How Kalach Pitchei Chokhmah Argued That Evil Emerged Gradually

Most readers, asked where evil comes from, expect a story. A serpent. A fall. A bad choice. Kalach Pitchei Chokhmah, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto's eighteenth-century Italian compendium of Lurianic Kabbalah, refuses to start there.

The Ramchal, as Luzzatto is known, treats evil as a structural problem that the Holy One had to solve in advance, before any creature was made. The book argues that evil emerged gradually, by stages of concealment, and that the gradual emergence was a deliberate accommodation for finite beings who could not have existed under conditions of unlimited perfection. Four interlocking passages set out the theology.

The Argument That Even Evil Serves Good

Kalach 1 opens with the thesis statement. His desire is only to bestow good. Even evil is a means through which He bestows good. In this way His oneness is clearly revealed.

The Ramchal is not denying that evil exists. He is asserting that whatever is named evil in the universe is functionally a delivery mechanism for good. The proof is the Holy One's oneness. If evil existed outside the Holy One's purposes, two powers would exist, not one. Since only one power exists, the apparent evils have to be located inside the divine economy as instruments.

This is not optimism. It is monotheism pressed to its hard edge. The Ramchal will spend the rest of the book explaining what kind of instruments these evils are.

The Problem With Speaking of the Unlimited

Before the Ramchal can describe the emergence of evil, he has to address a technical problem. Kalach 24 raises the objection a careful reader might have.

The Lurianic system describes a tzimtzum, a withdrawal, in which the Ein Sof, the Unlimited, withdrew His light to make room for creation. The traditional language speaks of nine sefirot that withdrew. The Ramchal asks how this can be coherent. The Unlimited has no parts. Boundaries do not apply to it. If so, what can nine sefirot possibly mean when applied to the Unlimited?

The answer, the Ramchal explains, is that the language of nine sefirot is a vocabulary loan from the post-tzimtzum world projected backward onto the Unlimited. It is the only vocabulary finite minds have. The Ramchal accepts the limitation without resolving it. Kabbalistic language about the Unlimited, in his hands, is always provisional.

The Concealment That Made Creation Possible

Then the Ramchal gets to the heart of his argument. Kalach 25 answers the question of why concealment was necessary at all.

In order to reveal His unity in the clearest way, the Ramchal writes, the Holy One concealed His perfection and instituted a way of imperfection in order to create and govern imperfect creatures. What remained after the concealment is called the Reshimu, the Residue. The Residue is the medium in which finite creatures can exist.

The Ramchal is precise about why this was needed. Creatures, by definition, cannot reach divine perfection. They are created. Their perfection has an upward ceiling that is lower than the Creator's. So a graded structure is required, with levels of imperfection through which creatures can approach perfection step by step. The Unlimited, having no boundaries, cannot contain such gradations. The concealment that produced the Residue produced, with it, the framework in which spiritual ascent becomes meaningful.

The Gradual Emergence of Evil

Kalach 26 finally addresses evil's appearance. The Ramchal insists on a counter-intuitive point. Total evil was not brought into being at once.

Initially there was only a certain concealment of perfection. What remained of the perfection that was not concealed was good. What was missing from the original perfection was the absence within which evil would later develop. At first, the Ramchal explains, there was no actual evil, only a state of concealment, a preparation. The concealment itself was neutral. Its potential to be filled with evil was latent.

Subsequent stages of concealment deepened the absence. The deficiency that had been merely potential became actual. Evil, in this picture, is not a created substance. It is the cumulative shadow of repeated concealments of light. The Ramchal is making sure his reader does not picture the Holy One as having created evil directly. Evil emerged, gradually, in the wake of the very concealments that made creation possible.

The picture is sober. The Holy One did not create evil. The Holy One did create the conditions under which evil could emerge. And the Ramchal will argue, in later chapters, that the gradual emergence of evil is also the gradual emergence of the conditions for its eventual rectification.

Why the Gradient Mattered

Stack the four passages and the Ramchal's theodicy comes into view. Kabbalah in Kalach Pitchei Chokhmah is not consoling. It is precise.

The Holy One desires only good. Even evil is a means to good. But evil cannot be a created substance, because that would split divinity in two. So evil is what emerges from the concealments that make finite existence possible at all. The first concealment was barely a concealment. The deficiencies were minimal. Over time, by stages, evil developed in the spaces the concealments left.

The Ramchal's reader is meant to leave the chapter with a difficult comfort. The evil in the world is not a divine cruelty. It is the cost of being a creature at all. And because evil emerged gradually, in stages, the Holy One can rectify it gradually, in stages. The same gradient that produced it is the gradient by which it will be dismantled.