Читать книгу The Essential Agus - Steven T. Katz - Страница 47

Can we prove the existence of God? M. demonstrates the existence of God by a variant of the cosmological proof—for every existent effect there is a cause; hence, an ultimate Cause, an Unmoved Mover. But when the issue of creation vs. eternity of the cosmos is raised, M. takes refuge in a theory of faith. The issue cannot be decided by the arguments of logic alone. An extra-logical factor must be brought into the equation. If the cosmos is created, “then the Torah is possible.” Since the scales of logic are evenly balanced, we are free to put our weight on the scale of creation and Torah.

M.’s resort to the Jamesian “Will to believe” must not be understood in superficial, tactical terms. M. made clear that his choice was not dictated by the literal teaching of the first chapters of Genesis. “The gates of interpretation are not closed to us.” (II, 25.) Nor did he opt for creation simply because of the possibility of including the miracles of Scripture in the primary act of creation. His argument moves on a deeper plane, so that it remains convincing in our contemporary universe of discourse. God does act in the world by relating Himself now to one person, now to another and by choosing a whole people as his instrument. (Ibid.)

Torah, in the sense of the harmonious unity of the supreme values of life, is itself a form of cognition. To love is to seek understanding, as M. put it.

Speculative reason is intimately one with the imperatives of ethics and the intuitive perceptions of “the imagination.” It is our personality as a whole that confronts the mystery of the universe, and when the judgment of logic is neutralized, the associated forms of outreach within us impel us to choose that view of the world which is consonant with the ultimate reality of spiritual values. In a created world, where the free spirit of God is sovereign, the human spirit finds its validation.

It follows that faith is not an alien element to the quest of truth, or a separate faculty detached from or even opposed to reason. On the contrary, faith is an extension of the adventure of speculative reason. Faith is the total posture of man, as “in fear and love,” he confronts the awesome majesty of the Supreme Being. God is “the soul of the soul” of the universe, the Ultimate Whole, Whose Wisdom proceeds from the whole to the parts, rather than the other way around. Hence, in our quest of His “nearness,” we have to integrate the whole of our being—our imagination and intuition, our balanced ethical virtues and our quest of God, our hunger for aloneness with God in the ecstasy of meditation (III, 51), and our eagerness to redeem the world by deeds of justice and compassion. (Ill, 52—54.)

M.’s teaching in regard to the meaning of faith and its decisive role in the trans-logical realm is applied in Neo-Maimonism to the issue of God’s existence, not merely the creation of the world. Defining God as the Perfect Personality, the ultimate Whole in an evolutionary holistic-mechanical cosmos, we cannot demonstrate with mathematical logic that God does indeed exist. We point to the marvelous ladders of evolution, in which wholes of ever greater complexity and range of freedom have come into being. The appearance of the human mind marked the emergence of a new phase of holism—conscious, deliberate, multi-dimensional, creative. In the geniuses of art, ethics, science, statecraft and religion, new phases of spirit are briefly glimpsed. All great achievements well up into the conscious mind of their own accord, as it were, like invasions from a sea of Super-Spirit, when the dikes are lowered, or like bolts of lightning, illuminating the dark night. The mysteries of life, mind and flashes of genius point toward the possibility of divine thrusts, impelling us toward perfection. Indeed, we perceive, however dimly, intimations of the supreme source of all values in our ethical deeds, esthetic apprehensions and experiences of holiness. But, we cannot prove that the theistic hypothesis is true.

Still, and here we touch bases with M., our inner aspirations for growth in the realms of the spirit impel us to choose that view of the cosmos, in which Spirit, Freedom and creative Growth triumph over the dead entropy of matter. Our faith in God is an extension of “the lines of growth” in our personality—our hunger for justice, our thirst for beauty, our longing for truth, our experience of holiness, when we sense the cosmic resonance of eternity. Faith is the fragmentary arc within our being, extrapolated into an invisible, eternal circle. It is the outward reach of our entire being; hence, it cannot be unreasoning, or immoral, or blind. It becomes demonic when it sets itself over against the moral, or the rational, pretending to go “beyond good and evil.” It is the whole of our self orienting itself toward and seeking support from that all-embracing Self, of which our minds are but so many cells. And faith, as M. points out, is not a steady, static condition. It is rather a tremor of the soul, an assurance and an inquiry, at one and the same time.