קאווע שטיבל

שאין ראוי שנאמין כדעת מי שיאמין יסורין של אהבה ונאמר שראובן הוא אדם נקי מחטא ושלא נתחייב בזה הרע שהגיעו לו אלא להרבות שכרו, כי זה יהיה עוול חלילה

Suffering, it has been said, poses a theological problem. If the Almighty is fair and just, then how can He allow people to be harmed? What may be an issue for theologians, however, does not seem to pose a problem to believers — the more people suffer, the more they appear to believe in God. In the most canonical of examples, the Bible’s Job is harmed in every conceivable way: His possessions are destroyed, his family is killed, his body riddled with disease, but the worse it gets, the more he believes. What about suffering makes people believe?

We suggest that people see God when they are harmed — or helped — but can find no human agent to account for their suffering or salvation. In other words, although God may be the ultimate agent, it may be that He is specifically the ultimate moral agent, the entity who accepts blame and praise for moral outcomes, whether bad or good

. . .

Though people can make others (and even animals) responsible for moral outcomes, there are times when the magnitude of the deed exceeds human capacity. No single human seems able to cause famine or spare a city from a hurricane, and so such events are likely to lead people to infer the presence of a more powerful moral agent. This agent, of course, is God, and evidence suggests that He is invoked specifically for instances of help and harm that lack another mind to hold responsible

In the realm of help, people seem to perceive the hand of God when salvation comes without a source of human agency — for example, being suddenly cured of a disease or miraculously escaping harm are events frequently attributed to heavenly influence (Pepitone & Saffiotti, 1997; Spilka & Schmidt, 1983). Other studies also suggest that God is invoked more often to explain positive rather than negative outcomes (Lupfer, Tolliver, & Jackson, 1996; Pargament & Hahn, 1986), but we might also expect the opposite pattern. For one thing, negative events are more psychologically powerful than positive ones (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, & Vohs, 2001). Relative to positive events, negative events cause more motivated forgetting (Sedikides & Green, in press), evoke a stronger psychological and biological response (Taylor, 1991), and induce a greater need for sense making (Pennebaker & Beall, 1986). Research also finds that, relative to positive events, negative events are more likely to trigger intentional explanations (Knobe, 2005) and anthropomorphism (Morewedge, in press)

The power of negative events to make us see God is suggested by a number of studies. One researcher who investigated prostate cancer survivors found that those with worse health gave a greater causal role to God for their disease (Gall, 2004), and others researchers have found that parents of children become more religious when their child was diagnosed with cancer (Spilka, Zwartjes, & Zwartjes, 1991). In a study examining paraplegics, Bulman and Wortman (1977) discovered that God was often held accountable for their accidents, whereas Pargament and colleagues (1990) found that Christians ascribed responsibility to God for a range of negative life events. As attributions to God seem to stem from specific instances of misfortune, we might expect that the more a population suffers in general, the more religious it should be. If bad is indeed stronger than good, then God should not thrive in times of plenty but in times of pain, with disease and trauma fueling His perception. Anthropological evidence provides support for this idea, as various societies invoke supernatural agents (“witchcraft”) for instances of death, injury, and even the theft of one’s genitals (Boyer, 2001; Lewis, 1995)

Of course, these data are not the final say on God’s mind: Scripture, careful reflection, and some research (e.g., Haslam, Kashima, Loughnan, Shi, & Suitner, 2008) suggest that God is capable of Experience, of anger, jealousy, and pleasure. What these data do suggest, however, is that people may intuitively perceive God to be an entity with Agency but not Experience. Although such a view may be at odds with scripture, research suggests that people will frequently ignore theology in their perceptions of God (Barrett & Keil, 1996; Epley, Akalis, Waytz, & Cacioppo, 2008)

Because people see God as exclusively responsible for moral deeds, it leads to Him being morally typecast as exclusively an agent. The more help and harm He metes out, the less He seems capable of Experience, until eventually He is characterized as generally lacking in emotion and sensation, the ultimate moral agent. We might also expect other supernatural agents presumed to be capable of moral outcomes (e.g., the Devil) to have a similar perceived mental composition

The basic idea is that people believe in God because morality has a dyadic structure, such that any instance of good or evil needs both a moral agent (to do the good/evil) and a moral patient (to receive the good/evil). We suggest that the dyadic structure of morality compels the human mind to infer the presence of an agent when confronted with an isolated patient (i.e., someone who seems beset by good or evil). When people experience unjust suffering and undeserved salvation, they search for someone to blame or praise, but when no person can be held responsible, they look to the supernatural for an agent, finding God. In such a view, the central features of beliefs about God and religion spring not from our naïve wonder at thunderstorms or the sunrise but from our use of religious ideas to understand the moral world. Explaining religion in terms of agents and patients opens the possibility that morality may be not only a consequence of religion (Norenzayan & Shariff, 2008) but also a fundamental cause. Applying the idea of moral typecasting to religion suggests that humans invent God and Satan as moral agents to be responsible for the good and bad in our lives and in turn understand ourselves as moral patients who receive the good and bad that supernatural agents send our way

The notion that the moral dyad — agent and patient — forms the template for both morality and religion explains some curious and unexpected phenomena. It accounts for why people will hold animals criminally responsible, for example, why people are willing to inflict pain on the saints, and why belief in God may frequently thrive on suffering

There is another complementary explanation for why people think of God when misfortune comes knocking — relief. God may serve as the emissary of suffering, but He can also be an emotional crutch (Pargament et al., 1990). This would help to explain why suffering is correlated with religiosity. That God may be both the cause and the cure of hardship suggests another reason why harm leads us to God more strongly than help — with help people may thank Him, but with harm people both curse and embrace Him

One argument sometimes advanced for the existence of God is the “God of the Gaps,” where He explains any phenomenon that science cannot explain. The research reviewed in this article suggests that God may be more accurately characterized as “God of the Moral Gaps,” a supernatural mind introduced into our perception of the world because of the underlying dyadic structure of morality. Seen in this light, God stems not only from agent detection but from patient detection as well, both of which arise from a persistent need to maintain the moral order of a universe consisting of moral agents and patients. Such a view of God can explain why He thrives on human suffering and why His mind is perceived as curiously one sided. The strange fact that motivated this article — that God is widely seen as incapable of feeling pain, pleasure, or other inner experience — makes sense when we recognize that He is perceived as the ultimate moral agent in a moral dyad that pairs God and self

Perhaps the most interesting implication of having a God of the moral gaps is that His continued perception depends on the continued experience of suffering in need of an agent. From a memetic point of view (Blakemore, 1999), in which religion is seen as like any other idea competing for mental real estate, it makes sense for religion to encourage its adher- ents both to come to harm and to encourage moral interpretations of such harm. For example, faiths that send missionaries to dangerous locations can capitalize on the fact that people who live in harm’s way should already be predis- posed to believing in God. Seen in this light, it is understandable why some religions discourage their mem- bers from seeking orthodox medical treatment—the more harm that comes to them and their family, the more they believe. It also makes sense of why religions might encour- age moralistic explanations for disasters, windfalls, and even the creation of the world. The mind of God would seem to thrive under such circumstances

It may seem that despite the theories proposed and the evidence examined the mind of God remains unknown. After all, no one person would seem to have direct access to the thoughts of the divine, and those who claim to do so are often greeted with substantial skepticism. It may be that the mind of God is ultimately unknowable

Nevertheless, a large-scale international survey suggests that many people do claim to know the mind of God, and they perceive it to have only half the mental capacities of their own mind (H. M. Gray et al., 2007). Although such results might not be compelling in theological circles, they are in line with a host of psychological theories from the domains of morality, mind perception, and justice. It may be that the only way to truly know the mind of God is through prayer or revelation, but as psychologists we suspect that the best way to know the Almighty is by understanding the minds and lives of those who perceive Him

A replication of the survey found again that God was located in the lower-right-hand corner of the mind perception graph, though this time He was not alone — Google was also seen to be solely a moral agent (Gray, Gray, & Wegner, 2008)

מי אני האט געשריבן: ↑זונטאג דעצעמבער 17, 2023 12:55 pm איה״נ. אבער די חלק פונעם תלונה וטענה אז עס ווערט געברענגט אויפ׳ן מענטש ‏בכוונת פועל על לא עוול בכפו ממש כנ״ל, איז נאך אלס במקומה עומדת. און ווי געזאגט, האט ער נאך אלס דעם טענה פון לא מדובשך ולא מעוקצך ולא הן ולא שכרן.

