א נחמה פאר א צעבראכענעם אבל - וועקער 18

עובדיה האט געשריבן:יישר כוח פאר דיין שיינעם ארטיקל. איך מיין דו האסט א שטיקל טעות בדעת הרמב"ם, דער רמב"ם זאגט נישט אז דער באשעפער קען גאר נישט טוהן צו ראטעווען א מענטש פון א צרה, נאר ער רעדט בכלליות פון דעם אז ס'איז דא רעות בעולם, זאגט ער אז ס'איז בהכרח און ס'איז נישט שייך צו באשאפען דעם טבע העולם פון הוה ונפסד אן דעם, אזוי אויך וועגען בחירה מוז זיין א מציאות פון קענען טוהן רעות, אבער אודאי בפרטיות קען דער באשעפער ראטעווען א מענטש פון סיי וועלעכע צרה, נאר ס'זעהט אויס אז דער רמב"ם האלט אז דער באשעפער איז נישט משגיח משנה צו זיין די טבע נאר פאר א צדיק וואס איז דבוק בו יתברך ווי דער רמב"ם איז מאריך אז די השגחה איז תלוי לויט דעם מענטש און לויט זיין מצב אבער אודאי קען תפילה העלפען בכל אופן.

מי אני האט געשריבן:ואפילו טאמער איז ער נאר א דעת יחידאי, איז מיין טעזע געווען לנחם האדם אויף עפעס וואס למעשה יש לו על מי לסמוך, ווי ערווענט אינעם ארטיקל. ואגב, עיין בסוף מבוא התלמוד מר׳ שמואל הנגיד (נדפס בסוף מס׳ ברכות), כל מחלוקת שלא חייב המחלוקת במעשה אלא בדעת לבד לא נגדור בו הלכה כפלוני ע״כ ע״ש. (מ׳קען זאגן אז ער׳ז אויך א דעת יחידאי...)

מי אני האט געשריבן:ובכלל האב איך געקלערט אז אפילו מ׳זאל אננעמען און אפלערנען אזוי ווי @עובדיה, האט נאך אלס די עצם טעזע פונעם ארטיקל איר האפט. ווייל ווי באקאנט איז דא אין דעם פעלד פון עטיקס א דיסטיִנקשאן וחילוק צווישן אן אומעטישע אקט פון קאמישאן, והיינו בקום ועשה וואס אויף דעם איז דא א גרעסערע תלונה, און אן אומעטישע אקט פון אמישאן, והיינו בשב ואל תעשה וואס אויף דעם איז די תלונה נישט אזוי שטארק. יעצט, לגבי מציאות הרעות בהעולם/בהטבע בכלל איז דאך דאס מוכרח אף לו ית׳ און ער קען דאס נישט אפטוהן כביכול וככל הנ״ל בהרמב״ם. וממילא איז די דיִפאָלט און סתם אז ס׳איז דא רעות, וממילא נעמט דאס אוועק דעם געדאנק אז ״דער אויבערשטער האט אים געשיקט די צרה/רעה״ - אלס אן אגענט בקום ועשה. און הגם מ׳קען נאך האבן אפשר טענות פארוואס דער אויבערשטער האט זיך נישט ״אריינגעמישט״ אים צו העלפן/ראטעווען, וואס דאס קען ער יא, און געווען כביכול א שב ואל תעשה, איז אבער אויף דעם די תלונה נישט אזוי שטארק כנ״ל (ובפרט אז מ׳פארשטייט אז ער קען זיך נישט ״אריינמישען״ פאר יעדן אלס דעם אי-יכולת כביכול הנ״ל), וממילא איז ער זיך מנחם. (והגם מ׳קען טענה׳ן אז די טעמים אין די דיסטיִנקשאן זענען נישט גילטיג פאר ג-ט כביכול, איז אבער פונעם מענטשליכן מבט דאך יא דא דעם דיסטיִנקשאן און אז ער טוהט שוין יא אנטראמארפיזירן ג-ט אלס אן אגענט מאכט ער שוין יא די דיסטיִנקשאן און איז זיך ממילא מנחם.)

ומפני זה אמרו אין מזל לישראל, רצו לומר שתיקונם והפסדם אינם לסבה טבעית ולא על מנהג המציאות, אלא נתלה בעבודה ובמרי

“Providence is the government, guidance, and care issuing from the ground of the universe [G-d], or from the universe itself, that brings an entity into existence and/or preserves it in existence, and regulates or orders its existence according to some rational law or principle.” Consequently, an entity ruled by providence will not display irrational and incoherent variations. Its actions, and that which occurs to it, will take place in accordance with some intelligible law or principle...

...Traditionally, only such care and guidance as comes miraculously from a personal God is viewed as providence, whereas, according to Maimonides, guidance and care that come through the ordinary workings of a natural universe are also properly termed providence. Maimonides' definition, consequently, allows for natural providence, the production and preservation of entities by nature alone.

Entities that come into existence, or are preserved in existence by mere accident, without government or regulation exercised to produce or preserve them and reduce them to order, do not
enjoy providence. They are produced and preserved by chance. By “chance” Maimonides means that no intellect orders and regulates their existence according to an intelligible, rational law. Rather, they are left to the blind cause and effect of physical determinism.

מי אני האט געשריבן:

מי אני האט געשריבן:ענליך קען מען זאגן בנוגע דאס וואס ער זאגט אין אנהויב הל׳ תענית (א ג) אבל אם לא יזעקו ולא יריעו אלא יאמרו דבר זה ממנהג העולם אירע לנו וצרה זו נקרה נקרית הרי זו דרך אכזריות וגורמת להם להדבק במעשיהם הרעים ותוסיף הצרה צרות אחרות ע״כ. והיינו, אז איה״נ עס איז אמת אז עס איז טאקע געקומען ממקרי העולם, אבער דאס אליין צו זיין נתון תחת המקרים גרידא איז טאקע צושטאנד געקומען מחמת דאס׳ן נישט אפהיטן די תורה, וואס ווען מ׳היט דאס אפ פירט דאס צו אינטעלעקטשואלע שלימות ודביקות, וממילא השגחה. און טאמער פאררעכט מען דאס נישט איז אט דאס די אכזריות, ווייל עס גייט גורם זיין צו ווייטער בלייבן אזוי אונטער המקרים וואס וועט בהכרח גורם זיין נאך רעות ווייטער. עס איז ענליך צו וואס אונז הא׳מיר פריער געזאגט בנוגע שכר ועונש.

חזי מאן גברא רבה קמסהיד עליה! דא [1:13:20-1:18:50] זאגט @לעיקוואד ממש דאס. שפעטער דארט זאגט ער די וואס זענען מפרש דעם רמב״ם אין פכ״ג (עיין בשם טוב בסוף ובאפודי שם) אז איוב איז טאקע צוגעקומען צו די הכרה אין השגחה און אזוי ווי דער שם טוב איז דאס ווידער מסביר אין פנ״א. עס לוינט זיך אויסצוהערן דעם גאנצן שיעור וואס רירט שטארק אָן אין די גאנצע נושא.

