[Avodah] My Noah Problem

[T613K at aol.com]

>>How do I reconcile the God who keeps saying "oops"
in the  Flood story: "oops I shouldn't have created
Man", "oops I went too far in  destroying", with
the common medieval God-images of the  omnipotent,
omniscient God?  It's the "etz pri -> etz oseh  pri"
problem writ large.<<


.
>>>>>





There are a gazillion more examples you could have brought -- e.g., "He was  
/going/ to have the sun and the moon the same size, BUT....."
 
Every story has two sides, as seen from G-d's perspective and as seen from  
ours.  The whole Torah is written from our perspective.  From His  perspective, 
He knew ahead of time that human history would play out in a world  with sin 
and mortality in it; that Pharaoh wouldn't let the Jews go; that the  Jews 
would be in the desert for forty years; that Moshe wouldn't enter  E'Y and so on. 
 The story /has/ to be told from a human perspective,  in which WE don't know 
the outcome of each story at the beginning, and  therefore it looks to us 
like G-d is "changing His mind."
 
Pirkei Avos deals with an aspect of the paradox when it says "Hakol tzafui  
vehareshus nesunah."  Thus, G-d knew that the Dor Hamabul would sin but  
nevertheless THEY didn't know they were going to sin and they DID have free  will.  
And therefore could be punished.  G-d's knowledge does not  /force/ our 
actions.  And then after we have acted, He in turn  /reacts/.  He is not a puppeteer 
pulling our strings, IOW.
 
But the very fact that P'A talks about it shows there /is/ a logical  
paradox.  However this paradox has no practical consequences for us humans  groping 
in the dark.  We still have to choose.  We can't just sit on  our duffs each 
day saying, "Thy will be done, L-rd.  If You want me to  daven today, just drop 
my siddur in my lap, if You want me to go to work, send a  limo, Thanks."

--Toby  Katz
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