Religious Language (2)

 

Negative Attributes

 

            We have one category of descriptions left to explore - negative attributes.  This approach negates the existence of attributes in God.  Here too, the Rambam has much to teach us.  He claims that this negation of attributes from God is itself informative.  Our case is similar to that game in which someone leaves the room, and the people who remain in the room choose a concept.  The person who went out must discover the concept by asking a set number of questions.  Let us imagine a case in which he receives negative answers to all of his questions.  It is possible that, even though he received negative answers to all his questions, he might discover the concept and win the game.

 

            How is this possible?  We can illustrate this reality through the statistical method known as lion trapping.  We choose a continent, and divide the area into two parts.  The lion must be in one of the halves.  If we repeat the division many times, we will eventually "catch" the lion.  The principle here is that we can use the negative attributes to gain knowledge.  If we know where the lion is not, we will progress towards our goal.

 

What Is Negation?

 

            Rihal defines negation beautifully in his explanation of its use as a divine attribute.  We use negation in everyday language; for example, we speak about a person as "intelligent" or "unintelligent."  Of course, this negation is completely relative.  Linguistic negation does not describe absolute negation in reality.  The possibility of formulating things using opposites such as these, teaches us that negation in and of itself does not express any absolute value.  Negation is merely a linguistic form which we can utilize to create one term on the basis of another, in order to express the absence of a quality.

 

            In many cases we use negation appropriately; thus, for example, we say that a person "does not see," meaning that he is missing the quality of vision.  However, at other times, a grammatically positive term hides a negation within it.  The word "blind" is a good example of this.  The term blind does not describe any positive quality; it actually points out the absence of a quality, the ability to see.  The Rambam points out that many philosophers have fallen into this linguistic trap.  Thus, for example, the Muslim theologians, whom the Rambam often disputes, made this mistake and erased the difference between negation and positive description.

 

            Until this point we have discussed one type of negation, in which we negate the existence of a possible situation or trait.  However, there is another type of negation, which we will, for the time being, call infinite negation.  This negation does not claim that someone or something is missing a particular quality.  It negates the very possibility of the application of a quality at all.  For example, when we say, "The wall can't see," we don't mean that the wall is blind and it lacks a particular quality; rather, we mean that the question of seeing or not is not applicable to the wall at all.  We can illustrate this with endless examples, in which the question itself becomes absurd.  What is the color of the note c?  What is the sound of the cold?  Although there are people who would use such imagery in their poetic language, we would claim simply that the property of color does not apply to sounds.  We must develop the awareness that there are things to which we simply cannot apply certain paired descriptions such as hot and not hot, tall and not tall.  Sometimes this understanding is obvious; yet, sometimes, we may be deceived, and we must use all of our intellectual powers to avoid falling into a trap.

 

            Infinite negation does not point out a lack; it is absolute negation.  We must use this type of negation when talking about God.  However, here we must apply another principle, that of value.  If we say that God is alive, we seem to be describing God using a concept from human experience.  Yet we do use this term, says Rihal, because we use it as a negative attribute.  This description negates the application of the very human pair of words, life and death, to God.  Rihal writes: "Just as when you say, 'The stone is not wise,' it does not follow that you would describe the stone as foolish; it is at too low a level to be described either as wise or foolish; thus the Divine Being is too elevated to be described by the terms life and death.  God is beyond these qualities, just as He is beyond light and darkness.  If we were asked the question, 'Does the Divine Being exude light or darkness?' we would answer through transference: Light!' [2:49].  We should really give the complicated answer that God is beyond every description; however, religious language leads us in a particular direction and from each possible pair of words we choose the term which denotes the higher value.  Since we instinctively feel the superiority of light to darkness, we use transference and say that God exudes light.  The Chaver continues: "This response stems from our fear that the questioner will think that whatever is not light is darkness.  However, in truth, we would have to say more: Light and darkness apply only to physical bodies, but the Divine Being is not a body.  Therefore, He should not be described in term of light and darkness except as a literary device, or in order to negate a description which we consider a deficiency" [ibid.].

 

            To understand the meaning of negative attributes, I invite the reader to join me on an imaginary journey within the warm room which he currently occupies.  In this trip, we will take a fresh look at the objects in our daily lives; however, this time we will wear glasses, earphones, scientific clothing and gloves which will display the world according to the theories which we study in physics, chemistry, etc.  This unique garb will also enable us to grow and shrink, like Alice in Wonderland, in order to reach these otherwise invisible worlds.  The only condition to this trip is that we take what we learn there seriously.

