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Updated: May 11, 2025
We are thus led to contradict our hypothesis of eternity from which we started. Creation is thus established, and this is the best way to prove the existence, unity and incorporeality of God. Maimonides attempts to prove creation from the peculiarities of the heavenly motions, which cannot be well accounted for on the theory of natural causes.
The best way then, it seems to me, is to prove God's existence, unity and incorporeality by the methods of the philosophers, which are based upon the eternity of the world. Not that I believe in eternity or that I accept it, but because on this hypothesis the three fundamental doctrines are validly demonstrated.
The second proof of God's existence, unity and incorporeality, that based upon the distinction between "possible" and "necessary" existent, which has its origin in Alfarabi and Avicenna, is also found in Ibn Daud. The other two proofs are Maimonides's own, i. e., they are not found in the works of his Jewish predecessors.
Corporeality, or incorporeality, has nothing to do with the matter." "Well," sais I, "Domine Doctor, that doctrine of implicit obedience to the government won't hold water neither, otherwise, if you had lived in Cromwell's time, you would have to have assisted in cutting the king's head off, or fight in an unjust war, or a thousand other wicked but legal things.
This is by definition a necessary existent, which is the cause of the existence of everything else. This proof is compatible with God as a Creator. Having shown the existence and incorporeality of God we must now prove his unity. We shall base this proof upon the idea of the necessary existent.
His proof of the existence of God is also identical with one of the proofs of Saadia. Other predicates of God are perception, will, unity, incorporeality and eternity. Perception is one of the most important expressions of life, but it must not be confused with knowledge or wisdom. The latter embraces the non-existent as well as the existent, the former the existent only.
Creation ex nihilo is a true belief but not a fundamental principle. It is not sufficient to believe in the three principles mentioned to be considered a believer and to be entitled to a share in the world to come. One must believe also in the derivative principles following from them. Thus from the existence of God follow his unity and incorporeality.
He is one in the sense that there is no second God beside him; and he is one in his own essence, i. e., he is simple and not composed of parts. His Life and his Power and his Wisdom are not distinct one from the other and from his essence. They are all one. We have also proved God's incorporeality.
But when he bears the words spirituality, immateriality, incorporeality, &c. pronounced, neither his senses nor his memory afford him any assistance; they do not furnish him with any means by which he can form an idea of their qualities, or of the objects to which he ought to apply them; in that which is not matter he can only see vacuum and emptiness, which as long as he remains what he is, cannot, to his mind, be susceptible of any one quality.
Maimonides, who was a strong opponent of the Mutakallimun, gives an outline of their fundamental principles and their arguments for the existence, unity and incorporeality of God. Some of these are identical with those of Saadia. Saadia, however, is not interested in pure metaphysics as such. His purpose is decidedly apologetic in the defence of Judaism and Jewish dogma.
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