13 Mar 07 The Question of Amazement

I’m still working through God In Search of Man by Abraham Joshua Heschel.  It’s been a pretty slow read as I have been reading, mulling, re-reading and re-mulling.  Here’s what I’ve been mulling on recently:

Greek philosophy began in a world without God. It could not accept the gods or the example of their conduct.  Plato had to break with the gods and to ask:  What is good?  Thus the problem of values was born.  And it was the idea of values that took the place of God.  Plato lets Socrates ask:  What is good?  But Moses’ question was:  What does God require of thee?

There is no word in Biblical Hebrew for doubt; there are many expressions of wonder.  Just as in dealing with judgments our starting point is doubt, wonder is the Biblical starting point in facing reality.  The Biblical man’s sense for the mind-surpassing grandeur of reality prevented the power of doubt from setting up its own independent dynasty.  Doubt is an act in which the mind inspects its own ideas; wonder is an act in which the mind confronts the universe.  Radical skepticism is the outgrowth of subtle conceit and self-reliance.  Yet there was no conceit in the prophets and no self-reliance in the Psalmist.

And so the Biblical man never asks:  Is there a God?  To ask such a question, in which doubt is expressed as to which of two possible attitudes is true, means to accept the power and validity of a third attitude, namely the attitude of doubt.  The Bible does not know doubt as an absolute attitude.  For there is no doubt in which faith is not involved.  The questions advanced in the Bible are of a different kind.