וכן המצוה אשר צונו לצעוק אליו ית' בעת צרה, רצוני לומר אמרו "והרעותם בחצוצרות" וגו׳, היא מזה הכלל, מפני שהיא פעולה שיתחזק בה הדעת האמיתי והוא שהאלוק ית' משיג ענינינו ובידו לתקנם אם נעבדהו ולהפסידם אם נמרהו, לא שנאמין שזה מקרה ודבר שארע. וזהו ענין אמרו "ואם תלכו עמי קרי", רצונו לומר שאני כשאביא לכם אלו הצרות לענוש אתכם אם תחשבו בהם שהם מקרה אוסיף לכם מן המקרה ההוא כפי מחשבתכם יותר חזק ויותר קשה, והוא ענין אמרו "והלכתם עמי בקרי והלכתי עמכם בחמת קרי". כי האמינם שהוא במקרה, ממה שמחייב התמדתם על דעותם הרעות ועל מעשי העול ולא ישובו מהם, כמו שאמר ״הכיתה אותם ולא חלו". ולכן צונו להתפלל אליו ולהתחנן לו ולצעוק לפניו בעת צרה.

מה שנאמר בזה הפרק מבואר בעצמו, והוא ביאור כי מן הדעות ההכרחיות [״שקרים קדושים״, ועיין לעיל שם במו״נ בפכ״ח] הוא שנאמין שהשי״ת מביא הרע בעצם לרשעים לא מצד מקריות תנועות הגלגל כלל אלא מצד רשעתם, וזהו אמרו אם תלכו עמי בקרי והלכתי אף אני עמכם וגו׳, כי אם יאמינו בני אדם שזה הרע בא להם מצד מקריות לא ישובו מן העול אשר בידיהם כמו שאמר הכית אותם ולא חלו.

כי האמינם שהוא במקרה ממה שיחייב התמדתם על הדעות ועל מעשה העול ירצה ויחוייב שיוסיף להם מן המקרה ההוא.

המצוות אשר כלל אותם הכלל התשיעי הם המצוות אשר ספרנום ב"ספר אהבה" וסיבת כולם מבוארת. רצוני לומר שכונת העבודות ההם, זכרון האלוק תמיד ואהבתו ויראתו ושמירת המצוות כולם ושיאמן באלוק ית' מה שהוא הכרחי לכל בעל דת שיאמינהו והם התפילה וקריאת שמע וברכת המזון.

For it seems a greater miracle if God always governs the world with one and the same fixed and immutable order, than if, on account of human folly, he abrogates the laws which (as only one thoroughly blinded could deny) he himself has most excellently decreed in nature, from sheer freedom.

God created Nature so ineffective and prescribed for her laws and rules so barren that he is often constrained to come once more to her rescue if he wants her to be preserved, and the course of events to be as he desires. This I consider to be utterly divorced from reason.

God’s decrees and commandments, and consequently God’s providence, are in truth nothing but Nature’s order; that is to say, when Scripture tells us that this or that was accomplished by God or by God’s will, nothing more is intended than that it came about by accordance with Nature’s law and order, and not, as the common people believe, that Nature for some period has ceased to act, or that for some time its order has been interrupted.

Spinoza’s naturalistic understanding of divine providence in the Treatise can also accommodate, in some sense, an important feature of the common religious view of providence, namely, that which sees God as managing a system of rewards and punishments. The providential God of the Abrahamic traditions ensures that, at least in the very long run, human virtue and vice receive their just deserts. This is the moral dimension of providence directed at individuals that earlier Jewish philosophers called “special providence,” to distinguish it from the “general providence” that runs through the laws of nature and endows each species with characteristics essential for survival (for example, rationality in human beings or speed in gazelles). What Spinoza cannot allow, however, is that there is a distribution of rewards for virtue carried out by an intelligent moral agent, a kind of person, freely and actively dispensing them from on high.

In the Ethics, Spinoza shows that the virtuous person pursues and acquires true and adequate ideas, a deep rational understanding of Nature and its ways. As we have seen, this intellectual knowledge, unlike information that comes by way of the senses or the imagination, provides insight into the essences of things and especially the ways in which they depend necessarily on their highest causes in Nature. Spinoza insists that this knowledge of God or Nature and how things relate to it is of the greatest benefit to a human being in two ways.

First, he suggests that an understanding of Nature’s essences and laws provides the virtuous individual with the tools needed to navigate life’s obstacle course. The ways of Nature are transparent to the intellectually perfected person. His capacity to manipulate things and avoid dangers is greater than that of the person who is governed by the senses and imagination and thus subject to chance and whatever may happen. The virtuous person has greater control over events; others are more at the mercy of luck. A deep knowledge of things benefits one in this very practical manner.

Second, and more important, true knowledge is, for the virtuous person, the source of an abiding happiness and peace of mind that is resistant to the vicissitudes of fortune. When a person understands Nature, he sees the necessity of all things, and especially the fact that the objects that he values are, in their comings and goings, not under his control. More precisely, he sees, for example, that all bodies and their states and relationships - including the condition of his own body - follow necessarily from the essence of matter (Extension) and the universal laws of physics; and he sees that all ideas, including all the properties of minds, follow necessarily from the essence of Thought and its universal laws.

Such insight can only weaken the power that the irrational passions have over an individual. Herein lie the natural benefits or rewards of virtue. When a person achieves a high level of understanding of Nature and realizes that he cannot control what it brings his way or takes from him, he becomes less anxious over things, less governed by the affects of hope and fear over what may or may not come to pass. No longer obsessed with or despondent over the loss of his possessions, he is less likely to be overwhelmed with emotions at their arrival and passing away. Such a person will regard all things with an even temper and will not be inordinately and irrationally affected in different ways by past, present, or future events. His life will be tranquil and not given to sudden disturbances of the passions. The result is self-control and a calmness of mind.

The more this knowledge that things are necessary is concerned with singular things, which we imagine more distinctly and vividly, the greater is this power of the Mind over the affects, as experience itself also testifies. For we see that Sadness over some good which has perished is lessened as soon as the man who has lost it realizes that this good could not, in any way, have been kept. Similarly, we see that [because we regard infancy as a natural and necessary thing] no one pities infants because of their inability to speak, to walk, or to reason, or because they live so many years, as it were, unconscious of themselves.

What Spinoza calls the “free person” - the virtuous individual who “lives according to the dictate of reason alone” - bears the gifts and losses of fortune with equanimity, does only those things that he believes to be “the most important in life,” refuses to chase after or be anxious about ephemeral goods, and is not overly concerned with death. His understanding of his place in the natural scheme of things brings him happiness and true peace of mind.

Virtue, then, has its rewards. The natural consequence of the striving for and acquisition of understanding and knowledge is well-being. Our freedom, our physical and psychological flourishing are directly dependent on our knowledge of Nature, including our understanding both of the necessity of all things and of our place in the world. Virtue is a source of an abiding happiness that is free from chance. Such is the true but entirely natural benefit of virtue. This, if anything, constitutes a special kind providence within Spinoza’s system, one that is available only to rational beings.

