[Avodah] Is Panentheism Heresy

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 03:59:16PM -0500, Zev Sero wrote:
>> If you're going to believe in the Chasidic system, you have to believe
>> in continuous revelation insofar as the system depends on revelations:

> Very different.  Reform's idea of "revelation" is someone having an idea,
> with no way of verifying that it's true, let alone knowing where it comes
> from.  It's all made up.  How can you compare that to Eliyahu Hanavi and
> Achiya Hashiloni coming from the Other World to teach the Arizal and the
> Baal Shem Tov, etc?  That is not some wishy-washy "inspiration", it's
> direct communication of hard data from one person to another.

You presume your conclusion when taking those visitations as evidence,
rather than part of the claim being proven.

And while I can't make this same argument WRT visitations from Eliyahu or
Achiya, who are people, the notion of the Mechaber or the Ramchal being
visited by magidim is so far beyond understanding ruach haqodesh as Divine
Inspiration that it seems to me to be positing nevu'ah bizman haseh.

I therefore wonder how literal any of this visitation talk was originally
intended to be. Did the mechaber get an angelic visitor? Or is that
the metaphysical description of things being so clear to him the ideas
played themselves seeingling on their own. (As fiction authors often
report about their characters surprisng them.) And so the author of
the SA was visited by the archetypal halachic code in angelic form.
But not that he saw an angel -- that would be nevu'ah.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             I have great faith in optimism as a philosophy,
micha at aishdas.org        if only because it offers us the opportunity of
http://www.aishdas.org   self-fulfilling prophecy.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                              - Arthur C. Clarke