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At the same time, and with little consistency, Albo takes the part of Judah Halevi and Crescas, employing their arguments, without naming them, that the philosophers and the philosophizing theologians are wrong who make human immortality, perfection and happiness depend solely upon intellectual activity.
Now, argues Crescas, whether the number of causes and effects is finite or infinite, there must be one cause of all of them which is not itself an effect. For if all things are effects they are "possible existents" as regards their own nature, and require a cause which will make them exist rather than not. This self-subsisting cause is God.
He just leaves us with the juxtaposition of two incompatibles. We shall see that Hasdai Crescas was more consistent, and admitted determinism. We have now considered Judah Halevi's teachings, and have seen that he has no sympathy with the point of view of those people who were called in his day philosophers, i. e., those who adopted the teachings ascribed to Aristotle.
This seems a risky thing to do for a religionist. And Crescas feels it, saying that to make this view public would be dangerous, as the people would find in it an apology for evil doers, not understanding that punishment is a natural consequence of evil.
If Hasdai Crescas admits the infinite, the Aristotelian proof fails. Similarly God's unity in Maimonides is among other things based upon the finiteness of the world and its unity. If infinite space is possible outside of this world, and there may be many worlds, this proof fails for God's unity.
The above distinction between the two senses of the term unity, one of which is rationally derived from the existence of God, whereas the other not being so derivable is not a principle, and is given in the Bible as a special commandment, is clearly due to Crescas, who after a few attempts at proving the unity of God in the sense of excluding dualism, gives it up as incapable of proof logically, and falls back upon the testimony of Scripture, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One."
Proceeding to the more dogmatic elements of Judaism, Maimonides was the first to reduce the 613 commandments of Rabbinic Judaism to thirteen articles of faith. Hasdai Crescas criticised Maimonides's principle of selection as well as the list of dogmas, which he reduced to six. And Joseph Albo went still further and laid down three fundamental dogmas from which the rest are derived.
God's omniscience extends only to the universal and its consequences; the contingent particular is by definition not subject to foreknowledge, and hence it argues no defect in God's knowledge if it does not extend to the undetermined decisions of the will. Crescas embraces the other horn of the dilemma. God's omniscience must be maintained in all its rigor.
This is a bold statement on the part of Crescas, and the analogy between a man's voluntary act in ethical and religious conduct and the tendency of fire to burn irrespective of the person's responsibility in the matter can be valid only if we reduce the ethical and religious world to an impersonal force on a plane with the mechanism of the physical world order.
No merely logical argument, is his idea, can give us absolute certainty even in so fundamental a doctrine as the unity of God. Like Judah Halevi, Crescas took his inspiration from Algazali, whose point of view appealed to him more than that of Maimonides and Gersonides, who may be classed with Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes.
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