[If you haven’t checked out this MUST READ resource in our library, here are two posts from the book we’re revisiting here: Gerald L. Schroeder [A Physicist Proves We’ve Been Wrong About God All Along]
MUST READ: God According to God, Gerald L. Schroeder
Image from bigthink.com
You will be surprised at what you will read in this series of excerpted chapters from this book. Normally, we would not expect such perspectives to be coming from scientific minds such as this quantum physicist but read on and be surprised! Our intent in featuring excerpts from books we recommend is that our readers will become interested enough in wanting to know more and will purchase a copy of the book for your own library. If not, there’s enough to learn from the excerpts.
This turned out to be longer than intended; started out to choose excerpts but since the flow of discussion could not be interrupted and cut short, the whole chapter is practically featured here. The long read is worth typing to the end.-Admin1]
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NATURE REBELS
God Grants Nature a Mind of its Own
[Excerpts from Chapter Four]
And God saw all that He had made, and behold it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day” (Gen. 1:31).
This, the closing verse of the first chapter of Genesis, the celebrated evocative creation chapter of the Bible, summarizes the results of the first six days of the universe: all was “very good.” But was it all really “very good”? I wonder by what standards it was very good.
. . . The universe had been meticulously made ready for life. But life, especially human life, seems not to have been ready for the responsibilities assigned to it. God had created Adam and Eve and “blessed them . . . and placed them in the Garden of Eden . . . saying, of every tree in the Garden you must eat, but of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil you shall not eat” (1:27-28;2:15-17). Eden was literally paradise on earth. Except for the one forbidden fruit, everything should have been “very good.” Yet just two chapters after this heartwarming news of all being good, Adam and Eve rebelled against God, ate from the forbidden tree, and were expelled from Eden. A few verses farther on, Adam and Eve’s firstborn murdered their younger son. Not just simple murder, but fratricide! That doesn’t sound very good to me. A mere two more chapters pass, and God, with “a saddened heart,” disgusted with the decay of society, throws in the towel and brings on the Flood to destroy all life, for God “regretted having made them” (6:7). Sounds like things weren’t “very good” by God’s standards either.
If God is supposed to be great, couldn’t God have controlled events a bit more strictly or at least realized that the entire project was a no-go right from the start? What was the Author of the Bible—and even more than the Author of the Bible, the Creator of the universe and life itself—thinking about when informing us that all was “very good”?
Henry Youngman the late gifted comedian, said that after reading about the evils of alcohol, carefully reviewing all the documentation on the subject he could find, he decided to give up reading. That’s called cognitive dissonance. I see the facts, but I’ve got my own ideas, so please don’t confuse me with those facts. I prefer my personal take on reality.
I want a God that acts in a way I assume God should act, predictable according to my human logic. When the God of the Bible tells me all is very good, I expect all to be good. But then the Bible tells me not to count on it and lists disaster after disaster. So why was I told just the opposite? It’s a hard truth to accept, and in our typically human desire to resolve cognitive dissonance, we argue all the way. But what we learn in the very opening chapters of the Bible is that the God of the Bible is not a predictable, static Divinity. That conventional but ill-conceived description totally misses the biblical reality.
We discover the startling truth of God’s character in Exodus, the second book of the Bible. Exodus 3:14 is a verse often mistranslated and yet pivotal in understanding God’s sometimes less than manifest immanence in the world it created. Moses, having been confronted by God at the burning bush, asks God’s name (3:13). In reply, “God said to Moses, ‘I will be that which I will be’ [ehe’ye (I will be) asher (that which) ehe’ye (I will be)] …. This is My name forever” (3:14-15). This meaning of the Hebrew text is vastly different from the King James rendering of that verse, “I am that I am.” The erroneous King James version (ca. 1611) is based on the fourth-century Latin Vulgate, which in turn was based on the six-hundred-years earlier Greek translation (the Septuagint). The irony of this ongoing error is that the exact Hebrew word in question, ehe’ye, appears just two verses earlier in Exodus 3:12, and both the Latin and the Greek translations render this “I will be,” not “I am.” But “I am” is so much more predictable, more appealing to our preconceived notions of God than “I will be” that the translators actually changed the meaning of the biblical text!
