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According to Maimonides, it would seem, he would be called a heretic and be excluded from a share in the world to come equally with one who denied the existence of God; whereas according to Albo a person so guilty is a sinner and needs forgiveness, but is not a heretic.
It is no discovery of a late day but is well known to Maimonides who is himself, as has just been said and as will appear with greater detail later, a strong opponent of these to him unphilosophical thinkers.
# Compare the above with Maimonides, Hilchot Yessode Hattorah, from chapter 7.
On the other hand, Maimonides does not regard creation ex nihilo as fundamental, whereas others do; and to their mind Maimonides is open to the charge of unbelief. The truth is that only he is an unbeliever who deliberately and knowingly contradicts the Bible.
As Joseph Jacobs reminded us in his "Biblical Archæology" and as Sir James Frazer is just illustrating afresh, the whole of Hebrew ritual is permeated by savage survivals, a fact recognized by Maimonides himself when he declared that Moses adapted idolatrous practices to a purer worship. Israel was environed by barbarous practices and gradually rose beyond them.
Don Isaac Abarbanel has already criticized this attempt of Maimonides by justly arguing that if the meaning of the mysterious vision of Ezekiel is what Maimonides thinks it is, there was no occasion to wrap it in such obscurity, since the matter is plainly taught in all schools of philosophy.
At the end of the twelfth century Maimonides was trying to argue it out of existence on the best possible grounds. "Know, my masters," he writes, "that no man should believe anything that is not attested by one of these three sanctions: rational proof as in mathematical science, the perception of the senses, or traditions from the prophets and learned men."
For once Maimonides in the last Rabbinic quotation actually hit upon a passage which owes its content to Alexandrian and possibly Philonian influence.
In his discussion of the divine attributes, of angels, of Providence, of Prophecy, of free will, of the ceremonial laws in the Pentateuch, Thomas Aquinas constantly takes account of Maimonides's views, whether he agrees with them or not. It is no doubt an exaggeration to say that there would have been no Aquinas if Maimonides had not preceded him.
This involves not so much a difference of philosophical views as a difference of temper and of objective. The followers of Plato are mystics, yearning for the love of God; the followers of Aristotle are rationalists, seeking for the abstract knowledge of God. Hence in Maimonides there is less soaring and more argument than in Philo.
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