen by way of nature and the Hebrew Bible is lying?
You can quote the entire Hebrew Bible here (yesterday there was someone who already started doing that. Maybe that was you?). I suggest you start with "And it shall come to pass, if you surely listen." I've already explained all this many times. Search here on the site for divine involvement in the world or something like that.
And see also Guide for the Perplexed, Part II, chapter 48.
Clinging to the hem of our master's cloak, I would reinforce what he said: even in the Hebrew Bible itself, by no means are most of God's interventions in His world of that kind, at least not from what is described to us. It seems to me that even Elisha's miracles alone include more than taking away human beings' freedom of choice.