Why belabor the point? Because what we discover here is that the God of the Bible is not a static Divinity, able to be pigeonholed into how we think God should act. Ehe’ye is not a present-tense verb or a noun, with all the implications of stasis, but a genderless verb actively projecting into the future. As we will learn in the following pages, the God of the Bible is a dynamic Force with options, contingency plans, a manifestation that changes to fit the changing needs of the dynamic world it created. Ehe’ye is the perfect description of the God of the Bible. We expect an “I am,” but instead the God of the Bible self-identifies as “I will be.”
If we are to treat the Bible as a valid source of information about God’s role in our lives, then looking closely at the text is a prerequisite. As King Solomon urged in Proverbs (25:11), we must seek the “apples of gold in the dish of silver”—the deeper truths sequestered within the literal text. To help us do that, throughout this book I will be using the major ancient Hebrew commentaries.
Among the oldest of these works is the Talmud (redacted ca. 400). It is a compendium of biblical commentary and exegesis from the four-hundred-year period prior to its redaction. Most of the text is in the form of debates between scholars seeking the correct interpretation of the Bible’s wording, which, as we’ve seen, can be very subtle.
- Rashi (1040-1105), a scholar considered to be the interpreter of biblical Hebrew par excellence, lived in southern France. He was also a vintner. Yet for all the demands of the wine industry, Rashi was able to compose precise commentaries on much of the Talmud, a text having over five thousand pages plus the primary Hebrew commentary on the Torah.
- The philosopher and theologian Maimonides (1135-1204), while living in what is now Egypt, was chief physician to the ruler of that country (a post that had its very real dangers). He compiled a codification of the laws found in the Torah with a commentary that exceeded nineteen volumes. An example of his philosophical work is The Guide for the Perplexed (1190), which deals with many aspects of the Bible that seemed to conflict with how the world was perceived.
- Nachmanides (ca. 1195-1270) was a kabalist who offered insights about the Bible that he learned from his teachers. The Hebrew root of the word “Kabala” means “to receive.” The received wisdom of Kabala is considered to be the spiritual physics of the world, essentially how an infinite eternal nonphysical Creator interacts with the finite physical world it created. Kabala itself is not mysticism. However, the sensation one may get when internalizing the information can lead to what might be called a mystical experience.
There are many commentaries and commentators on the Bible. These are at the top of the list. Being ancient, the perspectives that they bring are not biased by the discoveries of modern science. The antiquity of these sources ensures that there has been no attempt to bend the biblical text to match science. In this they offer us a unique and invaluable vantage point. And for that reason, only ancient commentaries are used in this book as authoritative sources of biblical insight.
The first 6 days as described in Genesis 1 take us from the creation of the universe to the creation of humanity. The entire account is described in a mere 31 verses. At M.I.T.’s Hayden library, we probably have 20,000 books on the events covered in those 6 days—not from a theological perspective but from a scientific one that deals with the cosmology, physics, and biology of a universe created with energy capable of producing life, brain, and sentient mind. Up the Charles River from M.I.T., at Harvard’s Weidner library there are probably 50,000 books on these topics. With only 31 verses in the first chapter of Genesis, we shouldn’t expect each Divine detail in the cosmic development described there to leap off the biblical pages. If we are to reap the golden apples within the silver dish of the Bible, we’ll have to reach out. It is worth the effort.
The flow of events during the first 6 days of creation is driven by the recurring Divine command “And God said . . .” This directive, which appears 9 times in the first chapter and a 10th in the second, presages the unfolding drama of a universe in the making. With God so intimately in control we should expect smooth sailing in that most amazing of cosmic voyages. Surprisingly, according to the biblical account of those events, that seems not to have been the case. The very fact that in those 31 verses the Bible felt it necessary to enlighten us 7 times over that God saw “it was good” and even “very good” might imply that perhaps at times it was not so good. Of course that would be absurd according to the image we project of an infinite, always-in-control God, the father figure of the Bible, creator of the heavens and the earth. But let’s see what the Bible has to say.