אני אומר באמונה שלימה
שהתפלות קדמו לאלקים.
התפלות יצרו את האלקים
האלקים יצר את האדם
והאדם יוצר תפלות
שיוצרות את אלקים שיוצר את האדם.

Leaman has set up a strawman as the Jewish philosophers' God, wrongly taking them to believe in a being of absolute omniscience and omnipotence (as well as unqualified benevolence, which they did accept).

Levi Ben Gerson’s solution [over what constitutes God’s Knowledge and its extent], whatever we may think of its scientific or philosophic value, is surely very bold as theology, we might almost say it’s a theological monstrosity.

שהדברים אשר ירצם האלוק יעשו בהכרח ואין שם מונע ימנע מהעשות רצונו, אלא שהוא ית' לא ירצה אלא אפשר, ולא כל אפשר - אלא מה שגזרה חכמתו להיות כך.

Maimonides' absolute transcendence concept of [the] deity is made more explicit by drawing the full implications of the above statements and concretizing them with specific examples. Thus denying that God in any way is an object of human knowledge means that there is no being called God that the human person can understand or believe in. The very statement "God exists" is empty of content [1:56] since the human mind has no idea of the entity referred to, and even if it did, would not know what existence in the case of such an entity means. Moreover, the fact that God has no relation to any being other than Himself, and can be affected by no other being means, for example, that when humans pray they do not encounter God, or enter into any other relation with Him, and their prayers produce no effect upon Him. Furthermore, one cannot even say that God is aware of the human race - let alone that He intervenes in human affairs - since knowledge of humans entails entering into an epistemological relation with them. Similarly, God cannot be considered the "father" of human persons, a common liturgical notion, but a relation that Maimonides explicitly denies exists between deity and any of his creatures (1:52). Finally, since God has no emotions He cannot be said to possess a quality such as mercy or compassion for His creatures, emotions commonly attributed to God in the Bible.

Absolute transcendence, one must bear in mind, puts forth a concept of [a] deity who is completely unknowable, who relates to nothing other than Himself, who cannot be said to know of humans or exercise providence over them, who cannot be related to through prophecy, prayer, or other actions, and who cannot be called upon in time of distress.

...

The absolute transcendence concept of deity implies both the belief that God is not aware of humans and that He does not dispense reward and punishment to them. Maimonides states that the former belief disheartens pious persons and the latter belief leads to social disorder (III:19, 17; cf. 11:23). Accordingly, since the absolute transcendence concept has potentially destructive social consequences it must be withheld from the multitude.

כן המציא דבר מגושם לא מחומר כלל הוא מכת האפשר אצלנו ומכת הנמנע אצל הפילוסופים. וכן יאמרו הפילוסופים שהמציא מרובע שאלכסונו כצלעו או זוית מגושמת שיקיפו בה ארבע זוית פשוטות נצבות וכיוצא בהם - כל אלה מכת הנמנע; וקצת מי שיסכול החכמות הלימודיות ולא ידע מאלה הענינים רק המלות לבד לא ציור ענין יחשבם אפשריים.

Maimonides is not saying that God is vindictive, or that God singles out individuals for punishment. In Maimonides’ view, Divine Providence is consequent upon the perfection of human intellect and reflects the causal and ontological grid whereby God orders reality. In this respect it differs from [the fifth view in Ch. 17] which did not emphasize the importance of intellectual perfection.

The first distinction must be raised before we even begin to address the problem of evil as a challenge to theism. This is the distinction between the philosophical problem of evil and what we may call the existential problem of evil. When philosophers talk about the problem of evil, they are discussing an argument – or, to be more precise, a family of arguments – against the existence of God, taking evil as the starting point. It is argued that the existence, amount, magnitude, or distribution of evil renders God’s existence impossible or unlikely. So the philosophical problem of evil concerns certain arguments against God’s existence. The existential problem of evil is more pervasive than the philosophical problem. Many people who rarely think about arguments at all are faced with this problem. The existential problem of evil is not an argument but a challenge. The challenge can be phrased in the form of a question: how can I make sense out of my life given the evil that I suffer or that I witness? Each human being encounters or, at least, is aware of significant evil and thus faces the existential problem of evil. I face the existential problem of evil when I am facing real suffering. I think about the philosophical problem when I have the luxury of sitting back and theorizing about evil. It is rare that someone in the middle of deep suffering will spin an argument against God. He might cry out against God or for God, but there is generally little structuring of arguments going on.

It is important to make this distinction, because adequate answers to these problems will be very different from one another. An answer to the philosophical problem of evil will require that we pay careful attention to the details of various arguments. We shall analyze them and try to find the various strengths and weaknesses in them. This kind of academic work is not directly relevant to a person in the throes of suffering. When a person faces the existential problem of evil, she is not concerned with arguments at all. An answer to the existential problem of evil will be very personal. If I provide a detailed refutation of some argument to a person when she is struggling with her own experience of evil, I will miss her need entirely. We can help each other through difficulties by expressing our deep concern and by extending a listening ear and by providing what might be called pastoral care. It may be that either of these problems – or their combination – is at the heart of a person’s rejection of theism.

In support of the thesis that God’s knowledge of particulars extends equally to providence, it can be argued that God withholds providence when God knows that I am distracted. On this reading, my suffering or benefiting from providence is the direct result of God’s knowledge of me qua particular. This position is supported by the statement that “outside the mind nothing exists except individuals . . . consequently providence watches only over these individuals” (GP 3.18). I suggest that this reading is more consistent with Maimonides’ own statements pertaining to the extent of divine omniscience. But, of course, we are left with two problems: first of all, God is ultimately responsible for the suffering of the righteous, and secondly, God’s providence, coupled with His omniscience, do affect my ability (yekholet) to board or not board the ship. On this reading, humans do not have free choice in light of God’s knowledge of future contingent events.

The resolution of the prima facie tension between God’s justice and apparent disorder in the distribution of flourishing is to be found in the generality of God’s ways – or, more particularly, in the universal and lawlike order that God has established in nature. When we see a virtuous person suffer, it is not because God has directly chosen to inflict punishment on this individual, with an ad hoc intention; his suffering is not the result of what Philo calls “immediate providence” (kata pronoian). Rather, his suffering is a result of the general manner in which nature works. God’s providential ways are not directed toward the well-being of particular individuals but to the overall well-being of the system and the general welfare of creatures. Thus, it may sometimes happen that an operation of nature that is, on the whole, for the best (and was chosen by God for that reason) has consequences that, from the perspective of one individual or another, are not optimal. God looks to the goodness of the whole, not its particular constituents, some of whom may (unjustly, it seems) get swept along by the course of events.

In pestilential diseases, it is necessary that some of those who are not guilty should be involved in the destruction . . . It is inevitable that those who are exposed to a pestilential atmosphere must become diseased just as all persons who are exposed to a storm on board a ship must all be exposed to equal danger.

God does not intend for the virtuous individual to suffer; his suffering is, in this sense, “accidental,” one of “the results and consquences of the operations of nature.” Indeed, it is the person himself who is to blame for his suffering, because it is his responsibility to take care within the course of nature and be on guard against any disasters that may be coming his way. Later Jewish thinkers will demonstrate how the pursuit of virtue does, in fact, afford one some relief and protections from the vicissitudes of nature.

