Reason first: what to do when logic clashes with tradition?

“Faith is above reason”?

Many say that faith is “above reason.” When logic contradicts it, that is a “test” one must withstand. The position here is the complete opposite: reason comes first, even in matters of faith. And there is a simple reason for this. Even someone who decides to “give up reason and believe” uses reason to make that decision. And in that decision he may err exactly as in any other. There is no escaping reason. What reason requires is what I am meant to think, what I am meant to believe, and how I am meant to act.

This position is not new. Rabbi Shimon Shkop, one of the great Lithuanian roshei yeshiva about a hundred years ago, wrote in the introduction to his book that a person’s duty to obey what reason requires precedes the Torah itself. He illustrated this with monetary law: the prohibition of theft assumes that there is something that belongs to me and something that belongs to you, and that is determined by reason and human law, even before the Torah. The Torah comes and adds force to it. And before him, Rabbenu Nissim Gaon, about a thousand years ago, explained that non-Jews are punished even for things they were not commanded, because “all the commandments that depend on reasoning and understanding of the heart, everyone is already obligated in them from the day God created man upon the earth.” A commandment based on logic binds every person, at every time and in every place, even without a command.

Three kinds of difficulty

And yet, whoever believes there was a revelation at Sinai must reckon with the possibility that he is the one who is mistaken, and give weight to the tradition. The question is when. It is worth distinguishing three kinds of difficulty.

The first kind is not understanding. It is not clear to me why tefillin are put on precisely every day, and why precisely on the left arm. Here it is reasonable to trust God: perhaps he knows something I do not, and after reaching the conclusion that he exists and that he commanded, I am willing to accept that my logic is partial.

The second kind is a difficulty with morality or with the laws of nature. A prohibition that seems immoral to me, or a miracle like the splitting of the Red Sea, which contradicts physics. That is a difficulty, but not a contradiction. Whoever created the laws of nature can change them. And in the case of a moral difficulty, there may be a moral consideration I do not see, or a religious consideration that outweighs the moral one in this case, as also happens between two moral values. Here one can look for an interpretation, one can accept the difficulty and live with it, and one can also go on wrestling.

And it is worth adding an important distinction. Very little of what has come down to us in the tradition is “the word of God” in the direct sense. Almost everything went through human elaboration and interpretation over the generations. So in most cases the clash is not between the word of God and my opinion, but between an ancient human interpretation of the word of God and my opinion. And on the other hand, my opinion is not certain either. Only when both sides are uncertain is there room to weigh: perhaps to interpret differently, and perhaps to give up my position. There is no sweeping rule here, neither in favor of tradition nor in favor of reason.

The third kind is a genuine logical contradiction. For example, the claim that God knows in advance what I will choose, and that my choice is nevertheless completely free. Here, as we will see, there is nothing to accept, even if the believer wanted to, because there is no content here that can be accepted.

In the yeshiva world they say: “Better to strain the text than to strain the reasoning.” That is, when one meets a difficult text, it is better to interpret the words in a forced way than to accept an illogical idea. That is exactly the direction taken here. But this rule does not solve everything: one must always decide how forced the text is and how forced the reasoning is, and that decision remains ours.

One cannot believe a contradiction

Why can one not “believe” a contradiction? Because a sentence like “this thing is true and also not true” is not a claim. It is a collection of words without content. Like “a rectangle whose diagonal is shorter than its side”: one can say the words, but there is nothing they describe, and so there is nothing here to believe. And from this, something about God too: he too “cannot” perform a contradiction. This is not a lack in his power, because a contradiction is not something that can be done. Maimonides (Guide III:15) wrote that the logically impossible is not subject to God’s power, and added that “no one among the people of reflection disputes this.” And by the way, where do we even get that God is “omnipotent”? There is no clear source for that. What can be said is that his power is immeasurably greater than ours.