On the third day of the creation, we are told that God commanded the earth to bring forth the first forms of plant life, vegetation. It’s interesting that the word “creation” does not appear on day three. Creation would signify that something entirely new, an entity unable to be made from the materials already present, was needed. No mention of creation means that nothing totally new was needed to bring life into the universe. The big-bang creation produced the physical basis for all the materials required for life. This inherent potential for life to flourish on earth led Nobel laureate, organic chemist, and authority on origin of life studies Professor Christian de Duve to write in Tour of a Living Cell:
“If you equate the probability of the birth of a bacteria cell to chance assembly of its atoms, eternity will not suffice to produce one…. Faced with the enormous sum of lucky draws behind the success of the evolutionary game, one may legitimately wonder to what extent this success is actually written into the fabric of the Universe.”
What was needed to spin out the fabric’s potential for life was the Divine command,
“And God said …”: And God said let the earth sprout vegetation, herbs yielding seed, fruit trees yielding fruit each after its own kind with its seed in it …” (Gen. 1:11).
That verse is the statement of the Divine command for the earth to produce the first forms of life. The description of nature’s execution of the command follows in the next verse.
“And the earth brought forth vegetation, herbs yielding seeds of its kind and trees yielding fruit with its seed in it after its kind …” (1:12).
The execution of the command seems essentially the same as the command itself. Seems the same, that is, until we read the words more closely with the help of Rashi’s decisive ancient commentary. God’s command asked for “fruit trees yielding fruit,” but the earth produced “trees yielding fruit.”
A miniscule, seemingly insignificant divergence but an astonishing implication is revealed to us by Rashi. Fruit trees yielding fruit has a superfluous adjective, the word “fruit” modifying “trees.” The text might have simply stated “trees yielding fruit” or, equally descriptive, “fruit trees.” That would have been sufficient to indicate the directive for the earth to produce trees bearing fruit. The ancient commentaries, upon which I am basing the intention of the biblical text, accepted that seemingly superfluous words, especially when presented or omitted in successive verses such as here in verses 11-12, come to bring one of the “golden apples in the silver dish” of the Bible. Rashi wrote that the earth was commanded to produce fruit trees yielding fruit in order that the taste of the tree or its bark as well as the fruit that hung from its branches would have the taste of the fruit. But the earth did not comply. The earth rebelled. Instead, the earth brought forth trees bearing fruit, not fruit trees bearing fruit, the wood or bark of which would also be as a fruit.
Perhaps God’s demand exceeded nature’s potential. Can the wood of a tree ever be a fruit?
In the family orchard of my parents, of blessed memory, we had mostly apple trees, plus several quince, peach, and pear trees, and two cherry trees (which year after year the birds harvested before we could). Though I occasionally chewed on a branch as I was working at the yearly pruning, regardless which of those trees it was, the wood always tasted like wood and never like the fruit of that tree. Except for the cinnamon tree, the bark of which is the “fruit,” hence making it a “fruit tree,” we might have thought that such a thing as “tasty wood” would be an impossibility. Not so. Nature simply failed to comply with God’s command.
And even the cinnamon tree did not succeed in completing the Divine command. Although it is indeed a “fruit tree” because its bark is a spice, it does not also yield a separate fruit to become “a fruit tree yielding fruit.”
The Torah didn’t have to tell us of this rebellion. If nature’s mutiny had been kept a secret, all we would know is trees of wood. But the Bible comes to teach reality, not some fantasy we might have desired of a story-book God orchestrating a make-believe world. Rashi makes a point of informing us about this rebellion to break that image of an always controlling Master, a superpowerful father image. Such a God makes a lovely, heartwarming, even reassuring fable, but unless the Bible got it all wrong, the ever hands-on God of our childlike imaginations is not the Deity of the Bible active in our world.
The Bible in these verses tells us an almost incomprehensible fact. Nature, purportedly bound by unbending “laws of nature,” which were themselves created by God, somehow was able to do the unimaginable. Nature was able to go against God’s explicit command. Nature rebelled. If someone of less stature than Rashi had made this biblical “accusation” it would have been dismissed as trivial nit-picking. But Rashi is the foremost of all Hebrew commentators on the Bible.
And more intriguing, this three-thousand-year-old biblical claim of nature rebelling against the command of God, of nature having a “mind of its own,” is eerily similar to modern-day observations of quantum physics. As noted previously, Sir James Jeans, knighted mathematician and physicist who helped develop our understanding of the evolution of stars more than seventy years ago, wrote in his book The Mysterious Universe:
“There is a wide measure of agreement, which, on the physical side of science approaches almost unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter. We are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail mind as the creator and governor of the realm of matter” (emphasis added.)
