The will of God is known by this short statement from our reason that tells us: Worship God your creator and love all men as yourself. Moreover our reason says: Do not do unto others that which you do not like to be done to you, but do unto others as you would like others to do unto you. The decalogue of the Pentateuch expresses the will of the creator excepting [the precept] about the observance of the Sabbath, for our reason says nothing of the observance of the Sabbath. But the prohibitions of killing, stealing, lying, adultery: our reason teaches us these and similar ones. Likewise the six precepts of the Gospel are the will of the creator. For indeed we desire that men show mercy to us; it therefore is fitting that we ourselves show the [same] mercy to the others, as much as it is within our power. It is the will of God that we keep our life and existence in this world. It is by the will of the creator that we come into and remain in this Life, and it is not right for us to leave it against his holy will. The creator himself wills that we adorn our life with science and work; for such an end did he give us reason and power. Manual labour comes from the will of God because without it the necessities of our life cannot be fulfilled. Likewise marriage of one man with one woman and education of children.
Moreover there are many other things which agree with our reason and are necessary for our life or for the existence of mankind. We ought to observe them, because such is the will of our creator, and we ought to know that God does not create us perfect but creates us with such a reason as to know that we are to strive for perfection as long as we live in this world, and to be worthy for the reward that our creator has prepared for us in his wisdom. It was possible for God to have created us perfect and to make us enjoy beatitude on earth; but he did not will to create us in this way; instead he created us with the capacity of striving for perfection, and placed us in the midst of the trials of this world so that we may become perfect and deserve the reward that our creator will give us after our death; as long as we live in this world we ought to praise our creator and fulfil his will and be patient until he draws us unto him, and beg from his mercy that he will lessen our period of hardship and forgive our sins and faults which we committed through ignorance; and enable us to know the laws of our creator and to keep them.
Now as to prayer, we always stand in need of it because [our] rational nature requires it. The soul endowed with intelligence that is aware that there is a God who knows all, conserves all, rules all, is drawn to him so that it prays to him and asks him to grant things good and to be freed from evil and sheltered under the hand of him who is almighty and for whom nothing is impossible, God great and sublime who sees all that is [above and] beneath him, holds all, teaches all, guides all, our Father, our creator, our Protector, the reward for our souls, merciful, kind, who knows each of our misfortunes, takes pleasure in our patience, creates us for life and not for destruction, as the wise Solomon said: “You, Lord, teach all things, because you can do all things and overlook men’s sins so that they can repent. You love all that exists, you hold nothing of what you have made in abhorrence, you are indulgent and merciful to all” [Wisdom 11:23–25]. God created us intelligent so that we may meditate on his greatness, praise him and pray to him in order to obtain the needs of our body and soul. Our reason which our creator has put in the heart of man teaches all these things to us. How can they be useless and false?
COMMENT
is “worship God your creator and love all men as yourself” really a precept of reason? Zera Yacob offered an argument for the existence of God back in chapter III. And in chapter IV he briefly addressed the further matter of worship:
He is intelligent who understands all, for he created us as intelligent from the abundance of his intelligence; and we ought to worship him, for he is the master of all things. If we pray to him, he will listen to us; for he is almighty.
And what about the Golden Rule? Jesus taught it, but I am not so sure about reason, and I would like more of an argument there. Empathy and mutual aid are natural, certainly, but so are vengeance and rivalry.
I’ve talked before about how there are lots of good rules that are not deliverances of pure reason, and I think observance of the Sabbath is another good example. Unlike murder and theft, observing the Sabbath is only required because God tells us to do it. It’s like taking out the trash as a kid—you only have to do it if your parents tell you to. Still, you do have to do it if they tell you to, and likewise we’re supposed to observe the Sabbath, not because we’re told to do so by reason, but because we’re told to do so by God. Moreover, it’s good that he told us to do that. If everyone else works seven days a week, then it’s pretty hard to take one day off yourself. But if God (or any other authority) makes everyone take a day off, then great! Everyone gets a day off.
The following is an interesting passage, because it raises a question about how Zera Yacob understands the relationship between what we should do, what reason tells us, and what God wills:
But the prohibitions of killing, stealing, lying, adultery: our reason teaches us these and similar ones. Likewise the six precepts of the Gospel are the will of the creator. For indeed we desire that men show mercy to us; it therefore is fitting that we ourselves show the [same] mercy to the others, as much as it is within our power. It is the will of God that we keep our life and existence in this world. It is by the will of the creator that we come into and remain in this Life, and it is not right for us to leave it against his holy will.
Zera Yacob evidently thinks that whatever reason reveals to be right, God wills—perhaps because reason simply reveals the will of God? In the last chapter, Zera Yacob referred to “the will of the creator revealed through the light of reason,” and see also the first sentence of the present chapter. The last sentence of this quote may suggest that, ultimately, we should do things precisely because God wills that we do them; indeed just below Zera Yacob says that “We ought to observe [things which agree with our reason], because such is the will of our creator.” As Plato observed in the Euthyphro, there must be some reason why God commands one thing rather than another, so it cannot simply be that we should do things merely because God says so. On the other hand, and as I pointed out just above, God, like a parent, can make certain things obligatory in virtue of his authority. Maybe that’s all Zera Yacob is getting at in the last line above: it is wrong to abandon the life your creator gave you in the same way that you could be said to wrong your parents by committing suicide. But on the whole it is a shame that Zera Yacob does not say more about what we would now call moral epistemology and metaethics; probably we must just accept that he has not really worked out a theory on such matters.
Regarding manual labour, we may note that in Ethiopia, as in many ancient and medieval societies, manual labour and technical trades were looked down on.
In the second paragraph, Zera Yacob offers a brief theodicy (a “justification of the ways of God to man,” in Milton’s words). God could have made us perfect, but did not do so because he wanted us to perfect ourselves and deserve our blessedness. As usual, Zera Yacob doesn’t develop the idea in detail, but in contemporary philosophy of religion, this is known as a “soul-making theodicy.”
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