Names of God: Attributes of Divine Nature In Maimonides' Jewish Philosophy

December 7, 2003
By Jim Weller

Just what is God, after all? What can we say about God to represent an apprehension of divine nature? What can we know of God qua God, as distinguished from our knowledge of God’s effects – what the ancient philosophers called the “sensible” and the “intelligible” aspects of reality? What in the world can we attribute to God’s essence – what God is, in the way that we give “names,” or attributive terms, to signify what an existing thing essentially is? These are some of the puzzling questions the medieval philosophers of theology asked themselves. Our contemporaries are still asking them. The questions asked in terms of any other object of knowledge, or philosophical apprehension, remain, when asked of God (in an oft-used phrase), “an enigma inside a puzzle wrapped in a mystery.”

I know no better way of answering than this: All we can truly say, or know, or understand concerning what God is, is that God is. That is just how God answers the Biblical Moses’ question asking God’s name: Eyeh-Asher-Eyeh – “I am that I am.” These are the words of the oldest text in the Hebrew Scriptures, dating from around 950 BCE. In other words, God’s essence and existence are one. As St. Thomas Aquinas put it, according to University of Notre Dame professor of theology and philosophy David B. Burrell, Deus est esse – God is “to-be,” in the infinitive, i.e., “existence,” or “being.” Alternatively, as in Paul Tillich’s twentieth-century formulation of the Biblical answer, God is “Being-itself.” Tillich finds that the basis – what he calls the "prius" – of all philosophy of religion, as affirmed by St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, is the Deus est esse. God is being, a unity of essence and existence.

Just so, for Moses Maimonides, writing in his twelfth-century didactic on the meaning of Torah and Talmud, The Guide of the Perplexed, nothing that can be said of the human experience of reality can be properly said of God as God, “there being nothing in what exists besides God . . . and the totality of the things He has made. There is, moreover, no way to apprehend Him except it be through the things He has made; for they are indicative of his existence and of what ought to be believed about Him, I mean to say, of what should be affirmed and denied with regard to Him.”

Maimonides’ doctrine is that we can only speak of God’s attributes, or “names,” by analogy, as though, like anything in existence, something might be predicated of it – what its formal features, or substantial properties or qualities are, or even what it is, essentially, its “quiddity.” Because, unlike something in existence that can be made the object of thought, God is existence essentially.

Maimonides enunciated the public doctrine that he maintained ought to be believed by the multitudes “on traditional authority,” as follows: “that God is not a body; that there is absolutely no likeness in any respect whatsoever between Him and the things created by Him; [and] that His existence has no likeness to theirs.” He explained further, concerning the Names of God,

"Everything that can be ascribed to God . . . differs in every respect from our attributes, so that no definition can comprehend the one thing and the other. Similarly, the term ‘existence’ can only be applied equivocally [differently] to His existence and to that of things other than Him. As for the discussion concerning attributes and the way they should be negated with regard to Him; and as to the meaning of the attributes that may be ascribed to Him . . . and the notion of His names, though they are many, being indicative of one and the same thing – it should be considered that all of these are obscure matters. In fact, they are truly the mysteries of the Torah and the secrets [of the Talmud.]"

Therefore, in a declaration of the absolute limits to human understanding given as a preface to his discussion of the knowable aspects of God, Maimonides warned against intellectual hubris, writing,

"Know that the human intellect has objects of apprehension that it is within its power and according to its nature to apprehend. On the other hand, in the totality of that which exists, there also are existents and matters that . . . [the human intellect] is not capable of apprehending in any way; the gates of . . . apprehension are shut before it. There are also in that which exist things of which the intellect may apprehend one state while not being cognizant of other states. The fact that it apprehends does not entail the conclusion that it can apprehend all things."

Maimonides emphasized that the incomprehensibility of divine or metaphysical realities (he equates the two adjectives), “for the apprehension of which [humankind] . . . has a great longing,” has been recognized by philosophers of all times and cultures, and this is not “a statement made [just] in order to conform to Law [Torah].” He recounts the Greek philosopher Alexander of Aphrodisias’ dictum that there are three causes of differences of human opinion concerning speculative truth, one of which is plain ignorance. The others are human contentiousness, and “the obscurity of the object of apprehension in itself and the difficulty of apprehending it” – the ultimate incomprehensibility just mentioned. To these, Maimonides adds another cause of perplexity. “It is habit and upbringing. For [humankind] has in his nature a love of, and an inclination for, that to which he is habituated.” By this, he means the mistake of flat, literal interpretation of the sacred texts, “whose external meaning is indicative of the corporeality of God and other imaginings with no truth in them, for these have been set forth as parables and riddles.”

Because of the fundamentally incomprehensible Eyeh-Asher-Eyeh, there is profound virtue and sense in the Holy Scriptures’ use of parabolic and metaphoric language, “in such a manner as the mind is led toward the existence of the objects of these opinions and representations but not toward grasping their essence as it truly is.” The central enigma must be approached only with the utmost circumspection, awe, and humility. It is “beyond the domain of things that [humankind] is able to grasp,” and yet it is the truth of ultimate reality. In this regard, Maimonides teaches by allusion to Proverbs 25:16, rendering: “Hast thou found honey? Eat [only] so much as is sufficient for thee, lest thou be filled therewith and vomit it.”

As for the Names of God and the other “mysteries of the Torah,” Maimonides explained, “When people have received this doctrine [of the incorporeality and unity of God], are habituated to and educated and grown up in it, and subsequently become perplexed . . . they should be elevated to the knowledge of the interpretation of [the books of the prophets], and their attention should be drawn to the equivocality and figurative sense of the various terms.”

Thus, Maimonides explains at length, every affect, act, feature, and quality ascribed to God is meant in figuratively humanistic terms. Citing the Babylonian Talmud, he reminds the reader, “The Torah speaketh in the language of the sons of man.” He asserts thus that scripture attributing to God such human affects as wrath, anger, and jealousy express the attitudes of the faithful toward idolaters and infidels, the willfully ignorant and blasphemous people of the society amongst whom they lived and worshipped. Anthropomorphisms in scripture, i.e., terms used of God such as “face,” “back,” “heart,” “air [breath],” “soul,” “living,” “wing,” “eye [or sight, seeing],” and “hear [hearing],” are in each instance “an equivocal term, its equivocality being mostly with respect to its figurative use.” Furthermore, he avers, “When we . . . begin to expound the negation of the attributes, we shall make clear how all this is reducible to one notion, which is exclusively that of the essence of God . . . who produces everything other than He, and in addition apprehends His own act.” Maimonides presages for his reader, “When . . . the true reality is investigated it will be found . . . that He has no essential attribute existing in true reality, such as would be superadded to his essence [esse].” Then, he gives his well-known expostulation of antitheses concerning the divine essence:

"On the attributes . . . it is known that existence . . . is superadded to the quiddity [essence] of what exists. This is clear and necessary with regard to everything the existence of which has a cause. As for that which has no cause for its existence, there is only God. For this is the meaning of our saying . . . that His existence is necessary. Accordingly, His existence is identical with His essence and his true reality, and His essence is His existence. He exists, but not through an existence other than His essence; . . . He lives, but not through life; . . . He is powerful, but not through power; . . . He knows, but not through knowledge. He is one not through oneness."

Regarding these, Maimonides’ famous “negative attributions,” the fundamentals are the dogmatic attributions he prescribes, of the in-corporeality and un-likeness of God to any other existent. These negations derive from the primal credos of Jew, Muslim, and Christian: “Hear, O Israel, God our God is one;” “There is no God but Allah;” and “I believe in one God.” Thus, his summary teaching is the admonition to “Know that the description of God by means of negations is the correct description – negations are in a certain respect attributes and . . . we have no way of describing Him unless it be through negations and not otherwise.”

The sole affirmative attribution proper to God, according to Maimonides’ treatise, is the one I began with here. Maimonides makes of this a demonstration founded in the scriptural revelation “made known to Moses and through which they [the Israelites] would acquire a true notion of the existence of God, this knowledge being: I am that I am.”

"This is a name deriving from the verb to be, which signifies existence. The whole secret consists in the repetition in a predicative position of the very word indicative of existence. For the word that requires the mention of an attribute immediately connected with it. Accordingly, the first word is I am, considered as a term to which a predicate is attached; the second word that is predicated of the first is also I am, that is, identical with the first. Scripture makes, as it were, a clear statement . . . that He is existent not through existence . . . [i.e.] the existent that is the existent, or the necessarily existent. This is what demonstration necessarily leads to, namely, to the view that there is a necessarily existent thing that has never been, or ever will be, nonexistent.”

Maimonides has a very great deal more to say to the perplexed reader concerning his “divine science.” For myself though, dear reader, I say at this juncture, “Further, plaintiff alleges not,” as it were in a legal complaint; or – not to put too fine a point on it – in the words of the Biblical sage Qoholeth, “God is in heaven and you are on earth; that is why your words should be few.”

What Is The Soul?

4 August 2004
By Jim Weller

Let’s say that the soul is the I at the center of personal being. I might have said, at the center of the experience of personal being, but that would entail consciousness – experience is not usually thought of as non-conscious. But sometimes personal being is non-conscious, or not self-aware, as when dreamlessly sleeping, for instance. Experience goes with self-awareness; but persons in being are not always self-aware, as in various states of non-consciousness. Deep meditative states and comatose states are other instances of this, aren’t they? In all those instances, though, the I is still there, or at least it is potentially, isn’t it? If it isn’t, where did it go? Whence does it return when we return to self-aware, conscious experience? No, I think what I mean by the I, the soul, is there as long as the whole person is alive – “brain-dead” persons notwithstanding.

Many people, usually children and simple-minded folk, want to believe that the I exists independently from the living body. With my definition, this would mean that personal being is distinct and separable from the living organism. Thus, the soul existed, in some sense, before the organism came into being, will continue after its death, and is potentially apart from it while it lives. This is the idea of the immortal, incorporeal soul popularized by Plato and his followers, which became standard in many quarters of Western civilization afterward until the late modern era, and is still firmly ensconced, as I’ve said, in many people’s minds.

I don’t think so. I think that personal being, and the I at its center, the soul if you will, is a consequence, an incident, a feature, or a function of the living organism, with its brain and mind, and that it is nonsensical to imagine it existing otherwise, especially before the person’s life or after death. The soul is coterminous with personal being, and the life of the person. It probably begins at some point in prenatal development, is certainly present neonatally, and ends with death. (I don’t limit the application of this discussion to human beings, incidentally, because it is obvious that some other species exhibit many characteristics of personality, whether or not we refer to them as “persons,” which I occasionally do.)

There is something else to consider, though, and that is the fact that no one is “an island.” All persons exist in society, in communities, in ecosystems involving a multitude of other living beings. No person – no self, no I – can come into being and continue to live, except interdependently, as a reflection of, and in relation with other selves, other persons, other beings. We are biologically and socially constructed and conditioned.

Thus, in a very real sense you might say, with Emerson, that there is an “oversoul” analogous with the individual soul, correlative with all of life itself – the entire biosphere in which all souls are situate – which extends physically and temporally beyond the limits of individual persons’ lives, and includes all of them, along with all their ancestors and descendants. This is what has sometimes been called the “collective unconscious.” I think that’s what Jung meant, and I think it would not be mistaken to regard it also as a collective consciousness. This is still in the realm of ecology, social psychology, and anthropology.

That is not God, though. It is a feature of life on earth. You might say it is an aspect of God’s consciousness, if you want to get metaphysical. But you can’t really talk about God in these terms. God and the soul are different subjects, in my opinion. Metaphysics is philosophy. God-talk is theology. Soul-talk is in the realm of biology, social science and the humanities.

Will They Do It Again?

3 August 2004
By Jim Weller

Tuesday, September 11, 2001 was a day off work for me. I woke up and, as usual, turned on the local public radio news. When I had listened long enough that morning to get a full picture of what was happening, the really big question for me was this: How could this incredible, horrible attack have happened, entirely unbeknownst to the most powerful national security establishment in world history? It took me awhile to accept the cognitively dissonant but obvious answer: It didn’t. I think Bush knew. It was all part of the big White House plan, which would unfold in due course.

“Nah,” you think. “You must be crazy. The President of the United States would never sacrifice thousands of American lives in some gigantic political power game.” Is that what you think? Well, I don’t. The man-on-the-street Bush apologist says, “Well, we had to do something after 9/11, didn’t we?” Yes, of course. That’s the point. The Bushites wanted to be in that position. And the best their cadre of policy wonks could come up with to do about it was to knock over a couple of weak, impoverished Muslim countries?

Look what Bush has done since then. Well in excess of a thousand U.S. soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many more thousands have been maimed and injured. Increase those numbers at least thirty-fold if you want to estimate how many foreign people are dead and dismembered, and tortured – don’t forget that, as the result of the U.S. military adventures there. Dozens more of us and them fall every day. And it’s getting worse, not better. All for what? The people and the national institutions of Iraq and Afghanistan, such as they were – even the worst of them, were never a threat to the United States. Never. Not in 1991, not in 2001, not in 2003.

So what’s it all about? What’s the big aim of all this fighting and fear and loathing? November 2, 2004, that’s what. It’s about political power in America, Republican power. Bush wants to be the War President. National Super-Hero, Defender of Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Who do you trust more to defend the security of the nation? George W. Bush or John Kerry? That’s it. “We are a nation in danger,” Bush said Sunday, as he raised the terror color code from yellow to orange. “This is a solemn reminder of the threat we continue to face.” Terror is the key factor in the Republican campaign strategy. Bush plans to consolidate political power by terrorizing the U.S. electorate.

I think the Bushites are going to do it again. Stage another terrorist attack in the United States. In the next ten weeks or so, before the election. Maybe it won't have to be such a big production this time. Maybe it'll be a foiled attempt. Maybe they'll catch a few Muslim extremists in the act and kill or capture them. Or maybe they'll only kill a few of us, say a few dozen victims instead of 3,000 as in the 9/11 attacks. Still, it'll scare the living shinola out of the swing voters; make them rally ‘round the flag in a big way. The more ground the Kerry/Edwards campaign gains, the more likely it is that Bush/Cheney will play their ace in the hole. They seem to be preparing the stage now, putting on the Homeland Security high alert. Jack-booted, black-jacketed thugs with assault rifles ready, guarding every financial district street corner.

Go ahead; tell me I’m a conspiracy nut. Yes, I do think the political progenitors of Bush and Cheney snuffed the Kennedys and Malcolm X and Rev. King in the 60’s. It’s the same power elite pulling the wires, now as then. These people will stop at nothing to stay in power –the 9/11 Commission and the Warren Commission reports notwithstanding. As the electoral tide turns against them, they're getting ready to roll out the Terror Factor, and the Big Lie - the sequel.

On the day this fall when we all wake up and say, “My God, how could this happen – again?” Bush will say, "We warned you." And I’ll say, “I told you so.”