And Maimonides himself acted this way. In the “Eight Chapters,” his introduction to Pirkei Avot, he sets up a contradiction between the philosophers and the Sages on the question of who is greater: one who has no desire for evil, or one who has the desire and overcomes it. The philosophers said the first, and the Sages said “whoever is greater than his fellow, his inclination is greater than his.” He did not reject the philosophers because the Sages said otherwise. He tried to reconcile, and found that in fact both are true. His reconciliation: the philosophers spoke of transgressions that every person understands are bad, such as murder, robbery or ingratitude. With such transgressions, the one who does not want to commit them at all really is better: whoever desires to murder has a flaw in his soul. The Sages, on the other hand, spoke of commandments that are not self-evident, that reason does not require, such as meat with milk or shatnez. Of them they said: “A person should not say ‘I cannot bear to eat meat with milk,’ but ‘I could, but what can I do, my Father in heaven has decreed upon me.’” That is, here there is no flaw in the desire, and a person’s greatness lies precisely in refraining because of the command. Both statements are true, each in its domain. And on another question, whether the world was created or always existed (“the eternity of the world”), he wrote explicitly (Guide II:25) that if there were a demonstration, that is, an absolute rational proof, that the world is eternal, he would interpret the verses of creation at the beginning of Genesis accordingly. Exactly as he interpreted the verses that describe God as having a body (“the hand of God,” “the eyes of God”) as metaphor, because it had been proven to him that God is not a body. He rejected the eternity of the world only because it had no such proof. And the Kuzari put it sharply: “Far be it from God that the word of the Torah should contradict the testimony of what is seen with the eye, or what has been proven by rational demonstration.” What is true remains true, and tradition cannot cancel it.

Is it permitted to forbid thinking?

Here an objection arises from the Torah itself. It is written, “You shall not stray after your heart and after your eyes,” and the Sages learned from this a prohibition on “heretical thoughts.” Maimonides (Laws of Idolatry 2:2-3) expands: it is forbidden to read books of idolatry, and forbidden to entertain any thought that might “uproot a principle of the principles of the Torah,” because “a person’s mind is limited.” How does this fit with everything said about freedom of thought?

The answer is that such a prohibition is not logical, for several reasons. First, the question of whether there is a God is a question of fact, and a command cannot determine what is true. Just as a law of parliament cannot command me to think that the table in front of me does not exist: one can say the words, one cannot think them. Second, as long as a person has not reached the conclusion that the Torah obligates him, it does not yet obligate him, and a prohibition on examining does not apply to him. Otherwise, an idol-worshipper too could say: “My religion forbids me to examine it,” and would never get out of it. Third, “the mouth that forbade is the mouth that permitted”: reason is the basis of faith. How can one use it to reach faith, and then forbid its use? Fourth, reading works of thought, even those whose conclusions differ, broadens the mind and deepens faith. And fifth, what might be called a “mistaken transaction”: if a person would leave the faith upon hearing all the arguments, then his present faith is not the result of a real decision, but of not having been exposed to the other side. It is “faith by mistake,” like a deal made without knowing an essential detail, which halakha regards as a “mistaken transaction.” And if he would remain a believer, what is the point of the prohibition?

So it is hard to see how such a prohibition could bind in its plain sense, even if it had been stated explicitly. A prohibition on clarifying the truth contradicts the very foundation on which faith rests. And one can also propose an interpretation. Maimonides himself read many works of philosophy that disagreed with the Torah, first among them Aristotle, who claimed the world is eternal. It is reasonable that he did not mean to forbid serious inquiry. One can understand that the decisors formulated the prohibition sharply in order to keep away the general public, who did not know how to cope. And whoever is truly capable of such inquiry will not ask the decisors whether he is allowed, and rightly so. Whoever accepts the instruction, it is good that it was written for him. And whoever does not, suffers no harm from its having been written. And if someone still thinks that whoever thinks freely is committing a transgression? One can live with that easily. What one cannot live with is the feeling that free thought is a transgression in someone’s eyes. Whoever believes in God, and in his logic, knows that God cannot forbid such a thing.