Jerusalem and Athens

It remains far beyond me to detail the avenues by which Platonic and Aristotelian ideas came to influence Judaism. However, it seems that the Greek conception of transcendence (e.g., the Absolute) along with the general rigor of Greek reasoning drove Jewish thinkers to envision a God that was ever more static and remote. The great medieval thinkers who wrote on this topic are well known, especially Rambam, Ralbag, and Crescas. But a millennium before Moreh Nevuchim was written, one of Judaism's most neglected philosophers and mystics gave us a surprisingly modern exposition of God's transcendence. Philo, "the first theologian," introduces the Jewish conception of unknowability (matt_90) with a Platonic expansion on the famous Exodus 33 conversation between God and Moses:

[Moses says] "But what Thou art in Thy essence I desire to understand, yet find in no part of the All any to guide me to this knowledge." [...] [God] replies, "Thy zeal I approve as praiseworthy, but the request cannot fitly be granted to any that are brought into being by creation. I freely bestow what is in accordance with the recipient; for not all that I can give with ease is within man's power to take, and therefore to him that is worthy of My grace I extend all the boons which he is capable of receiving. But the apprehension of Me is something more than human nature, yea even the whole heaven and universe will be able to contain. [...] But while in their essence they [God's powers] are beyond your apprehension, they nevertheless present to your sight a sort of impress and copy of their active working. You men have for your use seals which when brought into contact with wax or similar material stamp on them any number of impressions while they themselves are not docked in any part thereby but remain as they were. Such you must conceive My powers to be, supplying quality and shape to things which lack either and yet changing or lessening nothing of their eternal nature. Some of you call them not inaptly 'forms' or 'ideas,' since they bring form into everything that is, giving order to the disordered, limit to the unlimited, bounds to the unbounded, shape to the shapeless, and in general changing the worse to something better. Do not, then, hope to be ever able to apprehend Me or any of My powers in Our essence."

Further, Philo warns us that

To be anxious to continue his course yet further, and inquire about essence or quality in God, is a folly fit for the world's childhood. Not even to Moses, the all-wise, did God accord this, albeit he had made countless requests, but a divine communication was issued to him, "Thou shalt behold that which is behind Me, but My face thou shalt not see." This meant, that all that follows in the wake of God is within the good man's apprehension, while He Himself alone is beyond it, beyond, that is, in the line of straight and direct approach, a mode of approach by which (had it been possible) His quality would have been made known; but brought within ken by the powers that follow and attend Him; for those make evident not His essence but His subsistence from the things which he accomplishes.

While in Philo's view it certainly seems that aspects of God are unknowable by the human mind, he, like Maimonides later, does not take this as a cause for despair and disenchantment. Rather, Philo regards the recognition of God's unknowability as the highest goal of human inquiry:

When therefore the God-loving soul probes the question of the essence of the Existent Being, he enters on a quest of that which is beyond matter and beyond sight. And out of this quest there accrues to him a vast boon, namely to apprehend that the God or real Being is apprehensible by no one, and to see precisely this, that He is incapable of being seen.

Thus, in some sense, it is the recognition of the limits of human knowledge that itself represents the highest form of human knowledge, a sentiment echoed 1800 years later in R'Nachman's dictum that "The end of knowledge is [the realization] that we do not know" (green_92). Perhaps all mystics think alike, after all.

Next, the mystical approach...

Talmudical Unknowability

It would be a major oversight not to include the opinions of Chazal on the unknowability of God, but it appears to me that the Talmud contains very little of any substance on this topic, perhaps because of the "theological functionalism" to which Chazal largely adhered (lachs_93). I will cite two passages which I found mentioned in (montefiore_loewe_74): In the Midrash on Psalms (braude_59), we have

...when Moses said to the Holy One, blessed be He, Show me now Thy ways (Ex. 33:13), He showed them to Moses, as is said He made known His ways unto Moses (Ps. 103:7). But when Moses said: Show me, I pray Thee, Thy Glory (Ex. 33:18), that is to say, "Show me the rule whereby Thou guidest the world," God replied: "My rules thou canst not fathom!"