בְּתוֹךְ עַמִּי האט געשריבן: ↑זונטאג דעצעמבער 24, 2023 12:45 pm אין אנדערע ווערטער: ס׳איז גרינגער צו סאמערייזען אין איין גרויסע באקס אלע סייקעלאדזשיקעל קוועטשענישן וואס קומט מכח צער ויסורים ח״ו און עס אפשיקן צום קאלעקטיוו מיסטערי (unknown) וואס דער מענטש זעט סייווי אין וועלט בכלליות, ווי איידער זיך צו מוטשענען מיט יעדן פעקל באזונדער און פעיסן ריאלעטי - אבער, כמובן איז דאס נישט [דער אלטימעט] ״אמונה״ וואס איז שייך צום נשמת הישראלי.

בְּתוֹךְ עַמִּי האט געשריבן: ↑זונטאג דעצעמבער 24, 2023 1:40 pm

מי אני האט געשריבן: ↑זונטאג דעצעמבער 17, 2023 12:55 pm איה״נ. אבער די חלק פונעם תלונה וטענה אז עס ווערט געברענגט אויפ׳ן מענטש ‏בכוונת פועל על לא עוול בכפו ממש כנ״ל, איז נאך אלס במקומה עומדת. און ווי געזאגט, האט ער נאך אלס דעם טענה פון לא מדובשך ולא מעוקצך ולא הן ולא שכרן.

נו... טאקע, אין לך ביטול היש גדול מזו, צו עקסעפטן פעין על אף דאס און דאס אליין אויך.

מי אני האט געשריבן: ↑זונטאג דעצעמבער 24, 2023 3:31 pm(ובפרט טאמער איז שייך פאר ג-ט צו באקומען די תכלית בדרך אחרת).

בְּתוֹךְ עַמִּי האט געשריבן: ↑זונטאג דעצעמבער 24, 2023 4:17 pm ס׳שייך צו האבן יסורי איוב ה״י און אעפ״כ בלייבן מיט א פעסטן ישות. ס׳ווענטסעך אינעם צוגאנג דערצו; דער מענטש דארף ״בוחר״ זיין עס מקבל צו זיין באהבה און מקיים זיין דעם ״בטל רצונך מפני רצונו״ (אבות).

בְּתוֹךְ עַמִּי האט געשריבן: ↑זונטאג דעצעמבער 24, 2023 4:29 pm

מי אני האט געשריבן: ↑זונטאג דעצעמבער 24, 2023 3:31 pm(ובפרט טאמער איז שייך פאר ג-ט צו באקומען די תכלית בדרך אחרת).

כ׳מיין אז ס׳זאל קומען דערצו אז דער מענטש זאל פרעגן די סארט שאלות [און דערנאך צוקומען צו ביטול היש] אָן דעם ס׳זאל זיין וויאזוי ס׳איז, איז בגדר הנמנעות

אמר הנה יש דבר שהוא לפי הנראה בלתי טוב וישר בהנהגה, והוא מה שה׳ מעניש לצדיק ומה שמכה את הנדיבים, שמזה יולד התלונה של צדיק ורע לו, שמה שמעניש הצדיק הוא לא טוב ומה שמכה נדיבים הוא על יושר, ר״ל הוא עול בהיושר. משיב ע״ז, מי שיודע דעת חושך אמריו ואינו שואל השאלה הזאת, אחר שיודע ע״פ הדעת שה׳ משגיח ושמאתו לא תצא עול כי הוא השלם בתכלית השלמות, וא״כ יודע שודאי משפט ה׳ אמת ולא יחקור ולא יגלה אמריו מהקושיא הזאת, ומי שהוא איש תבונה הוא מבין טעמי ההנהגה הזאת, שהוא לשלם לו איזה חטא שעשה בעוה״ז, להיטיבו באחריתו וכיוצא מהטעמים שנאמרו בזה, והוא יקר רוח שגם ברוחו הפנימי לא תסער השאלה הזאת. אולם גם האויל והמסתפק בכל דבר, אם מחריש ואינו מתפקר בהשאלה הזאת, חכם יחשב, שבזה כבר נהג כפי חקי החכמה שלא יוציא שאלות כאלה בפיו, הגם שמסתפק בלבו, ואם אוטם שפתיו לגמרי, עד שגם בדבורו החיצוני לא ימצא איזה פקפוק בכיוצא בזה, יחשב נבון ויחשבו שהגיע למדרגה להתבונן בה בינה, כמ״ש יקר רוח איש תבונה.

במשפט ״שלא ימצא האדם אחריו מאומה״ הכוונה במילה ״אחריו״ היא לא-ל יתעלה, כלומר בגלל שהשינויים האלה בפרטים אינם נובעים מעושה הפעולה אלא בגלל ההבדלים בין המקבלים, משום כך לא יכול האדם לטעון טענות נגד האל יתעלה על השינויים המתרחשים שהוא רואה, שהם מנוגדים לסברתנו, כלומר על פי סברתנו ראוי היה שיקרה ההפך, כמו ״צדיק וטוב לו צדיק ורע לו, רשע ורע לו רשע וטוב לו״ (ברכות ז.), או אדם שנולד עיוור או חולה כרוני, או בעל מום או חולה במחלה מלאת ייסורים או שימות צעיר, ולעיתים זה מלווה בכאבים גדולים וצרות ומאבקים קשים וארוכים, ואנו יודעים היטב שהתינוק הזה לא חטא חטא שבגללו יהיה ראוי לכך, ובדומה לכך ישנם מקרים רבים המתרחשים בעולם אשר במבט ראשון נראה שראוי היה שיקרה ההפך. לפיכך אמר: אילו היה זה נכון שהאל פועל בעצמו בעניינים אלה מתוך כוונה ורצון, אפשר היה לטעון כנגדו ולהעלות התנגדויות ולגנות אותו, אך מכיוון שהוכח שישנם גורמים אחרים – גורמים טבעיים מצד החומרים והמקבלים – שהם היוצרים את אי הצדק הזה, או השפעות של גלגלי הכוכבים הגורמות לכך, לפיכך לא נותרה לאדם התנגדות שהוא יכול להעלות, ולא ספק שהוא יכול להעלות, כנגד מעשי האל המחוכמים, והוא לא יכול למצוא בהם חסרון או פגם או לגנות אותם או למצוא בהם עוול ולכעוס על כך, ולאבד את אורך הרוח והיציבות הנפשית.

אבל זה שאמרתי שתסתכל כי מעוות לא נוכל לתקן, אין ענינו שתתבונן בזה תמיד, עד שיהיו כל ימיך מכאוב וכעס; לא כן, אלא ביום טובה היה בטוב, ואל תתבונן כלל בענין קלקולי העולם, וביום רעה ראה – רק ביום רעה לבדו ראה והסתכל במה שאמרתי שתסתכל בו

Given everything that I know up until this moment of my existence, is that enough for me to keep going? Now, what exactly do I know up until this point? What fundamental truths do I have access to? And they're not particularly uplifting. On the one hand, I know that life is suffering, there is war, there is genocide, there is injustice, disease, famine, and I cannot control that. But I also know something else. And that is that many people in the world suffer a lot more than I do, and that therefore I am in a position to help them, even if I cannot entirely make those problems disappear. And so McDermott introduces this pathway into existentialism. He calls it the amelioration pathway. And he says the answer to the question, why live is actually another question. And that is, can I believe in helping others even when I know there is no absolute solution to human suffering?

