Maimonides, on Divine Attributes

Moses ben Maimon, known as Maimonides (1135-1204), was a Jewish rabbi, philosopher, physician, and astronomer. He was born in Córdoba, Spain, but due to religious persecution, his family was forced to move to Fez, Morocco and later to Palestine and Egypt. He studied the Torah under his father, Maimon ben Joseph, who was a rabbinic judge and scholar, and he also studied medicine, mathematics, and Greek philosophy. He eventually became court physician to Saladin, the sultan of Egypt. He died in Fostat, Egypt and was buried in Tiberias, Israel. His many writings included his Treatise on Logical Terminology (1154), Commentary on the Mishnah (1168), the Mishneh Torah (1178), and The Guide for the Perplexed (1190).

      Maimonides says in The Guide for the Perplexed that while Genesis 1:27 tells us that God created man in his own image, that act of creation doesn't imply that God himself had human form. It is because of man's capacity for rational awareness that he is said to have been created in the likeness of God, not because God has a body or shape.¹ God transcends all likeness, and he is incorporeal.

      God has no attributes or qualities, says Maimonides. There are no attributes that can be predicated of God, because predicates signifying the essence or "whatness" of a thing are inapplicable to God.² There are no factors prior to God's existence by which he might be defined. Indeed, the very term "God" is indefinable.³

      God has no accidental attributes, because he is not a substrate of accidents. There is nothing accidental about his nature or essence. He has no essential attributes, because he does not have a composite essence. He is one in every way, without internal complexity.⁴ 

      God's supposed attributes are nothing but his acts, says Maimonides. God's acts can be known, but not God himself. To say that God has attributes is merely to assign traits to him that seem to be expressed by his actions. Thus, we try to be virtuous by emulating God and modeling our conduct on his actions.

      There is nothing passive about God. God is not affected or changed by any causes or conditions. There is also nothing potential about God. All of God's perfections are fully actualized.⁵

      Existence, knowledge, and will are not essential attributes of God, because God has no essential attributes. There is no analogy or likeness between his existence and the existence of other things. No predicates can be applied to him, as they can be applied to other things. For anything whose existence has a cause, its existence is accidental and distinct from its essence.⁶ But for God, who necessarily exists, his existence is his essence, and his essence is his existence.

      Unity and multiplicity are accidents of whatever is one or many.⁷ God is one, but not by way of oneness or unity.⁸ God is one in the sense of being unique, not in the sense of being a unity of composite features or attributes. 

      The only proper way of characterizing God, according to Maimonides, is by using negative predicates.⁹ We can only know or say that God is, not what God is. The more that we affirm about God, the farther we are from knowing him.¹⁰ God's perfections should not be viewed as traits or attributes, because he has no traits or attributes. Indeed, he transcends all traits or attributes. Only negative predications, such as "God is not corporeal" or "God is not a contingent being," can bring us closer to knowing God.¹¹ 

      God created the world out of absolute nothingness, and God also created time. His creation of the world was therefore not an event in time, because time was part of what he created. Thus, Maimonides rejects eternalism regarding the world's existence.

      God is perfect in his being, says Maimonides. Since there is nothing lacking in God, there is nothing that God fails to know.¹² God is his knowledge, and his knowledge is one, although it is of many things of different kinds.¹³ 

FOOTNOTES

¹Moses Maimonides, The Guide to the Perplexed, translated by Lenn E. Goodman and Phillip I. Lieberman (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2024), p. 21.

²Ibid., p. 87.

³Ibid., p. 87.

⁴Ibid., p. 91.

⁵Ibid., p. 100.

⁶Ibid., p. 102.

⁷Ibid., p. 102.

⁸Ibid., p. 102.

⁹Ibid., p. 103

¹⁰Ibid., p. 106.

¹¹Ibid., p. 111.

¹²Ibid., p. 389.

¹³Ibid., p. 194.