because we know in our own case that an intellect is perfected by knowledge. And since we have come to the
conclusion on other grounds that God is a perfect intellect, we say he must have knowledge. Now if this knowledge that
we ascribe to God has no resemblance whatsoever to what we understand by knowledge in our own case, the ground is
removed from our feet. We might as well argue that man is rational because solid is continuous. If the word knowledge
means a totally different thing in God from what it means in us, how do we know that it is to be found in God? If we have
absolutely no idea what the term means when applied to God, what reason have we for preferring knowledge as a divine
attribute to its opposite or negative? If knowledge does not mean knowledge, ignorance does not mean ignorance, and it
is just the same whether we ascribe to God the one or the other.
The truth is that the attributes we ascribe to God do have a resemblance to the same attributes in ourselves; only they
are primary in God, secondary in ourselves, i. e., they exist in God in a more perfect manner than in us. Hence it is
absurd to say that what would be in us error or uncertainty is in God knowledge. Our problem must be solved more
candidly and differently. There are arguments in favor of God's knowing particulars (Maimonides gives some), and there
are the arguments of the philosophers against the thesis. The truth must be between the two, that God knows them from
one aspect and does not know them from another. Having shown above that human events are in part ordered and
determined by the heavenly bodies, and in part undetermined and dependent upon the individual's choice, we can now
make use of this distinction for the solution of our problem. God knows particulars in so far as they are ordered, he does
not know them in so far as they are contingent. He knows that they are contingent, and hence it follows that he does not
know which of the two possibilities will happen, else they would not be contingent. This is no defect in God's nature, for
to know a thing as it is is no imperfection. In general God does not know particulars as particulars but as ordered by the
universal laws of nature. He knows the universal order, and he knows the particulars in so far as they are united in the
universal order.
This theory meets all objections, and moreover it is in agreement with the views of the Bible. It is the only one by which
we can harmonize the apparent contradictions in the Scriptures. Thus on the one hand we are told that God sends
Prophets and commands people to do and forbear. This implies that a person has freedom to choose, and that the
contingent is a real category. On the other hand, we find that God foretells the coming of future events respecting human
destiny, which signifies determination. And yet again we find that God repents, and that he does not repent. All these
apparent contradictions can be harmonized on our theory. God foretells the coming of events in so far as they are
determined in the universal order of nature. But man's freedom may succeed in counteracting this order, and the events
predicted may not come. This is signified by the expression that God repents.[347]
Levi ben Gerson's solution, whatever we may think of its scientific or philosophic value, is surely very bold as theology,
we might almost say it is a theological monstrosity. It practically removes from God the definite knowledge of the outcome
of a given event so far as that outcome is contingent. Gersonides will not give up the contingent, for that would destroy
freedom. He therefore accepts free will with its consequences, at the risk of limiting God's knowledge to events which are
determined by the laws of nature. Maimonides was less consistent, but had the truer theological sense, namely, he kept
to both horns of the dilemma. God is omniscient and man is free. He gave up the solution by seeking refuge in the
mysteriousness of God's knowledge. This is the true religious attitude.
The question of Providence is closely related to that of God's knowledge. For it is clear that one cannot provide for those
things of which he does not know. Gersonides's view in this problem is very similar to that of Maimonides, and like him he
sees in the discussions between Job and his friends the representative opinions held by philosophers in this important
problem.
There are three views, he says, concerning the nature of Providence. One is that God's providence extends only to
species and not to individuals. The second opinion is that God provides for every individual of the human race. The third
view is that some individuals are specially provided for, but not all. Job held the first view, which is that of Aristotle. The
arguments in favor of this opinion are that God does not know particulars, hence cannot provide for them. Besides, there
would be more justice in the distribution of goods and evils in the world if God concerned himself about every individual.
Then again man is too insignificant for God's special care.
The second view is that of the majority of our people. They argue that as God is the author of all, he surely provides for
them. And as a matter of fact experience shows it; else there would be much more violence and bloodshed than there is.
The wicked are actually punished and the good rewarded. This class is divided into two parts. Some think that while God
provides for all men, not all that happens to a man is due to God; there are also other causes. The others think that
every happening is due to God. This second class may again be divided according to the manner in which they account
for those facts in experience which seem to militate against their view. Maintaining that every incident is due to God, they
have to explain the apparent deviation from justice in the prosperity of the wicked and the adversity of the righteous. One
party explains the phenomenon by saying that the prosperity and the adversity in these cases are only seeming and not
real; that they in fact are the opposite of what they seem, or at least lead to the opposite. The second party answers the
objection on the ground that those we think good may not really be such, and similarly those we think bad may not really
be bad. For the way to judge a person's character is not merely by his deeds alone, but by his deeds as related to his
temperament and disposition, which God alone knows. Eliphaz the Temanite belonged to those who think that not all
which happens is due to God; that folly is responsible for a man's misfortune. Bildad the Shuchite believed that all things
are from God, but not all that seems good and evil is really so. Zophar the Naamathite thought we do not always judge
character correctly; that temperament and disposition must be taken into account.
