Monday, March 19, 2007

Must one believe that God created the World? Is it an Ikkar - Dogma?

In the Sinai Journal volume 137 year 69, there is an interesting article by Rav Aryeh Leib Feldman, where he cites comments of Rabbeinu Nissim of Gerona (Rabbi Nissim ben Reuven (1320 - 1380, Hebrew: נסים בן ראובן) also known as RaN, in his Pirush on Torah, in which he defends Rashi against Ramban’s criticisms. The first one addresses the famous first Rashi in Chumash that quotes R. Yitzchak as asking why the Torah starts with Breishit. After all it is a book of laws rather than a history or philosophical treatise. Ramban is surprised by the question. He argues that the Torah has to tell us that God created the world because that is the basis of all our beliefs and anyone that does not accept it is a heretic.

Before I explain Ran’s answer it is necessary to understand Rambam’s position on this as it is the underlying argument in Ran’s exposition. As I have discussed many times in earlier posts and in my two articles in Hakirah, Rambam holds that there is only one thing that can be proven empirically in Jewish theology; the existence of God as the First Cause. By definition, once that is proven, His uniqueness, perfection and omnipotence are self-evident conclusions. Everything else that we as Jews believe about God, are ontological explanations based on revelation, the Torah and other theological considerations. That God has Will and that He willed existence and the universe at a certain time are not self-evident axioms. They are accepted by us because they fit our understanding of what revelation has taught us. The reason I say fit rather than saying revelations teaches us, is because Nevuah is an interpretable medium. Its use of language is flexible enough to allow it to be adapted to a broad range of ideas. The rule that governs how far we can interpret is quite simple; as long as the revelatory statement cannot be overturned by empirical evidence, it stands as is.

The fact that God is the First Cause of everything, that everything depends on His existence while His existence is totally independent of anything else, can be proven empirically without the need for revelation. That statement alone already forces us to accept His uniqueness, His singularity and thus His unknowability. In other words He is transcendent and nothing about Him, except the effects He caused, can be known. Man from time immemorial, in his quest for answers to his existential questions, has engaged in a search for this great unknowable entity that we call God. Revelation, a natural human capability that we learned with time how to use, teaches us that certain beliefs, ontological explanations, are helpful in that quest. That God has Will is the most fundamental and sine qua non of all religious experience. What we are saying is that for us to understand the existence we observe, had we been the ones who caused it to exist; we would have had to have willed it. As will to us is time dependent, at one time we had not yet willed what we are willing now, so too we say that God willed existence other than His own at a certain time. As God is perfect by definition, He exercised His will only one time. That allows us to accept that everything we experience is the result of that one time primordial Will that God exercised. Rambam makes this point very clear in MN 2:25:

“Know that with a belief in the creation of the world in time, all the miracles become possible and the law becomes possible, and all questions that may be asked on this subject, vanish. Thus it might be said: Why did God give prophetic revelation to this one and not to that? Why did God give this law to this particular nation, and why did He not legislate to the other? Why did He legislate at this particular time, and why did He not legislate before it or after? Why did He impose these commandments and these prohibitions? Why did He privilege the prophet with the miracles mentioned in relation to him and not with some others? What was God’s aim in giving this law? Why did He not, if such was His purpose, put the accomplishment of the commandments and the non-transgression of the prohibitions into our nature? The answer to all these questions would be: He wanted it this way; or His wisdom required it this way. And just as He brought the world into existence having the form it has, when He wanted to, without us knowing His will with regard to this or in what wisdom there was in His particularizing the forms of the world and the time of its creation- in the same way we do not know His will or the exigency of His wisdom that caused all the matters, about which questions have been posed above, to be particularized.”

When I say that God has Will is not empirically provable, I am saying that as the First Cause, we can understand God as an entity that is the underlying “concept” of the universe. He and the universe (existence) have eternally been there and will be so eternally. The idea that there is a First Cause is not a temporal statement; it is an explanation of how things exist. They have existed that way eternally. This understanding negates all religious experience as there is no possible relationship with such a God. What relationship can one have with an entity that has no will?

The idea that God having Will is the basis for all Jewish theological discourse is accepted by all the Rishonim. Their arguments are in its application in our analyses of our existence. When reading Rashi’s question, Ramban’s reaction was that once we accept that God has Will does it not include the belief that He created the world in time? Isn’t the belief that God created the world in time a necessary and fundamental idea that underlies the whole Torah and the laws it promulgates? Is it therefore not self-evident why the Torah introduces the idea of Creation before it proceeds to giving laws?

