[Avodah] Fwd: How did Abraham Dicover God? The Experiential Approach

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

Part II

-Micha

- How did Abraham Discover God? The Experiential Approach


The Illuminated Palace: An Introduction to Dogma in Jewish Thought
A single midrash on Parashat Lekh Lekha manages to touch upon the
existence of God and how to relate to Him, on the tension between Torah
and science, and on rabbinic criticism of Maimonides' thirteen
principles.

- Part 2 -
How did Abraham Discover God?
The Experiential Approach

Rabbi Dr. Seth (Avi) Kadish

Part 1 of this Introduction to Dogma in Jewish Thought concluded by
raising some questions about Maimonides' rationalistic reading of the
Parable of the Illuminated Fortress. In Part 2 we will now deal with
alternative interpretations based on the idea of an experiential, living
relationship with God.

Second Interpretation: God as a Personality (Crescas)

Two centuries after the death of Maimonides, Rabbi Hasdai Crescas (d.
1410/11) composed the first full-fledged "book of principles" of Judaism:
A complete work whose parts are organized according to a unique system
of the principles of the Torah. The book is called Or Hashem ("The Light
of the Lord").

Crescas' teacher was Rabbenu Nissim of Gerona (best known by his acronym
"Ran"),[1] who along with two generations of his students, was deeply
interested in defining the principles of the Torah. They subjected
Maimonides' list of principles to systematic analysis and offered
alternatives to it. What was shared alike by the entire school, and the
source of their preoccupation with the problem, was their rejection
of naturalism: The God of Aristotle cannot be the God of the Torah,
who is a personality possessing will. This was the foundation of the
Torah according to the Ran, its only true "principle". In his view,
any system compatible with it is a viable way to understand the Torah,
while any system that undermines it or rejects it will lead to the
destruction of the Torah.[2]^^

During the two centuries between Maimonides and the Ran, ever since
Maimonides first publicized the thirteen principles within his Commentary
to the Mishnah in his younger years, silence had reigned regarding
them. But that silence can be misleading, because this was precisely
the period of the great controversies that raged for generations
over Maimonides and his writings. It is most likely that the thirteen
principles were utterly ignored not because others agreed with them, but
rather because they were correctly seen as nothing more than a natural
outgrowth--and a relatively unimportant one--of a powerful and dangerous
world view that needed to be fought and defeated at its core. The theology
underlying the thirteen principles was far more important to Maimonides'
critics than were the principles themselves.

Rabbi Hasdai Crescas realized this more fully than any other member
of the school. To suggest an alternative to Maimonides' system of
principles could not be enough for him, because doing so could only
be truly effective if the entire philosophy underlying them was also
undermined. He therefore strove to collapse the dogmatic certainty of
medieval science that had reigned for centuries. That is why he took
aim precisely at the Aristotelian proof for the existence of God.

The first treatise of Crescas' Or Hashem
<http://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=22063&st=&pgnum=26> is about
the "roots" of the Torah, which are the existence of God and His primary
attributes (unity and incorporeality). These can be established with
absolute certainty based upon Aristotelian axioms that were enumerated
by Maimonides in his introduction to Part Two of the Guide to the
Perplexed. Because he was an honest seeker of the Torah's truth, and
in the spirit of the talmudic description of the House of Hillel who
"would give precedence to the opinions of the House of Shammai and even
teach them first before their own" (b. Eruvin 13b), Crescas therefore
<http://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=22063&st=&pgnum=10> divided
the first treatise of Or Hashem into three parts: The first part is
devoted to a full and fair presentation of the Maimonidean axioms and
proofs. In the second part he undermined those proofs through careful,
nuanced critical questioning of long-cherished philosophical axioms and
definitions.[3] In the third part he proposed his own new approach to
the existence of God, God's unity and incorporeality, which can coexist
with a non-dogmatic understanding of both the Torah and science.[4]^^

Crescas chose to conclude the first treatise of Or Hashem
<http://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=22063&st=&pgnum=135> with an
interpretation of the Parable of the Illuminated Palace:

