I started typing this in reply to your earlier comment, but it's been deleted?
Anyway:
He mentions, almost in passing, that the only purpose of reading a Kabbalistic text is for interior transformation, not any intellectual reason at all. I think this is very important, not that we haven't touched on this point ourselves. Basically this is the principle of approaching the esoteric "with folded hands" as Smith says. If there is any pride, any ego, any will to "become more knowledgeable", then not only will nothing of worth be gained, but we will be hurt by the endeavour. It would be more akin to the heresy of "Gnosticism" rather than true Gnosis - it would be the "gnosis that puffeth up" (1 Cor 8:1 (biblegateway.com)) rather than the true gnosis for which there is a key (Luke 11:52 (biblegateway.com)). Of course this applies to any authentic esoteric truth, and not just Kabbalah.
At one point around the 20-minute mark he quotes some Rabbi about how it is the very essence of gnosis (he uses some Hebrew term for "seeing God directly") to become more conscious of the deficiency of one's self, the fact that one apprehends a personal regress of sorts, even as one sees God more clearly. This builds off of what he was saying about how we depend on negations to know anything at all - we must apprehend coldness to really be able to apprehend hotness, and vice versa. So as we see God more clearly, we more clearly see how far from Him we really are. This is precisely the doctrine of St. John of the Cross in the Dark Night of the Soul, and this phenomenon, this dark night, is something routinely occurring in the saints. As they grow in holiness, as they begin to negate those things of themselves that are not oriented to God, as they begin to see Him more clearly, they simultaneously begin to realize how far they fall from Him, and even from His plan for them - and it torments them. As St. John of the Cross teaches, lack of care during this dark night can be fatal, but if survived it opens up an entirely new world of holiness and understanding of God.
And this isn't something that "only the saints" have to deal with; this is a process that each and every one of us must go through if ever we are to see God. "Blessed are the pure [or clean] of heart, for they will see God." (Matthew 5:8 (biblegateway.com)). The corollary being that those who are not pure of heart are neither blessed in this way, nor will they see God. Indeed, nothing unclean shall enter heaven (Revelation 21:27 (biblegateway.com)). But, clearly, most of us are not saints in this life; most of us do not endure a dark night of the soul in this life; most of us do not experience spiritual ecstasies or just see esoteric truths in this way. Most of us lack the virtue and the will to negate those things that are not of God; most of us lack the discipline to become saints. Again I stress the importance of Purgatory, and the immensity of God's mercy - that even those without the virtue and greatness to be fully open to God's grace, and by grace be transformed, that if they at least have faith, hope, and charity, they can be aided by the flames of God's love, and purified by those means, before entering heaven and "seeing God".
Back to the video: his distinguishing between the Divine light that illuminates, and the quality of this light, or its intention, is very good. He did not say so explicitly, but this strikes me as a form of the difference between the exoteric and the esoteric. We have said before, following the Meister, that to know the esoteric is precisely to "see with the eye of God" - is this not exactly what would be necessary to apprehend His intention in any given radiance of His light?
This particular point summarizes well the central argument, I think. In order to truly understand evil, one must see with the eye of God - for God, unlike us, knows the intention of every act of His will. Whereas we see only the burning trees (to continue the Jew's forest fire example), God sees the purification that takes place by this fire, and the fullness of the results.
I want to tie this in with the Fall, because the Christian emphasis on the Fall is not a cop-out or convenience; it remains essential to the argument. Because man is Fallen, man exists in a state where he does not see God; his heart is not pure. Or, put another way: there are elements within man that, following the Meister, remain to be negated - negatio negationis (Christian Gnosis, p.203). But insofar as one is attached to any being or relation that must be negated, this negation must needs be perceived as a kind of loss, or pain, or evil. To be purified by flame is an evil phenomenologically, but a good teleologically - and this has precedence.
