[Avodah] "God who knows the future"

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, Aug 04, 2011 at 06:21:29PM -0400, Micha Berger wrote:
: I emailed RDR the following summation of how he and I read the Ramban...

: I'm saying that "ulai" introduces one hypothetical outcome...
:                                              HQBH the "Yodeia' asidos",
: ... was ascribing to HQBH knowledge of the future with no exceptions.

: RDR us saying that "Yodeia' asidos" describes HQBH as knowing some of
: the future... ulai ... does mean Divine uncertainty.

I still find the notion of saying "the Knower of parts of the future"
is a weird way to read a title being used to denote G-d.

But we don't need to rely on the one quote before us. RZL sent me scans
of some pages from RCChavel's Ramban from Iyov (intro) and Qoheles.

In RCC's edition, the sentence that runs across Iyov pp 17-18 and the
one on Qoheles pg 195 line 5 both explicitly refer to Hashem's knowledge
of the future as part of His Knowledge of every perat. Neither can be
read as discussing only some things about the future, because of that
knowing every perat context. Take a look, because the paragraphs are
far too long for transliteration.


As some background, here is how I see some problems understanding the
rishonim on HQBH and time:

1- In Aristo's physics, time is a property of a process. If nothing is
moving there is no time. In our worldview, time is a context, a dimension,
in which processes occur. (Probably beginning with Galileo's observation
about the time it takes for a pendulum to swing, when he noticed that
different processes all operate at predictable rates. Until that theory,
no one applied math to science, and these things weren't quantied or even
quantifiable. I have no idea what they mean by lemaalah min hazeman, but
I believe can't be close to what we mean. I think that's why it's not
until the Or Samayach that we get to resolving hakol tzafui vehareshus
nesunah in terms of Hashem having no concept of "knowing *now*".

2- Everyone (except the Ralbag and some outliers most of us never heard
of) holds that G-d knows everything in every detail. The question is
whether a question about the future is "something". Does it even have a
true-or-false status that we can talk about knowing which it is? Again,
given my question about what rishonim meant by lemaalah min hazeman,
it might be consistent with some rishonim to say that Hashem knowing
everything can't include those non-factual questions where there is
nothing to be known, yet.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Every second is a totally new world,
micha at aishdas.org        and no moment is like any other.
http://www.aishdas.org           - Rabbi Chaim Vital
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