    Most appropriate here is what they (of blessed memory) told in the
    midrash: This may be compared to one who was passing from place to
    place and saw a palace illuminated. He said, "Will you say this palace
    has no governor?" The master of the palace peeped out at him. He said
    to him, "I am the master of the palace." Thus, because our father
    Abraham would say, "Will you say this world has no governor?",
    the Holy One, Blessed be He, peeped out at him and said to him,
    "I am the Master of the world..." In other words, even though he
    inclined toward the truth, he didn't leave all doubt behind until
    the light of the Lord emanated to him, and that is prophecy.

Crescas' comment on our midrash is very brief, but loaded with
meaning.[5] The only thing he said explicitly about the midrash is that
Abraham's question was a very real one. The world provokes our most
important questions, but it doesn't supply easy answers.[6] Thinking
about the world made Abraham ask about whether there is a God, but he
couldn't be sure until God spoke to him. That act of divine
communication is of acute importance, so much so that in the above
passage Crescas called it the light of the Lord, which is, of course,
also the very title of his book.

That Abraham's question was real, and that the high point of the
midrash is in God's reply, are both crucial points, because together
they encapsulate two extraordinary elements in Crescas' thought. The
first is an attempt to return to a classical model of Judaism; the
second is a shift in the very nature of religion from medieval times to
the modern world.

I. Returning to a classical model of Judaism: The Bible and Chazal
rarely if ever touch upon the question of whether God exists. God is
there, and powerfully so. The real question is not whether or not God
exists, but rather what is the state of our mutual relationship with
God: Is it characterized by love or hatred? Respect or disgrace?
Loyalty or betrayal? The God of biblical religion and halakhic Judaism
is a personality, not a concept.

Take marriage as an example. A great many things can and do happen over
the course of a marriage but one thing that has never happened, at
least in my marriage, is to wake up in the morning and ask: Does my
spouse exist? The question would be silly because we experience our
partners all the time in a personal context.

Such is the God of the Bible and Chazal: God is always there, and
powerfully so. The question is not whether God is there, but how we relate
to God. The most vivid example of this in the entire Bible is Job, to
whom it never occurs to take the suffering of the righteous as a reason
to call God's existence into question. Instead, throughout the poetic
body of the book, he wags his finger at God time and again in accusation
(so to speak): "You are very much there. You are there, wicked, cruel and
vicious. You are there, evil and corrupt. You are there and I hate you!"

This is why for Crescas, to know that God exists cannot possibly be
a commandment. God is known through living experience, not through
logic. It is, therefore, no accident that the preface to Or Hashem
<http://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=22063&st=&pgnum=22> is
entirely devoted to refuting Maimonides' contention that knowing God is
a commandment. One theme Crescas emphasized throughout Or Hashem is that
ideas in general cannot mitzvot, not even for the most important "root"
of the Torah, namely that God exists.

The God in Crescas' Or Hashem is a personality capable of love, who
chose to communicate with Abraham. God is a personality known through
experience, not a concept derived through logic. Abraham's relationship
with God is fraught with difficult and even horrific experiences, but
never since God speaks to him the first time does Abraham have reason
to question God's existence. The same is true for the nation of Israel,
Abraham's descendants, who experience God throughout the Bible and beyond.

In this way Crescas took what he saw as an aberration, namely the
medieval philosophical view of God as a concept, and removed it by
refuting the scientific basis for the concept. He thus allowed for a
return to the God of the Torah, who is experienced through life, rather
than being apprehended through rational inquiry. We might even suggest,
anachronistically, that the very term "Middle Ages" would have been
deemed quite accurate by Crescas, who saw medieval Aristotelianism as a
system that had wrongly replaced the classical approach of the Torah,
and whose removal would enable prophecy ("the light of the Lord") to
return to Israel at the dawn of a new age.

