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Having laid the philosophical foundations of religion in proving the existence, unity and incorporeality of God, and purposeful creation in time, Maimonides proceeds to the more properly religious doctrines of Judaism, and begins with the phenomenon of prophecy.
The purely philosophic interest was not strong in his day. He was not confronted by the necessity of proving the existence and incorporeality of God by reason. No one doubted these things and they had been abundantly written about in times gone by.
From God's eternity follows his incorporeality, for we have shown before that all body is created, since it presupposes combination and separation, and the latter a combiner and separater. When we speak of the unity of God we mean first that there is no second God, and then that his own essence has no composition or plurality in it.
For his argument from motion leads him to conceive of the first mover as a "separate" form or intellect. This clearly denotes incorporeality, for body is composed of matter and form. But it also denotes unity, for the immaterial is not subject to numerical distinction unless the one be the cause and the other the effect. But in that case the cause alone is God.
He then follows up his destructive criticism with a constructive method, in which he frankly admits that in order to establish the existence, unity and incorporeality of God the three fundamental dogmas of Judaism beyond the possibility of cavil, we must make common cause with the philosophers even though it be only for a moment, until they have done our work for us, and then we may fairly turn on our benefactors and taking advantage of their weakness, strike them down, and upon their lifeless arguments for the eternity of the world establish our own more plausible theory of creation.
The simplicity of God was proved by arguing that if he is composite, his parts are prior to him, and he is neither the first, nor is he eternal, and hence not God; and the incorporeality followed from his simplicity, for all body is composite. Maimonides proved with one stroke God's existence, unity and incorporeality.
God's knowledge, Providence, Power, Prophecy, Free Will, Purpose, adding thereto the three proved by Maimonides, God's existence, unity and incorporeality. The objection to this list is that it does not contain the special dogmas of Judaism, and does not give us a principle by which we can distinguish between the genuine and spurious divine religion.
The third is devoted to a discussion of the existence, unity, incorporeality and other attributes of God, based upon the doctrine of the creation of the world. This bears the stamp of the Kalam, and is indebted to the writings of Saadia, Bahya and Joseph al-Basir.
But no sooner does Maimonides establish his proof of the existence, unity and incorporeality of God than he returns to the attack of the Aristotelian view and points out that the problem is insoluble in a strictly scientific manner; that Aristotle himself never intended his arguments in favor of eternity to be regarded as philosophically demonstrated, and that they all labor under the fatal fallacy that because certain laws hold of the world's phenomena once it is in existence, these same laws must have governed the establishment of the world itself in its origin.
Having proved God's existence, unity and incorporeality, he proceeds to discuss his most essential attributes, which are, Life, Omnipotence, and Omniscience. These easily follow from what was said before. We cannot conceive a creator ex nihilo unless he is all-powerful; power implies life; and the thing made cannot be perfect unless its maker knows what it is going to be before he makes it.
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