RaN in his Pirush on the Torah, excerpted in the above article, argues that we could accept eternal existence, that God is not the Creator; He can be seen as the First Cause, as long as we accept that He has Will. It is not necessary to assume that because He has Will he must have created. Will and Creation are not synonymous. Although there cannot be Creation without Will, there can be Will without Creation. As long as the Torah teaches us that God has Will and exercises it, the whole Torah makes sense. Rashi’s question is therefore why did the Torah choose to tell us that God has Will by telling us that He is the Creator? Why did it not find it sufficient to tell us this important idea starting with the Exodus? Why is the ontological understanding of that event not enough for the belief that God has Will and exercises it? Why is the Mitzvah of Hachodesh Hazeh Lachem which resulted from that experience not enough to teach that God has Will and exercises it?[1]

RaN then makes a very important statement. The fact that God created the world is not a dogma that we must accept on its own. As long as we accept that God has Will, the rest of the Torah would stand without a problem. An eternal uncreated universe does not negate Will to God. It therefore cannot be a dogma without which Judaism cannot stand. However once the Torah tells us that God did create the world in time, denying it makes one deny a statement in the Torah. That in itself is heresy.

This discussion gives us an insight of how RaN saw the Ikkarim and I believe is how Rambam saw them. They are not arbitrary stand-alone dogma. They are what Rambam understood to be fundamental ideas without which the rest of Jewish theology and practice have no meaning. When later Rishonim such as RaN followed by his pupils R. Hasdai ben Abraham Crescas (Hebrew: חסדאי קרשקש) (born in Barcelona, Catalonia c. 1340 - 1410/1411) and R. Yosef Albo (15th century Spain) argued against the Ikkarim, they were arguing that Judaism can be understood rationally with a smaller number of dogma. In other words they tried to show that the Torah can stand on its own independently of certain dogma. They were not denying the validity of the beliefs nor the fact that someone who does not believe in them is stepping outside the boundaries of Jewish theology. They just argued that if one does not accept several of Rambam’s Ikkarim the rest of Judaism does not crumble.




[1] This argument has implication on how we understand miracles. Rambam who does not see God exercising His Will all the time, just at Creation, sees the Exodus as the result of that original Will at Creation. Ramban and His school of thought see God exercising Will constantly. But this is a lengthy discussion for another time.

24 comments:

  1. 1. >Rambam holds that there is only one thing that can be proven empirically in Jewish theology; the existence of God as the First Cause.

    That's very debatable & we had our differences about this in the past.
    I'll just add that if it's so evident &"proven empirically",it's so surprising that most scientist in the top 5-10%(Nobel winners in physics & other sciences) are either atheists or agnostics.
    As is shown in all the surveys, that I have seen.

    2. > What we are saying is that for us to understand the existence we observe, had we been the ones who caused it to exist; we would have had to have willed it. As will to us is time dependent, at one time we had not yet willed what we are willing now, so too we say that God willed existence other than His own at a certain time. As God is perfect by definition, He exercised His will only one time.

    In this respect you're comparing God's will to mans.Just as man could only will in time,so God too in the instance of creation could only exercise his will 'in time'(did I get it right?).
    But that's anthropomorphic & is against everything the rambam wrote against the impossibility of comparing anything to God.
    By saying that God could only create in time,just as man could only create in time,you're anthropomorphic.
    In addition,you're limiting Him.


    3.>“Know that with a belief in the creation of the world in time, all the miracles become possible and the law becomes possible, and all questions that may be asked on this subject, vanish.

    The Rambam doesn't answer anything.All he is saying: don't ask any questions.Things are as they are,& that's it.It's the will of God! What kind of an answer is this?!
    This answer(?) has been given from time immemorial."The gods willed so",case closed.
    That excerpt always puzzled me.One would expect of the Rambam something more original!
    And it somehow resonates with determinism & fatalism.
    " that's how God willed it,and that's it"


    4.You havn't said whether God has FREE will.
    Soforno on Gen.1:26 writes:
    אמנם בחירות האל ית,היא לעולם לטוב ולא כן הבחירה האנושית.ועם זה הנה האלוהית על אופן נכבד מאד יותר מין הבחירה האנושית.
    But if what wills is ALWAYS good,it's not really free will.
    One could just as well say that a stone also has free will,it just wants always to fall to the ground.
    What is your take about FREE will with regard to God. Is it an Ikkar in Judaism?

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  2. >But if what wills is ALWAYS good,

    should read;
    But if what GOD wills etc.