One possible, even natural way of conceiving the divine modus operandi in providence for Maimonides needs to be ruled out from the start. There are passages in which Maimonides speaks as if God, seeing the virtues and vices of particular human beings, actively and intentionally chooses to reward and punish them as individuals – perhaps in just the way that the multitude think of providence, with God sending a thunder bolt against one person while snatching another person from the jaws of death (e.g., in the lions’ den). Thus, just as Maimonides insists that the people are on board the ship because of the “divine will in accordance with the deserts of those people as determined in His judgments,” so he elsewhere notes how the fate met by many people is “due not to neglect and the withdrawal of providence, but was a punishment for those men because they deserved what befell them.” It is clear that this anthropomorphic way of acting, with God intervening to save or punish a person as if through a miracle, is inconsistent with what Maimonides considers the proper conception of God; such language may be only an element of Maimonides’ exoteric (vs. esoteric) writing, geared for the philosophically unsophisticated reader.

Rather, God’s role in providence is, so to speak, much more passive. God has put a system in place that is there for individual human beings to take advantage of or not, as they choose. It is the virtuous – understood as those who pursue intellectual virtue, and not merely moral virtue – who choose to do so, whereas all others are left without its protection.

Maimonides distinguishes between general providence, which is constituted by the species’ characteristics oriented to its preservation and is (barring unusual circumstances) provided equally to all member of the species, and individual providence, which is particularized to individuals and distributed only according to merits. Both varieties of providence are understood in highly naturalistic and Aristotelian terms. The latter, however, comes into play only in the realm of human agency.

. . .

‏Despite Maimonides’ claim that the suffering of many is “due not to neglect and the withdrawal of providence, but was a punishment for those men because they deserved what befell them,” it seems clear that it is precisely through approach and withdrawal – that is, the human being’s willful approaching to and withdrawing from the overflow – that providence operates. As long as one is actively enjoying the epistemic connection to the divine overflow, one is ipso facto protected; providence is watching over such a person. On the other hand, when one is not attending to God (either because one has never made the effort or because, having achieved the connection, one has temporarily become distracted, perhaps by the pleasures of the senses), one is abandoned to chance and left to one’s own devices. The person who is not experiencing the overflow is not enjoying its benefits. He is at the mercy of nature’s elements and his well-being is subject to whatever may or may not come his way. Providence is no longer watching over him – not because God is actively punishing him, but because through his own actions he has taken himself outside of the care that providence (the overflow) offers.

. . .

There is some ambiguity as to just what is the nature of the protection that, according to Maimonides, divine providence provides. Commentators, from Maimonides’ time onward, have found a tension between two ways of reading his account. On one reading, what the knowledge brought to the human intellect by the divine overflow gives to the righteous person is a way actually to escape the evils around him. The overflow carries information about nature, among other things, just the kind of understanding that allows an individual to successfully navigate his way around the obstacles to his well-being that the world presents. Thus, a person who has perfected his intellect in the proper way will know not to get on the doomed ship (e.g., because he knows a storm is coming). At one point Maimonides says of the intellectually perfected person that “no evil at all will befall him.” If he should find himself in the midst of a pitched battle, then “even if one thousand were killed to your left and ten thousand to your right, no evil at all would befall you.”

On another reading, however, the person who attends to God, while not literally avoiding the evils that naturally come his way – especially the physical evils of the first kind and the moral evils of the second kind, which tend to be due to circumstances well beyond one’s control – will be less troubled by them. His mind is fixated on the true and lasting good, and he becomes immune to the lure of mutable goods and inured to the travails of his body. He has achieved a lasting state of spiritual well-being and happiness, one that is not subject to the vagaries of chance. Maimonides says that this is the condition of Job at the end of the story. In his first speech, as Maimonides reads it, Job adopts the Aristotelian view: God is not watching over individuals and is causing suffering for no good reason at all, “because of his contempt for the human species and abandonment of it.” After God has spoken, however, Job achieves a state of understanding: “He knew God with a certain knowledge, he admitted that true happiness, which is the knowledge of the deity, is guaranteed to all who know Him and that a human being cannot be troubled in it by any of all the misfortunes in question.” It is not that the good person experiences no loss or harm in his life; after all, Job lost practically everything. Rather, consumed with his bond with God and possessing true happiness, he cares less about those losses. He may see evils in his lifetime, but they will not constitute an “affliction” for him. The lesson Maimonides sees here is a Stoic one.

On either reading, providence does not consist in the active and willful intervention of God in human affairs; it is not that God chooses in particular to reward the person who has united himself to the overflow. Rather, somewhat naturalistically, the knowledge acquired by the virtuous person through the overflow affords him an advantage in the world. “The overflow of the divine intellect . . . guides the actions of righteous men, and perfects the knowledge of excellent men with regard to what they know.”

. . .

When the bond with the overflow is broken, the virtuous person is no better off than the wicked person. They are both on their own, abandoned to the world, come what may.

Yet an impediment may prevent from some time [the overflow] reaching the excellent and good man in question, or again it was not obtained at all by such and such imperfect and wicked man, and therefore the chance occurrences that befell them happened.

Full responsibility for the disconnection from the divine overlow lies with the individual, not God: “It is clear that we are the cause of this ‘hiding of the face,’ and we are the agents who produce this separation.”

Similarly, the prosperity of the wicked person is not a true flourishing, because this person is not enjoying the highest good, intellectual perfection. Moreover, the prosperity that has come his way is totally undeserved and does not represent a reward from God for anything he has done. Rather, being unprotected and at the mercy of nature, it so happens that chance has brought some apparently fine things his way. His possession and enjoyment of them is equally subject to fortune and certain to be short-lived.

See, I ask you, how the matter has turned out in the end! Among so many conveniences in nature they had to find many inconveniences: storms, earthquakes, diseases, etc. These, they maintain, happen because the Gods (whom they judge to be of the same nature as themselves) are angry on account of wrongs done to them by men, or on account of sins committed in their worship. And though their daily experience contradicted this, and though infinitely many examples showed that conveniences and inconveniences happen indiscriminately to the pious and the impious alike, they did not on that account give up their longstanding prejudice. It was easier for them to put this among the other unknown things, whose use they were ignorant of, and so remain in the state of ignorance in which they had been born, than to destroy that whole construction, and think up a new one. So they maintained it as certain that the judgments of the Gods far surpass man’s grasp.

מי אני האט געשריבן:אגב, מיט דעם קען מען בעצם צאמשטעלן די דאקטרין פון נמנע הנמנעות וואס נעמט דאס יא אן בעצם, היפך הרמב״ם, עם שיטתו בענין העדר שני הפכים בנושא אחד וברגע אחד. והיינו, אז וויבאלד עס איז לגמרי נישט שייך דן צו זיין דערויף, איז אין פראקטיש זאגן זיי ביידע בעצם די זעלבע זאך; ס׳איז נישט מער ווי א חילוק אין סימענטיקס.