A perhaps even less informative passage is found in the Sifre on Deuteronomy (hammer_86):

Who rideth upon the heavens as thy help — when Israel is upright and performs the will of God, He rideth upon the heavens as thy help, but when they do not perform His will — and in His excellency on the skies (33:26) — if one dare say such a thing. And in His excellency on the skies: All of the people of Israel gathered around Moses and said to him, "Our master Moses, tell us, what is the glory (of God) really like on high?" He replied, "You can surmise what the glory (of God) is like on high from the appearance of the lower heavens." A parable: To what may this be likened? To a man who said, "I wish to behold the glory of the king." He was told, "Go to the capital city and you will see him." He went there and saw a curtain set with precious stones and pearls and spread out at the entrance of the city. He could not take his eyes off of it, until he collapsed in a swoon. They then said to him, "If you could not take your eyes off of a curtain set with precious stones and pearls and spread out at the entrance of the city, until you collapsed in a swoon, how much more so had you entered the city (and beheld the glory of the king)." Hence it is said, And in His excellency on the skies.

In both passages, the assertion is that God is somehow unapproachable. The distinction, I think, is that previously mentioned (last post) regarding the interpretation Exodus 33. In the Sifre above, the remoteness of God is characterized in terms of his radiance overloading the senses — the notion that God is somehow too intense for human perception, whereas in the Midrash on Psalms the unapproachability of God appears to be due to a genuine failure of comprehension. It is not that the attempt to understand God would cause us to be struck blind or "collapse in a swoon," but rather that the human mind cannot fathom the kind of Entity that is God — that the human mind is in some way incompatible with the kind of knowledge that characterizes this particular Entity. However, the exact nature of this incompatibility is not further discussed, as far as I can tell, and is probably not of any great interest to the author of the Midrash.

While there well may be other Talmudical passages which remark on God's remoteness and inaccessibility (and which I hope someone will bring to my attention!), it seems fair to say that the real history of the unknowable God begins when Judaism encounters Greek philosophy. This will be our next topic.

Biblical Unknowability

One finds early hints to the idea of the unknowable God in the Pentateuch. The classic passage is found in Exodus 33, where Moses makes various entreaties of God which might be interpreted as part of a quest to understand the Divine nature. Moses asks, "Now, if I have truly gained Your favor, pray let me know Your ways, that I may know You and continue in Your favor," and a few verses later, "Oh, let me behold Your Presence."

To this, God famously responds as follows:

I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim before you the name Lord, and I will grant the grace that I will grant and show the compassion that I will show. But, "He said, "you cannot see My face, for man cannot see Me and live." And the Lord said, "See, there is a place near Me. Station yourself on the rock and, as My Presence passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock and shield you with My hand until I have passed by. Then I will take My hand away and you will see My back; but My face must not be seen.

The metaphysical reading of this passage is either that God is in His essence somehow too "intense" to be directly perceived by human senses without damage to the perceptual apparatus, or, more abstractly, that God in His essence cannot be comprehended by mortal (i.e., living) creatures because His essence in some way transcends their representational or computational capacities. Both interpretations have been offered by various commentators, and sometimes (it would appear) even by the same commentator.

In Neviim and Ketuvim we find many additional passages that accommodate themselves to interpretations involving the unknowability of God. Kohelet claims in 3:11 that "He also puts eternity in their mind, but without man ever guessing, from first to last, all the things that God brings to pass," and later in 11:5, that "Just as you do not know how the life-breath passes into the limbs within the womb of the pregnant woman, so you cannot foresee the actions of God, who causes all things to happen." Likewise, The Psalmist proclaims (Ps.145) "Great is the Lord and much acclaimed; His greatness cannot be fathomed," and (Ps.147) "Great is our Lord and full of power; His wisdom is beyond reckoning." The Jewish Apocrypha also contains similar references to God's unknowability. From Ben Sirah 43:27 (skehan_dilella_87), we have

More than this we will not add;
let the last word be "He is the all."
Let us praise Him the more, since we cannot fathom Him,
[...]
Extol Him with renewed strength,
and weary not, though you cannot fathom Him.
For who has seen Him and can describe Him?
or who can praise Him as He is?
Beyond these, many things lie hid;
only a few of His works have I seen.