Does this imply that something akin to mind exists throughout all of nature, some phenomenon along the lines of Nobel laureate Wald’s previously quoted epiphany? And that this “mind,” which of course finds its origins in the Divine creation of the world, could have allowed the earth to rebel? Sounds preposterous. To the uninitiated. But not to those who struggle to conceptualize the quantum reality of existence. To what level of existence does mind, and all the implications of what mind brings, including a level of self-awareness, extend? Humans of course have it. What about dogs and cats? Pass a few hours in any public park, and from the way dogs and cats react you realize that dogs know that they are dogs and not cats. But these are all mammals. What about other forms of life? Do they too have mind?
While driving in Holland with my family, we noticed a huge nest mounted on what appeared to be a utility pole. I asked a local resident and was told it was a stork’s nest, occupied each summer by what appears to be the same bird as it completes its annual multi-thousand mile migration from northern Europe in the fall to sunny Africa and its return as the seasons reverse. I’d heard of that navigational feat. But until I met naturalist Rabbi Shmuel Silinsky I’d never internalized what a navigational achievement this represented. Just ponder, he said, how many rooftops and utility poles are there in Holland. I couldn’t find our way without a map and road signs, but the stork’s bird brain does it just fine, as do monarch butterflies in their flight from Mexico to Alaska and back, even though their migration takes several generations in each direction.
A review article in National Geographic surveyed the level of cognition within a range of animals. Scientists from such esteemed universities as Stanford Duke, Harvard, and Brandeis describe the extraordinary level of awareness, including self-awareness and episodic memory (the cognitive ability to mentally travel back in time), in animals as different as elephants and birds. Parrots, Irene Pepperberg of Harvard and Brandeis points out, are especially interesting because parrots can learn to speak. Her colleague during 31 years of research, Alex, an African gray parrot did exactly that, identifying shape and color and numbers, even asking for breakfast and a view out of a window in another room—not in symbols, but in English words.
Animals have it, but what about microbes? Do they communicate in a meaningful way, a way that can actually transfer information? If we are claiming that mind, rebellious or not, exists in the seemingly inert earth itself, then we should be able to identify its presence in the most basic forms of life.
In the treatment of several recalcitrant microbial infections vancomycin is often the antibiotic of last resort. Its powerful sword beat back a brutal illness, extending the life of my late father-in-law, of blessed memory. Bacteria that can outsmart many of our medical weapons often fall prey to this brilliant product of biotechnology. Vancomycin does its work by attacking the cells first line of defense, the cell wall.
The bacterial cell wall differs from that of multicellular life-forms in that it has an external scaffolding that helps the single-celled critters maintain their shape. The structure of cells in multicellular life, such as humans, is established by a system of internal (rather than external) microtubules. In that difference lies the basis of vancomycin’s effectiveness. It disrupts the construction of the bacteria’s cell wall while not affecting the cells of the multicellular life-forms, such as humans who might happen to be the unfortunate hosts of the infecting microbes. What the bacteria had to do was to change ever so slightly the molecular structure of their cell wall, so that the vancomycin could no longer recognize and attack them. And change they did.
The chosen alteration is brilliantly subtle and eminently effective. The bacteria replace one of the usual cell-wall amino acids, alanine, with lactic acid, a molecule sufficiently similar to the alanine so that it fits easily into the structure, but sufficiently dissimilar so that the vancomycin can no longer do its job. Lactic acid substitution is a logical choice. It’s already a common metabolic product, being produced as an end product when the digestion of glucose occurs in the absence of oxygen. So there’s nothing new about the presence of lactic acid in a cell. The sore muscles we get when overexercising result in part from the accumulation of lactic acid in our muscle tissues. As with alanine, the lactic acid molecule has three carbon atoms, one methyl group, and one double-bonded oxygen atom. The significant change is that the amine group of alanine is gone.
To accomplish the alanine-lactic acid switch the bacteria assembled a genetic unit referred to as a plasmid, a snip of DNA in this case housing nine separate genes. (If you are seeking the hint of a cunning strategem within bacteria, here it comes.) [We will skip the explanation—admin1.]
