Physical Makeup: Beyond Being

By Jonathan Seidel

Divine pathos and personality of God: A more intimate link with Hashem

Intro-Humanisation?

The Bible relates to God as a character in the story. God has feelings and a bodily figure. In contrast to the normative incorporeality of God perpetuated by Maimonides. A former teacher explained these physical texts as prophetic lingo. Alternatively, “the Torah talks in human tongue” (Sanhedrin 64b, J. Shabbat 19b). Using human terminology, we can better understand the situation. Does God actually have a right hand (Exodus 15:6)? Was God angry (Exodus 4:14, Dueteronomy 11:17)? The answer to both is in the negative. It is God’s way of relating to us in terms we can conceive. I wish to analyse this further, not necessarily to surmise God must have these feelings or if these feelings are real but rather that there is no reason to believe they are not.

Physical Makeup 

Concerning (pain and pleasure/emotions), Maimonides, among others, would certainly champion impassibility. R’ Berkovits claimed that the tradition rejects personifying God in his critique of R’ Heschel1. Yet, the Bible continues to describe God. God describes himself. The univocity of pathos is illustrative in the text. If the divine text written by God about himself is only metaphorical then the relationship itself is metaphorical. The bond is real because it is a mutually engaged one. Prayer is a dialogue because God is listening. If in both instances it was metaphorically implied and essentially imaginative the relationship is an illusion. We are constructing a fictional realm where God is concerned. Yet believers uphold that even if God is not jealous, he is somehow still merciful and loving. The latter two are not emotions themselves, but they derive from compassion and joyousness. Is God merciful without compassion? God isn’t a robot. God feels for us. Either it is all emblematic, or it is all authentic. Maimonides takes one extreme, and seemingly R’ Heschel accepts the legitimacy to anthropopathic verses in regards to the prophets but limits God’s possibility. I am representing the opposite extreme. The divine pathos demonstrates a genuine representation of God’s feelings to the current state of the relationship. To apply emotions to the Ineffable may sound foreign, but a personal God must be founded on mutual feelings. For those who say his feelings are beyond. So his love is far greater than we can conceive. Is his anger the same? Is it still anger and/or love?  God applies anthropomorphic concepts to himself; we are merely gesturing the alignment.  

Attempting to synthesise divine ontology and pathos is no easy feat. If God is being then we fall into an idolatrous trap. God also cannot be non-being as he is neither fake nor dead. He is eternally present. God thus is beyond being2. It is difficult to surmise but if he is beyond being as the illeity, how can the infinite dress in personal garb? Illeity refers to the absolute other—the third person “he”3. Levinas refuses to acknowledge God in a fellowship outside the frame of tradition4. God’s appearance is a call to responsibility and a just society5. Buber felt otherwise, that we are in an active relationship with God. We do not control the other but respect it in our encroachment6. In subjecting God to the personable other, the link conjures an I-Thou encounter. Spatial proximity is irrelevant as the psychological desirability conjoins the two in a mutual experience. The transcendent God is framed as a “human” in a “rom-com” plot. We read God’s authorship centuries later, consulting God’s depiction of his emotions, but this novel was experienced. The actors felt the divine pressure. God is portraying a reality for us to understand, but for the prophet, it was a monumental encounter. The query is not directed to how we view the ancient epic but how the affected felt in the moment. It may seem symbolic to us, but it was real to them. God may be beyond being to us, but he was not to them. He entered their space and showered them with divine emotion. God entering as a character need not establish his self-ontology. God is not being, nor is he non-being. I am not necessarily a fan of this paradoxical logic in a quest for the divine beyond/infinity but it is a solution to God’s simultaneous transcendence and immanence7. God’s infinitude provides him with the mobility to act as he pleases. He is not an idea, but lately, his absence has regulated him to such status8. The divine pathos follows an esoteric model colliding with paradoxical logic. Many others have reduced or ignored the divine immanence aspect. R’ Berkovits believes in a divine relationship but that need not compel ‘authentic’ divine emotions9. It is not that God is not concerned but what we mean by those words is our interpretation of God’s actions; it is not necessarily what he meant. Our relationship is built upon a bond with the divine who need not have personhood. Alternatively, as the creator of being, he can have emotions as he created them.

