Kaplan
Thus, for example, God and man are worlds apart— “as the heavens are higher than the earth.” On a purely spiritual plane, it would be totally impossible for the two ever to be brought together. It was for this reason that God created the concept of space. Spiritual things can be bound to the material, just as, for example, the soul is bound to the body.
This adopts the Leibnizian conception of concept combination, the determination of truth governed by PNC, and the Leibnizian definition of knowledge, which is a function of analysis, whereby total and perfect knowledge is a function of total analysis. Perfect knowledge is complete transparency, and this occurs when the object is purely structural and this structure is none other than the structure of the subject’s ability to grasp. The fully known—what Leibniz calls adequate-intuitive knowledge—is the structure of intuiting that brings the object (as presence, as intentionality) into the perfect transparency in intuition because as intuition. What makes identity is indiscernibility; there is no numerical difference. And what does make numerical difference is discernibility of intrinsic marks. Contentfully different concepts are ontologically different concepts.
Two opposites can then be brought together by being bound to physical objects. In the physical world, space exists, and two opposites can literally be pushed together. Furthermore, two spiritual opposites can even be bound to the same material object.
Thus, for example, man has both an urge for good and an urge for evil, the Yetzer Tov, and the Yetzer HaRa. In a purely spiritual sense, these are poles apart. Without a physical world, they could never be brought together in a single entity.
The archetype of the spiritual being is the angel. Since an angel has no body, it can never contain both good and evil in its being. Our sages therefore teach us that angels have no Yetzer HaRa.
It is only in a physical being that both good and evil can exist together. Although they arc at opposite poles spiritually, they can come together in the physical man. One reason why God created man in a physical world was to allow him to have full freedom of choice, with both good and evil as part of his makeup. Without a physical world, these two concepts could never exist in the same being.
The fact that good and evil can exist in the same physical space also allows good to overcome evil in this world. Here again, this is only possible in a physical world. In a purely spiritual arena, good could never come close enough to evil to have any influence over it. In the physical world, however, good and evil can exist together, and good can therefore overcome evil. Our sages thus teach us that one of the main reasons why man was placed in the physical world was to overcome the forces of evil. The Zohar expresses it by stating that we arc here “to turn darkness into light.”
The entire concept of the non physical is very difficult to comprehend, and may be clarified by a remarkable teaching of our sages. The Midrash tells us, “One angel cannot have two missions. Neither can two angels share the same mission.”
This teaching brings our entire discussion into focus. The angel is the archetype of the nonphysical being. When we speak of an angel we are speaking of an entity that exists purely on a spiritual plane. Angels can be differentiated only by their mission, that is, by their involvement and attachment to some physical thing.
Two angels therefore cannot share the same mission. It i$ only their different missions that make the two angels different entities. They cannot be separated by space like physical objects. Therefore, if they both had the same mission, there would be nothing to differentiate them, and they would be one. Similarly, one angel cannot have two missions. On a purely spiritual plane, two different concepts cannot exist in a single entity. If an angel had two missions, then it would be two angels.