Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
254Maimonides was, indeed, a man of science. Young men of Sephardic origins
were enc ouraged to balanc e Torah study with the sc ienc es in this age, and, as a
t rained physic ian, he was t ypic al in t hat respec t. Undoubt edly, it was his
bac kground in the natural sc ienc es that led to his affinity for Aristotle, the great
nat uralist of c lassic al philosophy, the c ataloguer and taxonomist of nature, the
apostle of close observation. (It should be pointed out, however, that his knowledge
of Arist ot le was heavily influenc ed by t he Muslim Arist ot elians Avic enna and al-
Farabi.) In the Guide, Maimonides attempts to apply a rationalism that has its roots
firmly in t he real world t o mat t ers of met aphysic s and religion. T he result is work
written in the language of philosophy rather than Torah, one that assumes a
knowledge bot h of t he Arist ot elian voc abulary and the voc abulary of Torah and
T a lmu d. At the heart of the Guide is Maimonides’ conception of God. When we say
that “God is one” every day, what do we mean by that statement? For many Jewish
philosophers – Maimonides c hief among them – t his is the c entral question of
Jewish philosophy. He argues that God is a perfec t unity, not admitting of any
pluralit y. God does not have part s, eit her lit erally or figurat ively – no arms or legs,
no bac k or front, no end or beginning. (One of the alternate names for God in
Jewish discourse is Ein Sof/Without End.)
That also means that, in Aristotelian terms, one c annot ac tually say “God is...”
and proceed to enumerate God’s attributes. To desc ribe the Eternal One in suc h a
sent enc e is t o admit of a division bet ween subject and predicate, in other words, a
pluralit y. (Maimonides writ es in Chapt er 50 of t he Guide, “Those who believe that
God is One and that He has many attributes dec lare the Unity with their lips and
assume the plurality of their thoughts”.) Therefore, he c onc ludes, one c annot
discuss God in terms of positive attributes. On the other hand, one can describe
w hat God is not. God is not corporeal, does not occupy space, experiences neither
generation nor c orruptions (in their Aristotelian sense of birth, dec ay, and death).
For obvious reasons, Maimonides’ c onc eption of the Supreme Being is usually
c harac terised as “negative theology” that is, defining by the ac c umulation of
negatives. Maimonides writ es, “All we underst and is t he fac t t hat [God] exist s, that
[God] is a being to whom none of Adonai’s c reatures is similar, who has nothing in
c ommon with them, who does not inc lude plurality, who is never too feeble to
produc e other beings and whose relation to the universe is that of a steersman to a
boat; and even t his is not a real relat ion, a real simile, but serves only t o c onvey t o
us the idea that God rules the universe, that it is [God] that gives it duration and
preserves its necessary arrangement.”
But what of all the anthropomorphic terms that we enc ounter in Jewish sac red
texts? What of “Adonai’s rod and staff...” or the Creator who “reac hes out a
hand...”? There are thousands of passages like this in the Torah, in the Talmud, in
Midrash, in our lit urgy. Maimonides’ response is that these are allegoric al passages,
designed to ease the transition of the Jewish people from idolatry to monotheism.
Even the famous desc ription of man’s c reation b’t selem Elohim/in t he image of God
is meant metaphorically; God created out of free will and we are granted the abilit y
to reason and a free will of our own. But t here is no “family resemblanc e.”