God is different from the pagan gods. They are a perfect example of an ontology-pathos symbiosis suffering at the hand of fate. They are unable to transcend beyond. They are not the creators of their system, destined for non-being. God’s were supernatural but fell victim to similar human problems. The godly pathos is justifiably anthropomorphic. They paid the same price as all other organisms—the curse of fate. They were marked to an inescapable future. The gods are not only being but created beings, created from the original event10. They may have preceded man and created him, but they are not the a priori creators. They are subject to something greater than themselves. They are the effect of the first cause, not the cause itself. The Jewish god is the first god, present before being. Yet before being, there was just him. Non-being did not exist, mermaids or death specifically11, as there was nothing. Non-being is the absence of being, just as the dark is the absence of light. Non-being essentially precedes being just as darkness preceded light. Darkness only became darkness after creation (Isaiah 45:7). There was no darkness beforehand. God created darkness and then light from it (Genesis 1:1-3), but non-being was created and then being from it. The difference is that God created darkness but did not create non-being. Non-being is a state of reality. God created darkness as the antithesis of light or cold as the absence of heat. In the scientific system, the former is the foundation and the latter are contingent. The sun warms the earth, but if the sun is not present (the winter) it is cold. So too, if it is late at night, the sun has gone down, it is dark. Non-being works similarly, as it is the state of finitude. If the brain is working, there is being, but once it stops, it is non-being. There is a quota, a time-dependency to liveliness. Death (non-being) is the absence of life (being). 

Endnotes

1. Eliezer Berkovits, “Dr. A.J. Heschel’s Theology of Pathos” Tradition 6:2 pp. 71-73.^↩

2. Googling ontology in Judaism did not favour many responses. I did find christain scholars discussing the issue that may be of worth. See: Absolute Deity: Being, Beyond Being, or a Being? | Eclectic Orthodoxy and Is it Obvious that God is not a Being Among Beings?. And with Dale Tuggy God: A Being among Beings or Being Itself?. This ironically was an exchange of multiple articles over the course April-May 2015. The latter blogger (Bill) understands God to be identical with existence. This is similar to R’ Kook’s panentheistic conception of God (Orot HaKodesh III pg. 316, Orot “Seeds” 1). This Kookian (as well as kabbalistic) expression tugs with his opposition to R’ Soloveitchik’s divine experience. R’ Soloveitchik denounces proofs for God, instead arguing for an a priori intuition to God’s existence. Analogising a husband’s certainty of his wife’s existence so too God (Joseph B. Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith pg. 49). Bill counters that God’s presence is periodic; it is not as obvious that he is there. Mystical experiences are questionable, was it really God? “Not cosmic experience...but cosmologically”. Soloveitchik on Proving the Existence of God. To defend R’ Soloveitchik, his heritage and sacred texts speak to a God that is less about rational explanation and more about spiritual experience. The Rav stated that American Jews understand Torah but they do not live it (“Al HaTorah Ve’Al Geulat Nefesh Hador” pp. 407-408). He laments orthodox individuals are intellectual but experientially immature, criticising his philosophical indulgence but fail to truly experience religion (Aharon Rakeffet-Rothkoff, The Rav: The World of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, pg. 240). “[They come to shiur] but think I am a heretic”. (Aharon Lichtenstein, "The Rav At Jubilee: An Appreciation," pg. 54). This is reminiscent of the rational excessiveness of jewry in The Rav’s purview. The tradition of divine experience is furthered by his axiomatic soulful response. It is not about proving beyond a shadow of a doubt it is about trusting tradition and intuition. The experience is more vital than the rationalisation. Judaism is about action, not dogma.^↩

3. Emmanuel Levinas, “Judaism and Kenosis,” In the Time of the Nations, trans. M. B. Smith, (Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis 1994), pp. 114-132. Levinas constructs a theory where God remains beyond being yet necessarily encountered.^↩   

