A Religio-Philosophical
Reflection on the Book of Job
Then you will know the truth, and the truth
will set you free. (John 32)
Let me in your truth and teach me: for you are
the God of my salvation. (Psalm 25:5)
God is the Truth (the Real). (Qur’an 22:6)
We cast the truth against the falsehood, so
that it demolishes it, and lo! it vanishes away…. (Qur’an 21:18)
In this
reflection, I ponder the question of suffering and how any external
suffering and loss, such as Job’s loss of family and properties, is not
commensurable with internal suffering (disharmony and disconnect from God and
the divine nature within). My argument is simply to stress the fact that if I
take purely materialistic and physicalist stance about my existence, any lack
of pleasure would be an indicator of misery and loss. Evil, in this context, is
what happens to me externally. This is so, because for materialism and
physicalism, hedonism (sensual-aesthetic pleasure) and at best humanism are the
ultimate goals. No wonder that the dominant moral theory of our time, Mill’s
Utilitarianism, defines moral behavior in terms of maximizing pleasure for the
most. I argue that there is another ‘truth’ which is told by religions and
indicates that no matter what external calamities one goes through (similar to
Job’s afflictions), Hell is the loss of internal harmony with the divine. And
this is the worst loss. The structure of this reflection is like this: first, I
will express my theses; second, I will briefly discuss some philosophical views
on truth and values; third, I will quote part of the second book of Plato’s
Republic as the source of reflection on values of truth and justice; then I
will repeat my theses again in response to Plato’s question; and finally will
end this paper with quotations from different religions about human nature.
My
Theses:
1) Our
essence consists of the ethical-spiritual truth whose truth is prior to
scientific-knowing truth. This truth is expressed by religions, where ethics,
unlike secularism, is not separated from cosmos, heaven, and God.
2)
Human nature is divine (is Godly or is ontologically and morally attuned to
God). The inner working of this divine essence urges us for moral behavior and
just actions.
3) Each
unjust or immoral action, similar to Kant’s Categorical Imperative[1]
but for different reasons, creates inconsistency, a feeling of cognitive
dissonance, guilt and shame, and suffering conscience.
4)
Worshipping God and prayers are acts of redemption, atonement, and attunement.
God doesn’t need our worship, but we need prayers to keep our internal soul
balanced[2].
Lack of this balance is Hell.
5)
Axial Age sages, Socrates, Euripides, Upanishad’s Mystics, Jeremiah, Amos,
Ezekiel, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Buddha, and then Jesus, and Mohammad share a non-consequentialist
message: they all hold that justice and morality are for harmony with God,
Dao, or Heaven (T’ien) and are good for their own sake (have intrinsic
value) and subsequently also have extrinsic value (good consequences). In
Western Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant comes closest to this non-consequentialist
approach. However, he along with other rationalists put all his faith in reason
alone, which is the point of excess in our historical pendulum swing and
detrimental to the divine balance of our soul.
6) The
problem of evil or afflictions and suffering on an individual should not in any
sense take him or her to an immoral or unjust position or pessimistic disbelief
because the issue is an internal attunement to God (intrinsic value) rather
than external gain and loss (extrinsic value). So, in the story of Job, when he
is afflicted with so much pain and loss, he has no choice but to hold onto his
divine essence which is worshipping God as its essential attunement despite all
calamities. Hence he contends: “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked
shall I return there; the Lord has given, and the Lord has taken away; blessed
be the name of the Lord”.
Ethical-Spiritual
Truth
What is
the truth? The 20th century philosophy and sciences made the notion of “truth”
more and more problematic. We all know now “reason” as such can’t ground our
belief system. In “On Certainty,” Wittgenstein says:
The difficulty is to
realize the groundlessness of our believing. . . Giving grounds, however,
justifying the evidence, comes to an end, – but the end is not certain
propositions’ striking us immediately as true, i.e., it is not a kind of seeing
on our part: it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language
game. . . If the true is what is grounded, then the ground is not true,
nor yet false. (Sections 166, 204, 205)
Although
in our sciences we should strive for truth, as a valuable goal, the philosophy
of science of Popper and Kuhn have already shown that (capital T) Truth is not
achievable. Because either the truth of science is essentially and by definition
falsifiable (Popper[3]), or basically there is no
overarching meta-paradigm according to which we can compare the truths of
different paradigms of science. This is so, because the truths (with lower case
‘t’) depend on the internal function of paradigms (Kuhn[4]),
and accordingly, different scientific paradigms are not commensurable. A
strife for truth, however, remains one of the noblest impulses of human beings.
