[Avodah] Does God Change his Mind

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, February 26, 2008 1:30 pm, R Meir Shinnar wrote:
: You mix up two completely separate issues.  There is a difference
: between psak, and determining truth - and while psak requires a torah
: gefeel, determining the metziut or history are related to truth - not
: psak.

The two topics aren't halakhah vs metzi'us (current or historical),
it's halakhah vs aggadita. I'm arguing that having a feel for what
Torah is makes your aggadic pronouncements more reliable. No one
mentioned history yet, and I would prefer we don't.

...
: The issue of nitkatnu hadorot is actually quite problematic, because
: the earlier we go into the authenticated mesora, the less we have
: zoharic kabbala - and the question becomes how one who believes in
: nitkatnu hadorot can even think of rejecting of viewing as normative
: the position of Rav Hai Gaon on aggadta - the earliest authority to
: state precisely a position on this - and also one of the biggest
: b'aale hamesora...
:
: It is precisely when we go later that there is greater emphasis on
: Zoharic kabbala.....
...

You're spelling out the dilemma that led to the "atop shoulders of
giants" metaphor. (My emphasizing that nisqatnu is measured in
culture, not information, simplifies things somewhat.) But the issue
being problematic doesn't meant it's non-existent or wasn't utilized.
It means we have a question about something that we know was and is
employed to explain things.

...
:> This is a major blunder C inherited/adopted from the Historical
:> School. This confusion of academia, where the goal is to know
:> something well through staying apart from it, objective, as opposed
:> to talmud Torah where the goal is to internalize the study and
:> bedavka
:> learn how to understand it from within.

: This position, IMHO, demeans torah and hashem - because it implies
: that we can't use our objective methods and the reason given us by
: hashem  to study the history within torah...

As I didn't discuss history or anything in evidence, I don't follow
the the thrust of this or the rest of your post. "Qabel es ha'emes"
doesn't mean "Torah bagoyim ta'amin".

I am not denying Chokhmas Yisrael ("frum wissenschaft"). I'm defining
it as a seperate discipline than what I called talmud Torah.
...
: We have had previous discussions on your understanding of the
: rambam,  The rambam viewed truth as monovalent - and therefore two
: different sources of truth must agree - and if they disagree, there
: is a problem with one of them.  As the truth of chazal and the torah
: was not, according to the rambam, stated explicitly but
: allegorically, one could, in general, easily reinterprete the
: presumed viewpoint to be in agreement with truth - but certain things
: were so fundamental that such reinterpretation could not be done -
: and the rambam believed that there could be no intrinsic opposition...

And RZL and I read the Rambam as saying that reinterpretation can be
done when the philosophy is solid and the extrapolation from mesorah
was iffy. However, something explicitly stated by "our sages and
prophets" is solid, and the philosophical proof must, in some as-yet
undetected way, be flawed.

I'm not sure we want to revisit this. Perhaps we should just prune
this tangent.

...
: WRT to nitkatnu hadorot - his point is that with hashkafa, there is a
: radical change in the medieval sources - and we need to go back to
: the original....

The genie can't be put back into the bottle. The rishonim applied the
Torah to new questions raised by the Metakalamun and Scholasts. REB
ends up doing the same for post-Kantian thought.

To say there is a radical chance in the medieval sources that took us
off course is to presume we have a better feel for what's in concert
with Torah than they did. Some make that very claim about the Rambam;
as you note, the Gra did. RSRH did. I like noting these two acharonim
who themselves embraced chokhmah still had a defined limit that they
believed the Rambam crossed. But they don't roll back the history of
the development of machashavah in its entirety.

Moreso, the fact that we have different questions and thus are seeking
a different set of answers doesn't make their answers to their
questions inherently wrong.

...
: This is a point over which rishonim - who you say knew better - would
: have strongly disagreed - as they believed that, at least post
: talmudic,the primary issue is the strength of the argument rather
: than the authority of the arguer....Your position of respect for the
: rishonim actually rejects a core tenet of their hashkafa...

Sources? AFAIK, they used chazal as sources, not baalei pelugta.

I am not arguing that we ignore the strength of the argument. I am
suggesting that we be skeptical about it when it runs counter to
established conclusions. When someone invents a new approach to
fundamental questions, their burden of proof is great. If they run
counter to consensus, that burden may grow greater than my ability to
assess if it has been met.

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Man wants to achieve greatness overnight,
micha at aishdas.org        and he wants to sleep well that night too."
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