However, the passages most frequently cited in support of God's ultimate unknowability are those from Isaiah and Job:

Who measured the waters with the hollow of His hand,
And gauged the skies with a span,
And meted earth's dust with a measure,
And weighed the mountains with a scale
And the hills with a balance?
Who has plumbed the mind of the Lord,
What man could tell Him His plan?
Whom did He consult, and who taught Him,
Guided Him in the way of right?
Who guided Him in knowledge
And showed Him the path of wisdom?
[...]
To whom, then, can you liken God,
What form compare to Him?
[...]
Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The LORD is God from of old,
Creator of the earth from end to end,
He never grows faint or weary,
His wisdom cannot be fathomed.
(Isaiah 40:12-28)

For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)

Behold, God is great, and we know it not, nor can the number of his years be searched out. (Job 36:26)

Would you discover the mystery of God?
Would you discover the limit of the Almighty?
Higher than heaven — what can you do?
Deeper than Sheol — what can you know?
(Job 11:7-8)

Although all these Biblical passages are wonderfully pregnant with metaphysical possibilities, and have of course been the subject of uncountable interpretations of metaphysical character, it is not completely clear whether the biblical authors generally intended their words to be understood as claims about the unknowability of God. The context of some of these passages often makes it seem more plausible that they are intended to highlight the great power of God or his great fidelity and consistency, rather than speaking to metaphysical issues. (For example, "My ways are not your ways" because "the word that issues from My mouth...does not come back to Me unfulfilled, But... achieves what I sent it to do.")

There are certainly also many passages that seem to convey the contrary idea, that God can be known. For example, in Proverbs (2:1-5) we have,

My son, if you accept my words
And treasure up my commandments;
If you make your ear attentive to wisdom
And your mind open to discernment;
It you call to understanding
And cry aloud to discernment,
If you seek it as you do silver
And search for it as for treasures,
Then you will understand the fear of the LORD
And attain knowledge of God.

More significantly, it seems to me that the entire message of Tanach is the knowability of God, and that most Biblical authors therefore do not have a conception of God as being unknowable. Rather, in most cases, God communicates his desires and attitudes plainly enough, and without any great sense of mystery. Nevertheless, the extent to which the Biblical authors where actually interested in metaphysics is something that can be endlessly debated, and which probably will.

A Brief History of God's Unknowability

Since this is not a scholarly review, I will not give an exhaustive history of the idea of the unknowable God. (Nor could I, since I am just learning most of this material for the first time myself.) The following brief sketch will therefore have to suffice. Also, I am not a student of medieval rationalism or kabbalism, so I hope that where I have gone astray in describing these movements, someone with greater knowledge and insight will be willing to correct me. (You know who you are.) Certainly, there are many other sources which may be consulted by the reader interested in a more thorough review of these issues altmann_73, seeskin_00. Also, it will be apparent that I am covering only the classical Jewish approaches to the issue, and neglecting even the most significant non-Jewish Western thinkers such as Aquinas, Scotus, or Avicenna. To attempt to survey both Jewish and non-Jewish philosophers in this short paper would be (for me) beyond futile. As it turns out, though, this is not the major deficiency that one might think, since the important Jewish philosophers were all heavily influenced by non-Jewish sources (and, in some cases, vice-versa), so most of the major extant ideas are expressed in one way or another by the various Jewish thinkers.

Unknowability of God, In Parts

My epochal post on the "Unknowability of God" is taking an epoch to write, so I will start posting the introductory material in parts. This was B. Spinoza's suggestion, and I think it is a good one, although I am sure he (and everyone) will be disappointed at the quality of what they see. Nevertheless, I don't envision the introductory parts getting any better, so I will post them now in the hope that people who read them can offer me some help in improving this material. I hope at least that B. Spinoza, Chardal, and David Guttman, and BenAvuyah will give me some feedback. I will really appreciate it! Thanks a lot. Stand by for imminent posting.