Popper holds that adherence to scientific truth is based on an ethical
principle:
THUS ETHICAL PRINCIPLES FORM THE BASIS OF SCIENCE
"The principles that form the basis of every rational discussion, that is, of every discussion undertaken in the search for truth, are in the main ethical principles. I should like to state three such principles.
1. The principle of fallibility: perhaps I am wrong and perhaps you are right. But we could easily both be wrong.
2. The principle of rational discussion: we want to try, as impersonally as possible, to weight up our reasons for and against a theory; a theory that is definite and criticizable.
3. The principle of approximation to the truth: we can nearly always come closer to the truth in a discussion which avoids personal attacks. It can help us to achieve a better understanding; even in those cases where we do not reach an agreement.
It is worth noting that these three principles are both epistemological and ethical principles. For they imply, among other things, toleration: if I hope to learn from you, and if I want to learn in the interest of truth, then I have not only to tolerate you but also to recognize you as a potential equal; the potential unity and willingness to discuss matters rationally. Of importance also is the principle that we can learn much from a discussion, even when it does not lead to agreement: a discussion can help us by shredding light upon some of our errors.
Thus ethical principles form the basis of science. The idea of truth as the fundamental regulative principle – the principle that guides our search – can be regarded as an ethical principle. The search for truth and the idea of approximation to the truth are also ethical principles; as are the ideas of intellectual integrity and of fallibility, which lead us to a self-critical attitude and to toleration." (Karl Popper, In Search of a Better World, p. 199)
The
problem is that we know now that a purely secular, rational, materialistic,
physicalist, and naturalist view of truth is groundless. We know now that our
adherence to our secular naturalistic truth is itself an item of faith. Popper
states:
I too believe that our
Western civilization owes its rationalism, its faith in the rational unity of
human and in the open society, and especially its scientific outlook, to the
ancient Socratic and Christian belief in the brotherhood [or sisterhood] of all
humans, and in intellectual honesty and responsibility. (Karl Popper, The Open
Society and Its Enemies, vol. 2, pp. 243-244)
Moreover,
he openly and clearly declares his irrational faith in critical
rationalism and science:
Critical rationalism
recognizes the fact that the fundamental rationalist attitude results from an
(at least tentative) act of faith -from faith in reason. Accordingly, our
choice is open. We may choose some form of irrationalism, even some radical or
comprehensive form. But we are also free to choose a critical form of
rationalism, one which frankly admits its origin in an irrational decision (and
which, to that extent, admits a certain priority of irrationalism). The choice
before us is not simply an intellectual affair, or a matter of taste. It is a
moral decision (in the sense of chapter 5). For the question whether we adopt
some more or less radical form of irrationalism, or whether we adopt that
minimum concession to irrationalism which I have termed 'critical rationalism',
will deeply affect our whole attitude towards other men, and towards the
problems of social life. (Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol.
2, pp. 231-232).
In the
same way, Foucault also confronts “ethical truth” with “scientific truth”
(knowledge, connaissance). In The Ethics of The Concern for The Self,
he raises this important question:
Why are we concerned with
truth, and more so than with the care of the self? And why must the care of the
self occur only through the concern for truth? I think we are touching on a
fundamental question here, what I would call the question for the West:
How did it come about that all of Western culture began to revolve around this
obligation of truth which has taken a lot of different forms? Things being as
they are, nothing so far has shown that it is possible to define a strategy
outside of this concern.
After
this brief discussion of the position of truth in modern science, the priority
of the ethical to the epistemological (knowledge as such), we come up with an
interesting argument that ethical truth is prior to scientific truth. Or
more clearly, one might argue that we can be more certain about what course of
action to take ethically than whether our sciences really depict reality as it
is. The priority of the ethical to the epistemological is a step forward in our
understanding of ourselves. This is the same impulse that separates pre-Socratic
philosophers (natural philosophers such as Parmenides, Empedocles, Heraclitus,
etc.) from Socrates, and generally Axial Age sages, with their emphasis on the
priority of the ethical to the metaphysical. Moreover, this priority is not
only the priority of historical contingent practices whose truth is simply
defined by the historical moment (Foucault and Marx), but the ethical truths
are pluralistic (they can’t be reduced to one another) and universal and
embedded in the human nature. In contemporary philosophy, basically it sounds
strange if one talks about “ethical truth”, because so many of these
philosophers think that ethics has no truth of its own, as it is not factual
and there is always a gap between “what is” and “how things ought to be” (Hume’s
gap). However, this gap doesn’t imply that ethical truths are not part of the
inner working or nature of human beings. On the contrary, without ethical
truths of collaboration, empathy, love, care, justice, virtuous life, and a
holistic and integral sense of connection to the universe and God, our factual
existence in the world is in danger. As the
effect of hedonism, nihilism, consumerism, and unbridled capitalism and
destruction of our environment clearly allude to this fact.
