In Human Agency and Divine Will: The Book of Genesis, Charlotte Katzoff analyzes the relation between the choices of human beings “and their God-given destinies” (2). The study is a synchronic reading of Genesis that approaches the text as a finished literary unit. This approach brackets historical-critical exegesis of the Hebrew text, giving increased attention to the philosophical questions of agency, destiny, and free will that the author asks. By viewing Genesis through this lens, the monograph is an enlightening addition to the growing number of studies that engage the Hebrew Bible with philosophy or interprets the Hebrew Bible as philosophy.
In the introduction, Katzoff rightly notes the difficulty of teasing out philosophical concepts from narratives and accentuates that Genesis is far from a philosophical treatise in a modern sense. However, philosophical ideas “may be intuitively discerned in the narrative” (2). In addition to the philosophical inquiries, Katzoff engages the theological question of God’s intervention in human affairs. In contrast to a classical theism that posits an omniscient God that forcefully pushes an agenda on human puppets, the author conceives of God as persuasive. On this account, God creates specific circumstances for Genesis’ heroes and responds to the heroes’ free actions. Thus, there is a “dual causality” to the events in Genesis since freely chosen acts of human agents coincide with God’s intentions (10). In this framework, human and divine agency intermingle.
The monograph’s seven chapters introduce a variety of modern philosophical theories to engage a specific story, hero, or theme found in Genesis. The chapters are ordered according to the narrative of Genesis, and the first chapter is fittingly dedicated to Adam and Eve. Here, Katzoff highlights God’s persuasiveness and argues that God desires Adam and Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Katzoff interprets the couple’s motivation to eat from the tree as motivated by a desire for knowledge and that their sinful act of eating was “essential to their growing up” (33). God thus created the circumstances for the sinful act to happen, but the human couple remains responsible. In this way, the couple is introduced to the “cardinal yet very troubling axiom” that “God sometimes induces people to sin against Him and then makes them pay for it” (44).
In the second chapter, Katzoff turns to the epistemic empowerment of the matriarchs in Genesis and argues that they have an advantage of knowledge compared to the male heroes. While men are provided with an explicitly revealed knowledge from God, the women have an intuitive knowledge, where they perceive the right actions without explicit instruction.
The testing of Abraham and the (near) sacrifice of Isaac are engaged in the third chapter. By turning to the Akedah, Katzoff continues a long-running philosophical tradition, one in which authors like Søren Kierkegaard and, more recently, Eleonore Stump have been engaged. While Kierkegaard’s Abraham confronts an ethical paradox and Stump’s Abraham reveals a single-minded faith, Katzoff’s Abraham experiences a change in his beliefs. In an intricate argument, Katzoff distinguishes between belief and judgment and states that “one’s feelings and attitudes towards one’s evidence may influence what one believes when one’s judgment of one’s evidence remains the same” (74). As for Abraham, he transitions between the two beliefs of keeping and losing Isaac while simultaneously judging that God’s promise of many children remains constant.
In the following chapter, and with a new set of carefully defined categories of belief and truth, Katzoff turns to Isaac’s blessing of Jacob as an example of self-deception. Self-deception is the process by which someone “comes to believe something that he wants to believe” (98), and Katzoff argues that Isaac “wants to believe that he is blessing Esau” but “wants it to be true that he is blessing Jacob” (106, emphasis original). When reading the narrative of Isaac and his sons, Katzoff notices how Isaac displays an intuitive matriarchal knowledge and expects that Jacob is the one who will carry on God’s plan. For this reason, Isaac faces a conflict since he wants to bless Jacob, even though Esau is entitled to the blessing. So, when Jacob is deceiving his father into blessing him instead of his brother, Isaac simultaneously deceives himself into believing that he is blessing Esau to save face and “avoid acknowledging the conflict, or facing the necessity of resolving it” (107).
The fifth chapter turns to an older Jacob, his guilty consciousness toward Esau, and the misfortunes he experiences in his later life. In Katzoff’s reading, Jacob sets out to apologize to Esau for stealing his blessing because he feels guilty for his morally dubious actions. Yet, at the same time, Jacob’s scheming actions to steal the blessing were intended by God. This double-sided phenomenon—a morally wrong action that God intends—shows that “God’s will may conflict with morality” (143). By integrating numerous philosophical perspectives, Katzoff illustrates that Jacob is an example of how “fulfilling God’s will and playing one’s designated role in God’s plan does not keep one safe from misfortune” (144).
Katzoff subsequently considers the entanglement of Joseph’s free choices, his brothers’ decision to sell him, and God’s plan to save the Israelites from famine. The brothers are not forced to sell Joseph into slavery, but God intended for Joseph to come to Egypt to secure the Israelites' survival. In Katzoff’s view, God appears to be a “counterfactual intervener” (162) who only intervenes to alter a causal sequence when the outcome develops in an undesired direction. From this perspective, Joseph’s brothers acted according to God’s plan, but they did it of their own free will and are thus morally responsible.
The final chapter looks beyond Genesis and turns to the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart at the beginning of Exodus. The key claim of this chapter is that “the reason Pharaoh cannot avoid defying God is that God is causing him to defy Him” (175). In other words, God keeps Pharaoh from responding to the horrible plagues to achieve God’s redemption of the Israelites.
This monograph is a stimulating example of weaving modern philosophical voices, analytical thinking, and synchronic exegesis to provide a fresh perspective on ancient texts. Of course, there will always be methodological difficulties when an ancient text is read synchronically and squeezed into foreign categories of Western philosophy without considering local philosophy, historical context, and the literary development of the Hebrew Bible. Also, the brief introductions to modern philosophical categories and Katzoff’s talk of literary characters’ psychological states might frustrate traditional biblical exegetes. However, these methodological reservations should not diminish Katzoff’s laudable engagement with treasured narratives in new philosophical ways.
Søren Lorenzen is a research associate in Old Testament studies at Bonn University.
Søren Lorenzen
Date Of Review:
September 22, 2021