All of this is very reminiscent of the thrust I made in response to ARM's citing of Mackie on the problem of evil - which ARM never addressed. My main thesis was that God's omnibenevolence does not require that He act to ensure there be no evil; but rather it (His nature) requires that He act, in all things and all ways, to bring things to Himself, Who is Perfect Goodness. The Jew in that video points out that the only reason that anything is created at all is that God Loves, and that He wills for His creatures to experience the perfect joy of knowing Him. And as the Jew also notes, experience of suffering (typified by the dark night of the soul), a consciousness of evil, is simultaneous with a consciousness of God. Not because they are the same, but because they are contraries.
So, in the post-Fall context, it is trivial to understand how and why God permits evils, even moral evils, to transpire - doing so, given man's state, is necessary to bring His creatures to the joy of knowing Him. And while the pre-Fall context is different, the principle is the same. Adam sinned not due to any fault in his nature, but due to an error of his judgment and will - which, as we've acknowledged, and as is even reflected in the CTMU, is vertically causal and so self-determining. The problem of evil thus reduces to the question as to why this particular moral evil was permitted by God. Unlike post-Fall evils, permitting it is not (at least not evidently) necessary for the salvation of that particular immoral agent. Nevertheless, God as an end remains greater than any sin. If He can use a given evil to emphasize Himself to His creatures, and draw them to Himself, then there is no reason for Him not to permit it. And since He is God, He can use any evil to emphasize Himself and draw His creatures to Himself. Which constitutes sufficient reason for evil's existence.
We have to understand that God created finite creatures for the sake of those finite creatures loving and enjoying Him in spite of their finite nature. Could God bestow superabundant graces on every man, such that He would basically be shown God, and therefore know God fully to the point that every evil would be avoided. Yes, He could - this would be akin to creating all creatures as already possessing the Beatific Vision, already seeing God. But at this point we can almost ask what the point was in the first place; to begin existence already knowing God hardly constitutes an emanation at all - there would never have been a time when there was any negation needing negating, never a time where a creature could actually recognize its finite nature, recognize its dependence on God, for it already had this to begin.
By not creating His creatures already possessing the Beatific Vision, God reveals in part the kind of knowing of Him He wills us to have. Had God done this, the only knowledge of not-God we would have had would have been through the Beatific Vision; there would be no such knowledge separate from the seeing of God. But without this, there would really be no distinction between creation and God at all (akin to the supernature/nature distinction I referenced earlier). It is as Smith said in that documentary: Christianity appealed to him because, unlike Hinduism and other traditions, Christianity affirms that, while man and all creatures are a "nothing of sorts", there is nonetheless something of the human that remains - and this is made possible because God Himself united the human nature to His own. But this would not have been done had the Fall, and all consequent evil, not been permitted.
Therefore, in order to enable, in a way, an even greater knowledge and appreciation of God than would have been otherwise possible, God permitted evil - for the sake of His creatures and His greater glory. In this way, and this way only, contra my emboldened text above, evil can be said to be necessary.
Very insightful response.
I was particularly caught up by the thought about the fundamental difference in the nature of the will in God v. man. Anything which is not God must be a vessel whose nature it is to receive.
It is challenging and rewarding to think about the nature of God's will as an infinite bestower. We cannot comprehend it, and it ties the mind in knots like considering infinity does.
All of our perceptions of evil and goodness come from our ability to receive, which creates a necessary gap between ourselves and God: we cannot know what it is like to eternally and infinitely be giving experience away. We receive it, and that is all, and in our constrained ways we try to improve the experiences of others that we care about by intervening in this way or that.
But imagine how the interpretation of this world would be different if your will was based only on bestowing, and not at all on considerations about what you could receive (what could happen to you, or how this or that may effect you). It would just be to sacrifice all of the worldly concerns we possess. To fear nothing, including death.
It would just be to sacrifice all of the worldly concerns we possess. To fear nothing, including death.
Yes.
1 John 4:8 (biblegateway.com)
and
John 15:13 (biblegateway.com)
(post is archived)