And all that wisdom-like ability is stuffed into a bacterium approximately a millionth of a meter long and a third as wide. Observing that this level of “mind” extends to the simplest form of life makes the biblical inference that the earth has the trait of mind less of a leap. But then in the very first words of the Bible, we read, “With a first cause that was wisdom God created the heavens and the earth.” All aspects of creation are imbued, actually permeated, with the potential for mind. Over three millennia ago, the Bible taught this truth in black fire written on white fire, provided that we read both the black of the written words and the white of the wonders of nature as one integrated whole.
It’s hard to accept that a form of life as “simple” or primitive as a bacterium might actually exhibit traits of brainlike shrewdness. Not so for neurosurgeon Frank Vertosick, Jr. In his excellent book The Genius Within, he places reality before us:
If I speak with admiration for these creatures [bacteria] it’s because I’ve won and lost many battles like [the late] Stephen Jay Gould or Richard Dawkins, physicians like myself enter the competitive arena and do battle with supposedly unintelligent beasts like bacteria and cancer cells. Darwin observed the creatures of the world with a keen eye, but he never fought them one on one. For those of us who stare into the shining eyes of the world’s predators, we know how cunning they are at what they do ….The genes and enzymes and bacteria in this saga are but cogs in the greater communal machine, the microbial mind.
Freeman Dyson is a physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. According to Dyson (and others): “Atoms are weird stuff, behaving like active agents rather than inert substances. They make unpredictable choices between alternative possibilities according to the laws of quantum mechanics. It appears that mind as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom. The universe is also weird, with its laws of nature that make it hospitable to the growth of mind.
These scientists did not live or practice their professions in a vacuum. When they published statements such as these, not only did these thoughts have to pass the editorial review, but also these scientists had to face their colleagues and defend their positions. In short, to proffer such a diversion from the conventional material myth, Vertosick and Dyson had to be secure in their evaluations of reality.
If mind, or wisdom as biblically noted, is indeed the inherent essence of all existence, then the “mind” in nature, which of course is the product of God, could conceivably rebel, deviate from the word of God. Hitherto I thought only humans had that ability. We call it our free will. Yet if the Bible’s description of reality is valid, then apparently I learned wrong.
When Adam and Eve are reprimanded for having eaten of the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, God also punishes the ground.
“And to Adam He said, ‘Because you listened to the voice of your wife and ate from the tree which I commanded you saying you shall not eat from it, cursed is the ground because of you” (Gen. 3:17).
There is a non sequitur here. Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and God cursed the ground! Why punish the ground at this point? It was Adam and Eve who ate the fruit. The ground was totally passive here. I can imagine the ground pleading with God at this point: “What did I do? You, God, planted the forbidden tree in the Garden. You made it fantastically ‘appealing to the eye’ [Gen. 3:6]. They eat of the fruit and you punish me? Why punish me?” There is, however, a common theme between the eating of the forbidden fruit and the ground not fulfilling its calling. And that theme is rebellion. First, on day three the “inanimate” ground rebelled by not “minding” God’s command and then later in Eden the first humans rebelled by deliberately disobeying God’s command. Rebellion was in the air, and God chose to nip it in the bud. But He didn’t, did He? As we learn a few chapters farther on in the biblical text free will and rebellion remained facts of existence.
We are learning that the “Lord” of the Bible does not at all fit the usual concept of an all-controlling “Lord.” But the Bible has already made this clear by the two primary names it uses for God. Elokiim relates to God as made manifest in nature. As such Elokiim is the only name used for God in Genesis 1, the creation chapter. There we read of the physical development of the world. We will discover that nature is not as firmly bound by unyielding “laws of nature” as we might expect. In Genesis 2, the event more fully describe interactions between God and Adam and between Adam and Eve. From this point on in addition to Elokiim, we find the fundamental four-letter name of God, a word that has an approximate transliteration of the Hebrew as Ja/ko/vah. Of course the continuing paradox remains: both Elokiim and Ja/ko/vah are the one God that chooses to manifest Itself in very different ways. We were told: “I will be that which I will be.”
Recalling that Elokiim, God’s control as made manifest in nature, is the only name for God used in Genesis 1, the creation chapter, could nature’s ability to rebel be the source of the rare negative genetic mutations that mar what might otherwise be a properly formed baby at birth or allow for cancer to run rampant as it does today?
