[Avodah] Rav Nissim Gaon on Bas Kol's place in Pesak (Was: Re: Does the psak of bet din evidence the ratzon Hashem?)

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Nov 14, 2023 at 09:02:57PM -0500, Zvi Lampel via Avodah wrote:
> >   ... RNG gives authority to BQ to override halachic process, and
> >    the Achnai story's bas qol is a special case for two different reasons.
> >     ....
> 
> But my objection to that understanding of RNG remains. He strongly
> opposes the idea that a Bas Kol plays a role in determining halacha. Again,
> I quote RNG:
> 
> "The Torah of Hashem is complete, and already given to us at Sinai, and He
> let us know that He would switch over not one statement of it. Our Torah
> lacks nothing and has no doubts for which we would need a proof from
> Heaven."

Yes, in principle we shouldn't have such unresolved machloqesin. In
practice, there are many times we invoke "safeiq deOraisa lechumera" or
"... derabbanan lequlah" on an open machloqes because we weren't up to
the task.

> How does one get from that to "if the machloqes couldn't be resolved by
> humans, we would follow the BQ"??

So you think that if we couldn't find a masqanah using kelalei pesaq,
we would treat the machloqes as a safeiq even as a bas qol told us which
side to pick?

If R Nissim Gaon's main objection to following a BQ is because Hashem
didn't leave questions that require more information than He initially
gave us (because "Toras H' temimah"), then in cases where we can't figure
out that information, or we have the kelalei pesaq and refuse to use them
(like the initial reluctance to follow Beis Hillel despite their being
majority), there is no problem with the BQ. It didn't add more revelation
to the intial Torah.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Our greatest fear is not that we're inadequate,
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   Our greatest fear is that we're powerful
Author: Widen Your Tent      beyond measure
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF                      - Anonymous