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<DIV><BR>>>How do I reconcile the God who keeps saying "oops"<BR>in the
Flood story: "oops I shouldn't have created<BR>Man", "oops I went too far in
destroying", with<BR>the common medieval God-images of the
omnipotent,<BR>omniscient God? It's the "etz pri -> etz oseh
pri"<BR>problem writ large.<<<BR><BR><BR>.</DIV>
<DIV>>>>>><BR></DIV></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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....."</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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."</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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."</DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10"><STRONG></STRONG><BR><B>--Toby
Katz<BR>=============</B></FONT></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>