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A: Dear Walter:
Among all these questions and queries, I can say only one thing
with absolute confidence. In response to your question "What would
God's view be on this," I must say with great clarity that I can't
know for sure, and I would never presume to speak for God directly.
Now, what classic and contemporary Jewish texts have to say about
questions of ethical import, that's a different matter- I just
want to make the disclaimer that clarifying a possible Jewish
perspective is not the same thing as reading God's mind! In other
words, there's a certain humility we need to take on when we try
to frame religious answers to important questions; as a liberal
rabbi, I believe that our sacred texts are shaped by imperfect
human hands, and therefore we can't always assume that the texts
perfectly reflect God's will for our time.
OK, having disclaimed my disclaimer, let me rephrase your question.
It seems to me that what might really be bugging you about the
specific examples that you raise is the age-old problem of human
free will in a universe ruled by a God who knows the future. This
is a theological paradox: if we assume that God knows everything,
including how we will act, then how can we be said to possess
free will? If we are but actors in a cosmic drama that's been
scripted from The Beginning- as the Joseph story might suggest,
or God's promise to Abraham that his children will go down to
Egypt but come out a great nation (Genesis 15:13-17)- then how
can we choose between good and evil in any meaningful way? Finally,
if we can't really choose between good and evil, then what's the
point of the Torah, or of any moral code? We might as well be
robots, just following our programming, not really sentient beings.
There would be no point in talking about justice, or mercy, or
any kind of moral imperative, because we wouldn't really be choosing
one course of action over another.
Yet the Torah itself insists that we must choose our actions carefully, (Cf. Deut. 30, for example), thus
implying that the choice is a real and meaningful one. So if wanted
to resolve the paradox, we could decide that one or both of the
propositions above isn't really true: either God doesn't know
the future, or humans are not really free. In turn, each of these
revised propositions could take more than one form. For example,
I might say that God is indeed all-powerful and all-knowing, but
not across time, which is also part of Creation; the future is
really the future, within the universe as God created it, and
therefore even God doesn't know what will happen.
Another approach might be to rethink what we mean by the word
"God;" instead of conceiving of a conscious Being, we might think
of God as Being itself, that aspect of the cosmos that allows
life to flourish and evolve and become. This would be something
like Mordecai Kaplan's idea of God, "the Power that Makes for
Salvation," in which God is our name for a Godly aspect of our
universe, rather than a description of a Being that rules above
it. That solves our problem by simply removing from God the quality
of "knowing" as we ordinarily think of it, and thus the paradox
is somewhat resolved.
If you worked on the paradox from the other side of the equation,
the human side, you could say that indeed, God knows our choices,
but since we don't know what God knows, from our perspective,
we have total responsibility for our free will. To put it another
way, yes, the future is scripted, but that's only a theoretical
or theological truth, not a reality that matters in the here and
now- a human being facing a particular choice experiences real
anguish and anxiety over their dilemma, and can't worry about
God's arranging of events. This is why the great sage R. Akiva
said: "everything is foreseen, yet freedom is given. The world
is judged favorably, but everything depends on a preponderance
of good deeds." (Pirke Avot, 3:19)
You might say that R. Akiva's teaching simply states the paradox
without resolving it, yet by adding the second half, "that everything
depends on a preponderance of good deeds," I think he's hinting
at the reality of our ethical responsibility. So getting back
to Joseph's brothers, for example, I would have to say they really
sinned in selling their brother, even if later the act was recognized
as part of a Divine plan. They could not have known that at the
time, and therefore from our (limited, human) perspective, we
have to say that they chose to throw their brother into a pit
and send him to slavery, which obviously is a moral choice we
cannot condone, despite any possible positive future resolution
of the drama.
From R. Akiva's statement, and others we find in the Talmud and
later sources, it seems that the traditional rabbis were just
willing to let this paradox be a paradox. Personally, while there
are certainly moments in my life which feel "scripted," I tend
to believe that the future is really the future, and therefore
hasn't been decided yet, except perhaps in the broadest outlines
(i.e., that someday there will be a Redemption from war.). Thus
I don't think our moral choices can ever be removed from us by
saying "Oh, well, this is a bad thing but it's all part of God's
plan."
That leaves me with the problem of understanding stories like
Joseph's- the Bible does say pretty explicitly that there was
a Plan being played out. Sometimes I see the idea of "God's plan"
as a metaphor for those moments of grace and beauty which can
be experienced even under the most trying circumstances, and sometimes
I'm left wondering whether indeed there isn't an unseen Hand at
work, guiding my life. In any case, no matter how one resolves
or plays with the paradox of free will vs. moral choices, I think
we can safely say that Judaism urges careful attention to the
choices that lie before us, because we can't know anything about
the future other than our own possible effect on it.
cont'd: Part Two
NJL |
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