By Shmuli Phillips with Joshua Maroof.
Human attempts to comprehend and describe God’s knowledge have long led rabbinic thinkers across a theological minefield. The most commonly discussed difficulty relates to attempts to reconcile fundamental doctrines of free will and God’s foreknowledge – a problem which features in several chapters of Judaism Reclaimed. An examination of medieval analyses however show that the very notion of God’s knowledge in its own right is a thorny and troublesome concept.
This week’s parashah features an episode in which God judges and punishes the denizens of Sodom for their sinful behaviour. A seemingly innocuous verse describes God declaring “I will descend now and see, whether according to her cry, which has come to Me, they have done; [I will wreak] destruction [upon them]; and if not, I will know."” (Bereishit 18:21). Ibn Ezra comments on this that “the truth is that He knows everything generally, not as a particular” – a comment that Ralbag identifies as a support for his understanding that God only knows broad principles and not particular details which occur.
The reason for this is explained by Rabbi Joshua Maroof in his excellent series of online shiurim on the Moreh Nevuchim (link in first comment). For these rabbinic philosophers, who saw the world through the Aristotelian lens which informed scholarly insight in medieval times, the idea of God gaining new knowledge from cognizing events which occurred in the world presented a severe problem.
According to this way of thinking, when a person gains a new idea, it becomes part of the mind and thereby changes and improves it. For example, a person who has understood and internalised the theory of gravity will never look at the world again in the same way. Instead of “angels” moving objects he will now comprehend this movement by means of scientific principles of mass and force. Whatever is imprinting the physical world with these laws is now also imprinting the human mind – in Maimonidean terms the knowledge and the knower become one. This is unproblematic when we are dealing with steady and eternal rules of nature. These can always have been part of God’s Perfect knowledge with which He created the world.
But what about the particulars of the universe – the specific results of the various and changing manifestations of the laws of nature in the material world? And of course human conduct – the results of our free will? If God is understood to gain new knowledge of these, then He is “changed” and made “more perfect” as a result of receiving this knowledge.
It is against this backdrop that we can begin to appreciate quite how radical Rambam’s position on the matter was, remaining faithful to the clear implications of the biblical texts despite the theological challenges that these created when viewed from the prevalent Aristotelian perspective. Rambam’s conservatism prompted Ralbag to declare that “It seems that Maimonides’ position on this question of Divine cognition is not implied by any philosophical principles; indeed, reason denies this view, as I will show. It seems rather that theological considerations have forced him to this view.” (Milchamot Hashem 3:3).
In short, Rambam concludes – consistent with his broader approach to such matters – that we are entirely unable to describe any properties or attributes of God, including His knowledge. Even using the word “know” in relation to God is a borrowed term; it should not be taken to imply any similarity between God’s knowledge and that of humans (Rabbi Maroof points out that this principle also appears in the kabbalistic Patach Eliyahu prayer).
Notwithstanding our inability to fully fathom the nature of divine knowledge, Rambam offers an example to help us distinguish its nature from that of human knowledge:
“There is a great disparity between the knowledge that a designer has of the object he has designed and the knowledge that someone else has of that object. For if this object was made according to the designer’s plan, it is entirely the product of the designer’s knowledge. For another person observing the object, however, his knowledge derives from the object…The designer of a machine understands its properties not through observing how it operates subsequently…
However this is not the case for someone who looks at this machine, for whenever the onlooker observes the object he gains new knowledge…If you suppose that the motions of this instrument are infinite, the onlooker could never contain them all in his knowledge. In addition, the onlooker is incapable of knowing these motions before they occur, for his knowledge arises exclusively from observing what actually takes place.
So too…everything that we know is only through looking at the Creation, therefore our knowledge does not grasp the future or the infinite. Our insights are therefore renewed and increased according to the knowledge that we are able to acquire. God, however, is not like that, since His knowledge of objects is not derived from them…On the contrary, the objects in question are a result of His knowledge which preceded and established them as they are.” (paraphrased from Moreh 3:21)
Ultimately, while we can attempt to describe divine processes and their results, we are bound by a recognition that “knowing” and “mind” are borrowed terms when applied to God. As Rambam makes clear repeatedly in this context, our thoughts and language are unable to positively grasp or depict any aspect of the infinite. Metaphors and borrowed terms from descriptions of human actions help us relate to God to some degree but we must exercise extreme caution over taking them too literally and thereby ascribing positive features to God.
As Rabbi Maroof concludes, almost all theological problems that people raise are a result of them trying to compare God to His creatures. I believe that it is such flawed comparisons between divine and human existence and knowledge which pave the way for the intrusion of flawed theologies – such as corporealism, tzimzum and restrictions of divine knowledge – into Judaism.
First posted on Facebook 9 November 2022, here.