מי אני האט געשריבן:איז ראשית כל איז סתם אזוי אינטרעסאנט צו באמערקן אז אין אנהויב פ׳ חלק וואו דער רמב״ם איז מבאר די דרייצן עיקרי אמונה דערמאנט ער נישט קיין איינמאל די ווארט ״יכול״ אדער ״יכולת״ פונקט אזוי אויך נישט. נאר פארשטייט זיך אז דאס איז שוין ״געדרינגען״ פונעם ערשטן עיקר (צי פון דעם פיפטען).

כקבוץ החיוב והשלילה או כמציאות שני הפכים בעת ונושא אחד שלא יתואר השם ביכולת עליו כמו שלא יתואר בשיכול להפסיד את עצמו או לברא כמותו או לעשות מרובע שיהיה קטרו שוה לצלעו, ומה שדומה לזה מהנמנעות אשר להם טבע קיים ואינה מפעולת פועל.

But in the most serious passages we get the single rational God who is all good but not all powerful. Evil is not caused by God - it’s the stuff outside the remit of the rational deity. So in a stroke Plato has solved the Problem of Evil; he has a God that is all good but not all powerful.

The emphasis on the connection between God and humans is a significant feature that distinguishes Gersonides’ theology from deism. A deist can hold that God creates a world in which reward and punishment for human actions are built into the system, as it were, but not that he enters into a relationship with humans. God, on that view, may be likened to a parent who goes away on vacation leaving her children with a detailed series of instructions, money for food, baby-sitter, and so on, but without the phone number where she can be reached. Even if she is able to provide for total supervision of their activities, with the appropriate rewards and punishments, the children will lack the contact that, some say, is essential for their well being. Gersonides’ theory of “particular,” that is providential, knowledge supplies the element of contact that is essential to the biblical conception of God knowing humans. Not only are reward and punishment built into the world, as it were, but so is a direct connection with its author.

ובכלל כל התורה והנביאים מלאים מזה, רצוני שאיש לא ישא כלל עונש מאת ה׳ בעון איש זולתו, כי זהו יושר, א״כ מה נעשה לאמרנו פקד עון אבות על בנים, א״כ ח״ו יהיה הא-ל עושה עול?

התשובה ע״ז, גזירת פוקד עון אבות על בנים אין פירושה כמו שהניחו המפרשים מענין נקימה, אבל זכירה כמו וה׳ פקד את שרה, ובכלל כי פקד בכל המקרא אינו רק כמו זכר, כי הם שמות נרדפים גמורים, ואע״פ שיהיה כפירוש המפרשים, לא יהיה היזק בזה כמו שנבאר עוד. אבל האמת הוא שהטעם כי הא-ל זוכר ענין האבות בהגיע זמן הבנים, וחלילה שיאמר הכתוב שמדותיו ית׳ שהוא ישיא עונש כלל על הבנים מצד עון אבותם, אבל אומר שהוא ית' זוכר עון אבות על ראותו ענין הבנים בבואם אל המעשים, כלומר כי הוא ית׳ הצופה והמביט כל הדורות בראותו הבנים בבוא זמנם, ועתה הוא יזכור אז מה שחלף מן האבות בדורות שעברו העוברים, כי הכל אצלו גלוי וידוע בפעל, רצוני, בקודם יודע המתאחר, ובמתאחר יודע הקודם, ולכן בבא הבנים ויהיו בנים משחיתים, הנה לפניו ית׳ נזכר ומשיג בפעל ענינם, וידע שהאבות היו סבה פועלת ומניעה לעון הבנים, או לעונש שהם סובלים, כי הם החטיאו אותם כמו שמבואר בכל המשלים הכתובים במקרא.

The argument can be formulated as follows (Morriston 2001: 144). Consider some particularly evil state of affairs, E, such as every sentient being suffering excruciating pain throughout its entire existence.

Then:

1) If any being is necessarily morally perfect, then there is no possible world at which that being brings about E

2) If any being is omnipotent, then that being has the power to bring about E

3) If any being has the power to bring about E, then there is some possible world at which that being brings about E

Therefore,

4) No being is both necessarily morally perfect and omnipotent

Some theists have simply accepted the conclusion, replacing either necessary moral perfection or omnipotence with some weaker property. For instance, Nelson Pike famously argued that, although no being would deserve the title “God” unless that being were morally perfect, there are nevertheless possible worlds in which the being who is in fact God is not morally perfect, and therefore is not God (Pike 1969). Pike’s view is, in essence, a rather complicated version of the claim that God is only contingently morally perfect, a view which some have regarded as extremely objectionable from a theological standpoint (Geach 1977).

But if not for the atheist, for whom is an argument from evil a "problem"?

Perhaps the theist. The theist, however, may rightly find the premises or inferences of arguments from evil dubious and hence no problem at all. Perhaps, then, an argument from evil is a problem for the theist who finds all its premises and inferences compelling. But even then it might not be a problem, since she might have more compelling grounds to reject the conclusion than to accept all the premises and inferences. Perhaps, then, an argument from evil is a problem for the theist who finds all its premises and inferences compelling and who has lousy grounds for believing theism and she knows it. In that case an argument from evil might be a problem for the theist, at least if she is reasonable. For she might feel strongly inclined to believe there is no God, or at least that, in some sense, she ought to believe that there is no God. No doubt, this could be a troubling state of mind, one that might properly be called a problem. But in that case calling what philosophers study under the name "the problem of evil" a problem is highly misleading. For no philosophers today take the state of mind of the cognitively dissonant theist as their object of study when they study what they refer to as "the problem of evil”.

One might think that what philosophers study under the name "the problem of evil" are arguments that should lead the theist to the cognitively dissonant state of mind just sketched, and so, by extension, such an argument is rightly called a problem for the theist. But this rationale for calling what philosophers study under the name "the problem of evil" a problem is highly contentious, to say the least. For an argument from evil should lead the theist to cognitive dissonance only if the argument is good, and there is broad disagreement over whether any argument from evil is good. Of course, those convinced that some argument from evil is not defective and that it should lead the theist to cognitive dissonance might properly call it a problem. But why should the rest of us join them?

The problem is that whereas the fool rightly was willing to grant that it is possible that the concept of a maximally excellent being be instantiated, he would have to be not just a fool but a complete schmuck to grant that it is possible that the concept of an unsurpassably great being [with additional necessary existence] be instantiated. For in granting that it is possible that there is an unsurpassably great being, he is granting that it is possible that it is necessary that there is a maximally excellent being. But if his consent to the latter is to be an informed one, he must know that the nested modal operator, “It is possibly that it is necessary,” is to be subject to the axiom of the S5 system of modal logic, according to which whatever is possibly necessary is necessary. This has the consequence that a proposition’s modal status is world-invariant. Since it is possible that the proposition that it is necessary that there is a maximally excellent being is true, this proposition is true in some possible world. But given that a necessary proposition is true in every possible world, it follow that it is true in the actual world that there is a maximally excellent being. The fool is well within his rights to charge the S5-based ontological argument with begging the question in its possibility premise.