II. Shifting from medieval to modern religion: Crescas dealt with a
great deal of what we would now call "science" in the first treatise
of Or Hashem. Perhaps the greatest difference between medieval science
and modern science (although one with which Crescas himself didn't much
engage) is that the latter insists on empirical verification. Logic on
its own is insufficient. Theories need to be confirmed by conformity to
hard facts, and those facts need to be objectively verifiable by anyone.

Because of this, religion ceased to be a scientific issue in modern
times. God cannot be tested for in a laboratory. Any good scientist,
or at least one who has a decent grasp of the history of science, knows
that God is simply not a scientific question anymore. Science cannot
define God or describe God, and it certainly cannot determine whether or
not God exists. Something that is known through subjective experience,
rather than through objective observation and argumentation, cannot be
dealt with on a scientific level. This is why religion in the modern
world ceased being a scientific matter, and instead became a matter
of personal experience and conviction. In the case of Judaism, it is a
matter of both personal and national experience and conviction.

It is thus no accident that Crescas' abandonment of the conceptual
God of logic, in favor of returning to the personal God of life, is
tightly connected to the historical shift from medieval science to
modern science. Crescas was deeply convinced that the Torah itself had
been grossly distorted by medieval thought, from which it needed to
be disengaged and liberated in order to regain its own integrity. This
was his personal motivation for trying to undermine the core concepts
of Aristotelian science. To further this goal he was even willing to
sacrifice that aspect of Aristotelianism most beloved to medieval Jews,
namely its absolute proof for the existence of a single incorporeal
God. For Crescas, a God who could be proven (or needed to be proven)
wasn't a God at all. At the very least, such a God certainly wasn't the
God of the Torah.[7]^^

It must be emphasized that in no way did Crescas engage in anything
remotely like the cheap disparagement of modern science that is popular
among some Orthodox Jews today. He didn't try to save the Torah by
engaging in apologetics (otherwise he would have been quite satisfied
with the Aristotelian proof of God, as were some of his contemporaries
and students). Rather, in order to honestly uphold the Torah, he
placed himself firmly at the cutting edge of the science of his day
by questioning its underlying concepts, and was thus able to offer
alternatives that other contemporary scientists found compelling. He
tried to rethink assumptions on both sides for every issue he confronted:
No idea proclaimed in the name of the Torah, and no product of human
wisdom, was obvious to him or beyond question. By shattering popular
notions in both realms he did not merely reduce the friction between
them, but allowed each one to enrich the other. In fact, he was one of
a handful of men who so cogently challenged the core of medieval science
that they ultimately paved the way for the scientific revolution of the
16^th century.

Crescas is thus a powerful example of how personal attitudes and
motivations can be valuable tools toward unlocking new venues in
academia. This is true so long as they are openly and honestly
acknowledged, and on condition that the quality of research is not
compromised and the quest for truth retains its integrity.[8] As a man
of Torah, Crescas achieved this by insisting that the Torah be studied
and understood on its own terms, and science on its own terms. Honesty
and rigour are called for in both worlds, but each realm enjoys its
own sovereignty.[9]^^

The honesty and rigor exhibited in Crescas' thought are not just important
in terms of his contribution to humanity. For our purposes here, his
central contribution is to the intellectual lives of Jews loyal to the
Torah. To understand why this is so, recall that the first treatise
of Or Hashem is about God's existence, unity, and incorporeality. In
other words, it is designed to parallel the first three principles
of Maimonides.

For Maimonides, the absolute demonstration of these three principles
according to reason was the only possible basis for a true
understanding of the Torah. However, for Crescas, objective reason
ultimately proves little or nothing about God. Reason cannot uphold the
Torah, but neither can it refute the Torah. Crescas' goal was to
neutralize reason, and thus relegate it to its own realm, namely to the
world of objective human inquiry. In this way he freed the Torah to be
understood on its own terms, in its proper context, namely the
experiential, subjective and living relationship between God and
Israel.