 

            If we look through these glasses at the table, at the chair, etc., we will begin to see a strange world.  Instead of objects we will see strange structures, until we reach the chemical elements and begin to see molecules, atoms and then a dense forest of sub-atomic particles.  As Rav Sa'adia Gaon expressed it, we reach a reality which is "thinner" than reality as we know it.  In other words, on the way to these strange worlds we lose what we call the "physicality" of our concrete everyday world.  In the room we hear sounds and see colors.  On our journey we will discover that the harmony between the various sounds is merely a function of the relationships between the wavelengths of various chords; and color is merely a different wavelength.  The concrete world is merely a surface layer, and whenever we dig into it and go deeper, we lose more and more of our basic intuitions.

 

            We will illustrate this with a simple example.  Let us assume that we have shrunk to the extent that we can travel on an electron.  As we wrote above, our trip takes place in a warm room.  We have measured the temperature before starting out on our trip.  However, now that we have reached one of the electrons of the table, we will measure the temperature again.  What result will we get?

 

            Of course, we will get no result at all.  Not because we do not know how to measure, but because the concept of temperature in that world is meaningless.  Temperature describes a particular phenomenon in a world which contains molecules in perpetual movement, as we learned in physics.  When we speak about a single sub-atomic particle, temperature has no place.  The concept of temperature cannot be applied there.  However, this ought not to surprise us, since on this trip we have lost our sense of touch, our ability to discern color and virtually all of our conventional perceptual abilities.  We have reached a state in which all of our normal frameworks of perception have deserted us, to the extent that we would definitely be convinced by that great mathematician of the beginning of the century who claimed that particles are merely holes in absolute nothingness, holes filled with mathematical formulas.

 

            Is our perception incorrect?  If we are mistaken, where is our mistake?  Various philosophers try to save the warm room in which we began our journey; however, we have promised to be loyal to the scientific theories we learned in high school.  These theories teach us, among other things, the negative attributes of many objects whose existence we never dreamed of at first.  This is both the blessing and the curse of science.  Science begins from the world close to us, from the world of the simple honest man, who believes in realism and plain logic, and ends in abstractions and theories which are very far indeed from our original perceptions.  We experienced this reality in our search for scientific truth; how much more so is this sensation present in our search for God. This feeling is expressed in our use of negative attributes in relation to God.  God is distant, perhaps infinitely distant, from our perceptual channels.

 

            What do we accomplish with the application of negative attributes?  The Rambam teaches us that we create a system of negative attributes, which does not only concern itself with the neutralization of attributes, but also creates a certain concept of God, as a Being which is beyond the assignment of these attributes.  Let me give you an example involving the concept of time.

 

            What do we mean when we say that God is eternal?  Of course, on a basic level we mean thus to teach people that God has existed forever.  He was not born at a certain time, He has no biography as people do.  This is clear.  However, the Rambam teaches us, we must reach a higher level in order to understand that the category of time does not apply to God at all.  God is beyond time.  This understanding that God is beyond time entails tremendous effort and intellectual development.  We may understand the full meaning of this statement through an examination of man.  Man's body exists in space and time, while his soul does not exist in space, but only in time.  Emotional episodes, such as fear or joy, can be "located" in time, but not in space.  We could say that the fear preceded the joy, or that the joy preceded the fear; however, since our spiritual life does not exist in space, we certainly cannot say that the joy is to the left of the fear.  This is an example of a reality which stands outside a certain category.  God is beyond the categories of space and time.  Incidentally, this understanding helps us deal with the question of divine foreknowledge and free will; in other words, with the problem of God's knowledge of our future; for from the divine perspective, our future is in essence an eternal present.

 

            Divine Perfection

 

            Lastly, we will discuss an attribute favored by philosophers of all generations, the attribute of perfection.  We can think of God as the most perfect being.  The Rambam referred repeatedly to this divine attribute, particularly in his thirteen principles of faith.  In the Guide For The Perplexed, the Rambam explains that the selection of divine attributes is guided by the desire to bring about the recognition of this idea.  This teaches us that in the Rambam's view, the attribute of perfection is a psychological and pedagogical description.

 

(This lecture was translated by Gila Weinberg.)