Q&A: Providence
Providence
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I saw several discussions on the site about providence, and I didn’t understand: if everything is known and planned in advance, why is providence needed at all?
(And even if God does not know what a person will choose, He knows the options available to him and planned in advance that if he chooses this way then such-and-such will happen, and if he chooses differently then something else will happen.)
Answer
Who said that everything is known and planned in advance?
Discussion on Answer
Yes. He had general goals. But He also wanted us to choose freely, even if that would interfere with achieving those goals. Therefore He cannot know in advance what will happen.
He doesn’t know what a person will choose, but He does know all the possible choices, and He can plan in advance that if they choose this way then such-and-such will happen, and if they choose differently then something else will happen. For example, I have a choice whether to ask forgiveness from someone I hurt. God doesn’t know whether I will choose to ask forgiveness or not, but He can plan that if I choose to ask forgiveness then A will happen to me, and if I choose not to ask forgiveness then B will happen to me. It follows that He does not know what people will choose, but He does know all the possible paths, and therefore there is no need for providence.
A person spinning a roulette wheel also “knows” all the possible paths. But if you think about it, he doesn’t really know what will happen.
Maimonides, following a midrash of the Sages, indeed writes that the divine responses were embedded in creation from the moment it was created, as conditions dependent on our actions. The Holy One, blessed be He, made a condition with the acts of creation—and in particular, that the sea would split when Israel reached it. It doesn’t really matter; this is still active providence, because there is a response to each of our actions. The fact that this is done by remote guidance through laws that were set in advance doesn’t really make a difference for our purposes.
My logic tells me that the One who created the world also thought about the future and planned it.
Does the Rabbi disagree?
Is there some contradiction to my logic?