McDermott actually ends on a much more collective action driven existentialist position where we justify continuing to live not for ourselves, but for the sake of helping others. But still, he adds, and this is what still makes him an existentialist. Without the hope help that we offer will fix the fundamental indifference of the world to our need for meaning

Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact

At times, may I admit, I think the whole thing [i.e., the book of Job] is terribly funny. But irony is never really funny, is it? For what kind of universe must Job now live in? A meaningless universe mismanaged by a chaotic, capricious, jealous Tyrant

An age-old mythical motif — the determination of human fate in the divine council — is used in the prologue, only to come under attack in the poem. It seems that the poem unveils this vision of mythical action in order to challenge its ultimate adequacy. Such a God may still have the power to determine a person's destiny, but already the question is implicit whether this kind of God is still righteous and trustworthy

‏Job’s friends become increasingly ludicrous as they engage in an 'infinity of repetition'. 'Exaggeration', remarks Bergson, 'is always comic when prolonged and especially when prolonged' (quoted in Cox: 141). To put it another way: 'In ridiculing [they] become ridiculous' — which is a fundamental but paradoxical ingredient of comedy. From the outset both Job and the reader — albeit on different levels of knowledge — are keenly aware of the utter incongruity between the friends' speeches and Job's situation. The friends become cruelly and grotesquely comic as they strive with increasing dogmatism to apply their faulty solutions to the wrong problem — and the wrong person

If this verse refers to the arguments of the Dialogue, it is as magnificent a vindication as Job could have hoped for, proving that God values the integrity of the impatient protester and abhors pious hypocrites who would heap accusations on a tormented soul to uphold their theological position

God approved ofJob's maintaining his innocence and denying that sin is always punished with various afflictions, while God disapproved of the friends, whose tidy doctrinal stance could not admit Job's innocence

Job’s courageous and honorable challenge to God is more acceptable to Him than conventional defenses of God’s justice that rest upon distortions of reality

The blunt and forthright accusations of Job from the depths of his agony are closer to the truth than the conventional unquestioning pronouncements of the friends

God prefers the honest doubt of the earnest seeker after truth, to the zeal of the orthodox believer whose faith has never been tried because he has been afraid to look into the dark mysteries of existence

Scholars have widely recognized that Job is a book concerned with theodicy, or the problem of evil. At the conclusion of the book, job has suffered unjustly, questioned vociferously and protested throughout. His friends have invoked traditional theological truths, although they are not convincing to Job, who continues to question his treatment at God's hands. Then God intervenes. In his theophany he only addresses the problem obliquely, instead creating a grand picture of his power, which leads to Job’s comments in response. The question is, has God answered Job’s comments in response? Quite clearly, if by this one is asking whether God has answered satisfactorily according to the philosophical standards of today how to reconcile the various elements of theodicy, the answer is 'no'. But this itself appears to be the answer: all of the elements of the formulation are acknowledged as 'correct'. Job is said to be right to question the God and universe that seem to visit evil upon those who act morally and justly. As Burton Cooper states

‏Job acted correctly in raising the question of divine justice. In this view, Job's friends erred in allowing an ideology - only the guilty suffer - to override the experience of undeserved suffering. Job knows that his suffering is undeserved. What he does not know is how it is possible for undeserved suffering to exist. That question remains unanswered

‏This is certainly the case with Job and there is nothing in God's speech to dispute this. He in fact allows for this to be the case within a universe in which he is sovereign. But Job is also right to repent because of his lack of understanding. Job has acted like the philosopher, trying to solve all of the philosophical problems of the day. He comes to realize that this philosophical probing has interfered with his theological understanding, or rather this philosophical questioning has outstripped his theological reflection. Lacocque says that the lesson is that agonizing humankind should not ask questions but suffer in silence. But that is exactly what is not being said. The closest approximation to this reasoning in the book of Job is found in Job's friends. They are not commended, but Job is. Job is not told to be silent, but is commended both for his protesting and questioning and for his repenting

‏The interpreter is left with the begrudging inference that all of what Job has said is correct: he has been right to probe the imponderable issues of justice, evil and human suffering, but he has also been right to recognize that he is a human being, rightly concerned with such issues, but he is to be concerned in a different way. These issues are ultimately of God's concern, for he is the one who existed before the foundation of the world and he is the one who presides in the court of heaven. In this sense, as Clines has pointed out, “The concern is to affirm that the created order exists for God's purposes and benefit, not humankind's, and that therefore, implicitly and by analogy, so does the moral order. Suffering is a hippopotamus; it makes no sense to humans, but it does to God.” As Clines says further of Job's realization regarding God

‏The natural order is analogous to the moral order of the universe. Much of it remains revolting and incomprehensible to man, even threatening his existence, but all of it is the work of a wise God who has made the world the way it is for his own inscrutable purposes. Suffering is a hippopotamus. The only sense it makes it makes to God

‏The modern person finds this solution unsatisfying, for it leaves him or her to continue to ask the same questions as before, with the same answer to be given, a potentially endless cycle of inquisition and frustration. Lacocque consequently says of God's theophany, 'it seems undeniable that God badly misses the target'. But I would prefer to say that, rather than suspend judgment, we grasp both horns of the dilemma, at least for now. A similar paradox confronts the theologian. J. A. Loader says of the book of Job that

‏The enigma serves here as a warning to theologians not to lose their awareness of the limits of their theologies. To lay claim, even by implication, to 'God proficiency' is blasphemy. A theology that consists in a system of conclusive answers or operates as such or thinks itself to be in full 'possession' of God's truth does not speak of God what is right as did his servant Job. To him who, in his search for truth, asks what we should say then about these things, the answer is that in the innermost circle of theology there is no other procedure than that of questioning, observation, the forming of hypotheses and their constant testing

Job and his friends, worlds apart in many respects, share one belief; the acrimoniousness of their disputation and its minute details are due to this shared premise: the world is founded on justice, i. e. quid pro quo, reward and punishment, which will hereinafter be referred to as the principle of retribution. This principle pervades the world. Job and the friends hold fast to this belief because they have been raised in it; because everybody has it; because man has an intense need to abide by it. The need is so great that he goes to the remotest extremes to uphold it. When reality does not agree with the principle of retribution, whose function is to structure and interpret reality, so much the worse for reality. Man distorts his experience of reality, disregards facts, imagines figments, fashions ad hoc theories, and erects superstructures, all so as not to give up or substantially change the principle. A parade example of this phenomenon is the discussion of Job and the friends. What accounts for this phenomenon? The fact that this principle of retribution is the touchstone of man's life and his conduct within his society. Whether in the rearing of children or the administration of justice, it is this principle which guides him. From it flow some of his noblest deeds. And so it is natural that God is conceived of as guaranteeing it in the governance of the world

But give up the principle, reject causality in the physical-ethical world, and the problem of Job, the man and the book, disappears. Where justice is possible, injustice is, too. Where it is not, where the principle of retribution has no validity, there can be no injustice. In the absence of this principle, for Job to expect a lot corresponding morally with his deed is absurd. Where there is no ground for expecting anything, it is pointless for him to complain of his disappointment: that though he has been pious and upright his lot is bitter. Nor is there any point to the inference drawn by the friends from Job's lot to his conduct. To repeat: only the awareness that the world of ideas, unlike the world of matter, is not governed by the category of cause and effect, i. e. only the elimination of the principle of retribution, can solve the problem of the book

It is striking that the description of the inanimate world, comprising almost all of chapter 38, is interrupted by an evaluative and teleological proposition centering on man: "Have you ever in your life commanded the morning, have you directed the dawn to its place to take hold of the skirts of the earth so that the wicked are shaken out of it, so that light is withheld from the
wicked, and their uplifted arm is broken?" (38:12 f., 15). This can mean one thing only: there is no provision for retribution, nor any manifestation of it in the order of the world. The dawn of every day provides an occasion to punish the wicked, but this possibility is not in practice realized and is therefore not in the plan of the world. "Consider this fundamental fact," Job is told: "The sun rises over the righteous and the sinners alike. Can you change that?" It is not in the plan for the wicked to be punished. If Job were able to perform these things, his criticism of God would be justified, not only by the demonstration of his own prowess but, more important, by the demonstration that retribution is at least potentially operative in the world and need only be actualized. Failing a demonstration of this ability, the assumption of punishment of the wicked and reward of the righteous is without ground, and Job has no right to blame God

As God describes the meteorological phenomena, he is implying: "Consider this, Job: precious rain, that would be so beneficial to human beings, is wasted on land uninhabited and uninhabitable. In the natural world, where the category of cause and effect is operative, man is not as central as you fancy." This is, in effect, God's polemic with Job. It is, by the same token, the author's polemic with the point of view found in the rest of the Bible, for Job represents the general biblical point of view. Rain, in the Bible, figures prominently as a vehicle of reward and punishment. It is given for good deeds and withheld for evil ones. Here, however, the phenomenon is shown not to be a vehicle of morality at all — the moral purpose ascribed to it just does not exist. (Be it noted that the text does not state that the rain falls partly on the desert and partly on the sown. The point is that it falls on the desert where it has no relevance for man.)