The screening and repair mechanisms in cell structure and function approach perfection. With only a small Divine increase in the molecular skill of cell repair, no mutations would succeed. There would be no malformed children and also perhaps no cancer. Yet mutations, those that are not detrimental are what allow different forms of life to develop. They play a crucial role in forming the nuanced variety we observe within any community of living organisms. Variety is more than merely the spice of life. Variety within a species allows that species to adapt to changes in the environment an aspect of life so essential for its robust and vigorous flow. Mutations act as a two-edged sword.
God created our universe with its inherent ability to diverge from God’s Divine plan. In the opening chapter of Genesis we are explicitly instructed by God to have dominion over the world (1:28). By giving us such authority, God has placed with us the responsibility to repair the errors brought about by the vicissitudes of nature. An example of success in fulfilling this communal responsibility is found in medicine. The mortality rate of childhood oncology less than a century ago approached 100 percent. Today and for much of the past decade, the survival rate exceeds 90 percent in leading hospitals. That success was the result of the combined efforts of many disciplines. God has designed a world in which we are in truth our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. A less auspicious incident in the book of Joshua makes this absolutely clear.
After the Israelites had walked in the desert for 40 years, Joshua was charged with the task of leading this people into the Promised Land. Jericho, a fortified city located just west of the Jordan River confronted their entry. Because of the rampant abominations practiced by its inhabitants, God demanded that the city be conquered. Taking booty in any form was forbidden (Josh. 6). Unfortunately the temptation for the gold and silver overwhelmed the prudence of one warrior:
“Akhan the son of Karmi, the son of Zavdi the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah took for himself from the prohibited treasure” (7:1).
At the following battle with the city of Ay though it was a small town, the Israelites suffered a severe loss when the army was totally routed:
“And the men of Ay smote about 36 of them and chased them from before the gate as far as Shevarim and smote them at the descent” (7:5).
Joshua realized that such total defeat could not be explained merely in military terms. It had to be Divine punishment. To discover the cause of the calamity, Joshua cast lots, choosing, by the roll of a series of dice, first from among the 12 tribes then family by family within the “chosen” tribe, and finally person by person. At each roll, the choice came closer to and finally rested on Akhan:
“And Joshua said to Akhan, ‘My son . . . tell what you have done.’ And Akhan answered Joshua and said, ‘Indeed I have sinned against God. When I saw among the spoil a fine cloak and 200 shekels of silver and a block of gold of 50 shekels weight, I craved them and took them. They are hidden in the earth within my tent'” (7:19-21).
One person erred, and many suffered. The Bible describes the beginning of all humanity as stemming from a single couple. Accordingly, in the world God designed communal responsibility is not bounded by tribe or geography.
Could God as described in the Bible run every detail of existence? Could God, for example, have forced the ground to bring forth fruit trees bearing fruit? The conventional answer is obviously yes. The Creator of this grand universe must certainly be able to control every aspect of its functioning down to each blade of grass. Yet, notwithstanding this common perception of God being infinitely powerful and ever in control, every indication in the Bible is that God has chosen not to control all events. Biblically, this lacuna arises by Divine fiat and not by Divine necessity. Whether by fiat or necessity, the fact of this Divine decrease in control and its effect on society remain.
When going to war, just prior to entering battle, the combatants are asked:
“What man is there that has built a house and has not yet dedicated it? He should go and return to his house lest he die in battle and another man dedicate it . . . . And is there a man who is engaged to a woman and has not yet wed her? He should go and return to his home lest he die in battle and another man wed her” (Deut. 20:5-7).
Lest he die in battle? Couldn’t God protect these particular soldiers? We’ll deal with accidents in a later chapter. Here, however, we seen an aspect of reality far more fundamental: there is no guarantee of survival to the individual, even though only a few verses earlier, the soldiers were told
“Fear not . . . for the Eternal your God goes with you to fight against your enemies to save you” (20:3-4).
God may fight for national survival. That notwithstanding, individual cannot rely on a miracle to save them. God has the eternal option of stepping back and allowing nature and people to take their course. As God told Moses at the burning bush, “I will be that which I will be” (Ehe’ye asher ehe’ye).
