I'm under the impression that religious Judaism believes in absolute truths. That being the case, how does the concept of "eilu v'eilu divrei elokim chaim" (Eruvin 13b) work out? When two scholars argue, how can they both be right?
Answer
A simple parable for this idea is the idea of projection. If one looks at a cylinder, for example, it could be a square or a circle. In reality, it is both or neither.
Torah, in principle, is higher than human understanding. Therefore, as the Torah comes into human understanding it gets "filtered" through their brain (even two prophets would not use the same wording). Therefore, if someone applies the Torah approach to a problem and gets to one resolution, the result is true.
However, practically, as it comes into the world, there can be only one truth, which is known as "Halacha". Therefore, when one asks a shaila, he is expecting "what to do", not "there are two approaches" because this world, a physical world, is limited in the sense that one cannot do two opposite things at a time. Therefore, the halacha could go like either one or the other, and halachically, the other could be rejected completely, as if it wasn't there (Beis Shamai v Beis Hillel). In the source of Halacha, in the higher worlds, however, they are both true.
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