The Philosophy Book

84

GOD HAS

NO ATTRIBUTES

MOSES MAIMONIDES (1135–1204)

IN CONTEXT

BRANCH

Philosophy of religion

APPROACH

Jewish Aristotelian

BEFORE

c.400 CE The philosopher

Pseudo-Dionysius establishes

the tradition of Christian

negative theology, which

states that God is not being,

but more than being.

860s John Scotus Eriugena

suggests that God creates

the universe from the nothing

which is himself.

AFTER

1260s Thomas Aquinas

moderates Maimonides’

negative theology in his

Summa Theologiae.

Early 1300s Meister Eckhart

develops his negative theology.

1840–50s Søren Kierkegaard

claims that it is impossible

to provide any form of external

description of God.

M

aimonides wrote on both

Jewish law (in Hebrew)

and Aristotelian thought

(in Arabic). In both areas, one of his

central concerns was to guard

against anthropomorphizing God,

which is the tendency to think

about God in the same way as a

human being. For Maimonides, the

worst mistake of all is to take the

Torah (the first part of the Hebrew

Bible) as literal truth, and to think

that God is a bodily thing. Anyone

who thinks this, he says, should

be excluded from the Jewish

community. But in the Guide of the

Perplexed, Maimonides pushes this

idea to its farthest extent, developing

a strand of thought known as

“negative theology.” This already

existed in Christian theology, and

it focuses on describing God only

in terms of what God is not.

God, Maimonides says, has no

attributes. We cannot rightly say

that God is “good” or “powerful.”

Attributes are either...

But God has

no accidents.

Essential attributes

define.

...accidental.

God has

no attributes.

...essential.

But God

is indefinable.