God says: "No retribution is provided for in the blueprint of the world, nor does it exist anywhere in it. None is planned for the non-human world and none for the human world. Divine justice is not an element of reality. It is a figment existing only in the misguided philosophy with which you have been inculcated. The world in which you and the friends are spun is a dream. Wake up, Job!" And wake up is what Job does at the end

At some time during the sixth through the third centuries BCE a book was written which said to man: Neither hope for reward for good deeds nor fear punishment for evil deeds; moralists cannot shake the wicked from the surface of the earth and God will not. The laws of the natural order and those of the moral order are not of a piece. If you decide to do what is good, do it because it is good

The Book of Job continues the intellectual and religious enterprise, begun in the earlier books of the Bible, of emptying the world of much that had been put into it during the preceding millennia by human fantasy operating to satisfy human concerns. These books demythologized the world. The Book of Job, in this respect, does not lag behind any of them. It features an abundance of images from the then current myths but does not fail to provide its own understanding of them: the world is not as the myths would have it

But the Book of Job does more than demythologize the world; it also "de-moralizes" it, which is to say, makes it amoral. It completes the process whose first phase is known to the reader of the Bible from the opening pages of Genesis: the removal from the conceptual world of an order of superhuman beings independent of the Deity. And it extends it by the denial of the realization of moral values — values deriving from the Deity, to be sure — other than realization effected by man. This new world is as harsh as it is simple, for in it man is deprived of the protection he enjoyed in a world saturated with myth and morality and populated with powers to which he might turn with a view to rendering them favorable to his well-being, foremost by his leading of a meritorious life

The Book of Job, a supreme expression of religious faith, presents the purest moral theory in the Bible. Now it would be a grave error to interpret its denial of divine retribution as constituting a legitimate excuse for man from his obligations to establish justice on earth. Justice is not woven into the stuff of the universe nor is God occupied with its administration, but it is an ideal to be realized by society and in it. As to God Himself, while the book does not say so explicitly, it does not exclude the possibility of God's obligating Himself to abide by human standards in regard to specific occasions and contexts. Thus God, while often the author of the standards for human conduct, is Himself bound by them only in exceptional cases

To put it differently: He Who speaks to man in the Book of Job is neither a just nor an unjust god, but God

I may need to add that this is a position that is neither atheistical nor immoral. On the first front, if one is asked to decide between a theology in which God is responsible for cosmic moral order but does not evidently ensure it and a theology in which he is not so responsible, it is not difficult to see the attractions of the latter position. On the second front, if there is no moral structure to the cosmos, it does not mean that there is no place for justice in human affairs; it means only that justice is a human, not a divine, responsibility

Within the framework of justice, Job has a powerful case, and God will have difficulty in answering it. But if the framework is not accepted as valid, there is no case. God cannot be unjust — such is the position of the speeches — for he is neither just nor unjust. This is far from saying that he is both just and unjust; I mean solely that he refuses these categories for his relationship with the world

‏The essence of Job’s speeches about God has been that He ignores injustice in the world, allowing the wicked to prosper. At the same time, He cares nothing for justice, failing to protect hapless widows and orphans. Job meant it as a complaint, as a fundamental arraignment of God as a cosmic governor. But it turns out to be exactly what God wants to affirm about himself. He is the author of the immense variety of the world’s surprising life-forms, and He takes a delight in observing how they function; but He no more protects humans from one another than from dreaded sea-monsters. He never set out to police the universe. So when Job is insisting that God does not rule the world in justice he is speaking of God what is right —and in this he is alone in the book, and the opposite of every one of the friends

‏I am not for a moment suggesting that God in the Book of Job is a cosmic bully or a charlatan of a god; contrast David Robertson, The Old Testament and the Literary Critic, Guides to Biblical Scholarship, Philadelphia 1977, esp. 50, 54. He thinks the divine speeches are a failed attempt by Yahweh to convince Job of his own innocence, and that the Book of Job as a whole shows that ‘[w]hile God may be more powerful than we are, he is beneath us on scales that measure love, justice, and wisdom. So we know of him what we know of all tyrants, that while they may torture us and finally kill us, they cannot destroy our personal integrity’ (p. 54). See also his ‘The Book of Job: A Literary Study’, Soundings 56 (1973), 446-69. It is a different thing to recognize that Job regards God as a bully, of course

‏It may be that the author of the book of Job himself does not have a viewpoint that he wants to propound, that he is more of a poet than a theologian. What may interest him may be the play of opinion, the variety of plausible positions, the impossibility of definitive statement. The lyrical opportunities in his theme may be more important to him than reaching a satisfactory theological conclusion

‏What, in short, is important? That is a question raised by the narrator’s epilogue that goes beyond any that have been raised already in the book. It is a question of values. How to measure the relative value of a solution to the intellectual puzzle of the universe against the delight of dreaming up beautiful names for beautiful daughters? They are incommensurable values, neither to be subordinated to the other. Every one of the characters in the book is the author’s creation (including the character God, of course), but perhaps this narrator is closer to the author than any of them. Without negating for an instant the grand issues debated throughout the dialogues, could it be that the author had yet another, broader, vision of the human, one that did not hang upon questions of justice?

I conclude that for the Book of Job innocent suffering is not a problem, despite the many statements to that effect in scholarly and popular writing on Job and despite the protestations of Job against his suffering in the book itself. Putting the matter more positively, I am concluding that the Book of Job is an argument against the idea that innocent suffering is a problem, and against the belief that one should expect divine retribution for human deeds, whether good or bad. Heine’s famous dictum, that the Book of Job is the Song of Songs of scepticism, is worthy of revival in our day

אחר כל הויכוח הזה שהתווכחו על-פי השכל והסברה, התגלה ה׳ אל איוב מן הסערה, ויצו שיאזור חלציו ושיחלוף כח ויסורו ממנו הייסורים ויתווכח איתו. בהתגלות ה׳ בעצמו כבר נשלם כל הויכוח, כי מזה הראה לדעת:

א] שה׳ משגיח על פרטי בני אדם, עד שהיטה אוזן אל כל מה שדיבר איוב, ובא להוכיחו וללמדו דעת, שזה מעיד על השגחה פרטיית על כל מצעדי גבר, ונסתר דעת איוב שאין ה׳ משגיח.

ב] מזה מבואר שנפש האדם היא בת אלהים בלתי בת תמותה, חיה ורבת פעלים, שרק באופן זה יצוייר שידבר ה׳ עם האדם, מצד שנפשו הוא חלק ממנו, ובעת תפשיט בגדי הגוויה, היא צופה במראית אלהים שהיא חלק מעצמותו ית׳, ונסתרו כל הספקות שהיה מסופק בעניין הישארות הנפש וגמול עולם הבא, אחר שראה זה בחיים איך תתפשט הנפש מן הגויה בעת החזון והדיבוק באלהים, ואיך תתענג בנועם רוחני על מחזות קדשו.

ובזה כבר השיב לו על כל השאלות אשר שאל על ייסורי הצדיקים, אחר שראה שעיקר האדם הוא הנפש אשר היא תיפרד מן הגויה ותדבק באלהים לחזות בנועם ה׳ ולשמוע קולו מתוך האש, והוא עיקר השכר המקווה לצדיקים אחר כלות החומר, בעת תשוב הרוח אל האלהים אשר נתנה.

ועם זה דיבר עמו באורך בפרט זה, והודיע איך השגחתו הפרטית משתרע על כל מעשיו, בין בבריאת המציאות בכלל, בין על כל בריה בייחוד, שישגיח על כל ענייניו להמציא לו המזון והמעון, ולהשגיח על קיום מינו, הן בעניין לידתו, הן בפרנסת ילדיו, וכל שכן שהשגחה זו תתפשט על האדם מבחר היצורים.

ואחר שביאר לו כל זה, הוסיף לדבר עמו דיבור שני, להשיב לו על השאלה השניה ששאל מהצלחת הרשעים, ומדוע אין ה׳ מאבד את הרשעים שדומים כחיות הטורפות שמחריבים את היישוב, השיב ששאלה כזאת הלא תשאל גם כן על שברא בין בעלי החיים, בע״ח חלושים ובע״ח חזקים הטורפים את החלשים, ולדבריך היה ראוי שיברא רק רמשים חלשים חסרי כוח, ואין זה מגדלות הבורא, שמגדולתו הוא שיברא ברואים נוראים ואיומים, ובכ״ז ערך בהשגחתו שיתקיימו, על-ידי מה שעשאו מדיני בטבע ונטע בו הכוח לעשות משפט ומישרים, וכמו שביאר כבר אליהוא בסימן ל״ה.

כיוון על שיטת אליפז ובלדד שהם ייחסו עוולה אל הא-ל, שיעניש עונש כבד בעבור חטא קל לדעת אליפז, או שיגיע לו רע כדי שתמורת זה יתן לו אח״כ טוב כדעת בלדד. שזה ג״כ עולה, שיש אדם שלא ירצה בתמורה זאת. ועל שיטת צופר שיעניש ה׳ את הצדיק מפני שהוא רשע לפי נפשו ועצמותו הפנימי הגם שהוא יודע בעצמו שהוא צדיק. ושיעניש אותו בעבור רשע שכבר ידע ה׳ שיעשה אותו והוא מוכרח לעשותו, שזה רמיה.

