Q&A: Does the Holy One, Blessed be He, Have Choices?
Does the Holy One, Blessed be He, Have Choices?
Question
I saw in one of your columns that you argue that good and evil are necessities of reality, and more than that, that perhaps the commandments (Jewish law) are also a necessity of some spiritual reality that we do not understand.
From this it would seem that the Holy One, Blessed be He, did not command us to put on tefillin or keep kosher just because He felt like it, but because it is a necessity of reality, just like logic. And perhaps He also created the entire world out of some necessity (to perfect Himself?), and perhaps even the type of world was in a sense 'forced' on Him, because there are no other possible worlds that would satisfy the other necessities.
This raises the question: what is left of the Holy One, Blessed be He? He turns into a kind of deterministic, necessarily existing entity, and not really an 'intelligent designer' with desires—almost a logical derivative of reality.
Answer
These necessities of reality are abstract principles. Their implementation depends on the world that was created. In any world the Holy One, Blessed be He, would have created, those same moral and halakhic principles would have had a different expression, and therefore the actual applications depend on Him. He could have created a world without human beings, with only other creatures, and with regard to them morality would determine that their preservation or destruction is the moral issue. With regard to human beings, morality determines that their lives have value, and that is something the Holy One, Blessed be He, cannot change. But He can decide to create a world without human beings or with other creatures. Think about the rules of modesty in our world. It is clear that they are a function of the circumstances and culture in which we operate. In every culture, those same rules of modesty are applied differently, but they are still the same rules. It is not that modesty becomes something else. The application changes.
You are probably referring to column 457. There I explained that if you do not assume this, then the claim that the Holy One, Blessed be He, is good turns from a claim into a definition. The Holy One, Blessed be He, meets standards that He Himself set arbitrarily. What does that say about Him? Is that praise? In my view, no.
Discussion on Answer
I don't know whether I understood your question. Certainly not all of it. I will only say that it is pretty clear that human beings specifically are arbitrary. But creating a world and some kind of creatures perhaps is not. Probably not.
But arbitrariness is not choice either. After all, that is your claim in the parable about the elections in Switzerland. If so, in what situation does He have choice?
Here, arbitrary means that it is not forced on Him. Either random or chosen.
In what situation does He have choice, in your view? (In the sense that things are not forced on Him and are not arbitrary-random either.)
I don't understand the question. But I also do not understand the point of clarifying how and when the Holy One, Blessed be He, has choice and how He acts then.
What about the decision to create human beings? Is it arbitrary, or is it not arbitrary, in which case deciding it is also a necessity of reality? Note that we are speaking here on the logical level, so the third option (the libertarian one) does not exist.