In
holding the priority of ethics to sciences, Chomsky also expresses his faith
in moral imperatives and similar to his theory of linguistic creativity,
according to him, morality is wired in human beings universally and embedded in
the human nature; thus it internally evolves. About Chomsky’s moral-linguistic
theory, Joshua Cohen & Joel Rogers state:
We take Chomsky’s social
views to be marked by four key claims: (1) human beings have a ‘moral nature’
and a fundamental interest in autonomy; (2) these basic features of our nature
support a libertarian socialist social ideal; (3) the interest in autonomy and
the moral nature of human beings help to explain certain important features of
actual social systems, including for example the use of deception and force to
sustain unjust conditions, as well as their historical evolution; and (4) these
same features of human nature provide reasons for hope that the terms of social
order will improve from a moral point of view. (http://www.cows.org/joel/pdf/a_044.pdf)
For
this reason Chomsky argues against moral relativism and Foucault’s conception
of morality and justice[5].
While Foucault insists that we should give priority to the Ethics of the
Care of the Self rather than to the “regimes of truth”, his own stance on
ethical truth is nihilistic, which means that ethical practices as well as
justice are arbitrary “values” played within contingent historical practices.
He states:
What meaning is this
enterprise [replacing the history of knowledge with the historical analysis of
forms of veridiction] to be given? There are above all its immediately apparent
‘negative’, negativistic aspects. A historicizing negativism, since it involves
replacing a theory of knowledge, power, or the subject [the self] with the
analysis of historically deterministic practices. A nominalist negativism,
since it involves replacing universals like madness, crime, and sexuality with
the analysis of experiences which constitute singular historical forms. A
negativism with a nihilistic tendency, if by this we understand a form of
reflection which, instead of indexing practices to systems of values which
allow them to be assessed, inserts these systems of values in the interplay of
arbitrary but intelligible practices. (The Government of Self and Others)
So in
Chomsky-Foucault Debate, Foucault clearly takes a Nietzschean position about
the value of “justice”:
If you like, I will be a
little bit Nietzschean about this; in other words, it seems to me that the idea
of justice in itself is an idea which in effect has been invented and put to
work in different types of societies as an instrument of a certain political
and economic power or as a weapon against that power. But it seems to me that,
in any case, the notion of justice itself functions within a society of classes
as a claim made by the oppressed class and as justification for it.
In a departure
from nihilistic position of Foucault about “human nature”, I hold that not only
justice or moral values are not part of arbitrary historical practices, but
also they are the ground of the major truth at hand, the divine ethical truth
or divine human nature. While this stance is closer to Chomsky’s view about
having faith in innate moral principles, it also departs from Chomsky’s
secularism and Gnostic faith in reason alone, and reconnects with the divine
source.
The
Divine Justice as the Disposition of the Soul
In his The Republic, Plato clearly tackles the
problem of justice as disposition of the soul that has “intrinsic value”
against the views of Thrasymachus. Indeed, Foucault and Nietzsche say nothing
new in rejecting justice as a value; they simply repeat what Thrasymachus and
Glaucon say in the first two books of The
Republic. I will bring a quotation from the second book of Republic and
will try to respond to it in my own theses.
Plato wrote:
The
cause of all this, Socrates, was indicated by us at the beginning of
the argument, when my brother and I told you how astonished we were to
find that of all the professing panegyrists of justice --beginning with the
ancient heroes of whom any memorial has been preserved to us, and ending with
the men of our own time --no one has ever blamed injustice or praised justice
except with a view to the glories, honors, and benefits which flow from
them. No one has ever adequately described either in verse or prose the
true essential nature of either of them abiding in the soul, and invisible to
any human or divine eye; or shown that of all the things of a human's
soul which he has within him or her, justice is the greatest good, and
injustice the greatest evil. Had this been the universal strain, had you
sought to persuade us of this from our youth upwards, we should not have
been on the watch to keep one another from doing wrong, but everyone would have
been his own watchman, because afraid, if he did wrong, of harboring in
himself or herself the greatest of evils.