The intelligent S5 arguer, such as Plantinga, would grant that the argument does not succeed as a piece of natural theology, but then would point out that it nevertheless serves the purpose of showing that it is not irrational or epistemically impermissible to believe that God exists; for the argument is valid and has premises, including the possibility one, that are just as likely to be true as not.

If a stalemate of intuitions is to be overcome, the opponent of the argument must give some good argument for why its possibility premise is false. This could be done by finding some concept that intuitively seems to have more likelihood of being instantiatable than does the concept of being unsurpassably great and that is strongly incompatible with it in that if either concept is instantiated in any possible world, the other instantiated in none. The concept could be that of being an unjustified evil, meaning an evil that God does not have a morally exonerating excuse for permitting, that is, an evil that could not coexist with God. But since an unsurpassably great being, if it possibly exists, exists in every possible world, in no possible world is there an unjustified evil. But it certainly seems more likely that it is possible that there be an unjustified evil than that there be an unsurpassably great being. Even some theists seem to grant the possibility of an unjustified evil when they exercise themselves in constructing theodicies that attempt to show that the apparently unjustified evils of the world really have a justification. Thus, by souping up the concept of God in the way the S5 ontological arguer does, the foundation is laid for an ontological disproof of God, conceived of as an unsurpassably great being.

It is the final proof of God’s omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.

The existence of evil is the [emphasis in original] most fundamental threat to the traditional Western concept of an all-good, all-powerful God

Morally speaking, how the concept of inscrutable evil comforts those suffering monumental loss is an added mystery.

To argue that all sufferers were given their just deserts is as absurd as supposing that the millions Hitler annihilated, the millions who died as a result of Stalin’s purges, or the millions who were slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge were punished by God because of some sin they committed.

...

Another claim involved here is that the great power of God, evidenced by natural catastrophes, shocks those who are on the road to error into behaving appropriately. Yet sufferers are more prone to ask, “why me?” or to question the existence of an all-good, all-powerful God than they are to revere such a destructive power. A mass miracle now and then such as ending the slaughter in the Sudan, or turning the land mines of Cambodia into flowers, would better inspire awe and reverence than the devastation wreaked by earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, volcanic eruptions, and pandemics.

When people have tried to read into ‘God can do everything’ a signification not of Pious Intention but of Philosophical truth, they have only landed themselves in intractable problems and hopeless confusions

Perhaps it is worth saying at the outset that I do not attach very much importance to arguments from evil. At best, arguments from evil create problems for the hypothesis that there is a perfect being, that is, a being that is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good. It is a controversial question whether all orthodoxly conceived monotheistic gods have these properties; at the very least, there is clearly a case to be made for the contention that the monotheistic gods that are described in the scriptures of the major monotheistic religions fall far short of perfect goodness

Davies (1993) and others have contended that what it means for God to be good is different from what it means for an agent to be good. Those who think of God as Being as opposed to a being have some reason to adopt this position. A more desperate strategy is to deny the existence of evil, but it is difficult to reconcile traditional monotheism with moral scepticism. Also, in so far as we believe there to be a God worthy of worship and a fitting object of human love, the appeal to moral scepticism will carry little weight. The idea that evil is a privation of the good, a twisting of something good, may have some currency in thinking through the problem of evil, but it is difficult to see how it alone could go very far to vindicate belief in God’s goodness. Searing pain and endless suffering seem altogether real even if they are analysed as being philosophically parasitic on something valuable. The three great monotheistic traditions, with their ample insistence on the reality of evil, offer little reason to try to defuse the problem of evil by this route. Indeed, classical Judaism, Christianity and Islam are so committed to the existence of evil that a reason to reject evil would be a reason to reject these religious traditions. What would be the point of Judaic teaching about the Exodus (God liberating the people of Israel from slavery) or Christian teaching about the Incarnation (Christ revealing God as love and releasing a Divine power that will, in the end, conquer death), or the Islamic teaching of Mohammed (the holy prophet of Allah who is all-just and all-merciful) if slavery, hate, death and injustice do not exist?

Theistic responses to the problem of evil distinguish between a defence and a theodicy. A defence seeks to establish that rational belief that God exists is still possible (when the defence is employed against the logical version of the problem of evil) and that the existence of evil does not make it improbable that God exists (when used against the probabilistic version). According to the defence response, no creature should expect to be able to solve the problem of evil; it is beyond our epistemic capacities to stand in judgement here. Some have adopted the defence strategy while arguing that we are in a position to have rational beliefs in the existence of evil and in a completely good God who hates this evil, even though we are unable to see how these two beliefs are compatible. A theodicy is more ambitious, and is typically part of a broader project, arguing that it is reasonable to believe that God exists in light of the good as well as the evident evil of the cosmos. In a theodicy, the project is not to account for each and every evil, but to provide an overarching framework within which to understand at least roughly how the evil that occurs is part of some overall good

All such opinions spring from the notion commonly entertained, that all things in nature act as men themselves act, namely, with an end in view. It is accepted as certain, that God himself directs all things to a definite goal (for it is said that God made all things for man, and man that he might worship him). I will, therefore, consider this opinion, asking first, why it obtains general credence, and why all men are naturally so prone to adopt it? secondly, I will point out its falsity; and, lastly, I will show how it has given rise to prejudices about good and bad, right and wrong, praise and blame, order and confusion, beauty and ugliness, and the like. However, this is not the place to deduce these misconceptions from the nature of the human mind: it will be sufficient here, if I assume as a starting point, what ought to be universally admitted, namely, that all men are born ignorant of the causes of things, that all have the desire to seek for what is useful to them, and that they are conscious of such desire. Herefrom it follows, first, that men think themselves free inasmuch as they are conscious of their volitions and desires, and never even dream, in their ignorance, of the causes which have disposed them so to wish and desire. Secondly, that men do all things for an end, namely, for that which is useful to them, and which they seek. Thus it comes to pass that they only look for a knowledge of the final causes of events, and when these are learned, they are content, as having no cause for further doubt. If they cannot learn such causes from external sources, they are compelled to turn to considering themselves, and reflecting what end would have induced them personally to bring about the given event, and thus they necessarily judge other natures by their own. Further, as they find in themselves and outside themselves many means which assist them not a little in the search for what is useful, for instance, eyes for seeing, teeth for chewing, herbs and animals for yielding food, the sun for giving light, the sea for breeding fish, etc., they come to look on the whole of nature as a means for obtaining such conveniences. Now as they are aware, that they found these conveniences and did not make them, they think they have cause for believing, that some other being has made them for their use. As they look upon things as means, they cannot believe them to be self-created; but, judging from the means which they are accustomed to prepare for themselves, they are bound to believe in some ruler or rulers of the universe endowed with human freedom, who have arranged and adapted everything for human use. They are bound to estimate the nature of such rulers (having no information on the subject) in accordance with their own nature, and therefore they assert that the gods ordained everything for the use of man, in order to bind man to themselves and obtain from him the highest honor. Hence also it follows, that everyone thought out for himself, according to his abilities, a different way of worshipping God, so that God might love him more than his fellows, and direct the whole course of nature for the satisfaction of his blind cupidity and insatiable avarice. Thus the prejudice developed into superstition, and took deep root in the human mind; and for this reason everyone strove most zealously to understand and explain the final causes of things; but in their endeavor to show that nature does nothing in vain, i.e. nothing which is useless to man, they only seem to have demonstrated that nature, the gods, and men are all mad together. Consider, I pray you, the result: among the many helps of nature they were bound to find some hindrances, such as storms, earthquakes, diseases, etc.: so they declared that such things happen, because the gods are angry at some wrong done to them by men, or at some fault committed in their worship. Experience day by day protested and showed by infinite examples, that good and evil fortunes fall to the lot of pious and impious alike; still they would not abandon their inveterate prejudice, for it was more easy for them to class such contradictions among other unknown things of whose use they were ignorant, and thus to retain their actual and innate condition of ignorance, than to destroy the whole fabric of their reasoning and start afresh. They therefore laid down as an axiom, that God's judgments far transcend human understanding. Such a doctrine might well have sufficed to conceal the truth from the human race for all eternity, if mathematics had not furnished another standard of verity in considering solely the essence and properties of figures without regard to their final causes. There are other reasons (which I need not mention here) besides mathematics, which might have caused men's minds to be directed to these general prejudices, and have led them to the knowledge of the truth.

