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The variety of opinions concerning the time of the resurrection Crescas endeavors to reconcile by supposing that all agreed it would take place as soon as the Temple was built, but that the Messiah would precede the building of the Temple by some length of time. The purpose of the resurrection is to strengthen belief in those who have it and to impress it upon those who have it not.
Crescas goes further than Maimonides, and controverts most of the other propositions as well, maintaining in particular against Aristotle and Maimonides that an infinite magnitude is possible and exists actually; that there is an infinite fulness or void outside of this world, and hence there may be many worlds, and it need not follow that the elements would pour in from one world into the next, so that all earth should be together in the centre, all fire together in the outer circumference, and the intermediate elements, air and water, between these two.
Besides, if a man who is highly intellectual did much wrong, he should be punished in his soul, but on the intellectualist theory such a soul is immortal and cannot be destroyed. Accordingly Crescas goes back to the religious doctrine of reward and punishment as ordinarily understood. God rewards and punishes because man obeys or disobeys his will and command.
Though a great admirer of Maimonides, on whose "Guide" he wrote a commentary, and whose thirteen articles of the creed he defended against the strictures of Crescas and Albo, he was nevertheless an outspoken opponent of the rationalistic attitude and has no phrases strong enough for such men as Albalag, Gersonides, Moses of Narbonne and others, whom he denounces as heretics and teachers of dangerous doctrines.
Also that being which is most separated from other things is best called one. Crescas disagrees with Maimonides's opinion that no positive attributes can be applied to God, such as indicate relation to his creatures, and so on.
Crescas, we have seen, defends God's knowledge of particulars, hence he sees no difficulty in special providence on this score. He takes, however, the term in a broad sense. All evidence of design in nature, all powers in plant and animal which guide their growth, reproduction and conservation are due to God's providence.
Nor is it accident, for that which defines and separates the existing thing is truly called substance rather than accident; and this is what unity does. Accordingly Crescas defines unity as something essential to everything actually existing, denoting the absence of plurality. This being true, that existent which is before all others is most truly called one.
His criticism of the third view so far as it is based upon the intellectualist idea that the thing of highest value is intellectual effort, and the only reward is immortality which intellectual activity engenders, is similar to that of Halevi and Crescas in its endeavor to refute this notion and to substitute for it the religious view that the soul is an independent substance having a capacity for intelligence in God's service.
Intention without deed is; though the two together call for the greatest punishment or reward. "A burnt offering," say the Rabbis, "atones for sinful thoughts; sin committed through compulsion is not punished." It is of interest here to know that Spinoza, as has been shown by Joel, owed his idea of man's freedom to Crescas.
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