To what extent is Job's dilemma real for us? To what extent can we share, even vicariously, in his ideal? Is there not a quaint archaicism about the notion that God makes the wicked, and only the wicked, to suffer; and that He rewards only the virtuous? Once we readers, by an act of aesthetic suspension of belief, grant to Job and his friends their naive credulity, the dilemmas it creates can elicit our sympathy. But can we truly have empathy, can we participate even vicariously? For many modem readers, the whirlwind at the end of Job can seem more like a tempest in a teapot. Have not even theists in modern times got beyond such primitive notions? Can we take seriously the idea that God's law for us implies inevitable rewards and punishments? And, if not, can even the believer really take the Book of Job seriously?

My own belief is that we are wrong if we are patronizing or condescending to Job and his friends. We should not confuse their technological and scientific primitiveness with spiritual primitiveness. The doctrine that under God's law, He punishes the disobedient and rewards those obedient to His law is not merely an archaic popular belief, a belief in magic, or a tenet of some special theological doctrine

Professor Edwin M. Good has remarked on the manipulative power that human beings have over God by virtue of the reward-punishment feature of the Divine Will. Professor Good, however, asserts that Job's belief that we have such a power is a belief in magic. He sees the Book of Job as a protest against such "magical dogmatism," the belief "that in the last analysis man has the upper hand over God". So the sticking of pins into the image of an enemy is in this respect no different from the "pursuit of moral or theological excellence," for both are equally magical in that the aim is man's self-fulfillment by methods that purport to produce inevitably the desired effect. Good sees Job as moving "from a position of magical dogmatism to his ultimate stance in faith." Although I agree and have emphasized that the belief in the necessity of retribution and reward is in effect a belief in our power over God, I disagree with Good’s account. Most importantly, the belief in the inevitability of retribution and reward is not a primitive, naive, irrational, or magical belief; on the contrary, it reflects insight into a genuine and central logical necessity in that it is unintelligible to assert God has commanded us to act in certain ways and at the same time to deny that He inevitably punishes the disobedient and rewards the obedient

I view the appearance and the utterances of Elihu as integral to the aesthetic and religious meaning of the Book of Job. In Elihu we have just the link that is proper and essential to move Job and us from the deadend of Job's beliefs and logic to a new stance, rooted in suffering, song, and visions, towards our life, our existence, and the Divine. God speaks to us in songs, not law, says Elihu. Once the false hope that our puny will can keep life neatly law-abiding is dashed, our vision is opened to a more magnificent hope in creation, a valid hope. God's message comes in suffering; an appreciation of the meaning of the message comes only when we despair of our own powers, thus accepting the inevitability of the humbled human will and accepting suffering as intrinsic to our mortal existence. The implication of the message is that salvation and reconciliation with creation can not be accomplished by depending fundamentally on our own personal will. There must be a goel or an intercession from outside. No goel can save us, however, until we have learned the essential wisdom that consists in abandoning hope in our personal power to make things as we will them to be

The wisdom taught by suffering is the wisdom learned in living, not in books; it is the experience of the finitude and fallibility of the personal will, and also, in the perspective of human mortality, of its ultimate impotence and defeat. The message of suffering is thus implicit in suffering itself; it is not a lesson only contingently associated with and conveyed through suffering. The experience gives wisdom when we see the fact for what it is, when we experience the humbled will and see at last the will as humble, inherently finite, and fallible, and when we accept this truth in our very bones and not merely in theory. We can obscure the truth of suffering by inventing false theories to explain away the humbling of the will. We explain it away as a contingent affair, an error, or a failure on part that can be corrected and obviated by some further appropriate act of our own will

There is a story, which I cannot help digressing to tell, that most of the newly deceased, as they arrive at the pearly gates, are greeted by the attending angel and directed to a broad avenue that will lead them to the Divine Presence; but on the occasional arrival of a professor of philosophy or theology, the angel obligingly points out, instead, a different path leading to an auditorium where there is a lecture on God. I often think of this story as I see how earnestly and ingeniously many commentators on Job persist in weaving their logical webs of argument as they move into the Elihu and whirlwind passages in the Book of Job. Such readers do not and will not register the fundamental transformation that takes place, the shift to song that transports us and takes us to a profoundly different realm where at last we are granted the manifestation of the Divine. Many readers complain that with the Elihu and the whirlwind passages no new argument is introduced. Such readers are, of course, quite right. What is new, and absolutely central to the Book, is the shift from argument as a mode of teaching to direct revelation through poetry. It is incredible but true that there are still commentators who would strip away the poetic quality of the text, as if it were a decorative veneer rather than a mode of communication, and examine only the words. Instead of listening to the music of song and poem and opening the self to what the poet does - in short, instead of suffering - such a reader insists on continuing to act or to impose on the text the old categories and modes of inquiry. From this standpoint God's words can be characterized as a "complete evasion of the issue as Job posed it." Indeed it has been argued that the Lord so patently fails to refute Job's arguments as to warrant our concluding that the poet's real intention was to make God the butt of the reader's ridicule!

But God’s answer is the Voice of Existence that thunders, not a voice in the midst of a thunderstorm, but the self-revealing voice of existence. Existence does not argue, debate, reason, or adjudicate. It makes no contracts. It issues no commands and promises nothing

The marvel of the Book of Job is that in the end it does not offer an abstract logical or legalistic argument or a mere assertion of raw, neutral power but instead, and with enormous genius, presents to us a dramatic and poetic vision. In the way that poetry, music, and art present an experience and a vision, and in a way that argument and theory cannot, the poet reveals. The whirlwind passages are not a would-be lecture about the Divine; they are a poem of the Divine

It has been generally assumed that the purpose of the book is to give an answer to the issue with which it deals, the problem of divine justice or theodicy, that is, the question raised inevitably by any and every instance of seemingly unmerited or purposeless suffering, and especially the suffering of the righteous man

Either the book ends in magnificent anticlimax, or we must see the highlight in the divine speeches . . . . The content of the divine answer is . . . on the face of it, a disappointment. The issue as Job had posed it is completely ignored. . . . The complete evasion of the issue as Job had posed it must be the poet's oblique way of admitting that there is no satisfactory answer available to man, apart from faith

It is wrong to think that the book of Job’s purpose was to solve the problem of suffering. When God speaks to Job from the whirlwind, he does not reveal to him why he is suffering. . . . He reminds Job that there are mysteries in nature beyond his solving, and . . . the mystery of suffering is one of these. . . . It is of the essence of the message that God found Job in his suffering. . . . To sufferers in all ages the Book of Job declares that less important than fathoming the intellectual problem of the mystery of suffering is the appropriation of its spiritual enrichment through the fellowship of God

The problem with which the Book of Job deals is this: 'Why do the righteous suffer?' and its principal aim is to controvert the theory . . . 'that suffering is a sign of the Divine displeasure, and presupposes sin on the part of the sufferer

The Bible’s book of Job does not attempt to explain the mystery of suffering but to probe the depths of faith in spite of suffering. As such, the ancient parable of a long-suffering man provides one of the most poignant of imponderables: “Why do bad things happen to good people?” For Kant, it was precisely life’s unrelieved suffering and unrighted injustice that persuaded him that reason demanded that happiness and virtue be connected. In other words, by no other dictate than that of rationality: The righteous should be blessed, and the unrighteous punished. That’s how it ought to be. When it isn’t, which is often, we can, like Job, feel confounded

But the palpable disconnect between virtue and happiness didn’t upend Kant. For one thing, he treated it as one of those unfathomable supernatural matters. For another, and more positively, he thought that trying to comprehend the connection between virtue and happiness was morally disastrous because it precluded the very possibility of morality. It was precisely not understanding the connection between virtue and happiness (or vice and unhappiness) that led to both faith in God and the possibility of morality, he argued. For if we lived in a morally transparent world, we’d lack the freedom that morality required, because “to act freely is to act without enough knowledge or power — that is, without [divine] omniscience or omnipotence.” Therefore, according to Kant, “solving the problem of evil is not only impossible but immoral.” “Theodicy,” he wrote, “is not merely impossible and immoral it also tends toward blasphemy.” In the face of life’s unrelenting, undeserved suffering and injustice, then, ours was not to ask, “Why?” Rather, we were to affirm, “There must be a God to right such things,” then act like that God by becoming, as it were, moral legislators

If the world is rationally organised and has meaning, then it must be the case. For what sort of a meaning would it have to bring about a being (the human being) with such a wide field of possibilities for personal development and relationships to others, only then to let him achieve not even 1/1,000th of it?