I have now sufficiently explained my first point. There is no need to show at length, that nature has no particular goal in view, and that final causes are mere human figments.

I must add, too, that the only purpose of the book is to solve the intellectual problem raised by suffering; for the far higher task of teaching fortitude and patience I was never fool enough to suppose myself qualified, nor have I anything to offer my readers except my conviction that when pain is to be borne, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all

מי אני האט געשריבן:ער טענה׳ט אבער אז למעשה קען מען דאס נישט אינגאנצן אוועקמאכן פונקט אזוי ווי מ׳פארשטייט, צב״ש, אז די דייטשע רעגירונג כהיום איז מחוייב צו צאלן רעפּארעישאנס פאר וואס די נאציס האבן געטוהן.

Many believers have told me, I won’t say that they “admitted”, that one is just as lost in a world with God, if you really try to see where good and evil are, and what God’s will is, as in a world without God

Although Spinoza’s God is quite different from Maimonides’, these [anti-anthropomorphic] arguments are squarely in the Maimonidean tradition: it is inadmissible to attribute to God any human qualities, since God and humans are literally incommensurable. It is therefore likely that it was Maimonides, as well as Maimonides’ disciples — especially Levi ben Gershon [Gersonides] and Moses Narboni — who were Spinoza’s main medieval interlocutors. One might say that Spinoza took over the divine attributes of action from Maimonides and argued that they are all that there is to God. There is no essence outside of them, no transcendence beyond their immanence. God is the universe — and nothing else. One might also say that once the transcendent God became so abstract that he could not be grasped; he vanished from sight, leaving only the universe. Maimonides’ negative theology collapsed on itself with Spinoza, turning into its precise opposite: radical transcendence begat pure immanence

This radical “dehumanizing” of God leads Spinoza to positions that generations of readers have found uncomfortable. In the last part of the Ethics, he writes: “God is without passions, neither is he affected by any emotion of pleasure or pain. . . . Strictly speaking, God does not love anyone.” Therefore: “He who loves God cannot endeavor that God should love him in return.” The intellectual love of God that Spinoza taught must of necessity remain unrequited, for the beloved in question is not like a human lover. One can and must love nature without expecting anything in return

Because nothing can exist outside of the one substance, it is impossible to speak of God as acting out of his free will upon the world. Instead, the very laws of the universe are the actions of God, and as laws, these actions are necessary and determined. Since God is nature, the only laws that he can give are the laws of nature (of course, since Spinoza denied that God had volition, he could not actually “give” anything). Thus, the revelation at Mount Sinai could not have been divine. The difference between natural and biblical laws lies in the necessity of the former and the contingency of the latter: a biblical law can be transgressed, a law of nature cannot. So, for example, God’s commandment to Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge could not have been a true law because had it been, they could not have violated it, any more than that they could have violated the law of gravity

In light of this view of nature, Spinoza was probably the most deterministic of any philosopher since Aristotle, and even more than Aristotle who allowed for accidents or contingencies. Medieval scholars had debated long and hard about God’s powers and whether he could suspend the laws of physics (e.g., cause the sun to stand still), mathematics (make 2 + 2 = 5), or logic (suspend the law of excluded middle, i.e., that a proposition is either true or false). While the doctrine of biblical miracles required that God be able to do the first, the second two were generally regarded as impossible. But even miracles requiring the suspension of the laws of physics seemed to many to be problematic, and there were those, such as Maimonides, who held that God took miracles out of “the realm of the possible” rather than suspended the laws of nature

The desire to explain the biblical miracles by resorting to naturalistic explanations was not, then, an entirely modern idea. But Spinoza took it to a new extreme. Not only are the laws of nature immutable, but everything that happens within nature happens necessarily and without an external cause. Calling an event within nature a miracle is nothing but an admission that one doesn’t understand its immanent cause. Or, as he puts it:

If there were to occur in Nature anything that did not follow from her laws, this would necessarily be opposed to the order which God maintains eternally in Nature through her universal laws. So this would be contrary to Nature and Nature’s laws, and consequently such a belief would cast doubt on everything and would lead to atheism

Far from proving the existence of God, miracles undermine it! The real atheists are those who mistake the Bible’s stories for truth, not the scientists who give them naturalistic explanations. That the Bible revels in such miracles is but one piece of evidence that it was written not by a philosopher but by a prophet who spoke the uneducated language of his audience

Spinoza’s position on the immortality of the soul remained ambiguous. The only explicit statement he made on the afterlife in the Ethics is this: “The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but there remains of it something which is eternal.” A great deal of debate has arisen over this passage, with some claiming that Spinoza did believe in personal immortality, while others see this statement as evidence that after death the mind becomes one again with the mind of God. In the latter case, the mind separated from the body loses its individuality. But if this was Spinoza’s position, it puts him surprisingly in a medieval tradition, especially that associated with Levi ben Gershon, or Gersonides (1288–1344). Gersonides held that the immortality of the soul lies in the congruence between the “acquired intellect” (that is, the knowledge that one’s mind has acquired) and the “active intellect” (the eternal truths of God). Insofar as the contents of one’s mind unite with the active intellect, one becomes immortal, but this is a form of immortality that would appear to be impersonal and, in this sense, similar to Spinoza’s doctrine

Maimon’s ideas about miracles were equally radical. As with Spinoza, the world is thoroughly rational in the sense that the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things. But this rationality is from the point of view of the infinite understanding, which, as we have now seen, can only be approached but never attained by our limited understanding. The rationality of the world is in the mind of God. For God, the world is like the triangle in our example above: when he thinks it, he simultaneously constructs it. Its reality is in his mind. From this point of view, what we call “matter” is a product of our limited understanding, since it only reflects one possibility, while God’s mind encompasses all possibilities. From God’s vantage point, there is no matter, only ideas. Thus, when we see something that seems to contradict the laws of nature, we are responding to our limited view of the world. Since we can never comprehend all the laws of nature — something only available to God — we can never determine whether a given event ought to be called a miracle. This agnosticism with respect to miracles parallels Maimon’s agnosticism about God’s existence. But its net effect is to make the whole question of miracles moot, a brilliant move in light of the long history of debate on the issue

