Miraculous Nature : Part Two

In last week’s post we explored some of the basic ideas and terminology of miracles and nature within Chassidic thought. We explained that a miracle is asserting G-d’s authority and mastery over our physical seemingly autonomous reality. Within this itself there are two ways of expressing this divinity within the physical, in a revealed dominant manner and in a concealed integrated manner. The revealed manner is one of dominating nature. 

The concealed manner is one of dealing with the system of nature, acknowledging its legitimacy and working with the rules of nature to a certain extent; bending nature instead of breaking it. Each path has certain superiority in terms of communicating the absolute power and dominion that the divine has over the physical.

I just want to add two points as a continuation of last week’s post. Firstly, we explained that within the integrated category of miracle there is a subdivision of the “recognizable-integrated miracle” and the “non-recognizable-integrated” miracle. 

However there appears to be a subdivision even within the category of the open dominant miracle. There is the “completed dominant miracle” and the “continuous dominant miracle”. The completed dominant miracle is one where the miracle is open and dominant, clearly flouting the laws of nature but it is a one and done event. For example, G-d turning the Nile into blood. There was just one phenomenon that broke the laws of nature. The water turning into blood. 

After that one second of miracle there was now a river of blood that was flowing and behaving in accordance with nature.

Not so with the continuous dominant miracle. In this category the breaking of nature is a constant and ongoing event. Such as the sea splitting for the Jews when they were fleeing the Egyptians. G-d could have performed one extraordinary action of changing the very nature and molecular structure of the sea into water that naturally is vertical and inflexible. If that had occurred then a separate new miracle would be necessary to get the sea back to a flowing horizontal state instead of a rigid vertical one. G-d would have had to break this new nature of the water, a nature of vertical rigidity, to bring the sea back to its prior state. But this miracle didn’t occur within a completed framework. Instead it occurred within a framework of constant supernatural behavior. Every second the water stood required an entirely new and separate act of G-d to allow the water to ignore the rules of nature. 

This category is a much more invasive and overpowering one (from natures’ standpoint) since it is breaking nature anew every second instead of being a one-time intrusion.

The second additional point is: we explained that the advantage that the dominant miracle has is that it shows G-d’s mastery over the entire system of nature, expressing the fact that He can ignore the rules of nature at will. Conversely the advantage that an integrated miracle has is that it shows that G-d is not limited to ignoring nature when He wants to change something. Rather He can even work with nature and seduce, if you will, the system of nature to change course internally.

Perhaps an analogy to consider is one of an employer and employee. Imagine a boss tells one of his employees that from his perspective the next step the company must take is x. The employee’s perspective is that course x would be disastrous for the company and in fact course y must be pursued. The boss can then order his employee to implement course x or be fired. In this scenario the boss is expressing the dominance of his perspective by breaking the employees’ perspective and overriding it. A form of mastery to be sure, but not an organic ground-up approach. Rather what we have here is an externally enforced dominance. 

The other scenario is one in which the boss deliberates at length with his employee eventually convincing him that indeed course x is the wiser one. In this situation the dominance of the boss’s perspective is organic and from the ground up. It is dominant not just because it can steamroller the employee but more importantly because it took over the employee from within, eventually resonating with the employee and becoming so real that the employee himself embraces it. Two very different forms of strength and dominance.

This is all from the perspective of our reality, the natural. What about from the divine perspective? What are the differences between the dominant and the integrated miracle? From G-d’s perspective the two categories of miracles are extremely diverse in their meta-physical structure. Counter-intuitively a dominant miracle by definition contains a lesser lower level of divinity then an integrated miracle. This is because in order for an integrated miracle to occur there must be incredibly deep and lofty levels of divinity involved. 

Why is this? Think about the implications of an integrated miracle occurring. You have a situation in which the divine and the mundane are conversing and blending with each other. How is that possible? How can a finite system and an infinite system have any point of commonality and interaction between them? There is no starting point within which to engage in a shared dialogue.

The answer is that in order for this to occur there must be a third truly transcendent platform that facilitates a union between the infinite and the finite. This can only come from the essence of G-d Himself which is absolute and juggles the limited and the limitless all at once. For to be truly without limit means that one must be able to exist in limited forms as well. [A subject that deserves its own series of posts.] Therefore the integrated miracle must have some of the deepest levels of G-dliness involved, levels that are beyond even being defined as infinite, in order to bridge the limited-limitless divide.

The question that now needs to be addressed is the following. After everything is said and done how can we assert that there is a form of miracle that is integrated with nature since even after all the integration there is a point where nature says no and the miracle says yes. In other words you can bend nature all you want but at a certain point there is a negation of what the natural outcome would have been. Thus even the integrated miracle is not truly at one with nature.

Chassidut concedes this point and responds by holding up nature itself (removed from the concept of miracles) as the paradigm of a true synthesis between the divine and the natural.

This will be the topic of the next post. Stay tuned.