What I name a theological Weltanschauung is the view that the world and everything in it has meaning and reason, and indeed a good and indubitable meaning. From this it follows immediately that our earthly existence – since it as such has at most a very doubtful meaning – can be a means to an end for another existence

Does one have a reason to assume that the world is rationally organised? I think so. For it is absolutely not chaotic and arbitrary, rather – as natural science demonstrates – there reigns in everything the greatest regularity and order. Order is, indeed, a form of rationality

Assuming that the world is rationally organised, human life – as embedded in the world – ought to possess the same rational structure. We have grounds for assuming that the world is rationally organised. Yet human life is irrationally structured. It is constituted by a great potential but it never fully expresses this potential in a lifetime. Hence, each of us must realise our full potential in a future world. Reason demands it. And for Gödel, reason was evident in the world because its scientific order is discoverable

My impression is that Godel, like so many individuals immersed in the pristine abstractions of mathematics and logic, come to see them as the inscription of the divine, imprinted on the world to be decoded by mathematicians and logicians like him. Which makes Godel something of a shaman in the temple of divine orderliness. This is not unlike the conviction of those besotted by software code that our very existence is a simulation on some vast computer. To paraphrase the great Douglas Adams, (who sadly, we will not meet again) this is, of course, nonsense

One need not engage in too much armchair psychoanalysis to reckon that Godel was deeply affected by the horrors his German speaking brethren promulgated in WWII, an unrivaled display of mass psychopathy by a notoriously ‘well-ordered’ culture and society. Impossible to square with any notion of morality and rationality. The path Godel chooses, perhaps to reassure his mother, or perhaps for his own solace, is to dwell in a fantasy that at some point, after all, it must make sense. The ultimate expression of theodicy

To pin all this on his incompleteness theorem would suggest Godel, confronted with murderous human depravity on a nightmarish scale, wanted some affirmation that his own work had some greater significance than mere human utility, or for settling scholarly disputes. The alternative would be to succumb to, as the post-war existentialists did, acknowledging the utter meaninglessness of the universe

Which is all to say, Godel took solace in his work, and projected his wishes and fears onto the wider world, which he could not make sense of with the tools he was accustomed to

כל שעה שהמשתכל עומד בהשתכלותו זו – אין לרע בעולם שום שליטה עליו. דבוק-באלוק דבוק ממש הוא, דבוק המשמש מגן לדבק-המשתכל. רעיון-דבוק זה באלוק הוא כ“כ מציאותיי-קיומיי לו לרמב”ם – עד שהוא משמש לו מוצא לפתרון חדש לשאלות ההשגחה ו“צדיק ורע לו ורשע וטוב לו”. בשאלות אלו דן הרמב“ם בפרשיות מיוחדות בחלק השלישי – ומתוך המשך הרצאתן מתברר, שסיים באותן הפרשיות את עיונו בבעיות אלו, אלא שאגב דיון בהשתכלות-המתמדת באלוק הוא חוזר בחתימת המו”נ לבעיות אלו ומישבן מתוך נקודת-מפנה חדשה זו: השגחת אלוק היא בחינת פונקציה הכרוכה בשכל האדם ובהשתכלותו באלוק. ההשגחה – לשעורין נתנה. אדם ששכלו דבק בהתמדה באלוק – ההשגחה מתמידה בו. ואף זה המדביק שכלו באלוק, כשהוא מסיח מחשבתו מאלוק – השגחת אלוק נפקעת מעליו (אם גם לא לחלוטין, כמקרה מי שלא השתכל באלוק כלל; אולם היא נחלשת ביותר, ונתונה היא בגבול שבין ההיות-בכח וההעדר. לגבי ההשגחה מבדיל הרמב"ם בין המשתכל שהפסיק בהשתכלותו ובין זה שלא השתכל כלל – ואילו לגבי עצם הדבוק באלוק אין הם חלוקים כלל, הסחת-המחשבה גוררת אחריה בהכרח הפסק-הדבוק). הפקעה זו היא הפותחת פתח לרע: “ומפני זה יראה לי כי כל מי שתמצאהו רעה מרעות העולם מן הנביאים או מן החסידים השלמים, לא מצאהו הרע ההוא רק בעת השכחה ההיא, ולפי אורך השכחה ההיא או פחיתות הענין אשר התעסק בו יהיה עוצם הרעה… ותהיה השגחת הש”י מתמדת במי שהגיע לו השפע ההוא המזומן לכל מי שישתדל להגיע אליו, ועם הפנות מחשבת האדם והשיגו הש“י בדרכים האמתיים ושמחתו במה שהשיג אי-אפשר שיקרה אז לאיש ההוא מין ממיני הרעות, כי הוא עם השם והשם עמו. אבל בהסב מחשבתו מהשם, אשר הוא אז נבדל מהשם, השם נבדל ממנו, והוא אז מזומן לכל רע שאפשר שימצאהו”.

בגילוי “סוד” זה (בלשונו של הרמב"ם גופו) כרוך עיון יסודי נוסף בתורת אדם ואלוק של הרמב"ם: הרמב“ם נלחם כל ימיו במקרה, ב”הזדמן“. שאף כפילוסוף וכאיש-אמונה לחיוב-עולם, להכרח שאין אחריו הכרח. כנגד זה העמיד את ה”כוונה“, כוונת המכוון. בבחינה אונתולוגית-קוסמולוגית בסס “כוונת מכוון” זו לא רק במהות אלוק גופו, אלא גם בהיות-הטבע, בתכליתו ובחוקיותו. האדם מבחינת החומר שבו נתון בסכנה מתמדת של ה”מקרה" דבק בו מטבעו. האדם הזקוק לעולם לזולתו, הוא “המופקר למקרה”. חיי האדם השלם מלחמה שאינה פוסקת הם ב“מקרה”. ומהי השגחת אלוק? כאן מקבלת זו את משמעותה החדשה: ההשגחה היא ההצלה מידי ה“מקרה”, האנתיטיזה ל''מקרה“, או סלוקו. וכיצד זוכה האדם השלם להשגחה, כלומר, לפריקת עול ה”מקרה“? הווה אומר: דרך השתכלותו המתמדת באלוק! אין לו לאדם מפלט מה"מקרה" אלא זה לבדו, השמוש שאינו פוסק אף שעה אחת ב“דבוק” שבין האדם ואלוקיו, והוא עולה בקנה אחד עם זו ההשתכלות המתמדת באלוק, שהרי לכך נוצר.

כי מפני שטבע האדם לבקש כל איש עזר מאלקיו ולהתחנן לו לתת כל צרכו ולהודות לו על כל הטובה, קראו אותו ״תפילה״ להעיר אותו כי כל מעשי ה׳ צדק ומשפט, ומעשיו יקרבוהו ומעשיו ירחקוהו. וכפי דביקותו בהשי״ת תהיה ההשגחה בו ושמירתו.

ואני תמה מהמון העם האומרים כי הפילוסופים אינם מתפללים, ואולי הביאם לזה מחשבתם כי אין בתפילה רק בקשת צרכים כי אינם שמים על לב זולת זה, עם היותם חושבים שהפילוסופים אינם מאמינים בהשגחה. וכמה הם רחוקים מן האמת! וזה תחילה, כי אין יודע ומאמין בהשגחה על השלימות הגמורה כמו הפילוסופים מבני דתינו, והעד המורה. והשנית, כי הדבר היותו נקל בתפילתינו היא בקשת הצרכים אבל העיקרים הנכבדים הוא ההודאות לשם עם סידור יוצר, שבא בכלל זה פינות נכבדות מחכמת הטבע והאלקות ובכלל ביאור לדעת שיש שם מצוי ראשון והוא אחד, שהם השתי מצות הראשונות שיש לנו. ומי שיבין מה שהוא אומר בתפילה יבין זה.

ובקשת השואל והמשאלת, מרוצה ונאצלת, ותפלת המתפלל מקובלת, ובתחנה תקוה ותוחלת, מבלי שינוי ביוצר, תחת כנפי חסדיו המתפלל יסתר, ובאפס התהפכות בו לתפלתו יעתר. וזה בהיות התפלה מזומנת, בלב ישר ונפש מכוונת, ובהיות השואל מתנחם ומתחרט על אשר לא הקים המצוה, ועל הדברים אשר עוה, והשינוי וההפוך בנו ימצא, והוא הצדיק והישר בכל אשר יעשה. ובאמת ישיג גמול טוב ושכר, לב נדכה ונשבר, כי ישוב להתעסק במלאכתו בענייני תועלתו, וינצל מן המזיקין והצרות, בהתרחקו מן העבירות, אם כן העונש והגמול מאתו, כפי מעשה יכולתו, בכל הנמצא וממשלתו.