One of [Einstein’s] most evocative aphorisms was: “Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not.” When asked by a colleague what he meant, he replied: “Nature hides her secret because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of a ruse.” If the universe was constructed by a “ruse,” it might have been inaccessible and would therefore appear to function miraculously. Einstein’s God does not use miracles but rather uses laws that, no matter how subtle, we can hope to decipher. Interestingly enough, Maimonides claims the opposite: that God used a “ruse” (ormat ha-shem) to wean the Israelites away from idolatry, but this ruse was a nonmiraculous historical process. Seemingly in agreement about the lawfulness of the world, Maimonides and Einstein described it using opposite language

Hermann Cohen himself recoiled from his own secular theology at the end of his life by suggesting a new idea: a personal God in whom a suffering individual can find solace. But this existentialist God — similar in a way to the God of the Bible — could only be embraced by throwing off nearly a millennium of rationalist philosophy

“כי מי אשר יחובר אל כל החיים יש בטחון”. אך הנה מת האדם – והחלל נתרוקן. אין מה שיסיח את הדעת – והמחיצה נסתלקה. הכל נעשה פתאום בלתי מובן. ה“איקס” הנעלם משתרבב לפנינו שוב בכל מורא קומתו – ואנו יושבים לפניו רגע אחד על הארץ באפלה אבלים ודומם כאבן. אבל רק רגע אחד, לפי ששר של חיים מקדים סתימה לפתיחה, והוא מזמין לנו מיד “סגולה” חדשה להסיח בה את הדעת ולהפיג את הפחד, ועד שלא נסתם הגולל על המת – וכבר נמצא אותו החלל שנתרוקן סתום שוב באחת מן המלות, תהא זו של הספד, של תנחומין, של פילוסופיה או של אמונה בהשארת הנפש וכדומה. הרגע המסוכן ביותר – גם בדבור וגם בחיים – אינו איפוא אלא זה שבין כסוי לכסוי, כשהתהו מנצנץ, אבל רגעים כאלה מעטים מאוד גם בשגרת הלשון וגם בשגרת החיים, ועל פי רוב בני אדם מדלגים עליהם ואינם מרגישים. שומר פתאים ה'.

ועתה אגלה לך קצת סוד אל שדי. ידענו כי השם ברא ג' עולמות שהזכרתי, והעולם השפל יקבל כח מעולם התיכון, כל א' מהפרטים כפי מערכת העליונה. ובעבור כי נשמת האדם גבוה מן העולם האמצעי, אם היתה הנפש חכמה והכירה מעשה השם שהם בלא אמצעי, ועל ידי אמצעי, והניחה תאות העולם השפל והתבודדה לדבקה בשם הנכבד, אם יש במערכת הככבים בעת ההריון רעה שתבא עליו ביום ידוע, השם שדבק בו יסבב סבות להצילו מרעתו. וככה אם יש במערכה שיהיה עקר, השם יתקן לו כח תולדתו ויוליד. על כן אמרו חז"ל שהשם אמר לאברהם צא מאצטגנינות שלך, וקרוב מזה הטעם אין מזל לישראל, ועוד אבאר זה בפ' כי תשא. על כן אמר השם לאברהם קודם וארבה את זרעך אני אל שדי שפירושו מנצח המערכות העליונות, לא שהמערכה תשחת רק שידע הדבק בשמו שמתחדש לו טוב שלא יהיה במערכתו על כן אמר יעקב המלאך הגואל אותי מכל רע, שהי' נכון לבא עלי. וזה הוא סוד כל התורה כאשר אפרש עוד. והנה האבות לא הגיעה מעלתם לדבקה בשם כמשה אשר ידעו השם פנים בפנים ע"כ היה יכול משה לשנות תולדות עולם השפל ולחדש אותות ומופתים שלא יכלו האבות לחדשם.

והנה לא יוכלו המשרתים לשנות דרכם ושיעבור א' מהם החק שנתן לו השם, גם כן כל צבא השמים והשפלים יקבלו מהם כפי מתכונתם, על כן לא ייטיבו ולא ירעו. והנה המשתחוה למלאכת השמים לא יועילו לו כי אם מה שנגזר עליו כפי מערכת ככבי מולדתו כן יקרנו, חוץ אם ישמרהו כח העליון יותר מכח הככבים שיהיה דבק בו, אז ינצל מהגזרות. ואתן לך משל חשוב שהיתה מערכת הכוכבים שיגדל נהר על עיר אחת וישטוף אנשיה או ימותו, ובא נביא והזהירם שישובו אל השם בטרם בא יום רעתם ושבו אליו בכל לבם. ובעבור שדבקו בו נתן בלבם שיצאו אנשי העיר לחוץ להתפלל אל השם והנה עשו כן. וביום ההוא גדל הנהר פתאום כמנהגו כאשר ראינו בעינינו פעמים רבות ושטף כל העיר. והנה לא סרה גזירת השם והוא הצילם. וחשוב כי המשרתים ירוצו כסוסים עוברים במסלה ולא ירוצו להרע או להטיב רק ככה דרכם וחשוב כי במסלה איש עור לא ידע מנהג הסוסים מתי הולכין אל ימין או לשמאל, והוא נשען על פקח שידע סורם. והנה הוא ישמרנו כי ברוצם בצד זה יוליך העור לצד האחר ומרוצת הסוס לא תשתנה והעור ימלט. ובעבור זה אמר ה' אחר אשר חלק, ואתכם לקח ה' להיות לו לעם נחלה. ככה לא כאלה חלק יעקב כי יוצר הכל הוא, וזהו ונפלינו אני ועמך. וזהו שאמרו חכמינו ז"ל אין מזל לישראל כל זמן שהם שומרי התורה, ואם לא ישמרוה ישלוט בהם המזל כאשר הוא מנוסה. כי כל מחברת ומזל דלי [שהיא מזלו של ישראל כדכתב הראב״ע לעיל פרק לא פסוק יח] במערכת רעה, הנה יבא רעה לשונאי ישראל [ח״ו]. והיודעים חכמת המזלות יודו כן.

אל מלא רחמים,
אלמלא האל מלא רחמים,
היו הרחמים בעולם ולא רק בו.

אני, שקטפתי פרחים בהר
והסתכלתי אל כל העמקים,
אני, שהבאתי גוויות מן הגבעות,
יודע לספר שהעולם ריק מרחמים.

אני שהייתי מלך המלח ליד הים,
שעמדתי בלי החלטה מול חלוני,
שספרתי צעדי מלאכים,
שלבי הרים משקלות כאב
בתחרויות הנוראות.

אני שמשתמש רק בחלק קטן
מן המילים במלון.

אני, שמוכרח לפתור חידות בעל כורחי,
יודע כי אלמלא האל מלא רחמים
היו הרחמים בעולם
ולא רק בו.