Treating God As A Character

Faced with the intractable complexity of religious reality, metaphysicians attempt to introduce logical order to our experience. Jewish philosophers, among others, have struggled with the idea of divine omniscience, for example. If God's perfection implies that He is all-knowing, does this somehow prevent human beings from exercising free will? Does His knowledge of the future entail that His knowledge changes over time, as future events become present and then past, and does such change contradict His perfection? And if His majesty excludes such change, does this not preclude His active engagement with the world, with humanity, with the existing individual?

All of this is good work for philosophers, and their analysis occasionally yields dividends for the individual seeking to better comprehend the nature of his, or her, religious and intellectual experience. The principal focus of the Torah, however, is not to analyze the religious consciousness, but to record it in its full vitality. The reader seeking rigorous formulations of doctrine must frequently look to the secondary, philosophical literature. Among the classical commentators who serve as models for our creative engagement with the text, some incorporate philosophical discussion in their work as a matter of course; others, only when they are required, by the plain meaning of the text, to take these factors into consideration.

Take the aforementioned question of divine knowledge. If you read the Torah literally you are likely to conclude that God is frequently surprised by events: He does not always exhibit the total possession of the future that most religious thinkers ascribe to Him. Among believing Jews, the prevalent view is that of Maimonides (Rambam), who insists that all human attributions are literally false when applied to the deity, and that such terms as appear in the Bible are figurative and a concession to the cognitive finitude of man. A minority position is held by the 14th century French philosopher-exegete Gersonides (Ralbag). Based on philosophical reasons not germane to our discussion, he considers divine perfection to be compatible with limited divine foreknowledge. In the 18th century the Moroccan Kabbalist R. Hayyim ibn Attar (in his Or haHayyim) suggested that God is described as having limited knowledge in order to forestall the wicked from ducking responsibility by claiming that their evil actions are caused by God.

However worthwhile it might be to pursue the philosophical analysis to its appropriate conclusions, the fact is that the Torah invites us, on occasion, to think of God as if He were a "character" in the story, rather than the all-knowing Director of the plot. The gain in presenting God as contemporary with the world's travails, sharing mankind's hopes and failures, apparently outweighs the risk of readers stumbling intellectually and becoming entangled in impure philosophical conceptions.*

By way of illustrating the above, let us examine several texts in Genesis with a bearing on divine knowledge, as interpreted by Rashi, the most popular and influential of the medieval commentators.

1. The Torah informs us, at the beginning of the Akeda, that God was "testing" Abraham. The idea of a test seems to presuppose that the tester does not know the outcome of the test; the literal meaning is thus consistent with Ralbag's view. Many writers on the Akeda, adopting the conventional doctrine of divine omniscience, proposed alternative explanations of what it means for God to test a person. Rashi is not one of them. Though God is here depicted as if His knowledge were limited like that of a human character, Rashi is obviously not troubled by the potential derogation of God's perfection. Only later, when God tells Abraham that *now*, after the Akeda, He knows him to be genuinely God-fearing, does Rashi correct the implication of the word now (atta): it means that now those who doubted Abraham's commitment would be compelled to acknowledge it.

2. On two occasions, God opens a conversation with a question to which He presumably knows the answer. God asks Adam where he is, though it is clear from the context that He knows of Adam's shame after eating of the forbidden tree. Similarly God inquires of Cain about the whereabouts of Abel, though the next verse demonstrates that He is not vulnerable to Cain's evasions.

   With respect to Adam Rashi comments, citing a midrash:

   He knew where he was but commenced discussion, so that Adam not become confused in his response if He were to punish him suddenly.

   About God's question to Cain, Rashi writes:

   To commence with calm words, perhaps Cain would respond and say, I killed him and sinned unto You.

   In both these instances there is little need for philosophically driven exegesis. Only a churl would think that God's query, in these narratives, assumes His ignorance about the situation. What led Rashi to comment is the desire to explain the conversational purpose of the question in each case.

   (The conscientious reader will observe that Rashi offers slightly different explications of God's motivation in speaking to Adam and to Cain respectively. In the former situation, the overture is intended to prevent panic; in the latter, to encourage confession. Careful study of Rashi and his Rabbinic sources yields insights into the differences between the two sinners as perceived by our masters.)

3. Contemplating the degeneration of mankind before the Deluge, God is said to become saddened and to regret having made the human race. Can He indeed be accused of inconsistency with regard to the nature and destiny of His creation? Rashi's immediate responsibility is to the meaning of the text: "His thoughts changed from the attribute of mercy to that of judgment." As we noted earlier, we experience different aspects of the divine at different times. God's soliloquy indicates that, as a result of sin, the attribute of mercy will now be hidden from mankind; instead, the attribute of judgment will predominate. What this means, in terms of God's "essential nature," is for philosophers to mull over. For hearers of the Biblical message, it is enough to grasp the alteration in the mode of His interaction with the world.

A few lines later Rashi acknowledges the necessity of responding to the theological problem. He refers to the Midrash:

A heretic asked R. Yehoshua ben Korha: "Do you not admit that God foresees the future?... Does it not say that He became saddened?" He said: "Was a son ever born to you?" He said: "Yes." He said: "And what did you do?" He said: "I rejoiced and made others merry." He said: "But didn't you know that his end was death?" He said: "Joy in the hour of joy, mourning at the hour of mourning." He told him: "So too with God. Although it is revealed before Him that their end is sin and perdition He did not abstain from creating them."

What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap... Would think her son, did she but see that shape With sixty or more winters on its head, A compensation for the pang of his birth, Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?

Judaism teaches that the world will ultimately be redeemed. Rashi, in the very passage just quoted, goes on to state that the wicked are created for the sake of the righteous who will arise from among them. But fond hopes for a faraway future are insufficient to explain our stubborn bias in favor of existence, our unquenchable joy in birth, in the face of pain and uncertainty, in full awareness of eventual disappointment and the shadow of tragedy.**

Why God elected to create this world out of nothing, to commit Himself to an imperfect reality, oscillating between precarious nobility and destructive futility, is an impenetrable mystery to the human mind. Should He not have preferred the conception to the creation, a perfect cosmos that would have satisfied the strict standard of the attribute of judgment to our familiar, fallen nature that is barely sustained by the attribute of mercy? All we know is that God chose to relate Himself to this universe, and that the Torah is not embarrassed to make available to us the story of His involvement, cloaked in humility, as it were, in the affairs of the world He created, with all its manifold joys and terrible sorrows.

Notes:

* For more on the relation between philosophical categories and understanding the Bible, see Shalom Carmy and David Shatz, "The Bible as a Source of Jewish Philosophical Reflection" (in The Routledge History of Jewish Philosophy, ed. D. Frank and O. Leaman, London, 1996) 13-37.

** On the idea of an "ontological bias" in favor of existence see my "Tell Them I've Had a Good Enough Life," forthcoming in The Torah U-Madda Journal (1997) and as a chapter in Jewish Perspectives on the Experience of Suffering, edited by Shalom Carmy (1998).

Rabbi Shalom Carmy, Consulting Editor of TRADITION, recently edited Modern Scholarship in the Study of Torah: Contributions and Limitations (Jason Aronson, 1996)