Third Interpretation: The Palace in Flames

Returning to our midrash, an alternative reading has been suggested.
The Hebrew term birah doleket may not mean "Illuminated Palace" at all,
but rather "burning palace", i.e. a castle that is going up in flames.

Rabbi Enoch Zundel ben Joseph of Bialystok (d. 1867)
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enoch_Zundel_ben_Joseph>, in his commentary
Etz Yosef <http://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=14385&st=&pgnum=89>,
interprets our midrash as follows: The lonely traveler stumbles upon a
vestige of civilization, but it is burning down. The impressive palace
most certainly had a governor who built it and maintained it for a time,
but now he seems to have abandoned his manor. So the traveler asks,
"Does this mean the palace has no governor?" And then, suddenly, the
governor reveals his presence.

In other words, when Abraham saw the idolatrous civilization around him
collapsing and facing disaster (as described in related midrashim about
events in Parashat Noah), and God didn't intervene, he began to doubt that
God cared about the world anymore. But then God spoke to Abraham and told
him that all of the calamity and destruction was His will as punishment
for the wicked. He chose to let His palace burn. And henceforth, should
anyone ask whether the world still has a governor, the key to the answer
would no longer be the Palace itself, but rather in the unique experience
of one man and his family: Abraham. It is in the special divine providence
for Abraham and his descendants, in the extraordinary history of Israel,
that God's hand will continue to be revealed in the world.

I would like to take the "palace in flames" reading in a slightly
different direction. Note that in midrashic parables, it is often
important to pay attention to where the allegory doesn't fully match
what it stands for. In our parable, the traveler stumbles upon a burning
palace. But if the palace stands for the world, then Abraham doesn't
just stumble upon it. Rather, he is within it and a part of it.

An exclamation point is therefore called for when the traveler cries out,
"Will you say this palace has no governor?!" It is not intellectual
inquiry that is going on here, and he isn't just musing about whether
or not the governor has abandoned his palace. Rather, what we have here
is a personal cry for help, and even a challenge to God: "Isn't there
anyone in charge who can save the world?! How could God allow this to
happen?! Why isn't God taking responsibility?!"

There are many people who seek out God in times of pain and peril. In
my reading, the traveler represents them.

When reading the midrash this way, God's reply is particularly
fascinating. "I am the master of the world," God tells Abraham. One way
to understand this blunt response is that God has ordained the disaster
currently engulfing the world (as the Etz Yosef suggested). It is God's
will, and the decree stands despite any human protest. Considering
Abraham's difficult life, it seems quite reasonable to interpret the
midrash this way.

However, it can also be understood differently. When the traveler calls
out for help, the master of the palace reveals himself. By doing so the
Master says: "You are not alone. I identify with you in your time of
trouble." Such a reply might indicate that when a catastrophe befalls
humanity it is not just an accident of history but has meaning, as do
the human lives that it affects, and that God cares despite His harsh
decree. Furthermore, the divine identification with human suffering spurs
action: The very fact that the palace has a master--even though He has
consigned it to burn--calls upon Abraham (and humanity) to rescue the
moral order that is going up in flames.

The reply might further suggest that God not only identifies with human
suffering and shares our pain, and not just that His care calls upon us
to act, but that God actively assists us and supports us in ways that
might be difficult to discern. According to this, the lesson of the
midrash would be something similar to the famous poem, "Footprints in
the Sand." <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footprints_(poem)>

It is thus entirely possible that the whole medieval debate about proofs
of God's existence is not really what our midrash is about. The midrash
focuses not on the palace (and what it does or doesn't prove), but on
the flames (God's apparent abandonment of the world). In this case the
midrash is making a claim about the value and meaning of human life
and experience, and that God is concerned about them. It focuses even
more closely on Abraham, turning him into a potent symbol of divine
involvement and care. Such claims reside in an entirely different realm
than rational inquiry or science, which have nothing to say about them.