4. Emmanuel Levinas, “To Love the Torah More Than God” Judaism 28:2 pg. 40. See also: Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, trans. Alphonso Lingis (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969), pp. 78-79. There is a personal relationship connecting the beyond with the finite. Similar to my natural man’ and revelational man’. It is through the vein of tradition and text that man can encounter the personal God, not through rationality.^↩

5. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Being Essence trans. Alphonso Lingis, (XanEdu Publishing, Inc., 1998) pg. 158. Levinas objected to characterising God in the realm of ontology.^↩

6. Martin Buber, I and Thou trans. Walter Kaufmann (Scribners; LATER PRINTING edition, 1972) pg. 124-125. See: Damian Casey, “Levinas and Buber: Transcendence and Society” Sophia 38:2 pp. 69-92.^↩

7. The Nature of Gd - Wisdom & Teachings. God is infinite with all the finite advantages, no weaknesses. The Rebbe writes that God is not bound to the natural world, thus can do anything (Igrot Hakodesh 11 5742/1981-ספרי כ"ק אדמו"ר - אגרות קודש - כרך יא - ג'תשמב | ספריית ליובאוויטש). See: Can G‑d Create a Rock That's Too Heavy for Him to Lift? (Longer Version) - The Omnipotence Paradox. R’ Freedman states that of course God can create a rock that he cannot lift, he can do anything. He continues that this answer will baffle the questioner because it is not untrue, God does not fit our line of thinking. Rebbe Nachman said he believed God could make a triangle a rectangle (Arthur Green, Tormented Master pg. 306). Tzemach Tzedek (third Lubavitcher Rebbe) held that immanence is restricted to logic, not to his essence (Derech Emunah 3:5:6). Confirming R’ Arama’s theory of logical limitation that God cannot create the incomprehensible (Akeidat Yitzchak “Shaar HaShmanim”). See the extended footnote on the bottom of pages 88-89. R’ Saadia Gaon preceded R’ Arama with this claim. God cannot produce absurdities (Emunot VeDeot chap. 22 pg. 52). Maimonides concedes God cannot do the impossible (Guide 3:15:1-2). See Prof. Gellman’s treatment of the issue: "The Paradox of Omnipotence, and Perfection," Sophia 14 pp. 31-39. There are others who reject the paradox itself. C.S. Lewis argued “could not lift” was meaningless deconstructing the paradox (C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain pp. 13). R’ Avraham makes the same point. Talking about logical contradictions is nonsense. Anything undefined like a round triangle is impossible because it does not exist (כל יכוליותו של הקב"ה וסתירות לוגיות-Michi’s answer). See: Thinking about God | Yeshivat Har Etzion. R’ Amaru concludes oscillating between logic and mystery deepens our understanding of the beyond. He provides a similar answer in Concluding Shiur: On Immanence and Transcendence | Yeshivat Har Etzion, encouraging pluralism in this perpetual dialectic of complexity and commitment.^↩

8. Martin Buber, Eclipse of God: Studies in the Relation Between Religion and Philosophy. New York: Harper, 1952 pp. 67-84. Kant believed so as did Cohen. Rosenzweig noted Cohen had an additional theological layer but the “idea” conception remains. Buber points out ideas cannot love. God has a “personality” in the paradoxical sense. He is not willing to accept an actual personality as that would humanise or limit him. Cohen, understandably, derived his view from Maimonides’ metaphorical outlook. Mainly inspired by Kant, Cohen noted the absolute transcendence of God. In biblical fashion the idea of God is foreign. God is perpetually invested in Israel’s actions. God is a character, a participatory being in the future of his creation.^↩

9. Eliezer Berkovits, God, Man, and History, ed. David Hazony (Jerusalem: Shalem Press, 2004), pp. 12-15.^↩

10. Supra note. 4.^↩

11. See: Michael Wyschogrod, The Body of Faith: God and the Jewish People (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000), Chapter 4 “Created Being”.^↩