Comments | cellio: Melton class, miracles

cellio

Melton class, miracles

Nov 28, 2006 23:30

Last night was class #10 (of 30 for the year), and evaluation night. They wanted the forms back that night, so I had to write comments quickly. I hope I was sufficiently diplomatic about the first course ( Read more... )

judaism: theology, melton

Comments 2

baron_steffan November 30 2006, 01:02:26 UTC

There's a kabbalistic notion that the focus of Creation isn't so much manifestation per se as the imposition of order, that is, the manifestation specifically of physical laws. We can look at the first thing created -- light -- as an ordering of primordial chaos by the imposition of divine Law. So that leads to a definition of
"miracle" as "violation of physical law". That, I think, is a little broader than the popular idea, which seems to require some sort of specific benefit that we can believe was a deliberate gift from God. (Well, okay, everything is, but you know what I mean. See why I'm not a Talmudic scholar?) It takes a rabbinical mind, I think, to look at an unconsumed burning bush in the desert that way. Yes, we can evaluate the bush in terms of the gift to which it led Moses, but it itself...well, it isn't like the parting of the Red Sea, which was clearly done at that moment to save Israel from Pharaoh's pursuit.
I'm probably not expressing myself well here, but I'd be interested in how a real scholar (like, um, you) ( ... )

cellio November 30 2006, 02:56:18 UTC

We can look at the first thing created -- light -- as an ordering of primordial chaos by the imposition of divine Law.

Makes sense.

"Violation of physical law" is broad, but I think "specific gift from God" is too narrow. I think the latter comes, at least in part, from certain Christian groups that see God as almost your buddy -- all immanent and no transcendant, maybe.

In my opinion, there isn't a single definition which all miracles fit. That life works at all is in a sense miraculous, but it's not necessarily a specific gift from God. The parting of the sea was a blatant, open miracle. (Rambam the rationalist holds that ten miracles were "programmed in" at creation, including this one, and so it's not really a violation of natural law. He's free to believe that ( ... )