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  3. >By saying that God could only create in time,just as man could only create in time,you're anthropomorphic.
    In addition,you're limiting Him.

    Please read my words carefully. I said that "we believe" that God created in time. We cannot know that except through ontological interpretation based on revelation.


    >That excerpt always puzzled me.One would expect of the Rambam something more original!
    And it somehow resonates with determinism & fatalism.
    " that's how God willed it,and that's it"


    I discuss this in great detail in my article in Hakirah vol 3. I think I emailed it to you a few months ago. If you don't have it you can access it online at Hakirah.org

    Re your #4 question that sforno is also based on rambam. I have touched on it a little when we discussed darkness. I will expand on it in my upcoming posts and in an upcoming article I am just starting.

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  4. Re #4 MN 3:10 is about that.

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  5. >Is it an Ikkar in Judaism?

    An ikkar is not necessarily empirically provable. It is something that cannot be disproven and is necessary to allow for all the other aspects of Judaism to make sense. Of course God has free will by definition. The reason He does not make Ra, because Ra by definition does not exist. It is only the absence of existence.

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  6. I think a distinction should be made between empirically and logically provable.

    The First Cause is, strictly speaking, a logical proof, not an empirical one. There must be at least one non-contingent entity by definition and we know from observation that it cannot be anything in the material world, since everything in that framework is contingent on other things.

    By contrast, the creation of the universe could, at least in theory, be proven empirically, but will never be shown to be logically necessary in the way the existence of a First Cause is. Indeed, we have come pretty close to demonstrating the creation as an empirical fact, although there are still detractors who hope to find an alternative explanation (of course, even their explanation would leave us with a Platonic creation scenario, which was acceptable to both Rambam and Ralbag.)

    Yitzchak, with regard to Nobel Prize winning scientists - read "God and the Astronomers" by Robert Jastrow. It speaks about how the greatest minds of the early 20th century made egregious errors in their analysis of data that were motivated by a desire to deny the big bang.

    Being smart doesn't make you immune to human emotions, arrogance, etc., and scientists have no more of a clue about the ultimate meaning of things than the average guy on the street. Yet many remain as passionate about unprovable atheism as religious people are about their faith. Scientists are good at science and should stick to their field.

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  7. BTW, David, when are you coming to visit me in Rockville? :)

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  8. Rabbi Maroof, thank you for the distiction between logical and empirical. I will use it in the future and it makes much sense. What do you expect from a Yeshiva boy?

    Re Rockville, I am sure I will make it one day. I have a feeling though that you will be in my area Brooklyn first. So why dont we get together during your next trip to the big apple?

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  9. Interesting you mentioned "the first cause". The ancient Christian Gnostics were big on that and considered it the "true God" while expressing their antipathy for the "God of Israel".

    Sabbatean prophet Abraham Miguel Cardoso-in a slight twist- also professes belief in a dual deity but demands allegiance to the Israelite God which he called the "true God".

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  10. in a slight twist- also professes belief in a dual deity but demands allegiance to the Israelite God which he called the "true God".

    IIRC, this was not Cardozo's formulation of the Sabbatean "Sod HaElokut" but rather Sabbtai's own initial doctorine where HaKadosh Baruch Hu (God as revealed in the Torah) reveals Himself through the sefira of Tiferet. (I believe Cardozo and Hayon in his wake sent Sabbatean theology in a more trinitarian direction)

    This was hardly a Sabbatean Chidush. In fact this is a doctorine found in the Zohar (and for that matter in much of the proto-Zoharic literature). What the Sabbatean Heresy consisted of was the absolute insistance that God as revealed through the sefira of tiferet is SEPERATE from Ein Sof and that Ein Sof has NO RELEVANCE to the individual at all.

    What is important about this is that it illustrates how Sabbatean kabbalah deviated radically from the Kabbalah of the Ariz"l. In the Ari's system (and the Radak's as well), such a chiluk between Ein Sof and any of the sefirot is unthinkable! Those rationalists who want to pin the blame of the Sabbatean movement on Torat HaAri have to look somewhere else.

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  11. in a slight twist- also professes belief in a dual deity but demands allegiance to the Israelite God which he called the "true God".

    IIRC, this was not Cardozo's formulation of the Sabbatean "Sod HaElokut" but rather Sabbtai's own initial doctorine where HaKadosh Baruch Hu (God as revealed in the Torah) reveals Himself through the sefira of Tiferet. (I believe Cardozo and Hayon in his wake sent Sabbatean theology in a more trinitarian direction)

    This was hardly a Sabbatean Chidush. In fact this is a doctorine found in the Zohar (and for that matter in much of the proto-Zoharic literature). What the Sabbatean Heresy consisted of was the absolute insistance that God as revealed through the sefira of tiferet is SEPERATE from Ein Sof and that Ein Sof has NO RELEVANCE to the individual at all.

