In a message dated 30/04/2008 17:27:31 GMT Standard Time, jansy@AETERN.US
writes:
Rilke, in these stories, described how an
omniscient God was oonce absent-minded enough to
be unable to return a lost bird to its original forest. Because
of this godly distraction an adolescent angel, who hovered around
him singing praises to the "All-seeing God", was rendered mute
because he'd sung a lie. Still the faithful angel flew around and his lips
continued to shape his soundless praise.
This is beautiful. But before Rilke, God, in the Torah, puts the
rainbow in the sky to remind himself not to flood the world again. He also says,
after giving the ten commandments: "In every place where I am reminded of my
name, I will come to you and bless you." God needs man to remind him of his own
name. It is a collaboration.
So even on the traditional belief that God is the narrator of the Torah
(the five books of Moses), God the narrator explicitly describes himself as
in need of the reader even to remind him of his own name. He is some way short
of omniscient. He is not Aristotle's unmoved mover. Rabbi Abraham Heschel calls
him the most moved mover.
So why should even a narrator who does not use the first person be thought
of as omniscient, if God doesn't claim to be?
Anthony Stadlen