Is Teshuvah Rational? Rav Kook and Rav Soloveitchik’s Inspiring Defense of Repentance

Spinoza, The Ethics, IVp54:

Repentance is not a virtue, or does not arise from reason; instead, he who repents what he has done is twice wretched, or lacking in power... For first he suffers himself to be conquered by an evil desire, and then by sadness.

Friedrich Nietszche

"Just ask doctors who work with the insane what a methodical application of penitential torments, contrition, and cramps of redemption always brings on” (Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, III: §21)...

“Guilt before God: this thought becomes an instrument of torture for him. . . .This is a kind of madness of the will in psychical cruelty that has absolutely no equal: the will of man to find himself guilty and reprehensible to the point that it cannot be atoned for” (ibid., II: §22).

R. Joseph Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, 114:

From this perspective repentance is an empty and hollow concept. It is impossible to regret a past that is already dead, lost in the abyss of oblivion. Similarly, one cannot make a decision concerning a future that is as yet "unborn." Therefore, Spinoza [Ethics IV, 54] and Nietzsche [in Geneaology of Morals] -- from this persepctive -- did well to deride the idea of repentance.

R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, 113

He [Halakhik Man] does not regret an irretrievably lost past but a past still in existence, one that stretches into and interpenetrates with the present and the future...Similarly his resolve is not some vacuous decision made with regard to an obscure, distant future that has not yet arrived...Both -- past and future -- are alive; both act and create in the heart of the present and shape the very image of reality...

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man , 115

The Future imprints its stamp on the past and determines its image. We have here a true symbiotic, synergistic relationship. The cause is interpreted by the effect, moment a by moment b. The past by itself is indeterminate, a closed book. It is only the present and the future that can pry it open and read its meaning...When the future participates in the clarification and elucidation of the past -- points out the way it is to take, defines its goals, and indicates the direction of its development -- then man becomes a creator of worlds.

Max Scheler, "Repentance and Rebirth" in On the Eternal in Man, 40

There are present to us in the experience of every one of our indivisible, temporal moments of life the structure and idea of the entirety of our life and personal Selfhood...It is by virtue of this wonderful fact...that the sense and worth of the whole of our life still come, at every moment of our life, within the scope of our freedom and action...The whole of the past, at least with respect to its significance, never ceases to present us with the problem of what we are going to make of it.

Teshuvah always resides in the heart; even at the moment of sin, the impulse for teshuvah is hidden in the soul, radiating influence which will be revealed later, with the arrival of the regret that calls for teshuvah. Teshuvah resides in the depths of existential life, for it preceded the universe, and before sin arrives its teshuvah is already prepared. Therefore, nothing in this universe is as certain as teshuvah, and, ultimately, all will be repaired. (Orot haTeshuvah 6:2)

Teshuvah is a natural product of health and maturity:
The desire for teshuvah is a person’s most healthy spiritual desire. A healthy soul in a healthy body is compelled to achieve the great bliss of teshuvah, experiencing in it the greatest natural pleasure.

A properly functioning body removes harmful materials, thereby improving and healing the body. One who is spiritually and physically healthy will remove evil deeds and the evil, corrupt impressions they produce, every evil thought, and the distance from Divine influence which founds all evil, crudeness and ugliness. (Orot haTeshuvah 5:1)

The potential for Teshuvah is always present:
Even if a person consistently stumbles, damaging his righteousness and ethical behavior, this does not damage his fundamental perfection. A person’s fundamental perfection is found in his longing and desire to achieve perfection, a desire which is the foundation of teshuvah, and which continually governs his path in life. (Orot haTeshuvah 5:5)

The Challenge of Jewish Repentance

Wall Street Journal

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

September 16, 2017

Beneath the surface of this long religious ritual lies one of the more transformative stories of the human spirit. The sociologist Philip Rieff pointed out that the movement from paganism to monotheism was a transition from fate to faith. By this he meant that in the world of myth, people were pitted against powerful, capricious forces personified as gods who were at best indifferent, at worst hostile, to humankind. All you could do was try to propitiate, battle or outwit them. This was a culture of character and fate, and its noblest expression was the literature of Greek tragedy.

Jews came to see the world in a completely different way. The book of Genesis opens with God making humans “in his image and likeness.” This phrase has become so familiar to us that we forget how paradoxical it is, since for the Hebrew Bible, God has no image and likeness. As the narrative quickly makes clear, what humans have in common with God is freedom and moral responsibility.

The Jewish drama is less about character and fate than about will and choice. To the monotheistic mind, the real battles are not “out there,” against external forces of darkness, but “in here,” between the bad and better angels of our nature. As the religion writer Jack Miles once pointed out, you can see the difference in the contrast between Sophocles and Shakespeare. For Sophocles, Oedipus must battle against blind, inexorable fate. For Shakespeare, writing in a monotheistic age, the drama of “Hamlet” lies within, between “the native hue of resolution” and “the pale cast of thought.”

The trouble is, of course, that faced with choice, we often make the wrong one. Given a second chance, Adam and Eve would probably pass on the fruit. Cain might work a little harder on his anger management. And there is a straight line from these biblical episodes to the destruction left by Homo sapiens: war, murder, human devastation and environmental destruction.

That is still our world today. The key fact about us, according to the Bible, is that uniquely in an otherwise law-governed universe, we are able to break the law—a power that we too often relish exercising.

This raises an acute theological dilemma. How are we to reconcile God’s high hopes for humanity with our shabby and threadbare moral record? The short answer is forgiveness.

God wrote forgiveness into the script. He always gives us a second chance, and more. All we have to do is to acknowledge our wrongs, apologize, make amends and resolve to behave better, and God forgives. It allows us to hold simultaneously to the highest moral aspirations while admitting honestly our deepest moral failings. That is the drama of the Jewish High Holy Days.