ויש ראיות גדולות שספר איוב שנתקבל בין כתבי קדשינו, עיקרו לאחד מחכמיהם

והנכון בעיני כי הוא ספר מתורגם, על כן הוא קשה בפירוש כדרך כל ספר מתורגם.

אם היו יסורין באין עליו אם היו חלאים באין עליו או שהיה מקבר את בניו אל יאמר לו כדרך שאמרו לו חביריו לאיוב (איוב ד ו) הלא יראתך כסלתך תקותך ותום דרכיך זכר נא מי הוא נקי אבד

עיין להרב חסדי דוד בביאורו לתוספתא זו דכתב דהיינו דוקא כה"ג דאיוב דלא נחשד על כך, אז יש לנו לזכות ולומר דמזליה גרם. אבל אם הוא בענין שידעינן שיש בידו שום עון שיש לתלות שבשבילו באו, אז ודאי שפיר דמי למימר ליה והו"ל בכלל הוכח תוכיח יעו"ש. וכן נראה דעת הרב מוהר"ש אלגאזי בס' אהבת עולם דף י', ועיין להרב אשכנזי ז"ל באסיפתו [שטמ"ק] לב"ק בדף צ"א בד"ה זאת אומרת יעו"ש [וז״ל שם: ויראה לי בכוונתם שאם הלבינו לכוונת תוכחה כדי שיתבייש ויעזוב מתוך בשתו שלא יחטא עוד רשאי ותבא עליו ברכה והכל תלוי בכוונת הלב והרי נאמר ויראת מאלקיך.].

והם שאמרו לו כן מפני שהיה איוב מטיח דברים כלפי השגחת הש"י ומדותיו

שהרי לא דברתם לפניי טענה נכונה, כעבדי איוב. שהרי הוא לא פשע בי, כי אם על שאמר (איוב ט כב) תם ורשע הוא מכלה, על ידי השטן המקטרג את העולם, שנאמר (שם שם כג) אם שוט ימית פתאום. ואם הוסיף לדבר, מפני קושי הייסורין אשר כבדו וחזקו עליו דיבר [ועיין בב״ב טז: לגבי הטחת דברים של איוב דאין אדם נתפס על צערו ע״ש]. אבל אתם פשעתם בי על אשר הרשעתם אותו לומר (לעיל ד ו) הלא יראתך כסלתך, והחזקתם אותו בחזקת רשע. ולבסוף הייתם משותקין ומנוצחין לפניו, והיה לכם לנחמו כאשר עשה אליהוא. ולא דיי לאיוב בצרתו וייסוריו, כי גם הוספתם על חטאתכם פשע להקניטו

ואולם המחלוקת שיהיה מצר הנושא הוא שנאמר שאין הצריק המגיע לו רע צריק לפי האמת, אבל הוא צדיק לפי מחשבתנו, ושאין הרשע המגיע לו טוב רשע לפי האמת, אבל הוא רשע לפי מחשבתנו, וזה דעת צופר.

והנה יתבאר גם כן שהחוש סותר מה שהניח אותו צופר. וזה שהוא מבואר מן החוש שהרבה מן האנשים ימצאו להם טובות בעת מה, והרעות בעת אחרת, עם היותם יותר נוטים אל פעולות היושר והשלמות בעת שימצאו להם הרעות ממה שהם נוטים אליהם בעת שימצאו להם מהטובות. ואי אפשר שיותר הספק בזה מפני התחלפות ההכנות, כי האיש הזה הוא כאיש אחד בעינו, והכנתו אשר נוצר עליה היא אחת בעינה. האלקים, אם לא שנודה שהתחלפות הגמול והעונש באנשים יהיה מצד התחלפות האנשים בטוב הפעולות ושלמותם, לא מצד התחלפות ההכנה הפרטית, כמו שהניח אותו, רצוני שכל מה שהיו פעולות האיש יותר שלימות יהיה גמולו על פעולה אחת טובה יותר מעט מגמול מי שהיה למטה ממנו בטוב הפעולות עליה, וההיפך בעונש על הפעולה הרעה. ואם היה שיהיה מודה בזה, הנה יהיה הספק אשר יחשב לברוח ממנו נשאר בעינו, ר"ל זה שנראהו מהגעת הרעות לצדיקים והטובות לרשעים. זה מבואר בנפשו עם מה שקדם מהדברים.

בלדד [שסבר דמה שאנו חושבים ״רע״ או ״טוב״, אינו באמת ״רע״ או ״טוב״] וצופר אמרו מאמר בלתי מבואר ולא הניחו למוחש רושם אבל התירו הספק כשאמרו שאלו הדברים נעלמים ממנו, ואם העניין כן איך ידעו שאלו הדברים הם בסדר וביושר מי הגיד להם זה? והנה אין להם מאזני הבחינה ולא די בשרש שפעלו בו זה שימנעם מהשיג האמת בזה הדרוש אבל מי שמנהגו זה המנהג לא יתכן שישיג האמת בשום דבר כי אם לאנשים התחלה לידיעה ממה שנראה אותו מהדברים המוחשים לא יהיה לידיעת דבר דרך.

מי אני האט געשריבן: ↑זונטאג אקטאבער 27, 2019 9:51 amדאס צושטעל צום שאך שפיל איז מורא׳דיג אין פלאץ לדעתי, וויבאלד כידוע קען מען טעארעטיש ״סאלווען שאך״ [וויסן מה יהא בסופו נישט צו פארלירען] (אויב איז דא א פערפעקט שפיל); וכעין ענין ידיעתו של הקב״ה כביכול. (הגם דארט איז עס (עכ״פ אויך) מכח ווייל די אינטערעקשאנס זענען נישט אויף די זעלבע צייט און איינס נאכן צווייטן (פערפעקט אינפארמאציע), משא״כ לכאורה בנידון דידן.)

Open theism is a theory of divine providence according to which God has sovereignly chosen to create a world in which his creatures have significant freedom to determine the direction of events. As a consequence of God’s decision, there is no such thing as a completely settled future for him (or anyone) to know. That is to say, there is no complete and unique sequence of events subsequent to the present that is or that is going to be the actual future. Instead, there is a branching array of possible futures. Events that occur on all possible futures are settled and are known by God as such. Events that occur on some but not all possible futures are open and they too are known by God as such

An analogy commonly used to explain the open theist view of divine providence is the Chess Master analogy. To my knowledge, the first person to use this analogy in relation to divine providence was William James. He writes in “The Dilemma of Determinism” (1884):

Suppose two men before a chessboard — the one a novice, the other an expert player of the game. The expert intends to beat. But he cannot foresee exactly what any one actual move of his adversary may be. He knows, however, all the possible moves of the latter; and he knows in advance how to meet each of them by a move of his own which leads in the direction of victory. And the victory infallibly arrives, after no matter how devious a course, in the one predestined form of check-mate to the novice’s king

Since then, the analogy has been used by many open theists, including Greg Boyd, Peter Geach, Brian Hebblethwaite, Richard Rice, and John Sanders. Here is Geach’s version:

God, like some grand master of chess, can carry out his plan even if he has announced it beforehand. “On that square,” says the Grand Master, “I will promote my pawn to Queen and deliver checkmate to my adversary”: and it is even so. No line of play that finite players may think of can force God to improvise: his knowledge of the game already embraces all the possible variant lines of play, theirs does not

One important result from the standard theory is that one’s best overall strategy is often a ‘mixed’ one. This result may be helpful in addressing the problem of evil. The question is often asked why if God intervenes to eliminate or prevent suffering in some cases, he doesn’t do so in all relevantly similar cases. The answer suggested by game theory is that, given God’s value preferences, a mixed strategy in which he sometimes intervenes and sometimes doesn’t is the overall optimum strategy for God. Developing and defending this response, of course, would require spelling out what God’s value preferences might be and showing, in light of those preferences, that a mixed strategy is indeed God’s overall optimum strategy. I shall not attempt to do that here (though he doesn’t make any explicit appeals to game theory, William Hasker’s (2008) recent argument that God is justified in allowing some gratuitous evils effectively amounts to a defense of a ‘mixed strategy’ on God’s part. See William Hasker, The Triumph of God over Evil: Theodicy for a World of Suffering (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008)). I’m simply pointing out that this is a way in which game theory may be able to help us deal with one aspect of the problem of evil

God’s pre-emptive addition of suffering seems counterproductive, given Dembski’s description of God’s aims. A punishment which harms babies and animals as or more often than it affects people who have done anything wrong, and allegedly does so ‘as a matter of justice’, raises more questions than it answers. As far as making us realize the gravity of sin is concerned, most people throughout history have not known about the eons of evolutionary history before we came on the scene, and those who do almost uniformly draw the seemingly obvious conclusion that we can’t be responsible for natural evil, since it predates us. (Contrast this with the situation if we knew that the Earth had been a tranquil paradise for hundreds of millions of years until, shortly after the beginning of humanity, it plunged into the bloodbath we see today – that would be an effective demonstration of the gravity of sin!) So, on this view, God inflicts suffering on non-human animals for hundreds of millions of years in order to do something that apparently frustrates his purposes

אין צורך להגות בספרי הקדמונים, אשר לא דברו רק דברי מוסר ולא דברי פילוסופיאה, שהרי הכל נשמע, יום יום אנו שומעים כל איש ואיש אפילו הדיוט שאומר את האלקים ירא ואת מצותיו שמור, כי זה כל האדם, כל אדם יודע לדבר כזאת, ואין בזה חכמה כלל.