I dare
say that Thrasymachus and others would seriously hold the language which I have
been merely repeating, and words even stronger than these about justice
and injustice, grossly, as I conceive, perverting their true nature. But
I speak in this vehement manner, as I must frankly confess to you,
because I want to hear from you the opposite side; and I would ask you
to show not only the superiority which justice has over injustice, but
what effect they have on the possessor of them which makes the one to be
a good and the other an evil to him or her. And please, as Glaucon
requested of you, to exclude reputations; for unless you take away from
each of them his or her true reputation and add on the false, we shall
say that you do not praise justice, but the appearance of it; we shall
think that you are only exhorting us to keep injustice dark, and that
you really agree with Thrasymachus in thinking that justice is another's good
and the interest of the stronger, and that injustice is a man's own profit
and interest, though injurious to the weaker.
Now as
you have admitted that justice is one of that highest class of goods which are
desired indeed for their results, but in a far greater degree for their
own sakes --like sight or hearing or knowledge or health, or any other
real and natural and not merely conventional good --I would ask you in
your praise of justice to regard one point only: I mean the essential
good and evil which justice and injustice work in the possessors of them.
Let others praise justice and censure injustice, magnifying the rewards
and honors of the one and abusing the other; that is a manner of arguing
which, coming from them, I am ready to tolerate, but from you who have
spent your whole life in the consideration of this question, unless I
hear the contrary from your own lips, I expect something better. And
therefore, I say, not only prove to us that justice is better than
injustice, but show what they either of them do to the possessor of
them, which makes the one to be a good and the other an evil, whether
seen or unseen by gods and humans.
So, I repeat my theses again:
1) Our
essence consists of the ethical-spiritual truth whose truth is prior to
scientific-knowing truth. This truth is expressed by religions, where ethics,
unlike secularism, is not separated from cosmos, heaven, and God.
2)
Human nature is divine (is Godly or is ontologically and morally attuned to
God). The inner working of this divine essence urges us for moral behavior and
just actions.
3) Each
unjust or immoral action, similar to Kant’s Categorical Imperative, but for
different reasons, creates inconsistency, a feeling of cognitive dissonance,
guilt and shame, and suffering conscience.
4)
Worshipping God and prayers are acts of redemption, atonement, and attunement.
God doesn’t need our worship, but we need prayers to keep our internal soul
balanced[6].
Lack of this balance is Hell.
5)
Axial Age sages, Socrates, Euripides, Upanishad’s Mystics, Jeremiah, Amos,
Ezekiel, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Buddha, and then Jesus, and Mohammad share a non-consequentialist
message: they all hold that justice and morality are for harmony with God, Dao,
or Heaven (T’ien) and are good for their own sake (have intrinsic
value) and subsequently also have extrinsic value (good consequences). In
Western Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant comes closest to this non-consequentialist
approach. However, he along with other rationalists put all his faith in reason
alone, which is the point of excess in our historical pendulum swing and
detrimental to the divine balance of our soul.
6) The
problem of evil or afflictions and suffering of an individual should not in any
sense take him or her to an immoral or unjust position or to a pessimistic
disbelief because the issue is an internal attunement to God (intrinsic value)
rather than external gain and loss (extrinsic value). So, in the story of Job,
when he is afflicted with so much pain and loss, he has no choice but to hold
onto his divine essence which is worshipping God as its essential attunement
despite all calamities. Hence he contends: “Naked came I out of my mother’s
womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord has given, and the Lord has
taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord”.
Our
Divine Essence or Nature
I won’t
elaborate on these theses more. However, to end this reflection, I will quote
the views of sages mentioned in the fifth thesis about the human nature.
Lao
Tzu: Taoism
Free
from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the
manifestations… Tao flows through all things, inside and outside, and returns
to the origin of all things. … The Tao is great, The Universe is great, Earth
is great, Human is great. These are the four great powers…
From
Hua Hu Ching (Lao Tzu’s oral teachings) In ancient times, people
lived holistic lives. They didn’t overemphasize the intellect, but integrated
mind, body and spirit in all things. ..... Simply avoid becoming attached to
what you see and think. Relinquish the notion that you are separated from the
all-knowing mind of the universe. Then you can recover your original pure
insight and see through all illusions. Knowing nothing, you will be aware of
everything. Remember: because clarity and enlightenment are Within your own
nature, they are regained without moving an inch.
Confucius
Confucius
remarked: Heaven is author of the virtue that is in me. The power of spiritual
forces in the Universe—how active it is everywhere! Invisible to the eyes, and
impalpable to the senses, it is inherent in all things, and nothing can escape
its operation. What is God-Given (Given by T’ien or “heaven”) is what we
call human nature. To fulfill the law of our human nature is what we call the
moral law [Tao]. The cultivation of the moral law is what we call culture. Our
central self or moral being is the great basis of existence, and harmony
or moral order is the universal law in the world.