    What is important about this is that it illustrates how Sabbatean kabbalah deviated radically from the Kabbalah of the Ariz"l. In the Ari's system (and the Radak's as well), such a chiluk between Ein Sof and any of the sefirot is unthinkable! Those rationalists who want to pin the blame of the Sabbatean movement on Torat HaAri have to look somewhere else.

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  12. >Radak's

    You mean Ramak, R. Moshe Cordovero.

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  15. "Those rationalists who want to pin the blame of the Sabbatean movement on Torat HaAri have to look somewhere else".

    There is alot more than belief in a dual deity that doth a Sabbatean make. There is the sexual libertinism, the occultation of the Messiah (excusing Sabbetai's apostasy) which is of course has a "solid basis" in Zohar and Ari's writings- among other things.

    By the way the 2 major Sabbatean "prophets" Cardozo and Natan of Gaza differed in their approach to Kabbalah. Natan attempted to root the movement in Lurianic Kabbalah while his colleague Cardozo took a different direction altogether and added new dimensions to the older Zoharic concepts.

    Nechemia Chiyun (Hayyon) later took this even further, replacing the 2 Gods with a trinity.

    (There have been some attempts -such as that by Prof. Nissim Yosha to rehabilitate Cardozo and reinterpret his views as being in line with traditional Kabbalistic belief but this is not borne out of Cardoso's own writings).

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  16. All this Kabbalah-as we woudn't have enough problems with Tanach,Talmud,etc.
    It's all mumbo jumbo to me.

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  17. All this Kabbalah-as we woudn't have enough problems with Tanach,Talmud,etc.

    It's all mumbo jumbo to me.


    But not to others. I would recomend that every maimonedian have a seder in the Ramchal just as I would recoment every Mystical minded person to have a seder in the Moreh - I know I do. :)

    Its all part of our messorah!

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  18. >Its all part of our messorah!

    Are you sure? :-)

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  19. The overemphasizing of Kabballah is definitely to blame for the Sabbetai Zevi debacle. There is most definitely a place in Judaism for the mystical but it was not meant to take on the commercial form that proved our undoing. As Ben Sirah wrote: 'ein lecha esek b'nistarot'.

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  20. > As Ben Sirah wrote: 'ein lecha esek b'nistarot'.

    This is quoted in the Talmud,Chagigah 13a in the name of Ben Sira.
    What interests me is the word 'esek'.
    It's not a biblical word & I wonder whether the word was known in B.S.time,who lived in 2ndc. BCE
    The quote in Chagigah would be many c. later.
    I know that parts of BS was found in the Cairo Genizah(but it's not 100% sure whether it's the original Heb.or just a translation from the Greek).
    Parts of BS were also found amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls.
    I wonder whether this specific quote containing the word 'esek'is in those parts that were discovered.

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  21. >The overemphasizing of Kabballah is definitely to blame for the Sabbetai Zevi debacle.

    What does this even mean??

    A) as I am sure you know, there was more than one factor for the Sabbatean movement (the massacres in Poland, and a generally heavily mythological approach to redemption are just a few)

    B) At the height of the movement, kabbalah was almost completely absent from the public discourse. Various apocalyptic midrashim and fake news reports about messianic armies were.

    C) Kabbala as envisioned by SZ, was far removed from the popular approach during that era. We have SZ's own testimony that he did not approach Lurianic Kabbalah. Nattan did study Lurianic Kabbalah but most of his doctrines trying to use its symbolic language were quite a strech and orthodox Lurianists often rejected his formulation - ESPECIALY after the apostasy.

    Now, to be fair, could the Sabbatean movement have existed if there was no such thing as Kabbalah? Most probably not. However, there are many other factors which were necessary conditions but not sufficient conditions for it arising.

    One thing history HAS shown, is that a lack of hashkafic balance EITHER towards mysticism or rationalism, often leads to antinomianism of one sort or another. (or should I start pointing out movement which only wanted to be meVaer the chametz in the heart?) :)

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  22. >What interests me is the word 'esek'.

    The word Esek appears 4 times in ben sira (M.Z.Segal scholarly edition)

    I have not read his introduction (segal's) but from the short skim it seems that he believed that at least parts were in Hebrew.

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