Divine Heresy

Divine Heresy and Heretical Faith

Divine Heresy:
shattering concepts of God
that limit the awareness of God

Heretical Faith:
shattering the awareness of God
that limits the concepts of God

Renowned Kabbalist Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook saw the challenge which free-thinkers posed to various conceptions of God as a positive phase in the development of religion. The following words are translated from the rabbi's writings. The essential thrust is that any conception of God is, in some sense, heretical, and ideas concerning God easily calcify into rigid forms of idol worship. He believed that the atheists, by attempting to tear down these concepts, were accomplishing something which the faithful had lost the ability to do for themselves; which is, to see the lack of fluidity in their conceptions about God, and how these concepts actually hinder the connection to the true source of God's wisdom, which is intuitive. The Rabbi wrote: "As the Messiah approaches, insolence will increase." The word translated here as "insolence" is hutspa, which may also be translated as "nerve" or "audacity". As the forms become more rigid, their detractors become more audacious.

excerpted from:
"The Essential Kabbalah" by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook:

“The essence of faith is an awareness of the vastness of Infinity. Whatever conception of it enters the mind is an absolutely negligible speck in comparison to what should be conceived, adn what should be conceived is no less negligible compared to what it really is... Every definition of God leads to heresy; definition is spiritual idolatry. Even attributing mind and will to God, even attributing divinity itself, and the name "God" -- these, too, are definitions. Were it not for the subtle awareness that all these are just sparkling flashes of that which transcends definition -- these, too, would engender heresy... The greatest impediment to the human spirit results from the fact that the conception of God is fixed in a particular form, due to childish habit and imagination. This is a spark of the defect of idolatry, of which we must beware.

All the troubles of the world, especially spiritual troubles such as impatience, hopelessness, and despair, derive from the failure to see the grandeur of God clearly. It is natural for each individual creature to be humble in the presence of God, to nullify itself in the presence of the the whole -- all the more so in the presence of the source of all being, which one senses as infinitely beyond the whole. There is no sadness or depression in this act, but rather delight and a feeling of being uplifted, a sense of inner power. But when is it natural? When the grandeur of God is well portrayed in the soul, with clear awareness, beyond any notion of divine essence.

We avoid studying the true nature of the divine, and as a result, the concept of God has dimmed. The innermost point of the awareness of God has become so faint that the essence of God is conceived only as a stern power from whom you cannot escape, to whom you must subjugate yourself. If you submit to the service of God on this empty basis, you gradually lose your radiance by constricting your consciousness. The divine splendour is plucked from your soul.

"Every sensitive spirit feels compelled to discard such a conception of God. This denial is the heresy that paves the way for the Messiah, when the knowledge of God runs dry throughout the world. The crude complacency of imagining God in words and letters alone puts humanity to shame. Heresy arises as a pained outcry to liberate us from this strange, narrow pit, to raise us from the darkness of letters and platitudes to the light of thought and feeling. Such heresy eventually takes its stand in the center of morality. It has a temporary legitimacy, for it must consume the filthy froth clingling to mindless faith. The real purpose of heresy is to remove the particular forms from the thought of the essence of all life, the root of every single thought... removing the dross that separates us from genuine divine light. On the desolate ruins wrought by heresy, the sublime knowledge of God will build her temple. Utter heresy arrises to purify the air of the wicked, insolent filth of thinking about the essence of divinity -- an act of peeping that leads to idolatry. In itself this heresy is no better than what it attacks, but it is absolutely opposed to it, and out of the clash of these two opposites, humanity is aided immensely in approaching an enlightened awareness of God, which draws it toward temporal and eternal bliss...

"Pure belief in the oneness of God has been blurred by corporeality. From time to time, this confusion is exposed. Whenever a corporeal aspect falls away, it seems as if faith itself has fallen, but afterward it turns out that, in fact, faith has been clarified. As the human spirit verges on complete clarity of faith, the final subtle shell of corporeality falls away -- attributing existence to God. For truly, existence, however we define it, is immeasurably remote from God. The silhouette of this denial resembes heresy but when clarified is actually the highest level of faith. Then the human spirit becomes aware that the divine emanates existence and is itself beyond existence. What appeared to be heresy, now purified, is restored to purest faith. But this denial of existence in God -- this return to the source of all being, to the essential vibrancy of all existence -- requires exquisite insight. Each day one must trace it back to its authentic purity.

"The Infinite transcends every particular content of faith."