From: murray.bbs@cybernet.cse.fau.edu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish
Subject: L'Chaim 5 of 8
Date: 14 Aug 92 12:14:04 GMT
Organization: Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton

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L'CHAIM                      ISSUE  # 228                   PART 5 OF 8
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                               INSIGHTS
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FREEDOM OF CHOICE
From a letter of the Lubavitcher Rebbe
   I  received your letter which  is an acknowledgment  of my letter. I
was pleased  to read in  it about your  shiurim [study classes],  and I
hope that you  make additional efforts from time to  time in accordance
with the precept of our Sages that all things of  holiness should be on
the upgrade.
 
   Generally  speaking,  all the  questions  which  you mentioned  have
already been answered in  our sacred books, and  those who continue  to
argue about them do so mostly  either because of ignorance or mischief.
Some  people simply fear  that if they  accepted the  Torah and mitzvot
fully, they  would be obliged to commit  themselves in their daily life
and  conduct, and give up  certain pleasures, and  the like. Therefore,
they try to justify their misguided views by futile arguments.
 
   By  way of example,  I will take  one question which  you mention in
your letter, and which  apparently was impressed upon you  as something
complicated,  but in reality the  matter was discussed  and solved very
simply in our sacred literature. I refer to the question of how can man
have  freedom of choice of action if  G-d already knows beforehand what
he is going  to do? The answer to this is  simple enough as can be seen
on the basis of two illustrations:
 
   1. Suppose  there is a  human being who  can foretell the  future of
what is  going to  happen to  a person.  This does  not mean  that this
knowledge  deprives that person from  acting freely as  before. It only
means  that the  knowledge of  the forecaster  is such  that it  is the
knowledge of how the person will choose freely and of his own volition.
Similarly,  G-d's  knowledge of  human actions  is  such that  does not
deprive humans from  the free choice of action, but  it only means that
G-d knows how the person will choose to act in  a certain situation. To
formulate this  in scientific terms,  we can  say that the  opposite of
free choice is  not pre-knowledge,  but compulsion, for  there is  such
knowledge which does  not entail compulsion (as  for example, knowledge
of the past).
 
   2. Every  believer in G-d, and not Jews only, believes that with G-d
the past, present and  future are all the same, since  He is above time
and space. Just  as in the case of  human affairs, the fact that  Mr. X
knows all that  happened to Mr. Y  in the past, this knowledge  did not
affect  Mr. Y's actions in the past,  so G-d's knowledge of the future,
which is  the same as  His knowledge of  the past, does  not affect the
free choice of human action.
 
   From  the simple  solution to the  above question,  you can  draw an
analogy in regard to all similar questions and be sure that there is an
answer to them, and very often a simple one. But the proper  Jewish way
is to fulfill  the Torah and mitzvot without question,  and then to try
and find out anything that one  wishes to find out about the  Torah and
mitzvot, but not, G-d  forbid, make human understanding a  condition of
performance of G-d's commandments.
 
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 * Origin: L'Chaim BBS - KESHERnet NYC node2 (718-756-7201) (1:278/610)