Confucius
remarked: “The life of the moral person is an exemplification of the universal
moral order…. The life of the vulgar person, on the other hand, is a
contradiction of the universal moral order.” Confucius remarked: “To find the
central clue to our moral being which unites us to the universal order, that
indeed is the highest human attainment…”,
Confucius
remarked: “There are people who seek for the abstruse and strange and live a
singular life in order that they may leave a name to posterity. This is what I
never would do. There are again good people who try to live in conformity with
the moral law but who, when they have gone half way, throw it up. I never could
give it up. Lastly, there are truly moral people who unconsciously live a life
in entire harmony with the universal moral order and who live unknown to the
world and unnoticed by others without any concern. It is only people of holy,
divine natures who are capable of this…” Confucius said: In the morning hear
the Way; in the evening die content.
Upanishads
Three
thousand years ago, Nachiketas seeks wisdom of life from the King of Death
(Yama), narrated in Katha Upanishads.
Death
says: Take horses and gold and cattle and elephants; choose sons and grandsons
that shall live a hundred years. Have vast expanses of land, and live as many
years as you desire. Or choose another gift that you think equal to this, and
enjoy it with wealth and long life. Be a ruler of this vast earth. I will grant
you all your desires. Ask for any wishes in the world of mortals, however hard
to obtain. To attend on you I will give you fair maidens with chariots and
musical instruments. But ask me not, Nachiketas, the secrets of death.
Nachiketas:
All these pleasures pass away, O End of all! They weaken the power of life. And
indeed how short is all life! Keep thy horses and dancing and singing. Human
cannot be satisfied with wealth. Shall we enjoy wealth with you in sight? Shall
we live whilst you are in power? I can only ask for boon I have asked. When a
mortal here on earth has felt one’s immortality, could he wish for a long life
of pleasures, for the lust of deceitful beauty? Solve then the doubt as to the
great beyond. Grant me the gift that unveils the mystery. This is the only gift
Nachiketas can ask….
Death: There
is the path of joy, and there is the path of pleasure. Both attract the soul.
Who follows the first comes to good; who follows pleasure reaches not the End…
There is the path of wisdom and the path of ignorance. They are far apart and
ends to different ends. You are, Nachiketas, a follower of the path of wisdom:
many pleasures tempt you not. Abiding in the midst of ignorance, thinking
themselves wise and learned, fools go aimlessly hither and thither, like blind
led by the blind…. Not even through deep knowledge can the Atman [the divine
self within] be reached, unless evil ways are abandoned, and there is rest in
the senses, concentration in the mind and peace in one’s heart.”
Buddhism:
The Fullness of Emptiness by Thich Nhat Hanh
If you
are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet
of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees
cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential
for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be
here either. We can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. “Interbeing” is
a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter-”
with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, “inter-be.” If we look into this
sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine
is not there, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow. Even we cannot
grow without sunshine. So we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of
paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can
see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed
into paper. And we see the wheat. We know that the logger cannot exist without his
daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this
sheet of paper. And the logger’s father and mother are in it too. When we look
in this way, we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper
cannot exist. Looking even more deeply, we can see we are in it too. This is
not difficult to see, because when we look at a sheet of paper, the sheet of
paper is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also, so we
can say that everything is in here in this sheet of paper. You cannot point out
one thing that is not here—time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in
the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything coexists
with this sheet of paper. That is why I think the word inter-be should be in
the dictionary. To be is to inter-be. You cannot just be by yourself alone. You
have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because
everything else is. Suppose we try to return one of the elements to its source.
Suppose we return the sunshine to the sun. Do you think that this sheet of
paper would be possible? No, without sunshine nothing can be. And if we return
the logger to his mother, then we have no sheet of paper either. The fact is
that this sheet of paper is made up only of “non-paper elements.” And if we
return these non-paper elements to their sources, then there can be no paper at
all. Without non-paper elements, like mind, logger, sunshine, and so on, there
will be no paper. As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in
the universe in it. But the Heart Sutra seems to say the opposite.
Avalokiteshvara tells us that things are empty. Let us look more closely. Empty
of What? The Bodhisattva Avalokita: while moving in the deep course of Perfect
Understanding, shed light on the five skandhas and found them equally empty.