וכן כל האדם אפילו הדיוט אומר כי את כל מעשה האלקים יבא במשפט על כל נעלם אם טוב ואם רע. ומפני כל זה הוצרך בעל הספר לכתוב את הספר הזה, אשר, לדעת קהלת שכתבו, הוא מלא חכמה וכליל יופי על פי עומק חכמת הפילוסופיאה (גם כי באמת כל משכיל יראה בעיניו כי הבל הבלים אמר קהלת).

The best, and indeed the only, method of bringing everyone to a due sense of religion is by just representations of the misery and wickedness of men

Cleanthes admits that if we go beyond their usual meanings when we apply human terms to God, what we say is indeed unintelligible. Abandoning all human analogy is thus to abandon natural religion, but preserving it makes it impossible to reconcile evil with an infinite God

Cleanthes doesn’t realize that his new theory of “finite perfection” is worse than his old one. He also doesn’t seem to remember Philo’s earlier question about what “finitely perfect” might possibly mean. Instead of God, he is now committed to some kind of superhero. Besides, the story he is telling is itself a theodicy. His superhero’s limitations explain why he cannot eliminate evil, or create an evil–free world

The superficially sympathetic man flings a coin to the beggar; the more deeply sympathetic man builds an almshouse for him so he need no longer beg; but perhaps the most radically sympathetic of all is the man who arranges that the beggar shall not be born

שרי ליה לאיניש למימר ליה לחבריה הילך ארבעה זוזי אחביתא דחמרא אי תקפה ברשותך אי יקרא אי זילא ברשותי, דכיון דמקבל עליה זולא קרוב לזה ולזה הוא

I argue that the transformed waṣf literary device in Job 40:15–18 functions to highlight and so to emphasize the genitalia of Behemoth. Focus on the implications of this description in terms of revealing the nature of the beast as either mythopoeic or mundane rather misses the point: instead, this text is making a claim that the creature has an outsize member. And this is crucial for understanding the function of the body description: because God is ultimately able to defeat the beast, the text therefore claims that God, so to speak, has the bigger balls. We might understand the battle between God and Behemoth as a divine willy-waving contest. While my language here is rather crude, I am consciously using colloquialism to highlight the body description in Job as a bawdy and humorous text. Much of the work on the book of Job has focused on the sophisticated dialogue that the book enters into with other texts from the Hebrew Bible, in particular, the wisdom tradition. See e.g., Dell (1991); Kynes (2012); Kynes and Dell (2013). This dialogue has sometimes seen the book described as “wisdom in revolt” (Perdue, 1991). An alternative direction of inquiry is the complex and complicated language of the text, including poetic strategy and metaphor. See esp. e.g., Greenstein (2003; 2007; 2018). But recently, Katherine Southwood (2020) opened up the possibility that the book may also be comedic, arguing that comedy “is a weapon used to expose and ridicule the idea that suffering is punishment for some wrongdoing” (2020: 2). Consequently, and without disputing the sophisticated literary artistry of the book of Job, my argument is that the body description in Job 40 subverts the “poetics of the body” to create a comedic and crude comment on Behemoth’s hyper-masculinity – which is ultimately no match for the masculinity of God

The description of Behemoth’s body is truncated, making use of highly euphemistic language that focuses the reader upon one body part in particular, namely Behemoth’s penis. Through the transformation of the waṣf, the poet highlights and emphasizes the massive genitalia of the monster. And because God is ultimately able to defeat the beast, the text therefore claims that God has the superior genitalia, with implications for his masculine authority and power. Thus, by exploring the ideas and values embedded within the literary and poetic devices employed in the description of Behemoth’s body, new implications for understanding the battle between Yahweh and the beast can be brought to the fore: hidden within the language of this text is a divine willy-waving contest. Despite Behemoth’s outsize member and correlated claims to machismo, the creature is ultimately no match for the masculinity of God

It should be said that here, as throughout the Samuel story, there is at least some margin of ambiguity as to whether the real source of this ferocious imperative is God or the prophet who claims to speak on His behalf

There is a kind of hesitation in Saul's words: I have violated God's command, and yours as well. Is there a difference between the two? Though there may well be, Saul is in no position to argue that Samuel's words are not God's

שלא ישען על הרופאים כאסא [דברי הימים ב טז יב]. ודע כי הכתוב לא התיר להתרפאות [ב״ק פה.] רק ממכת בן אדם, כי השם לבדו הוא רופא ישראל ורפואתו לחזק נפשו ולהוסיף על יראתו.

נתן רשות לרופאים לרפא המכות והפצעים שיראו בחוץ. רק כל חלי שהוא בפנים בגוף, ביד השם לרפאתו.

In the eleventh fundament of the introduction to the tenth chapter of Mishnah Sanhedrin (Perek Cheilek, which deals with reward and punishment for observance or violation of the commandments), Maimonides also describes God as a punisher of the wicked and a rewarder of the righteous, all in a way that sounds supernatural to most of his readers. But here, too, the goal is not just social, for people need to believe that there is a supernatural reward in order to believe in reward from religious practice at all. This belief has clear, practical social significance, yet it is also theoretically correct. The metaphorical description of God as material to encourage the multitudes to believe in Him is similar to the metaphorical description of reward as being a supernatural reward in order to persuade the masses to believe in that as well. In the end, people who are willing to understand this all on a different level will comprehend that God is not material while the reward of the commandments is natural

Maimonides intentionally uses terms such as ‘providence’ and ‘prophecy’, and in so describing the actions of God, the average reader will understand such terms literally. However, discerning readers will notice that such an understanding contradicts both the truth and the words of Maimonides himself elsewhere. Educated and precise readers will be able to understand these expressions non-literally – for example, ‘providence’ can be understood as the existence of the universe by the power of God, with the commandments benefitting man naturally, while ‘prophecy’ can refer to man understanding God, and not God revealing Himself to man

ראוי שנזכיר את דבריו הנוקבים של ר' עקיבא, גדול האישים בעולמה של תורה שבעל-פה, בהתיחסו אל הפסוק: "עד אשר לא-יבאו ימי הרעה והגיעו שנים אשר תאמר אין-לי בהם חפץ" (קהלת יב צו א).

כולנו מבינים כי פשט הפסוק מכוון לימי הזיקנה, וכל אדם מגיע במסלול חייו גם לימים ושנים אלה עליהם יכול הוא לומר כי אין לו בהם כל חפץ, אולם ר' עקיבא מוציא פסוק זה מפשוטו, ואומר דברים הנראים במבט ראשון מבהילים ממש, וזו לשונו: "והגיעו שנים אשר תאמר אין-לי בהם חפץ", אלה ימות-המשיח שאין בהם לא זכות ולא חובה', עד כאן לשונו (ועיין בשבת קנא:). אותו חזון הגאולה המשיחית, בו לא יהיה מקום למאמצים, מאבקים והשתדלויות, משום שהכל בו יהיה נתון לאדם, אלה הם ימים שאין בהם חפץ. חפץ יכול להיות רק בעולם שתיתכן בו זכות ותיתכן בו גם חובה, והמאבק ביניהן הוא-הוא משמעותו של ה"חפץ", המתיחס למאמצים שהאדם עושה למען ערכים מסוימים בהם הוא בוחר, וכאשר אין זכות ואין חובה אין גם ערכים, ובעולם של גן-עדן אין משמעות למיצוות.