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Religious Language (3)

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Divine Attributes in Our Times: Religious Language

 

            Is the theory of divine attributes relevant today?  Surprisingly, the philosophical discussion of the theory of divine attributes has shown much more vitality than other philosophical discussions.  A definite influence in this direction is the recent interest in the linguistic aspect of philosophy.  Modern philosophy is more and more aware, not only of the problems of proving claims and constructing systems of thought, which were its classic goals, but also of the language used to formulate these claims. 

 

            This linguistic direction, which developed largely in the English-speaking world, reached its height (or what some would call its low point) in the claim that the exclusive role of philosophy is the clarification of the language used to formulate various statements in different fields.  Thus, for example, the philosophy of science deals with scientific language, etc.  These directions were very destructive with regard to a particular development in philosophy; however, they left behind an important message: the need to take note of religious language.  In this context, the theory of divine attributes developed in the direction of understanding the language we use to speak about God, and the differences between this and other types of languages, such as scientific language.

 

            We spoke earlier about divine unity as the dividing point between the Creator and His creatures.  Many discussions in medieval Jewish philosophy revolved around this topic.  This claim was under debate among our sages, who were divided into two camps: those who spoke of division and those who spoke of analogy.  The first group maintained that the difference between the Creator and His creatures was absolute, and no description of the Creator may be attributed to His creatures.  The second group felt that the creatures had characteristics which have the "fingerprints" of God, and therefore we can speak of analogy.  In order to describe this analogy, medieval philosophers used the term 'relationship.'  We use these attributes to compare human wisdom to divine wisdom, but we continually point out the tremendous gap that must necessarily exist between the two.  There are two possible approaches to understanding this gap.  The first possibility is that the very relationship between the Creator and His creatures produces the divine "fingerprints," and that is all we can say.  This was the approach of the Ralbag (Rabbi Levi ben Gershom).  The second possibility is that the relationship between the Creator and His creatures is comparable to the relationship between the finite and the infinite.  This was the approach of Rabbi Chasdai Crescas.

 

The Ralbag

 

            We will explain the Ralbag's approach with a simple example.  Imagine that you are walking through an art gallery, and when stopping before a particular picture, you hear the person behind you say that it is a sad picture.  This teaches us that we can use the word "sad" in two ways.  The picture may be sad, but in a different way than the person who is looking at it.  We attribute to the picture a quality which it definitely does not possess.  The qualities of pictures can be described through perspective, color, and other physical realities.  And yet, it is not absurd to attribute "sadness" to a picture.  In essence, through the use of this term we are stating that the picture creates a certain response in us.  When we use the word "sadness" regarding a picture, we point out that the picture is the source of our own sadness.  Similarly we can attribute wisdom to God.  He is the ultimate source of human wisdom, while the source itself is so very exalted that we have no power to describe it in our language.

 

Rabbi Chasdai Crescas

 

            Rabbi Chasdai Crescas believed in the analogy model as well.  However, he felt that we must place infinity at the center of this analogy.  Infinity has various meanings.  It is one of the basic kabbalistic concepts, where it is used to express the idea that we cannot attribute to God any characteristic within the sphere of human comprehension.

 

            In this sense the Kabbalists are more extreme than the Rambam.  However, on the other hand, these same Kabbalists maintained that we can and must create a religious language.  They accomplished this using the doctrine of the Sefirot.  (A description of the Kabbalistic approach would be beyond the scope of our present discussion.)

 

            Rabbi Chasdai Crescas bases the difference between human attributes and divine attributes upon the unbridgeable gap between the finite and the infinite.  Let me use a kind of mathematical analog to explain this idea.  As children we all learned the famous formula of a/b=c/d.  If we transpose this formula, we could say that human wisdom (A), in relation to divine wisdom (B), is equal to the finite (C), in relation to  the infinite (D).

 

The  Pauper's Hymn: Our Religious Language

 

            Let us return to the An'im Zemirot prayer, and look at a telling passage:

 

Bring my multitude of songs near to You

And my glad song shall come close to You.

May my praise be a crown of glory for Your head

And may my prayer be accepted as incense.

May the song of a pauper be acceptable to You

As a song sung over Your offerings.

 

            This section clearly can be understood both on a simple and on a mystical level.  On the simple level, our song is the "song of the pauper," for the Temple has been destroyed.  Yet we plead that our pauper's song be accepted just as God accepted the song of the Levites in the Temple.

 

            However, this passage contains a mystical meaning as well: the pauper's song is the song sung in man's own poor language.  All of philosophical endeavor is a pauper's song which cannot succeed in describing reality.

 

            This idea is expressed in parallel in the writings of three of modern Judaism's deepest thinkers: Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, Rabbi Kook, and Martin Buber.  Each one independently claimed that the construction of all of these theological concepts is only a temporary stage, and when man reaches a higher developmental stage, he will have to abandon this level, for at the higher level he will feel that the earlier stage is too corporeal.  This was expressed by Rabbi Nachman of Breslov when he said that in the future we will repent over our repentance.  From our loftier perspective we will look at theological intellectual definitions as the creation of teenagers who investigated the issues on a superficial level, and created a philosophy of adolescents.  Yet, this is actually the deeper meaning of the last sentence of the An'im Zemirot prayer, in which we ask God's forgiveness for using our religious language, for it is thus that we express our love for God:

May my speech be pleasant to You

for my soul longs for You.

 

 

(This lecture was translated by Gila Weinberg.)

 

 

 

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