According
to Avalokiteshvara, this sheet of paper is empty; but according to our
analysis, it is full of everything. There seems to be a contradiction between
our observation and his. Avalokita found the five skandhas empty. But empty of
what? The key word is empty. To be empty is to be empty of something.
The five skandhas, which may be translated into English as five heaps, or five
aggregates, are the five elements that comprise a human being. These five
elements flow like a river in every one of us. In fact, these are really five
rivers flowing together in us: the river of form, which means our bodies; the
river of feelings; the river of perceptions; the river of mental formations;
and the river of consciousness. They are always flowing in us. So according to
Avalokita, when he looked deeply into the nature of these five rivers, he
suddenly saw that all five are empty. If we ask, “Empty of what?” he has to
answer. And this is what he said: “They are empty of a separate self.” That
means none of these five rivers can exist by itself alone. Each of the five
rivers has to be made by the other four. It has to coexist; it has to inter-be
with all the others. When Avalokita says that our sheet of paper is empty, he
means it is empty of a separate, independent existence. It cannot just be by
itself. It has to inter-be with the sunshine, the cloud, the forest, the
logger, the mind, and everything else. It is empty of a separate self. But,
empty of a separate self means full of everything. So it seems that our
observation and that of Avalokita do not contradict each other after all.
Avalokita looked deeply into the five skandhas of form, feelings, perceptions,
mental formations, and consciousness, and he discovered that none of them can
be by itself alone. Each can only inter-be with all the others. So he tells us
that form is empty. Form is empty of a separate self, but it is full of
everything in the cosmos. The same is true with feelings, perceptions, mental
formations, and consciousness. http://www.lionsroar.com/the-fullness-of-emptiness/
Judaism
The
word “image” (selem) is sometimes related to a verb ‘salam’ (to “cut off”).
However, it is generally considered as “representation”. This conception of “representation”
is different from the modern concept of mental images. It means ‘presence’ but
not ‘identity’. So we can say in a sense God is present in human being but not
identical to it. It is interesting that this way of representing God goes
against the tradition of ‘image’ and ‘idolatry’ in which man used to create a
statue or the like and called it a representation of God or a symbol of its
presence. In both Mesopotamia and Egypt, “[t]he primary purpose of the image .
. . was not to describe the god; rather the image was one of the primary places
where the god manifested himself” (“The Anchor Bible Dictionary,” Volume III,
p.390). In Genesis, on the contrary, God creates man and manifests Himself in
his own image. While in Egypt and Mesopotamia sometimes the king also was
considered as the manifestation of god, in Genesis human race on the whole is
the manifestation of God, though in the beginning deprived of the knowledge of
good and bad and desiring the divine wisdom, rooted in being God’s representation.
“Thus, the presence of the god and the blessing that accompanied that presence
were affected through the image. It was the function of the image rather than
its form that constituted its significance” (“The Anchor Bible Dictionary,”
Volume III, p.390).
Rambam
points out that the Hebrew words translated as "image" and
"likeness" in Gen. 1:27 do not refer to the physical form of a thing.
The word for "image" in Gen. 1:27 is "tzelem," which
refers to the nature or essence of a thing, as in Psalm 73:20, "you will
despise their image (tzel'mam)." You despise a person's nature and
not a person's physical appearance.
The Dual Nature: In
Genesis 2:7, the Bible states that God formed (vayyitzer) man. The spelling of
this word is unusual: it uses two consecutive Yods instead of the one
you would expect. The rabbis inferred that these Yods stand for the word
"yetzer," which means impulse, and the existence of two Yods
here indicates that humanity was formed with two impulses: a good impulse (the yetzer
tov) and an evil impulse (the yetzer ra). The yetzer tov is
the moral conscience, the inner voice that reminds you of God's law when you consider
doing something that is forbidden. According to some views, it does not enter a
person until his 13th birthday, when he becomes responsible for following the
commandments. The yetzer ra is more difficult to define, because there
are many different ideas about it. It is not a desire to do evil in the way we
normally think of it in Western society: a desire to cause senseless harm.
Rather, it is usually conceived as the selfish nature, the desire to satisfy
personal needs (food, shelter, sex, etc.) without regard for the moral
consequences of fulfilling those desires. The yetzer ra is not a bad
thing. It was created by God, and all things created by God are good. The
Talmud notes that without the yetzer ra (the desire to satisfy personal
needs), man would not build a house, marry a wife, beget children or conduct
business affairs. But the yetzer ra can lead to wrongdoing when it is
not controlled by the yetzer tov. There is nothing inherently wrong with
hunger, but it can lead you to steal food. There is nothing inherently wrong
with sexual desire, but it can lead you to commit rape, adultery, incest or
other sexual perversion. The yetzer ra is generally seen as something
internal to a person, not as an external force acting on a person. The idea
that "the devil made me do it" is not in line with the majority of
thought in Judaism. Although it has been said that Satan and the yetzer ra
are one and the same, this is more often understood as meaning that Satan is
merely a personification of our own selfish desires, rather than that our
selfish desires are caused by some external force. People have the ability to
choose which impulse to follow: the yetzer tov or the yetzer ra.
