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Published Auguest 4, 2023 by Christian Lee Seibold
I happened upon a well-written article recently that described some of the author’s favorite heresies:
What's A Little Heresy Between Friends? (Web)
This post, while effectively presenting the complexity of human beliefs, also serves as a great overview for some of the heresies that propped up within Christian Theology. I liked it so much that I decided to write my own post in a similar nature. Since I am not Christian, and my beliefs lean more Jewish, these are actually not so heretical within the Jewish tradition, but they do go against the hyper-rational tendencies of contemporary times, as well as much Greek philosophy, which is definitely a pattern common to all these below.
The first one is the *anthropopathism* of God, the idea that God *feels emotions.* You see this in a lot of mystical works, as well as theologians and philosophers like Heschel, but it is also apparent in the Talmud, Midrashim, and even the Bible. The idea that God feels is completely against Greek philosophy of an unchanging, unfeeling God, which is part of why I like it so much.
There is a section of the Talmud that has captivated me for a while, Berakhot 7a. It talks about God praying for people, as well as God’s anger:
Along the same lines, **Rabbi Yoḥanan said in the name of Rabbi Yosei: From where** is it derived **that the Holy One, Blessed be He, prays? As it is stated: “I will bring them to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in the house of My prayer”** (Isaiah 56:7). The verse **does not say** the house of **their prayer, but rather,** “the house of **My prayer”; from here** we see **that the Holy One, Blessed be He, prays.**
The Gemara asks: **What does** God **pray?**
**Rav Zutra bar Tovia said** that **Rav said:**
God says: **May it be My will that My mercy will overcome My anger** towards Israel for their transgressions,
**and may My mercy prevail over My** other **attributes** through which Israel is punished,
**and may I conduct** myself **toward My children,** Israel, **with the attribute of mercy,
and may I enter before them beyond the letter of the law.**
- Berakhot 7a, *Koren Noé Talmud,* The William Davidson Edition (Koren Publishers) by Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz
So, God *prays.* He prays so that his mercy overcomes his anger. He prays that he treats his people with mercy. He also prays that he enters “beyond the letter of the law.” The passage then continues to narrate a story of a dream where God asks this Rabbi to bless Godself. It is incomprehensible for a human to bless a God that is supposedly unfeeling and immutable, and yet blessing God is a big part of Jewish tradition! One blesses God in the daily prayers, before studying the Torah, when waking up, upon eating or drinking, etc. The words “Blessed are you, God…” are used in so many Jewish prayers.
The second one is another of my favorites that challenges how many people think of God. It is the idea that *God changes.* God changes over time, and he changes in interaction with creation, especially humans. There are many passages in the Bible that shows God changing (some of my favorites are Genesis 9 and 18, and Jonah), but there are also many passages in the Talmud and in Midrashim that suggest a changing God. There is this tension in some of my past work between a changing God vs. humans gaining more understanding of God over time. I think both are possible and interact with each other.
This leads me to the final one: *that humans can argue with God and win the argument.* This one is probably the most challenging for many Christians, but it is so ingrained in Jewish tradition that a possible meaning for the Hebrew word Israel (Yisra’el) is “one who wrestles with God.” This alludes to the story of Jacob wrestling the angel (or is it God?) in Genesis 32. After this encounter, he is renamed to “Israel” and becomes the father of the 12 tribes of Israel.
This is not the only place God is argued with, however. Just before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham intercedes for Sodom in the latter half of Genesis 18. The story goes that Abraham asks what will happen if there are 50 righteous people in Sodom, and if God will still destroy the city in this case. God says he will not destroy the city if so. Abraham then asks again, this time lowering the number to 45. He continues to ask, lowering the number each time, until he gets to just 10 people. Of course, as the story goes, in Genesis 19, God does destroy the city, but God leads the few potentially righteous people out of the city first by sending two angels, according to the narrator. However, this does not diminish the importance of Genesis 18: God listens to our concerns and does not punish us for challenging God’s sense of justice.
One of my personal favorite stories is that of Job. Job is a righteous man with lots of cattle, a wife, and children. The Adversary (Heb. “HaSatan,” or the Satan[1]) challenges that Job only believes in God because he has wealth, possessions, and children, and his life is good. So, the adversary convinces God to let the adversary kill Job’s servants and allow his cattle to be stolen. Then, the adversary kills his daughters, and finally, strikes Job with disease. In every instance, Job does not curse God.
However, the heart of Job are the chapters in the center (chapters 3-41). This contains a long discussion between Job and his friends, who are convinced Job did something wrong to warrant the things that have happened to him. But then, God comes in out of nowhere, “from the whirlwind.” This is followed by a conversation between Job and God. Job challenges God’s justice and points out the bad things that happen to people. God gives completely unsatisfying answers in response and brings up Job’s limited understanding of the divine. Job ends up relenting in the end, and God rewards him with new daughters and cattle. Then God turns to Job’s friends and says, “I am angry at you and your two friends, for you have not spoken truthfully about Me, unlike My servant Job” (Job 42:7); Job’s challenging of God’s justice is more truthful than the friends who charged Job with wrongdoing.
However, while reading Job, I noticed this impression that others have also noticed of the different perspectives embedded within this story: the human and the divine. God alludes to humans’ limited knowledge of divinity, but Job explains his human perspective on justice and suffering. And this, I think, is one of the background themes of Job: that there is a difference between *divine experience* and *human experience.* Both Job and God are explaining their differing experiences, and they both relent in the end. This very theme led me to an interesting question that one could posit for a lifetime: How does an unlimited infinite God know what it’s like to be limited and finite?
Finally, the last passage is one of my favorites, and it was discussed in *Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law* by Chaim N. Saiman: the notion of the *Academy of Heaven.* In the Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 86a, there is a passage that starts: “They were arguing in the Academy of Heaven.” Not only is this an academy where Rabbis are arguing on different topics, it is *of heaven.* In this academy they are arguing about Halakhah! The intrigue doesn’t end here, as God joins the picture:
The Holy One, blessed is He, says he is pure,
While the rest of the Academy of Heaven says he is impure.
God and the rest of the Academy disagree on a particular classification of impure vs. pure. But the most important part is who makes the final decision, and *it was not God,* but rather Rabbi ben Nachmani! If humans have their own perspective, if God is a feeling, changing being, the message of this passage becomes clearer: Humans can argue with God, and sometimes they decide on issues. This would be regarded as one of the most heretical ideas in Fundamentalist Christianity, and yet it’s right here in the Talmud, a foundational text for Orthodox and Conservative Judaism.
But perhaps there is more here behind the surface: God doesn’t just change for the sake of change, he changes *for the sake of humanity* and his growing understanding of humans, and that is what it means to truly be in a bidirectional human-divine *relationship.*
1. The modern Theology of Satan had not been fully developed during the time the book of Job was written. In this book, Satan is merely someone who advises and counters God, and so is part of the divine council.