Zera Yacob's Contradictions

Zera Yacob had a culture entirely theological, where he earned respect for his intellectual capacities, and went on to pursue the traditional Ethiopian theological education. Zera Yacob mastered Coptic theology and Catholic theology, and he had extensive knowledge of Jewish, Catholic, and Islamic religions. His spiritual vade mecum was David’s Book of Psalms, in which he sought comfort and inspiration. Knowing two Christian interpretations of the Bible, as well as the two other Abrahamic religions, and being able to see the contradictions between them, Zera Yacob is led to refuse the authority of the Ethiopian tradition and of any tradition in general. He comes to think that tradition is infested by lies, because men, in their own ignorance,
believe that they know everything and thus refuse to examine things with their own mind, blindly accepting what has been transmitted to them by their ancestors. Zera Yacob accepts then as unique authority his reason, and accepts from the Scriptures and from the doctrines only what resists a rational inquiry. He affirms that the human reason can find the truth, if it searches it and does not get discouraged in front of the difficulties. Zera Yacob arrives at an argument that the existence of God is an essence uncreated and eternal, based on the impossibility of an infinite chain of causes, and at the conviction that the Creation is good, because God is good. This belief is the basis for a criticism of ascetic morals and of some Jewish and Islamic moral precepts as well. By identifying the will of God with what is rational, Zera Yacob rejects most of these moral precepts, such as polygamy, fasting, or sexual or alimentary interdictions, as blasphemy. He seems to think that all is good for the good one. By perceiving reason that natural religion is revealed to reason, and that reason is based human nature is natural, Zera Yacob identifies that nature and reason are good because they are created by God and thus nature and reason would serve as a standard for assessing good. However, there is a counter-argument to this, which if God is good and his Creations are good, then why do killing, stealing, lying, and committing adultery exist? Zera Yacob investigates this, which leads him to expose that good practices promote health, happiness and stability, while bad practices promote instability which it is in human nature to do these things. He essentially exposed the falsity (or violation of natural law) of religious tenets regarding fasting, celibacy, polygamy, and criticize slavery as well as any form of violence. In my perspective, different methods of knowing are pursued to understand different parts of the world. Different methods are used for knowing different parts of the whole, as there is not a single method of knowing the whole. There is also another argument that everything we see in this world, including ourselves, is transitory and created. However, there is a counter that how can things be created without a creator? This could be due to that each creature is finite and weak; they have no power to be created from nothing. This leads to his overall statement that there needs to be one essence that existed before all creatures, without beginning or end, which created all that is dense and thin, visible and invisible, from nothing – attributed to God. All that God has created is very good in the way He created it.