That is the heart of the Jewish understanding of free will. The Talmud notes
that all people are descended from Adam, so no one can blame his own wickedness
on his ancestry. On the contrary, we all have the ability to make our own
choices, and we will all be held responsible for the choices we make. http://www.jewfaq.org/human.htm
Jesus:
Christianity
The
Parable of the Mustard Seed: The kingdom of Heaven is like a
mustard-seed, which a man took and sowed in his field; As a seed, mustard is
smaller than any other; but when it has grown it is bigger than any
garden-plant; it becomes a tree, big enough for the birds to come and roost among
its branches.”
The
Parable of the Treasure: The kingdom of Heaven is like treasure lying
buried in a field. The man who found it, buried it again; and for sheer joy
went and sold everything he had, and bought that field.
The
Parable of the Vineyard Laborers · The Parable of the Wedding Feast. The
Parable of the Prodigal Son. The Parable of the Good Samaritan. The Kingdom
of God Is Among You.
Once
Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he
answered, “The Kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed;
nor will they say, ‘look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the
kingdom of God is among you.
Gospel
of Thomas:
Jesus
said: “if your leaders say to you, ‘Look, the kingdom is in heaven,’ then the
birds of heaven will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then
the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside you and it is outside
you.
Islam
We
created human. We know the promptings of human soul, and are closer to him [or
her] than his [or her] jugular vein. (Quran 50:16)
God is the First and the Last,
the Ascendant and the Intimate, and of all things Knowing. God knows what
penetrates into the earth and what emerges from it and what descends from the
heaven and what ascends therein; and God is with you wherever you are. (57:3-4)
When
your Lord took out the offspring from the loins of the Children of Adam and
made them bear witness about themselves, He said, ‘Am I not your Lord? And they
replied, ‘Yes, we bear witness.’ So you cannot say on the Day of Resurrection,
‘We were not aware of this,’ (7:172)
Do not
follow blindly what you do not know to be true: ears, eyes, and heart, you will
be questioned about all these. (17: 36)
Those
who, having done something shameful or having wronged their own souls, remember
God and immediately ask forgiveness for their sins... (Quran 3:135)
Have
they not thought about their own selves within themselves? God did not create
the heavens and earth and everything between them without a serious purpose and
an appointed time, yet many people deny that they will meet their Lord. (30:8)
So
[prophet] as a man of pure faith, stand firm and true in your devotion to the
religion. This is the natural disposition God instilled in mankind—there is no
altering God’s creation—and this is the right religion, though most people do
not realize it. (30:30)
[1] Kantian Western
Enlightenment of the sovereignty of reason has an interesting and strange
ethical theory, which is a heroic attempt to show that our wired in and innate
(a priori) law of reason defies inconsistency in ethical issues and
falls into cognitive dissonance and contradiction if it can’t universalize its
own moral actions, i.e., I shouldn’t find myself in cognitive dissonance if
everyone does the same thing that I morally do. This Kantian theory can’t
explain why this inconsistency should be avoided. Kant appeals to a sense of
“reverence” for the law of reason within. We all understand the kind of shame
and guilt we feel, when we realize we are inconsistence. Maturity of divine
conscience is a movement from the shame we experience under the dictum of
social norms only to the shame we experience if we violate our own divine
nature and lose the integrity of our own conscience.