Conclusion

Reading the midrash about Abraham and the Illuminated Palace in multiple
ways shows that the criticism of Maimonides' thirteen principles by later
thinkers is not just technical. A surface reading of some of these works
might suggest that they do nothing more than discuss the details of the
system (i.e. what should be listed as a "principle of the Torah"), or
that they pursue a somewhat broader but still technical goal, namely to
analytically redefine how a system of principles should be built. But
when they are read carefully as part of a dialogue with Maimonides
and with each other, we can see that their critique of Maimonides'
principles is ultimately a negation of the very notion that the Torah
depends upon objective reason, and it has harsh implications for the
related notion that ideas can be commanded.[10] Crescas' interpretation
of the Illuminated Palace is a vivid example.

God is a personality to live with, not a concept to be analyzed. The
Torah is a covenant between God and Israel, in the context of a
relationship, not a neutral expression of abstract, objective ideas.
What the Torah cares about is how we live--and most of all about the
inner intentions and loyalties that inform our behavior towards God,
Israel and humanity--not our intellectual positions. The upshot of the
analysis of "principles of the Torah" among the rishonim is that the
Torah is not intellectual dogma, it is rather a way of life with God.
_______________________________________________________________________

As this essay was being published online, it became known that Rabbi
Ovadia Yosef had passed away. My personal thoughts about him may be
found here <http://j.mp/1VvI4bv>. This essay is dedicated to his memory.
_______________________________________________________________________

Rabbi Dr. Seth (Avi) Kadish studied for his Ph.D. at the University
of Haifa (2006) in Medieval Jewish Philosophy. He previously studied
at Yeshiva University where he received his rabbinic ordination and
master's degrees in Bible and Jewish Education, and then taught secondary
school for 8 years in the USA and Israel. He currently teaches medieval
Jewish philosophy, history and exegesis at Oranim Teacher's College,
and in the Overseas School at the University of Haifa. For many years
he taught immigrant soldiers in the Nativ program of the IDF education
corps, and adult Israeli Jewish education for the Hebrew University's
Melton School. He lives in Karmiel, Israel with his wife and children,
where they are involved in building modern Orthodox communities that are
open and welcoming to people of diverse backgrounds and outlooks. Rabbi
Kadish is the author of Kavvana: Directing the Heart in Jewish Prayer
<https://sites.google.com/site/kadish67/kavvana-en> and The Book of
Abraham: Rabbi Shimon ben Zemah Duran and the School of Rabbenu Nissim
Gerondi <https://sites.google.com/site/kadish67/avraham-avinu>.

___________________

[1] Most famous as the author of Hiddushei ha-Ran and Derashot ha-Ran
(1320-1376). Rabbenu Nissim Gerondi and Rabbi Hasdai Crescas were the
rabbinic leaders and halakhic authorities of Spain during their respective
lifetimes. However, probably because of the horrific circumstances under
which he lived, Crescas never composed the great halakhic work that he
planned. Or Hashem was meant to be part one of a two-part work called
Ner Elohim: The first part (Or Hashem) is constructed as an alternative
to Maimonides' Guide, and the planned second part (Ner Mitzvah) was
meant to replace Maimonides' Mishneh Torah (!). The second part was never
written. Crescas devoted his life not to writing, but to rebuilding Jewish
communities in Spain that were shattered during the fierce persecutions
of 1391. For some background on the school of the Ran, see the first
chapter of my dissertation, The Book of Abraham: Rabbi Shimon ben Zemah
Duran and the School of Rabbenu Nissim Gerondi (University of Haifa,
2006) <https://sites.google.com/site/kadish67/avraham-avinu>.

[2] For an in-depth analysis of ikkarim and "books of principles of the
Torah" in the school of Rabbenu Nissim Gerondi, see the third chapter of
my dissertation <https://sites.google.com/site/kadish67/avraham-avinu>.
For a full history of Jewish dogma from its beginnings through Abarbanel's
Rosh Amanah, see the book by my teacher and friend Menachem Kellner,
Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought (Oxford University Press, 1986).

