|
|
A problem that occurs in the Eight Chapters is does God’s foreknowledge contradict man’s choice? In other words if God hardened the heart of Pharaoh, as we are told in the Bible, then does this not make His subsequent punishment of Pharaoh unfair? What happened to man’s free will of choice if God forced this mortal to behave in a certain way contrary to his own? One of the solutions to this apparent problem is addressed by Moses Maimonides. The core of his argument is that Pharaoh was not a blank page that God wrote on without his consent: he had already nearly covered the initially blank page of his life with the writing of cruelty and despotism. The Egyptian ruler had thereby become a man whose whole life was geared to evil. He was no longer a man whose actions were wrong or evil; he had actually transformed himself into a person whose first characteristic was evil, much in the same way that Hitler became. According to Maimonides, when a person such as Pharaoh repeats evil actions so often that they become a part of their essence, then they are no longer just another person, they are an evil being.
|