Kant's response to this objection can be found in the footnote to Groundwork for Metaphysics of Morals:
"One could accuse me of merely taking refuge behind the word respect [Ak4:401] in an obscure feeling instead of giving a distinct reply to the question through a concept of reason. Yet even if respect is a feeling, it is not one received through influence but a feeling self-effected through a concept of reason and hence specifically distinguished from all feelings of the first kind, which may be reduced to inclination or fear. What I immediately recognize as a law for me, I recognize with respect, which signifies merely the consciousness of the subjection of my will to a law without any mediation of other influences on my sense. The immediate determination of the will through the law and the consciousness of it is called respect, so that the latter is to be regarded as the effect of the law on the subject and not as its cause. Authentically, respect is the representation of a worth that infringes on my self-love. Thus it is something that is considered as an object neither of inclination nor of fear, even though it has something analogical to both at the same time. The object of respect is thus solely the law, and specifically that law that we lay upon ourselves and yet also as in itself necessary. As a law we are subject to it without asking permission of self-love; as laid upon us by ourselves, it is a consequence of our will, and has from the first point of view an analogy with fear, and from the second with inclination. All respect for a person is properly only respect for the law (of uprightness, etc.) of which the person gives us the example. Because we regard the expansion of our talents also as a duty, we represent to ourselves a person with talents also as an example of a law, as it were (to become similar to the person in this) and that constitutes our respect. All so-called moral interest consists solely in respect for the law. [The parenthetical material in the penultimate sentence was added in 1786. Cf. Critique of Practical Reason, Ak 5:71–89. In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant lists four feelings that are produced directly by reason and can serve as moral motivation. These are ‘‘moral feeling,’’ ‘‘conscience,’’ ‘‘love of human beings,’’ and ‘‘respect’’ (Metaphysics of Morals, Ak 6:399–403).]"
Kant's response to this objection can be found in the footnote to Groundwork for Metaphysics of Morals:
"One could accuse me of merely taking refuge behind the word respect [Ak4:401] in an obscure feeling instead of giving a distinct reply to the question through a concept of reason. Yet even if respect is a feeling, it is not one received through influence but a feeling self-effected through a concept of reason and hence specifically distinguished from all feelings of the first kind, which may be reduced to inclination or fear. What I immediately recognize as a law for me, I recognize with respect, which signifies merely the consciousness of the subjection of my will to a law without any mediation of other influences on my sense. The immediate determination of the will through the law and the consciousness of it is called respect, so that the latter is to be regarded as the effect of the law on the subject and not as its cause. Authentically, respect is the representation of a worth that infringes on my self-love. Thus it is something that is considered as an object neither of inclination nor of fear, even though it has something analogical to both at the same time. The object of respect is thus solely the law, and specifically that law that we lay upon ourselves and yet also as in itself necessary. As a law we are subject to it without asking permission of self-love; as laid upon us by ourselves, it is a consequence of our will, and has from the first point of view an analogy with fear, and from the second with inclination. All respect for a person is properly only respect for the law (of uprightness, etc.) of which the person gives us the example. Because we regard the expansion of our talents also as a duty, we represent to ourselves a person with talents also as an example of a law, as it were (to become similar to the person in this) and that constitutes our respect. All so-called moral interest consists solely in respect for the law. [The parenthetical material in the penultimate sentence was added in 1786. Cf. Critique of Practical Reason, Ak 5:71–89. In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant lists four feelings that are produced directly by reason and can serve as moral motivation. These are ‘‘moral feeling,’’ ‘‘conscience,’’ ‘‘love of human beings,’’ and ‘‘respect’’ (Metaphysics of Morals, Ak 6:399–403).]"
[2] “I have
created the jinn and humankind only for My worship.” (Quran 51:56) “Glorify the
praises of your Lord...” (Quran 15:98) “The seven heavens and the earth and
whatever is in them glorify God and there is nothing which does not glorify
God’s praise. However, you do not understand their glorification.” (Quran
17:44)
[3] Popper: "By
'fallibilism' I mean here the view, or the acceptance of the fact, that we may
err, and that the quest for certainty (or even the quest for high probability)
is a mistaken quest. But this does not imply that the quest for truth is mistaken.
On the contrary, the idea of error implies that of truth as the standard of
which we may fall short. It implies that, though we may seek for truth, and
though we may even find truth (as I believe we do in very many cases), we can
never be quite certain that we have found it. There is always a possibility of
error". All quotations taken from: https://www3.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/ti/artigas.htm
[4]
Kuhn:
“The development process described in this essay has been a process of
evolution from primitive beginnings-a process whose successive stages are
characterized by an increasingly detailed and refined understanding of nature.
But nothing that has been or will be said makes it a process of evolution
toward anything.... We are all deeply accustomed to seeing science as the one
enterprise that draws constantly nearer to some goal set by nature in advance.”
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago:
U Chicago P, 1970), p.170-1). http://history.hanover.edu/hhr/94/hhr94_4.html
[6]
“I have
created the jinn and humankind only for My worship.” (Quran 51:56) “Glorify the
praises of your Lord...” (Quran 15:98) “The seven heavens and the earth and
whatever is in them glorify God and there is nothing which does not glorify
God’s praise. However, you do not understand their glorification.” (Quran
17:44)
