One chapter of Judaism Reclaimed compares the theological debates between Judaism and its surrounding cultures in different eras, concluding with the arguments advanced by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks against the New Atheism of the twenty-first century. To mark the first anniversary of Rabbi Sacks' passing, the chapter has been adapted for this post (my personal tribute can be read here).
When Aristotle contemplated the multiple “forms” that make up the universe, he understood that there must be a single, simple source from which they all emanate. This source, however, he viewed as being a natural and constant First Cause, eternally bound to its role of producing the physical universe. The most important consequence of Aristotle’s view is that God does not exercise free choice, which is to say that according to the Aristotelian understanding, the world is governed by necessity.
In contrast to Aristotle’s understanding that the world emanated from a single source, pagans looked at the multiplicity of concepts and forces which appear to be in conflict with one another in the natural world. They rationalized these in terms of there being a multiplicity of deities, each with limited powers and spheres of influence, who engage in battle with one another where their interests come into conflict or their limited spheres of influence overlap.
Rabbi S. R. Hirsch describes how Judaism firmly rejects this position, emphasizing that God is morally free—above, not part of, the natural world—and, by extension, that He has a free will which is unbound by any rules or constraints of physical necessity. Humanity, by receiving the Divine gift of “tzelem Elokim”, is also granted this ability to transcend and overcome natural forces—most significantly the forces of its own natural tendencies—through the moral freedom of human free will. According to R’ Hirsch, this fundamental principle was one of the key messages of the miraculous Exodus from Egypt (as we examine in other chapters).
What the pagan and Aristotelian conceptions have in common is their view of God(s) as being part of and therefore constrained by His physical creation. In absolute opposition to these positions, both Rambam and R’ Hirsch point out that Judaism interprets these differing features of the physical world as reflecting the absolute free will of a God who transcends His physical Creation. A God who acts as He sees fit and whose will and power is not bound by anyone or anything. Only such a free God can impart similar freedom to humanity, and enable it to transcend physical necessity by exercising its free choice.
The positions adopted by Rambam and R’ Hirsch to battle the determinist ideologies of their respective eras were occupied in our generation by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in his efforts to counter the “new Atheism” of modern science and the determinist arguments it puts forward. This school of modern determinist thought, which can be traced back as far as Spinoza through to twentieth-century atheists such as Bertrand Russell, asserts that
[Man’s] origin, his growth, his hope and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve the body beyond the grave…Humankind’s rich repertoire of thoughts, feelings, aspirations, and hopes seems to arise from electrochemical brain processes, not from an immaterial soul.
As Rabbi Sacks summarizes their position: “We are, on this view, not distinctive at all. We are part of nature, nothing more.”
This scientific form of determinism differs from its predecessors only in detail, replacing irresistible deified natural forces with the assertion that humans are internally restrained by their own atomic and electrochemical processes. However, its underlying challenge to Judaism, and religion in general, is identical: if the universe is nothing more than a naturally evolved complex network of necessary and predetermined collisions of matter, with no genuine element of freedom to choose, then any system premised upon free human choice and responsibility is rendered invalid.
Rabbi Sacks argues, basing himself on a principle first introduced by Ludwig Wittgenstein, that the true meaning of anything necessarily lies outside of it; therefore, by extension, “the sense of the world must lie outside the world.” This true meaning, Rabbi Sacks continues, relies on the monotheistic conception of God, which understands that He transcends, entirely, all physical existence. In identifying the world’s “sense” and “meaning” with the transcendental God of monotheism and the human free will that He facilitates, Rabbi Sacks is following the well-trodden path of Rambam in his dispute with Aristotle and, more explicitly, the arguments of R’ Hirsch which strenuously oppose all forms of pagan and natural determinism.
A consequence of this proposition is that religion and science are two distinct and quite separate disciplines. If their nature and specific spheres of application are correctly understood, it is to be appreciated that science and religion can never clash or conflict with one another.
R’ Sacks described repeatedly how science examines the physical world on the basis of what is detectable to our five physical senses and develops theories as to how it works. Religion, by contrast, offers meaning as to why the universe exists and operates. This meaning, as stated above, derives from beyond the physical universe, in the metaphysical realm of God and our free-choosing human soul. That these metaphysical elements lie beyond the scope of scientific investigation merely confirms and reinforces their function in providing eternal religious meaning—a meaning which transcends the dynamic and ever-changing process of scientific discovery and theory.
First posted to Facebook 15 November 2020, here.
