The God of the Bible and the God of the Philosophers

For medieval Christian, Jewish, and Muslim philosophers, the great theological challenge was to reconcile the Aristotelian idea of God—an unmoved, impersonal force—with the biblical God who engages with His creations, answers prayer, and is subject to human-like emotions. Many modern thinkers and scholar see the philosophical approach, associated with Thomas Aquinas, Moses Maimonides, and Averroes, as imposing on the Bible a fundamentally incompatible notion of the deity. Eleonore Stump, however, argues that the gap between the philosophical and biblical God is not so great, and that medieval philosophy can enhance our understanding of Scripture. (Interview by Joseph Ryan Kelly. Audio, 17 minutes.)

Read more at Marginalia

More about: Bible, History & Ideas, Moses Maimonides, Philosophy of Religion, Theology, Thomas Aquinas

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF