HASDAI BEN ABRAHAM CRESCAS (1340-1410)
The influence of Aristotle on Jewish thought, which began as early as
Saadia and grew in intensity as the Aristotelian writings became better
known, reached its high water mark in Ibn Daud, Maimonides and
Gersonides. To Maimonides Aristotle was the indisputable authority for
all matters pertaining to sublunar existence, but he reserved the right
to differ with the Stagirite when the question concerned the heavenly
spheres and the influences derived from them. Hence he denied the
eternity of motion and the fundamental principle at the basis of this
Aristotelian idea, that necessity rules all natural phenomena. In his
doctrine of creation in time, Maimonides endeavored to defend God's
personality and voluntary and purposeful activity. For the same reason
he defended the institution of miracles. Gersonides went further in his
rationalistic attitude, carried the Aristotelian principles to their
inevitable conclusions, and did not shrink from adopting to all intents
and purposes the eternity of the world (strictly speaking the eternity
of matter), and the limitation of God's knowledge to universals.
Aristotle's authority was now supreme, and the Bible had to yield to
Aristotelian interpretations, as we have seen abundantly. Maimonides and
Gersonides were the great peaks that stood out above the rest; but there
was any number of lesser lights, some who wrote books and still more who
did not write, taking the great men as their models and looking at
Jewish literature and belief through Aristotelian spectacles.
Intellectualism is the term that best describes this attitude. It had
its basis in psychology, and from there succeeded in establishing itself
as the ruling principle in ethics and metaphysics. As reason and
intellect is the distinguishing trait of man--the part of man which
raises him above the beast--and as the soul is the form of the living
body, its essence and actuating principle, it was argued that the most
important part of man is his rational soul or intellect, and immortality
was made dependent upon theoretical ideas. Speculative study made the
soul; and an intellect thus constituted was immortal, for it was
immaterial. The heavenly world, consisting of the separate Intelligences
and culminating in God, was also in its essence reason and intellect.
Hence thought and knowledge formed the essence of the universe. By
thought is man saved, and through thought is he united with the Most
High. All else that is not pure thought acquires what value it has from
the relation it bears to thought. In this way were judged those
divisions of Judaism that concerned ceremony and ethical practice. Their
value consisted in their function of promoting the ends of the reason.
Judah Halevi, influenced by Al Gazali, had already before Maimonides
protested against this intellectualistic attitude in the name of a truer
though more naive understanding of the Bible and Jewish history. But
Judah Halevi's nationalism and the expression of his poetical and
religious feelings and ideas could not vie with the dominating
personality of Maimonides, whose rationalistic and intellectualistic
attitude swept everything before it and became the dominant mode of
thinking for his own and succeeding ages. It remained for Hasdai Crescas
(born in Barcelona, in 1340), who flourished in Christian Spain two
centuries after Maimonides and over a half century after Gersonides, to
take up the cudgels again in behalf of a truer Judaism, a Judaism
independent of Aristotle, and one that is based more upon the spiritual
and emotional sides of man and less upon the purely intellectual,
theoretical and speculative. Himself devoid of the literary power and
poetic feeling of Judah Halevi, Crescas had this in common with the
mediæval national poet that he resented the domination of Jewish belief
and thought by the alien Greek speculation. In a style free from
rhetoric, and characterized rather by a severe brevity and precision, he
undertakes to undermine the Aristotelian position by using the
Stagirite's own weapons, logical analysis and proof. His chief work is
the "Or Adonai," Light of the Lord.[386]
Agreeing with all other Jewish writers that the existence of God is the
basis of Judaism, he sees in this very fact a reason why this principle
cannot be regarded as one of the six hundred and thirteen commandments.
For a commandment implies the existence of one who commands. Hence to
regard the belief in the existence of God as a commandment implies the
very thing which the commandment expresses. The existence of God
therefore as the basis of all commandments cannot itself be a
commandment. Besides only those things can form the objects of a command
which can be controlled by the will. But a matter of belief like the
existence of God is not subject to will, it is a matter of fact and of
proof.[387]
Maimonides, as we know, based his proofs of the existence, unity and
incorporeality of God upon twenty-six philosophical propositions taken
from the works of Aristotle and his Arabian interpreters. As he was not
writing a book on general philosophy, Maimonides simply enumerates
twenty-five propositions, which he accepts as proved by Aristotle and
his followers. To these he adds provisionally another proposition,
number twenty-six, concerning the eternity of motion, upon which he
bases his proof of the existence of God in order to be safe from all
criticism. In the sequel he discusses this last proposition and shows
that unlike the other twenty-five, it is not susceptible of rigid
demonstration, and the arguments in favor of the origin of motion and
the world in time are more plausible.
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. The elements may stay in their respective worlds in the
places assigned to them. It will not be worth our while to wade through
all the technical and hair-splitting discussions of these points. The
results will be sufficient for our purpose.
The proof of the existence of an unmoved mover in Aristotle and
Maimonides is based upon the impossibility of a regress to infinity. 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. So Crescas takes up in detail all the Maimonidean
proofs of the existence, unity and incorporeality of God and points out
that they are not valid because in the first place they are based upon
premises which Crescas has refuted, and secondly were the premises
granted Maimonides's results do not follow from them.[388] It remains
then for Crescas to give his own views on this problem which, he says,
the philosophers are unable to solve satisfactorily, and the Bible alone
is to be relied upon. At the same time he does give a logical proof
which in reality is not different from one of the proofs given by
Maimonides himself. It is based upon the distinction insisted upon by
Alfarabi and Avicenna between the "possible existent" and the "necessary
existent." Whatever is an effect of a cause is in itself merely
possible, and owes the necessity of its existence to its cause. 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.[389]
He then endeavors to prove the unity of God in the two senses of the
term; unity in the sense of simplicity, and unity in the sense of
uniqueness. Unity as opposed to composition--the former sense of the
term--is neither the same as the essence of a thing, nor is it an
accident added to the essence. It cannot be essence, for in that case
all things called one would have the same essence. 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. Also that
being which is most separated from other things is best called one.[390]
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. His arguments are that we cannot avoid relation to creatures even
in the term "cause," which Maimonides admits; and in the attributes of
action--the only kind of positive attributes allowed by Maimonides--it
is implied that before a given time God did not do a particular thing,
which he did later, a condition in God which Maimonides will not admit.
Besides, if there are no positive attributes, what could be the meaning
of the tetragrammaton, about which Maimonides has so much to say? If it
expressed a negative attribute, why was its meaning kept so secret?
Crescas's own view is that there are positive attributes, and that there
is a relation between God and his creatures, though not a similarity, as
they are far apart, the one being a necessary existent, the other a
possible existent; one being infinite, the other finite.[391]
We must now try to show that God is one in the sense that there are no
other Gods besides. We may proceed as follows: If there are two Gods,
one of them controls only part of the world or he does not control it at
all. The first is impossible because the unitary world must be due to
one agent. But there may be more than one world and hence more than one
agent. This is, however, answered by the thought that being infinite in
power one could control them all. There is still another alternative,
_viz._, that one agent controls the whole world and the other does
nothing. Here speculation can go no further, and we must have recourse
to Scripture, which says, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is
One."[392] We see here that Crescas is interested in discrediting the
logic chopping of the philosophers. 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.
Having discussed the fundamental principles of all religion and
philosophy, namely, the existence and nature of God, Crescas next takes
up the following six fundamental dogmas of Judaism, God's knowledge of
existing things, Providence, Power, Prophecy, Freedom, Purpose.
There are three things to be remembered in the matter of God's
knowledge. He knows the infinite, for he knows particulars. He knows the
non-existent, as he knows the future; and his knowledge of the
contingent does not remove its contingent character. Maimonides and
Gersonides had difficulty with this problem and we know their respective
solutions. Gersonides, for reasons metaphysical as well as ethical, does
not scruple to limit God's knowledge to universals. Maimonides endeavors
to reconcile the dilemma by throwing the blame upon our limited
understanding. In God's knowledge which is _toto coelo_ different from
ours, and of which we have no conception, all oppositions and
contradictions find their ultimate harmony. Crescas, as we might
naturally expect, agrees with Maimonides in this matter rather than with
Gersonides. To limit God's knowledge is opposed to the Bible, and would
involve us in greater difficulties than those we endeavor to
escape.[393]
Related to the question of God's knowledge is the problem of Providence.
For God must know the individual or thing for which he provides, and if
God has no knowledge of particulars, there can be no such thing as
special providence. This latter as we know is virtually the opinion of
Gersonides (_cf._ p. 345). 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. Providence, he says, is sometimes exercised by God directly,
without an intermediate voluntary agent, sometimes with such mediation.
God's relations to Moses and to the Israelites in Egypt at the time of
the tenth plague were without intermediate agency. In all other cases
there is mediation of angels, or prophets, or wise men, or, according to
some, the heavenly bodies, which are living and intelligent beings.
Providence itself is of different kinds. There is the most general and
natural exhibited in the equipment of the various species of plant and
animal life for their protection and growth and conservation. There are
the more special powers found in the human race. These forms of
providence have little to do with the person's deserts. They are purely
dependent upon the constitution and influence of the stars. Then there
is the more special providence of the Jewish nation, then of the male
members of this nation, and of the priests and the levites. Finally
comes the special providence of the individual, who is rewarded and
punished according to his conduct. The reward and punishment of this
world are not strictly controlled by conduct, the reward and punishment
of the next world are. In this last remark Crescas cuts the knot which
has been the cause of so much discussion in religious philosophy. If the
real reward and punishment are in the next world, the prosperity of the
wicked and the adversity of the righteous in this world do not form so
great a problem. At the same time an explanation of this peculiar
phenomenon is still wanting. For surely the righteous man does not
deserve to _suffer_ for his righteousness, even though his good deeds
will not go unrewarded in the next world. In this discussion also
Crescas takes issue with the intellectualistic point of view of
Maimonides and particularly Gersonides. The solution of these men that
evil does not come from God directly but by accident and by reason of
matter, and the corollary drawn therefrom that God does not punish the
wicked directly, that he merely neglects them, leaving them to the
accidents of nature and chance, Crescas does not approve. Nor is he more
favorably inclined to the theory that the good man is provided for
because the more he cultivates his mind, the more closely he comes in
contact with God, in whom are contained actually all the ideas of which
man has some potentially. His main criticism is that the theory is
opposed to clear statements in the Bible, which imply special and
individual reward and punishment in a miraculous and supernatural
manner, which cannot be due to intellectual perfection, nor to the order
of the heavenly bodies. 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. The complaint raised on
account of the misery of the good and the prosperity of the wicked he
answers by saying that real reward and punishment are in the next world.
The goods and evils of this world are also to be considered, and he
gives the ordinary excuses for the apparent deviation from what ought to
be, such as that evil is sometimes a good in disguise and _vice versa_;
that one sometimes inherits evil and good from one's parents; that the
individual is sometimes involved in the destinies of the majority, and
so on, and so on. Evil in the sense of moral evil, _i. e._, wrong, does
not come from God, it is true, but punishment does come from God, and as
its aim is justice, it is a good, not an evil. The providence extended
to Israel is greatest. There is more Providence in Palestine than
elsewhere, not because there is any difference in the relation on God's
side, but there is on the side of the man enjoying this providence. His
character and disposition change with the place, and similarly with the
time and the season. Hence certain seasons of the year, like that about
the time of the Day of Atonement, are more propitious for receiving
God's providence.[394]
Another fundamental doctrine of Judaism is God's omnipotence. Weakness
would be a defect. Hence God can do everything except the contradictory.
His power is infinite not merely in duration, but also in intensity.
From Aristotle's proof of the necessity of an immovable mover as based
upon the eternity of motion (p. 256 f.), we gather only that God's power
is infinite in duration; whereas our doctrine of creation _ex nihilo_
shows that there is no relation at all between God's power and the work
he does; hence his power is infinite. This is shown also in the
miracles, some of which took place instantaneously, as the destruction
of the first born in Egypt at midnight precisely. Crescas insists that
the ass of Balaam did speak, and refers with disapproval to those who
doubt it and say it was in a vision (Gersonides).[395]
In his discussion of Prophecy the interest lies once more in his
anti-intellectualistic attitude. Maimonides agrees with the philosophers
that the prophetic power is a psychological process attainable by the
man who in addition to moral perfection possesses a highly developed
intellect and power of imagination. To anticipate the objection that if
this be so, why are there no prophets among the philosophers, Maimonides
adds that divine grace is necessary besides, and that if this is
lacking, one may have all the qualifications and yet not be a prophet.
Crescas sees the forced nature of this explanation, and once more
frankly returns to the plain intent of Scripture and Jewish tradition
that the prophet is the man chosen by God because he is a student of the
Torah and follows its commandments, and because he cleaves to God and
loves him. The prophet receives his inspiration from God directly or
through an intermediate agent, and the information received may concern
any topic whatsoever. It is not to be limited to certain topics to the
exclusion of others, as Gersonides tries to make out; and its purpose is
to give guidance to the prophet himself or to others through him.[396]
The most original contribution of Crescas to philosophical theory is
his treatment of the ever living problem of freedom. So fundamental has
it seemed for Judaism to maintain the freedom of the will that no one
hitherto had ventured to doubt it. Maimonides no less than Judah Halevi,
and with equal emphasis Gersonides, insist that the individual is not
determined in his conduct. This seemed to be the only way to vindicate
God's justice in reward and punishment. But the idea of man's freedom
clashed with the doctrine of God's omniscience. If nothing in the past
determines a man's will in a given case, then up to the moment of the
act it is undetermined, and no one can know whether a given act will
take place or its opposite. On the other hand, if God does know
everything in the future as well as in the past, man is no longer free
to act in a manner contrary to God's foreknowledge. This difficulty was
recognized by Maimonides as well as by Gersonides, and they solved it in
different ways. Maimonides gives up neither God's omniscience nor man's
absolute freedom, and escapes the dilemma by taking refuge in his idea
of God's transcendence. Human knowledge is incompatible with human
freedom; God's knowledge is not like human knowledge, and we have no
conception what it is. But it is consistent with human freedom.
Gersonides, who objects to Maimonides's treatment of the divine
attributes, and insists that they must resemble in kind though not in
degree the corresponding human attributes, can avoid the difficulty only
by a partial blunting of the sharp points of either horn of the dilemma.
Accordingly he maintains freedom in all its rigor, and mitigates the
conception of omniscience. 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. It is absurd to suppose that the first
universal and absolute cause should be ignorant of anything pertaining
to its effects. Is man then not free? Has he no choice at all, no
freedom in the determination of his conduct? If so how justify God's
reward and punishment, if reward and punishment are relative to conduct
and imply responsibility? Crescas's answer is a compromise. Determinism
is not fatalism. It does not mean that a given person is preordained
from eternity to act in a given way, no matter what the circumstances
are. It does not mean that command and advice and warning and education
and effort and endeavor are useless and without effect. This is
contradicted by experience as well as by the testimony of Scripture. But
neither is it true on the other hand that a person's will and its
conduct are causeless and undetermined until the moment of action. This
idea is equally untrue to reason and experience. We know that every
effect has a cause and the cause has a cause, and this second cause has
again a cause, until we reach the first necessary cause. Two individuals
similar in every respect would have the same will unless there is a
cause which makes them different. We have already intimated that God's
foreknowledge, which we cannot deny, is incompatible with absolute
freedom, and in the Bible we have instances of God's knowing future
events which are the results of individual choice, as in the case of
Pharaoh. The only solution then is that the act of will is in a sense
contingent, in a sense determined. It is contingent in respect to
itself, it is determined by its cause, _i. e._, the act is not fated to
take place, cause or no cause. If it were possible to remove the cause,
the act would not be; but given the cause, the effect is necessary.
Effort is not in vain, for effort is itself a cause and determines an
effect. Commandments and prohibitions are not useless, for the same
reason. Reward and punishment are not unjust, even though antecedent
causes over which man has no control determine his acts, any more than
it is unjust that fire burns the one who comes near it, though he did so
without intention. Reward and punishment are a necessary consequence of
obedience and disobedience.
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. 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. This latter statement
Crescas does not wish to be taken in its literal strictness, nor should
the analogy with the burning fire be pressed too far. For it would then
follow even if a person is physically compelled to do evil that he would
be punished, just as the fire would not refrain from burning a person
who was thrown into it by force. The determination of the will, he says,
must not be felt by the agent as a constraint and compulsion, else the
act is not free and no punishment should follow; for command and
prohibition can have no effect on a will constrained. Reward and
punishment have a pedagogical value generally, even if in a given case
they are not deserved. Even though in reality every act is determined,
still where there is no external compulsion the person is so identified
with the deed that it is in a real sense the product of his own soul,
bringing about a union with, or separation from God; and hence reward
and punishment are necessarily connected with it. Where there is
external compulsion, on the other hand, the act is not in reality his
own and hence no reward or punishment.
The question arises, however, why should there be punishment for
erroneous belief and opinion? These have nothing to do with the will,
and are determined if anything is, _i. e._, the person having them is
constrained to believe as he does by the arguments, over which he has no
control. This matter offers no difficulty to those who, like Maimonides
and Gersonides, regard intelligence as the essence of the soul, and make
immortality dependent upon intellectual ideas. A soul acquiring true
ideas, they say, becomes _ipso facto_ immortal. It is not a question of
right and wrong or of reward and punishment. But this is not the
Biblical view, and if it were true, there would be no need of the many
ceremonial regulations. Geometry would play a greater rôle in
immortality than the Torah. Crescas's answer is that reward and
punishment in this case are not for the belief itself, but rather for
the pleasure one finds in it and the pains one takes to examine it
carefully. Even in conduct one is not rewarded or punished for deeds
directly, but for the intention and desire. Deed without intention is
not punished. 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."[397]
It is of interest here to know that Spinoza, as has been shown by
Joel,[398] owed his idea of man's freedom to Crescas. He also like
Crescas denies the absolute indeterminism of a person's conduct that is
insisted upon by the majority of the mediæval Jewish philosophers. And
Joel shows moreover that Spinoza's final attitude to this question as
found in his Ethics was the outcome of a gradual development, and the
result of reading Crescas. In some of his earlier writings he insists
that anything short of absolute omniscience in God is unthinkable. He
sees the difficulty of reconciling this with man's freedom, but is not
ready to sacrifice either, and like Maimonides decides that we must not
deny it simply because we cannot understand it. Later, however, he
maintains that God's omniscience and man's freedom are absolutely
incompatible, and solves the difficulty in a manner similar to that of
Crescas by curtailing freedom as formerly understood.
The next topic of which it is necessary to have a clear idea for a
complete understanding of Judaism, is the purpose of the Law, and in
general the purpose of man. Here also appears clearly the
anti-intellectualism of Crescas and his disagreement with Maimonides and
Gersonides. The final purpose of the Law is of course, he says, a good.
The Bible teaches us to perfect our morals; it inculcates true beliefs
and opinions; and it promises by means of these happiness of body and
happiness of soul. Which of these four is the ultimate end? Clearly it
must be the best and most worthy. And it seems as if this quality
pertains to the eternal happiness of the soul, to which as an end the
other three tend. Corporeal happiness is a means to the perfection of
the soul since the latter acts through the means of bodily organs.
Similarly moral perfection assists in purifying the soul. As for
perfection in ideas, some think that it alone makes the soul immortal by
creating the acquired intellect, which is immaterial and separate, and
enjoys happiness in the next world incomparably greater than the joy we
feel here below in the acquisition of knowledge. There is a difference
of opinion as to the subject-matter which bestows immortality. According
to some it is all knowledge, whether of sublunar things or of the
separate substances. According to others it is only the knowledge of God
and the angels that confers immortality. All these views are wrong from
the Scriptural as well as the philosophical point of view.
The Bible makes it clear repeatedly that eternal life is obtained by
performance of the commandments; whereas according to the others
practical observance is only a means and a preparation to theory,
without which practice alone is inadequate. According to Scripture and
tradition certain offences are punished with exclusion from eternal
life, and certain observances confer immortality, which have nothing to
do with theoretical truths.
But philosophically too their views are untenable. For it would follow
from their opinions that the purpose of the Law is for something other
than man, for the acquired intellect is "separate," and hence cannot be
the form of man. It is different in kind from man, for unlike him it is
eternal as an individual. Besides it is not true that the acquired
intellect is made as a substance by its ideas, while being separate from
the material intellect; for as immaterial it has no matter as its
subject from which it could come into being. It must therefore come into
being _ex nihilo_, which is absurd.
And there are other reasons against their view. For if all knowledge
confers immortality, one may acquire it by studying geometry, which is
absurd. And if this privilege can be gained only by a knowledge of God
and the separate substances, the objection is still greater; for, as
Maimonides has shown, the only knowledge that may be had of these is
negative; and it is not likely that such imperfect knowledge should make
an eternal intellect.
If then theoretical knowledge does not lead to immortality as they
thought, and the other perfections are preparatory to theoretical, it
follows that the ultimate purpose of the Law and of man is attained
primarily neither by theory alone nor by practice alone, but by
something else, which is neither quite the one nor the other. It is the
love and fear of God. This is demanded alike by Scripture, tradition and
philosophy. That it is the view of religion is clear enough from the
many passages in the Bible urging love of God. But it is also demanded
by philosophy. For the soul is a spiritual substance, hence it is
capable of separation from the body and of existing by itself forever,
whether it has theoretical knowledge or not; since it is not subject to
decay, not being material. Further, the perfect loves the good and the
perfect; and the greater the good and the perfection the greater the
love and the desire in the perfect being. Hence the perfect soul loves
God with the greatest love of which it is capable. Similarly God's love
for the perfect soul, though the object as compared with him is low
indeed, is great, because his essence and perfection are great. Now as
love is the cause of unity even in natural things, the love of God in
the soul brings about a unity between them; and unity with God surely
leads to happiness and immortality. As love is different from
intellectual apprehension, the essence of the soul is love rather than
intelligence.
There are many Talmudical passages confirming this view logically
derived. We are told that the souls of the righteous enjoy the splendor
of the Shekinah, and the wicked suffer correspondingly. This agrees with
our conception of immortality and not with theirs. For enjoyment is
impossible on their showing, though they try to make it plausible.
Pleasure is different from apprehension; and as the essence of the
acquired intellect is apprehension, there is no room for the pleasure,
the intellect being simple. According to our view love is rewarded with
pleasure. The pleasure we feel here below in intellectual work
(Gersonides, p. 339) proves nothing, for it is due to the effort and the
passing from potential knowledge to actual knowledge, _i. e._, to the
process of learning. Proof of this is that we find no pleasure in axioms
and first principles, which we know without effort. But the acquired
intellect after the death of the body does not learn any new truths,
hence can have no pleasure.
The Rabbis also speak of definite places of reward and punishment, which
cannot apply to the acquired intellect, since it is a "separate"
substance and can have no place. The soul as we understand it can have a
place, just as it is connected with the body during life.
The Rabbis often speak of the great reward destined for school children.
But surely the acquired intellect cannot amount to much in children. The
truth is that the soul becomes mature and complete as soon as it
acquires the rational faculty in the shape of the first principles or
axioms. Then it is prepared for immortality as a natural thing without
regard to reward.
The purpose of the soul as we showed is to love God. This object the
Bible attains by the commandments, which may be classified with
reference to their significance in seven groups. They exalt God; they
show his great kindness to us; they give us true ideas concerning the
nature of God; they call our attention to his providence; they give us
promises of corporeal and spiritual reward; they call our attention to
God's miracles in order to keep our attention from flagging; and finally
they command love of God and union with him as the final aim of
man.[399]
In addition to the six fundamental doctrines of Judaism mentioned above
(p. 392), there are true beliefs which are essential to Judaism, and the
denial of which constitutes heresy; though they are not as fundamental
as the other six, in the sense that the Law would continue to exist
without them. They are (1) Creation, (2) Immortality, (3) Reward and
Punishment, (4) Resurrection, (5) Eternity of the Law, (6) The
superiority of Moses to the other prophets, (7) The priest's learning
the future through the Urim and Tumim, (8) Belief in the Messiah. The
list of thirteen articles of the creed given by Maimonides (_cf._ below,
p. 409) is open to criticism. If he meant fundamental dogmas, there are
not as many as thirteen; there are no more than seven or eight--the six
mentioned before (p. 392), and, if one chooses, the existence of God,
making seven, and revelation as the eighth. On the other hand, if
Maimonides meant to include "true beliefs," there are more than fifteen,
the six enumerated above (p. 392), existence of God and revelation, and
the eight "true beliefs" named at the head of this section, not counting
a great many specific commandments.[400]
Having made this criticism of Maimonides's thirteen articles, Crescas
proceeds to discuss every one of the eight true beliefs named at the
beginning of the last paragraph. For our purpose it will not be
necessary to reproduce the minute arguments here. We will select a few
of the more important topics and state briefly Crescas's attitude.
The doctrine of creation formed the central theme in Maimonides and
Gersonides. It was here, as we have seen, that Maimonides stopped short
in his devotion to Aristotle and took pains to show that the arguments
of the latter in favor of eternity are not valid, and that Aristotle
knew it. He endeavored to show, moreover, that the doctrine of creation
can be made more plausible than its opposite, and hence since creation
is essential to Judaism, it must be regarded as a fundamental dogma.
Gersonides could not see his way clear to accepting creation _ex
nihilo_, among other things because as matter cannot come from form, the
material world cannot come from God. Accordingly he compromised by
saying that while the present world as it is is not eternal, it came
from a primitive "hyle" or matter, which was eternal. Thus our world is
dependent for its forms upon God, for its matter upon the prime and
eternal "hyle."
Here Crescas takes up the problem and points out that whether we accept
or not an eternal "hyle," everything that exists must be dependent upon
God as the only necessary existent. Everything outside of him, be it
eternal matter or not, is only a possible existent and owes its
existence to God. Creation _ex nihilo_ means no more. To be sure, if we
assume that the existence of the world and its emanation from God is
eternal, because his relation to his product is the same at all times,
it will follow that the emanation of the world from God is a necessary
process. But necessity in this case does not exclude will, nay it
implies it. For the only way in which anything can come from a rational
cause is by way of conception. The rational cause forms a conception of
the world order and of himself as giving existence to this world order
as a whole and in its parts. Will means no more than this. This will
also solve the old philosophic difficulty, how can the many come from
the One. Our answer is that the good God created a good world. The
goodness of the world is its unity, _i. e._, the parts contribute to
making a whole which is good. On the other hand, an agent is perfectly
good when he acts with will. God's will also makes miracles possible.
Moreover, eternal creation is not inconsistent with continued creation,
and we have creation _ex nihilo_ every moment. Maimonides is wrong
therefore when he thinks that eternity would upset Judaism and make
miracles impossible. Creation in time is therefore not a fundamental
dogma with which Judaism stands and falls. At the same time it is a true
belief as taught in the first verse of Genesis.[401]
Another of the true beliefs is reward and punishment. This consists of
two kinds, corporeal and spiritual. Corporeal is spoken of in the Bible
and is not opposed to reason. For as the purpose of creation is to do
man good and enable him to achieve perfection, it stands to reason that
God would remove any obstacles in the way of man's perfecting himself,
and this is the kind of reward mentioned first, "All the diseases which
I put upon the Egyptians I shall not put upon thee, for I the Lord am
thy healer" (Exod. 15, 26). Punishment is primarily for the same
purpose.
As for spiritual reward and punishment, they are not mentioned
specifically in the Bible, but the Talmud is full of it. Rationally they
can be explained as follows. As the soul is spiritual and intellectual,
it enjoys great pleasure from being in contact with the world of spirit
and apprehending of the nature of God what it could not apprehend while
in the body. On the other hand, being restrained from the world of
spirit and kept in darkness gives it pain; and this may lead to its
ultimate destruction. The essence of the soul, as was said above, is not
intellectuality, but love and desire; hence pain may destroy it.
The reason spiritual reward and punishment, which is the more important
of the two, is not mentioned in the Bible, is because it was taken as a
matter of fact. Corporeal reward and punishment was not so regarded,
hence the need of specifying it.
A difficulty that presents itself is, How is it consistent with justice
to punish the soul by itself, when it was the composite of body and soul
that sinned? This may be answered by saying that the soul is the form of
the body and does not change when separated. Hence, being the more
important of the two elements composing man, it receives the more
important punishment, namely, spiritual.
Besides, it is true that the composite also receives compensation. And
this is the purpose of resurrection.[402]
Resurrection of the body is not universal, but is reserved only for
some, as is clear from the passage in Daniel (12, 2), "And many of those
that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting
life, and some to disgrace and everlasting abhorrence." At the same time
it is difficult to know who these some are. It cannot be the perfect and
the good only, since some of those rising will go "to disgrace and
everlasting abhorrence." We can decide this better later, when we have
learned more of resurrection.
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. At the time of the
resurrection those who come back to life will tell the living how they
fared when their souls left their bodies. Another purpose of
resurrection is, as mentioned above, in order to reward and punish the
composite of body and soul which acted during life.
The dogma of resurrection is regarded so seriously by the Rabbis, who
exclude the unbeliever in it from a portion in the world to come,
because in this act is completed the form of man; and because thereby is
realized the justice of God, and the faith is strengthened in the minds
of the believers.
It seems at first sight impossible that the elements of the body, which
were dispersed at the time of the body's death and formed part of other
substances, can be gathered together again. But it is not really so
strange, for in the first place God may so arrange matters that these
elements may be in a position to return. Besides, this is not really
necessary. It is quite sufficient that God create a body exactly like
the first in temperament and form, and endow it with the old soul, which
will then behave like the old person; and being endowed with memory
besides, the identity of personality will be complete.
For the purpose of showing God's justice and strengthening man's faith
it is sufficient to resurrect the perfectly good and the completely bad.
The intermediate classes do not deserve this extraordinary miracle, and
their spiritual reward will be sufficient.[403]