The Divinely imbued autonomy at all levels of nature from earth to Adam, narrow though it may be provides the potential for paths to be followed that may be less than beneficial. Quite simply, events occur that God would rather not occur. With this comes the latent possibility for undeserved and unexpected tragedy and even evil to enter our lives. Can it be that God forsees the trouble in the offing and nonetheless allows it to occur? In general God lets us travel the route we seek.
Prior to entering Canaan the recently liberated Israelites of the Exodus asked Moses to send scouts into Canaan to reconnoiter the Promised Land (Deut. 1:22). God realized this was not a good idea. What if the report the scouts brought back was disappointing? But the people really wanted it. And so when okaying the plan,
“God spoke to Moses saying, ‘Send for yourself men to scout out the land of Canaan that I give to the children of Israel'” (Num. 13:1-2).
God was saying, “Send for yourself and not for Me. You are courting trouble.” And trouble came. The scouts returned 40 days later and reported that the land was great, but the inhabitants were too powerful to confront. The people rebelled. Their rejection of the land that God had promised resulted in their being subjected to their 40-year trek in the desert; one year for each day the scouts had been in the land. Did God forsee the rebellion We cannot know. But the wording of the Bible makes it clear that God did not like the plan and hence, “Send for yourself.” God allows us to traverse the course we choose even though it may not be the most opportune option available. When Moses asked God to appoint people to help in the task of guiding the Israelites, God approved of the plan and so it is written, “And God said to Moses, ‘Choose for Me 70 men . . .'” (Num. 11:16). “Choose for Me as well as for you.”
This granted latitude in Divine control is less of a surprise, once we become familiar with the biblical description of what creation actually engenders. Biblically, we see creation as something, the universe, arising from the totally nonphysical we refer to as the Eternal Creator. But that is our view from within the physical side of creation looking toward the metaphysical. From the opposite perspective, from that of the Divine metaphysical viewing the physical, the perception of creation is quite different.
Speaking through the prophet Isaiah, God defines the Divine act of creation: “I am the Eternal and there is nothing else beside me. I form light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil. I the Eternal do all these” (45:6-7).
“I form light and create darkness.” One of the metaphors for God in the Bible is light: “By Your light we see light” (Ps. 36:9); “You wrap Yourself in light” (Ps. 104:2). God, the source of all spiritual light, “creates” spiritual darkness by withdrawing some of the Divine light: “I make peace and create evil.”
One of God’s names is Peace, shalom, shlaimoot, “wholeness,” “harmony.” To have evil, discord, in a world constructed of peace, some of that peace must be withdrawn. From God’s vantage point the act of creation, in Hebrew, ba’re’ah, entails a lessening of God’s manifest presence and control. Creation according to the Bible is God’s spiritual contraction. In Hebrew the term to describe this Divine contraction is tzimtzum, which literally means “to contract” or “to withdraw,” in this case a partial withdrawal of God’s evident spiritual presence. In essence, God hides God’s face. What once might have been a simple unified whole becomes multifaceted, moving in a multitude of paths, not all of which are necessarily spiritually compatible. Tzimtzum provides spiritual space for all aspects o existence as we now it.
The first creation, and hence the first tzimtzum, God’s creating the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1:1), brought into being the physical world with its time-space-matter, a single fabric interwoven by the laws of nature. The laws of nature are indeed “laws.” However, sequestered within is a quantum slack, a leeway in those laws that control nature. At the subatomic level, identical causes do not yield identical effects. That also is the message of the tzimtzum of creation. Einstein is quoted as having said in response to this quantum uncertainty that he could not believe that God played dice with the universe. Einstein was correct. God does not play dice with the universe, but God allows the universe to play dice.
According to all ancient Hebrew commentaries, the creation of the universe described in the opening verse of Genesis was the only physical creation. One physical creation is also the message of science. We call it the big bang. Everything that ever was or will be is made from the light of that first creation. Thus wrote the kabalist Nahmanides 800 years ago and so teach the discoveries of cosmology today. That creation shattered an undifferentiated whole and produced the potential for the variety we see in our world.
The second creation, and hence the second tzimtzum, occurred on day 5 of the 6 Genesis days (1:21) and relates to the creation of the animals. This was not the creation of their bodies—those were made from the already existing material—but the creation of the wholly etherial nefesh, the soul of animal life. The nefesh gives animals a level of choice and motion not found in plants. Animals choose among foods, driven in part by instinct. They can learn, navigate through a maze, and make tools. But the nefesh is totally self-centered, driven toward maximizing pleasure, survival, and progeny. The world, according to the nefesh‘s view, is there to be exploited for the self’s own needs.
