Last week this column began an analysis of a recent New York Times article by Yoram Hazony, president of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Shalem Center
I’d start with this: Is it really necessary to say that God is a “perfect being,” or perfect at all, for that matter? As far as I can tell, the biblical authors avoid asserting any such thing. And with good reason. Normally, when we say that something is “perfect,” we mean it has attained the best possible balance among the principles involved in making it the kind of thing it is. For example, if we say that a bottle is perfect, we mean it can contain a significant quantity of liquid in its body; that its neck is long enough to be grasped comfortably and firmly; that the bore is wide enough to permit a rapid flow of liquid; and so on. Of course, you can always manufacture a bottle that will hold more liquid, but only by making the body too broad (so the bottle doesn’t handle well) or the neck too short (so it’s hard to hold). There’s an inevitable trade-off among the principles, and perfection lies in the balance among them. And this is so whether what’s being judged is a bottle or a horse, a wine or a gymnastics routine or natural human beauty.
What would we say if some philosopher told us that a perfect bottle would be one that can contain a perfectly great amount of liquid, while being perfectly easy to pour from at the same time? Or that a perfect horse would bear an infinitely heavy rider, while at the same time being able to run with perfectly great speed? I should think we’d say he’s made a fundamental mistake here: You can’t perfect something by maximizing all its constituent principles simultaneously. All this will get you is contradictions and absurdities. This is not less true of God than it is of anything else.
Hazony misses the entire point. The doctrine of Divine perfection asserts that G-d is truly unique and beyond comparison to any created entity or object. Perfection in the physical realm may be defined as the optimal balance of trade-offs, but this is because it is a composite of elements, each with its own characteristics and qualities. (The bottle, to use Hazony’s example, is a composite of neck, bore, and container.) G-d’s essence, on the other hand, is an absolute unity in which all aspects of perfection exist.
The attempt to think of God as a perfect being is misguided for another reason as well. We can speak of the perfection of a bottle or a horse because these are things that can be encompassed (at least in some sense) by our senses and understanding. Having the whole bottle before us, we feel we can judge how close it is to being a perfect instance of its type. But if asked to judge the perfection of a bottle poking out of a paper bag, or of a horse that’s partly hidden in the stable, we’d surely protest: How am I supposed to know? I can only see part of it.
Is G-d’s perfection to be limited by our ability to perceive and understand it? (That would be the case only if G-d was a human creation!) Again, Hazony misses the point. The doctrine of Divine perfection does not make the claim that empirical observation leads us to our understanding of G-d; rather, through revelation and reason, we accept certain propositions about G-d, the full implications of which we are unable to sense and even fully comprehend.
Yet the biblical accounts of our encounters with God emphasize that all human views of God are partial and fragmentary in just this way. Even Moses, the greatest of the prophets, is told that he can’t see God’s face, but can only catch a glimpse of God’s back as he passes by.
Exactly! Because G-d’s perfection is absolute and thus outside the boundaries of human experience, our perception of him is partial and fragmentary.
At another point, God responds to Moses’ request to know his name (that is, his nature) by telling him “ehi’eh asher ehi’eh” —“I will be what I will be.” In most English-language Bibles this is translated “I am that I am,” following the Septuagint, which sought to bring the biblical text into line with the Greek tradition (descended from Xenophanes, Parmenides and Plato’s “Timaeus”) of identifying God with perfect being. But in the Hebrew original, the text says almost exactly the opposite of this: The Hebrew “I will be what I will be” is in the imperfect tense, suggesting to us a God who is incomplete and changing. In their run-ins with God, human beings can glimpse a corner or an edge of something too immense to be encompassed, a “coming-into-being” as God approaches, and no more.
A note on Hebrew grammar is required here. Modern scholars of Biblical Hebrew claim what we, as schoolchildren, called future tense is a misnomer. In English, for example, the phrase, I will eat, clearly implies that the action will take place in the future. However, in Biblical Hebrew, the verb ya’aseh, could equally imply something occurring at the present time on an ongoing basis. (See Iyov 1:5 for an illustration.) Consequently, modern Biblical grammarians use the term imperfect tense instead of future tense. (This is not to be confused with the use of the term imperfect in Indo-European languages.)
