So we’ve started talking about Antigonus, if that’s his real name, and we can move on to talking about what he said:
Antigonus of Socho received the tradition from Simeon the Just. He used to say, Be not like servants who minister to their master upon the condition of receiving a reward; but be like servants who minister to their master without the condition of receiving a reward; and let the fear of Heaven be upon you.
The word translated here here as servant is avadim, slaves, and I am in agreement that choosing servant over slave in translation probably avoids some problems, but loses the avadim hayinu reference, we were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, and are now—what—slaves of the Divine? Slaves to no-one but the Divine? Anyway, some say slaves and some say servants, and you miss the mark either way, just by a bit.
In addition, some say on the condition of and some say for the sake of, which is a bigger spread. If you are a schoolteacher, f’r’ex, it is one thing for you to do your job on the condition of being paid, but quite another to do the job for the sake of being paid. I am happier with the sake translation, but that’s not based on some sort of scholarship, but a backwards justification for some of my preferred interpretations.
Anyway, if we can try to move on despite these ambiguities, Antigonus is clearly saying that the pious Jew should fulfill mitzvot without regard to either material reward or heavenly reward. Taking the theodicy question backward, rather than asking why do bad things happen to good people?, he asks why should people be good, even if bad things may still happen to them? And his conclusion is that we should serve the Divine without thought of reward. Service to the Divine is for its own sake. This is nice, but not altogether satisfying.
I should pause here to tell a story. It seems that two students named Tzadok and Baitus were reading this wisdom of Antigonus. Said they to each other: Is there then no reward in the world to come? Is there then no world to come? For if there is a life after this world in which the good servant is rewarded, then surely Antigonus would have said so, and not said that we should not expect a reward. And so they each concluded that there is no world to come, nor is there a reward for the good. And each of them founded a school of thought, based on this interpretation of the teachings. Baitus told his followers that there is no world to come, and that therefore power in this world is to be sought for its own sake; his followers were called Boethusians. And Tzadok taught that there is no world to come, and that therefore luxury in this world is to be sought for its own sake; his followers were called Sadducees. Warning: this story contains little historic truth, and is the Pharisaic version besides. But worth noting.
The question that comes to my mind, I’m afraid, is whether it matters if you fulfill the commandments of the Divine out of love or out of desire for a reward. After all, they are still fulfilled. I think of two other ways to attack the question that I find helpful (two so far, but it’s early yet): one is that upside-down response to theodicy that says to those who wonder about the rewards and punishments of sin and wickedness that they are simply asking the wrong question. Don’t concern yourself overmuch with reward, says Antigonus. Put that aside. When you find yourself asking why the Divine allows this or that, you are misunderstanding your relationship to the Divine, and the main point is not to find an answer, but to carry on without one.
The second angle is that it’s a warning, not against looking into theodicy as a philosophical matter, but against the more prosaic daily bargaining with the universe we attempt all the time. Please let me roll a ten. Let it be benign. Give me patience. All that sort of thing is (I think) what Antigonus is on about, or at least what he is on about for me at this time. It’s misguided and unhelpful, a bad habit to fall into, and if in the end, there is a reward for us, I don’t think those little bargains are helping us get it. Those bargains, most of which inevitably fail, work against the fear of heaven that will segue into the next note rather nicely.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
Yeah, the “if there is no Divine, why should we be good?” argument in favor of Divinity has always seemed to me to be strained. Usually, in my experience of it, it’s a hedge against atheism that gets asserted by weirdly conservative Christians. I really have no standard counter-argument, which may be why it gets under my skin so thoroughly, but I probably can’t counter it easily due to its utter alienness to my experience.
I’m good, when I’m good, because I Know Better, and I always have been so. It’s not a product of having any relationship with the Divine, but because of how I was raised. It’s a behavioral psychological thing, not a religious thing. I’ve never seen Heaven as a realistic reward or Hell as a realistic punishment. It’s like “if you’re good, when you die you get a unicorn!” WTF? Unicorns are a fairy tale! I knew that when I was four or five; how the heck is a passel of angels handing out harps or horny dudes with pitchforks supposed to persuade me?
Now that I’ve developed (am in the process of developing) my own theology, I’ve shoehorned my experience into my flavor of Discordianism, but I think it works pretty well: goddess needs to live as people who fear God and are good (or bad) for that reason, but she also needs to live as people who are good (or bad) for other reasons, as well. THAT’s why we should be good. Or bad.
However, I acknowledge that as a shoehorning and reverse-engineering of morality. I think perhaps the problem that irks me is that the People of the First Argument don’t see their argument as a shoehorning, as well, when it so very clearly is one.
peace
Matt
great