[3] In parts one and two of the First Treatise, Crescas dealt extensively
with a wide variety of matters from physics to metaphysics, and from
mathematics to the careful use of scientific language, most of which
would seem at first glance to be foreign to a book called "The Light
of the Lord" about the principles of the Torah. But it is helpful to
remember that in the middle ages the word "philosophy" incorporated the
entire corpus of rational inquiry or systematic thinking, including all
of what we call "science" today, and that "philosophy" as a whole was
the primary intellectual challenge to traditional Judaism.

[4] My use of "non-dogmatic" here is an attempt to convey Crescas'
goal in Or Hashem of leaving open as many intellectual options as
possible. In terms of the Torah, this means not to claim anything in
the name of the Torah that the Torah does not clearly and absolutely
claim for itself. In terms of rational inquiry or science, it means
not to claim anything in the name of reason that reason itself does not
firmly establish. For instance, can one ascribe positive attributes to
God? According to Crescas, neither the Torah nor rational inquiry negate
that possibility. Can there be an "actual infinity"? One can use try to
use reason to negate the idea (as did Aristotle), but the arguments are
not convincing. In our case, does the nature of universe "prove" that
it has a First Cause in the Aristotelian sense? According to Crescas
neither the Torah nor rational human inquiry insist that this is so.

[5] Or Hashem as a whole is characterized by extreme brevity, but its
terse text contains the some of the most profound ideas in medieval
Jewish philosophy. It is surpassed only by Maimonides' Guide in its
combination of originality and high quality argumentation.

[6] Natan Alterman homed in on this point in his light-hearted poem
"The Little Cleric" ([Haqleriql haQatan]). The world naturally inspires
wonder in children (and sometimes even in adults). The questions that it
inspires, and the places they can lead, may sometimes be troubling for
parents, as for the atheistic couple in Alterman's poem who listen
to their child in horror, as his questions make him sound like a
primitive religious fanatic to their ears. At the same time, as the poem
acknowledges, things can also move in the opposite direction. But honest
struggling with questions is healthy regardless of where they may lead:
"No Marxist ever grew up in an incubator... And besides, those concerned
have forgotten, for they too were once Little Clerics! But it was no
tragedy, because there is One who cares and takes pity: They grew up
Epikorsim, thank God!" The poem is from The Seventh Column, vol. 1 (Tel
Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1973), pp. 200-202 (Hebrew); the text can be
found below in the comments section. There is no question that Alterman
was influenced by the midrashic model of Abram as a youth.

[7] The most that can possibly be established about God through reason,
according to Crescas, is limited and stunted. In Or Hashem I:3:3 he sums
up his position by saying that the universe--the totality of nature and
causality, whether it is finite or infinite--is in itself nothing more
than a contingent possibility that can either exist or not. What can
therefore be said is that there must be some sort of a "switch" that
turns reality on. This is a far cry from both the isolated grandeur of
the Aristotelian God who is an incorporeal intellect, and the powerfully
involved God of the Torah who is a personality.

[8] Joshua Berman eloquently expressed this idea in a short video that
used to be found in a personal website devoted to his book, Created
Equal. The point was that coming from an Orthodox Jewish perspective
can be an advantage for a serious scholar, even (and perhaps especially)
in a field like biblical scholarship that often involves direct, acute
tension at the very core of Jewish tradition.

[9] For more on Crescas as a scientist, and on dealing with the tensions
between Torah and science, see my essay found here <http://j.mp/1ZZ3S0k>
(a bit of which has been lifted into the current text).

[10] How this general attitude played out in various competing
systems of ikkarim will be explored in future essays; this is the
first installment of what I plan to be a series. I will continue with
further installments, God willing, as time and opportunity permit. A
highly tentative (and evolving) list of general topics and various
specific points that I would like to address in the future may be found
here <http://j.mp/1ntle9n? (comments and suggestions are welcome). For
those who would like to read more in the meantime about how and why the
medieval critique of Maimonides' ikkarim developed, see chapter 3 of my
dissertation <https://sites.google.com/site/kadish67/avraham-avinu>.