Regarding the phrase “ehi’eh asher ehi’eh”, our recognition of the dual use of the imperfect tense should lead us to the conclusion that “I am that I am” is actually the preferable translation. It means that Hashem is consistent with his fundamental essence not only at the moment he was speaking to Moshe but rather from the beginning of time for all eternity. The claim that the use of the imperfect implies “coming into being” is a misunderstanding of the grammatical issues.
The belief that any human mind can grasp enough of God to begin recognizing perfections in him would have struck the biblical authors as a pagan conceit.
We never claimed this. (See above.) It would not only be a pagan conceit; it would be a monotheistic conceit as well!
So if it’s not a bundle of “perfections” that the prophets and scholars who wrote the Hebrew Bible referred to in speaking of God, what was it they were talking about? As Donald Harman Akenson writes, the God of Hebrew Scripture is meant to be an “embodiment of what is, of reality” as we experience it. God’s abrupt shifts from action to seeming indifference and back, his changing demands from the human beings standing before him, his at-times devastating responses to mankind’s deeds and misdeeds — all these reflect the hardship so often present in the lives of most human beings. To be sure, the biblical God can appear with sudden and stunning generosity as well, as he did to Israel at the Red Sea . And he is portrayed, ultimately, as faithful and just. But these are not the “perfections” of a God known to be a perfect being. They don’t exist in his character “necessarily,” or anything remotely similar to this. On the contrary, it is the hope that God is faithful and just that is the subject of ancient Israel
What would the basis of our faith and trust be if G-d is understood as being inconsistent, constantly oscillating between indifference and action? Would there be any greater moral failing than this? Why should we be so confident that things will work out in the end? Hazony himself recognizes this:
The ancient Israelites, in other words, discovered a more realistic God than that descended from the tradition of Greek thought. But philosophers have tended to steer clear of such a view, no doubt out of fear that an imperfect God would not attract mankind’s allegiance.
Instead, they have preferred to speak to us of a God consisting of a series of sweeping idealizations — idealizations whose relation to the world in which we actually live is scarcely imaginable. Today, with theism rapidly losing ground across Europe and among Americans as well, we could stand to reconsider this point. Surely a more plausible conception of God couldn’t hurt.
It most certainly would hurt. Our conception of G-d is not a mere preference, a vanilla/chocolate choice. It is rooted in our deepest conviction that it is the absolute truth. To give it up because we are losing ground across Europe and among Americans is absurd. Perhaps we should embrace the principle that 1+1=3 as this would result in increased aggregate economic activity, thus addressing the European and American fiscal crises?
In conclusion, no coherent argument has been presented for the abandonment of the traditional conception of G-d and, as well, no evidence has been presented for the claim that this conception would have been foreign to Jews of Biblical times. However, a few additional comments are in order:
The starting premise of the Hazony article was that abandonment of the traditional conception of G-d could solve the problem of theodicy. Presumably, it is only the view of G-d as omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly virtuous that creates the expectation that G-d should prevent all suffering. Rejecting any one of the three beliefs would solve the problem; suffering could be easily understood if G-d was powerless to stop it, unaware of it, or indifferent to it. But let us explore these choices. Which of the three should we be most eager to surrender?
Generally it is assumed that the belief in G-d’s moral perfection cannot be rejected without undermining religion generally. As Hazony himself acknowledges, a morally imperfect G-d would not attract our allegiance. So we must now contemplate the rejection of omnipotence or omniscience. Again, it is generally assumed that these could be safely rejected. A G-d imperfect in these ways would still be worthy of our devotion.
Frankly, I find this argument to be flawed. Put yourself in the imperfect G-d’s shoes – to use an inaccurate metaphor – for a moment. You are contemplating creating a universe. You are aware of Your own shortcomings – that You are not omnipotent and not omniscient. You must therefore be aware that Your acts of creation may result in sufferings and injustices that You will not be able to prevent or stop. Is it then morally justified for You to create the universe? I believe not. The only way we could contemplate a non-omnipotent G-d or a non-omniscient G-d is if we also assume that He is imperfect in the moral sphere. But this, as we have already stated, undermines religion totally.
If this is the risk that Hazony wishes to take, that is his own business. (Although I would warn him that after 120 years he may discover that he made a big mistake!) But let us not follow him into the abyss.
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