300.11 Inverse and Dualities (p.83)
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The concepts of “inverse” and “mutual exclusivity” are crucial to our Unified Formulation. Under our formulation, the Tree of Knowledge is in both an “inverse” and a “mutually exclusive” relationship with the Tree of Life.302
The more general theme of opposites and inverses-or what Nicholas of Cusa, in the fifteenth century, would have called “the coincidence of opposites,”303 pointing to paradoxes in the heart of reality-finds significant expression in Jewish thought.304
God has made one thing opposite the other.
-Ecclesiastes 7: 14. . . all that I have created, I created in pairs.
-Midrash Rabbah305
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302 To clarify terms: Light is in an inverse relationship to dark, i.e., the more light, the less dark. Judaism is mutually exclusive with human sacrifice. If one is within Judaism, one does not engage in human sacrifice. If one engages in human sacrifice, one is not within Judaism.
303 Agus, The Evolution of Jewish Thought, p. 293.
304 See Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, p. 261. “In other words, the cosmic process becomes two-fold. Every stage involves a double strain, i.e., the light which streams back into God and that which flows out from Him, and but for this perpetual tension, this ever repeated effort with which God holds Himself back, nothing in the world would exist.”
Cf. Scholem, Origins of (he Kabbalah, pp. 438-440.
305 Cited by Kaellis in “The Crescas Dispute.” Midstream, December 1986, p. 47.
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