Job and Reason
In the Hebrew scriptures we have the book of Job, an odd narrative for several reasons. First, we have Job, the main character, who is not part of the Jewish people, yet his story takes its place in the Hebrew canon. Second, we have Satan, who otherwise has a small presence with his occasional Adversarial roles. Third, we have a challenge between God and Satan: to test whether Job would be faithful if he were not so blessed. It is a game in the spiritual realm, a battle between the celestial beings otherwise only alluded to in cosmic histories, but here described in play by play, with interactions and dialogue between the divine rulers, as if they were captains of two sports teams instead of fighting the heavy war of eternity.
Satan has a dialogue with God and provokes, “Does Job fear God for nothing? Have You not made a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But reach out with Your hand now and touch all that he has; he will certainly curse You to Your face.” Oddly, this God who has been presented as just and righteous, who blesses his own people and punishes evil doers, agrees to the test. He sets restrictions on Satan, but those are easily negotiated down, with God expressing faith in the devotion and steadfastness of Job, by his readiness to gamble on it, when the rest of scripture rather focuses on the faith of mankind, despite their failures. But in the process, the faith of Job is affirmed.
Job suffers several hardships, illness, and destruction of fortune, including the death of his children, in the name of the spiritual challenge, without knowing the reasoning. His wife represents the irrationality within the narrative of the rational Job, being the first to urge her husband to give in, telling him “Do you still hold firm your integrity? Curse God and die!” Following this come speeches from three of his friends. They take turns in poetic form to provide arguments, with Job responding to each, for three rounds. The structure creates a cubic pattern, with decreasing energy and passion from the friends. They present their contentions that God is just, God would only punish the unrighteous, that Job must have done something wrong and he can stop suffering if only he would repent. Their reasoning is sound, yet it is the reasoning of flawed humanity.
Job holds steadfast. His narrative cycles are full of rational arguments trying to justify why God would treat a faithful man this way, with his friends using logic to try to persuade him that this is a punishment and therefore he need only ask for forgiveness. In the face of this logic, Job resists. He lets reason speak, and engages in the dialogue, but does not concede. He does not claim to understand the cause of what his friends think of as punishments, and he seems stoic or apathetic towards his own suffering and lack of understanding, where it would seem justified to react in frustration.
In the end, God speaks. God’s reasoning is not the reasoning of mankind, and mankind’s reasoning is not the reasoning of God. Just as Greek has words to distinguish different forms of love, for instance agape being specifically godly love, we can distinguish different forms of reason; we can call God’s reasoning logos. “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God” the gospel of John begins. We human beings like to believe we are the rational creatures, and reason is what sets us apart from the animals, it is the touch of the divine we carry with us. But here Job yields to the reasoning of God, acknowledging that human beings do not have access to the reasoning of God, falling short. Human wisdom is foolishness for God, and God’s wisdom is foolishness to humans.
Job responds by saying, “Behold, I am insignificant; what can I say in response to You?” This is the right answer, because the challenge was not to endure, but to surrender. Job and his friends can exercise reasoning in speech after speech, but their understanding can not compare to the understanding of the one who created the world and populated it with all it contains. Job’s acknowledgement that his human reasoning fails in comparison to the divine reason is a greater success than enduring any hardship and is the confirmation that Job is faithful.
In relation to philosophical practice, we see in Job a model of surrendering to reason, as we ask the interlocutor to do. The interlocutor may not understand the reasoning, strategy, and open objective, and may be tempted to take over the direction of the dialogue from the philosopher, out of thinking he knows better, a desire to control, a desire to avoid painful avenues, a desire to save face or look good, a fear of the unknown, or a wish to pursue a particular objective. But unadulterated reason is not fully available to the interlocutor, otherwise the philosopher would be useless, and the interlocutor could be just as effective doing a self consultation. It is precisely because the philosopher is able to bring some objectivity to the reasoning of the interlocutor, if the interlocutor is able to surrender to reason, that the dialogue explores the unknown, and new discoveries are made.
There are two different reasons to surrender to the philosopher in a dialogue. First because the philosopher is other than the subject, therefore allowing the subject to escape himself, to estrange from himself and from his subjectivity. Second, because the philosopher is supposed to represent reason, since he is more trained in thinking than the subject. These are two different forms of transcendence that should incite the subject to surrender.