The creation of Adam, recorded on the 6th day involves the neshama, the soul of human life. The neshama attempts to change fundamentally the drives of the human animal. The neshama realizes that a spiritual unity pervades and unites all existence. This unity will eventually be spelled out as the central concept of biblical monotheism, “The Eternal is One” (Deut. 6:4; Mark 12:29). The neshama apprehends this ultimate message. Each person has a window of choice from within which he or she decides. Just as no two people are identical, so no two windows of choice are identical. But every person’s neshama evaluates every choice made to determine if an act will move the individual closer to or farther from that Unity, the Oneness of existence. Reaching that Unity is the ultimate pleasure of life.
Each act of creation during the 6 days of creation was a further tzimtzum by God, a further allowing of ever more freedom in the manner by which God’s commands were executed. The earth, acting within this relaxation of control, could in a sense “choose” to produce trees bearing fruit rather than fruit trees that also bore fruit (Gen. 1:11-12). And at the other end of the scale of freedom, Cain could choose to murder his brother, Abel (4:8).
Whether, according to the Bible or science, there is an actual consciousness of “choice” at the level of complexity of the earth or a tree is moot. We don’t speak the language of soil or plants. The autonomy inherent at the physical level of the quantum, while not proving the existence of free will, opens the possibility for the concept of choice even in the assumedly inanimate world of atoms and molecules. After all, it is the same protons, neutrons, and electrons in differing combinations that make up all material existence from earth to Adam. At some point along this gradation of complexity, manifest consciousness has emerged. The question is not “if” self-awareness can arise from a particular mix of these seemingly inanimate subatomic particles. We are living proof that it can and did. The problem is to identify at what level of complexity sentience and choice and mind come quantifiably online. By the time we reach the third of the creations, that of the neshama of humans, our free will is at such an advanced level that the Divine leeway of tzimtzum has actually granted us license to choose between life and death, that of others and even of our own.
“I call heaven and earth to witness with you today, life and death I have placed before you, the blessing and the curse. Choose life in order that you may live, you and your children” (Deut. 30:19).
This is a peculiar admonition by God. Wouldn’t we assume that people normally choose life? Apparently God did not think so.
In the Garden of Eden, 2,448 years prior to this revelation at Sinai, Adam and Eve were confronted with identical options. There, two sources of food were specifically offered: the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Eating from the latter would bring upon them their spiritual death. In contrast, the Tree of Life, from which they were told that they must eat (the verb in the Hebrew is doubled, implying a direct demand), represented the source of eternal Divine life. This first couple on earth to have the soul of humankind, the neshama, actually chose knowledge of good and evil over Divine life.
In the two and a half millennia between Eden and the revelation at Sinai, human nature had not changed. God now had learned the disposition of His creations and therefore urged that we make the choice that on the surface would seem obvious, but apparently was not so: we should go for a dynamic meaningful life over the stagnation of death. In a world where subjective feelings of pleasant and not pleasant blur interpretations of right and wrong, the right path is not always obvious.
In the creative act of God’s tzimtzum, this withdrawal of absolute Divine control, we discover the source of chance and choice within our world. And to our astonishment, this granted autonomy extends throughout all levels of existence. Considering God’s reaction to the rebellion of the “inanimate” earth at the incident of the fruit trees, and much later to the murder of Abel by brother Cain, anthropomorphically speaking, one is led to wonder whether the scope of Divinely granted freedom was more than God had originally bargained for. Some online revisions in the Divine management of the world were in order. With the failure of God’s contingency “plan A,” in which the first humans were to be nurtured in Eden, “plan B” was inaugurated. Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden. Perhaps being exposed to the outside world would be more instructive.
Unfortunately that approach also didn’t fare any better. Within ten generations, society had so fully deteriorated that it needed the washout of the Flood. Once again God changed the venue for life. Is this a Divine learning process or is it more accurately described as God’s very essence, the core meaning of “I will be that which I will be”?
Next: A Repentant God?
How to Understand a God That has Regrets