Of these various opinions the first one, that of Aristotle, cannot be true. Dreams, divination, and especially prophecy
contradict it flatly. All these are given to the individual for his protection ( cf. above, p. 342). The second opinion, namely,
that God's providence extends to every individual, is likewise disproved by reason, by experience and by the Bible. We
have already proved (p. 345) that God's knowledge does not extend to particulars as such. He only knows things as
ordered by the heavenly bodies; and knows at the same time that they may fail to happen because of man's free will.
Now if God punishes and rewards every man according to his deeds, one of two things necessarily follows. Either he
rewards and punishes according to those deeds which the individual is determined to do by the order of the heavenly
bodies, or according to the deeds the individual actually does. In the first case there would be often injustice, for the
person might not have acted as the order of the heavenly bodies indicated he would act, for he is free to act as he will.
The second case is impossible, for it would mean that God knows particulars as particulars—a thesis we have already
disproved. Besides, evil does not come from God directly, since he is pure form and evil comes only from matter. Hence
it cannot be said that he punishes the evil doer for his sin.
Experience also testifies against this view, for we see the just suffer and the wicked prosper. The manner in which
Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar wish to defend God's justice will not hold water. Man's own folly will account perhaps for
some evils befalling the righteous and some good coming to the wicked. But it will not account for the failure of the good
man to get the reward he deserves, and of the wicked to receive the punishment which is his due. The righteous man
often has troubles all his life no matter how careful he is to avoid them, and correspondingly the same is true of the
wicked, that he is prosperous, despite his lack of caution and good sense. To avoid these objections as Eliphaz does by
saying that if the wicked man himself is not punished, his children will be, is to go from the frying pan into the fire. For it is
not just either to omit to punish the one deserving it, or to punish another innocent man for him. Nor is Zophar's defence
any better. For the same man, with the same temperament and disposition, often suffers more when he is inclined to do
good, and is prosperous when he is not so scrupulous. Bildad is no more successful than the other two. The evils
coming to the righteous are often real and permanent. But neither does the Bible compel us to believe that God looks out
for all individuals. This is especially true in reference to punishment, as can be gathered from such expressions as "I will
hide my face from them, and they shall be given to be devoured" (Deut. 31, 17), or "As thou hast forgotten the law of thy
God, so will I myself also forget thy children" (Hosea 4, 6). These expressions indicate that God does not punish the
individuals directly, but that he leaves them to the fate that is destined for them by the order of the heavenly bodies. True
there are other passages in Scripture speaking of direct punishment, but they may be interpreted so as not to conflict
with our conclusions.
Having seen that neither of the two extreme views is correct, it remains to adopt the middle course, namely, that some
individuals are provided for specially, and others not. The nearer a person is to the Active Intellect, the more he receives
divine providence and care. Those people who do not improve their capabilities, which they possess as members of the
species, are provided for only as members of the species. The matter may be put in another way also. God knows all
ideas. Man is potentially capable of receiving them in a certain manner. God, who is actual, leads man from his
potentiality to actuality. When a man's potentialities are thus realized, he becomes similar to God, because when ideas
are actualized the agent and the thing acted upon are one. Hence the person enjoys divine providence at that time. The
way in which God provides for such men is by giving them knowledge through dream, divination or prophecy or intuition
or in some other unconscious manner on the individual's part, which knowledge protects him from harm. This view is not
in conflict with the truth that God does not know particulars as such. For it is not to the individual person as such that
providence extends as a conscious act of God. The individualization is due to the recipient and not to the dispenser. One
may object that after all since it is possible that bad men may have goods as ordered by the heavenly bodies, and good
men may have misfortune as thus ordered, when their attachment to God is loosened somewhat, there is injustice in God
if he could have arranged the heavenly spheres differently and did not, or incapacity if he could not. The answer is
briefly that the order of the spheres does a great deal of good in maintaining the existence of things. And if some little evil
comes also incidentally, this does not condemn the whole arrangement. In fact the evils come from the very agencies
which are the authors of good. The view of providence here adopted is that of Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite in the
book of Job (ch. 32), and it agrees also with the opinion of Maimonides in the "Guide of the Perplexed" (cf. above, p.
292).[348]
Instead of placing his cosmology at the beginning of his system and proceeding from that as a basis to the other parts of
his work, the psychology and the ethics, Levi ben Gerson, whose "Milhamot Hashem" is not so much a systematic work
as an aggregation of discussions, reversed the process. He begins as we have seen with a purely psychological analysis
concerning the nature of the human reason and its relation to the Active Intellect. He follows up this discussion with a
treatment of prognostication as exhibiting some of the effects of the Active Intellect upon the reason and imagination of
man. This is again followed by a discussion of God's knowledge and providence. And not until all these psychological
(and in part ethical) questions have been decided, does Levi ben Gerson undertake to give us his views of the
constitution of the universe and the nature and attributes of God. In this discussion he takes occasion to express his
dissatisfaction with Aristotle's proofs of the existence of the spheral movers and of the unmoved mover or God, as
inadequate to bear the structure which it is intended to erect upon them. It will be remembered that the innovation of
Abraham Ibn Daud and Maimonides in making Jewish philosophy more strictly Aristotelian than it had been consisted in a
great measure in just this introduction of the Aristotelian proof of the existence of God as derived from the motions of the
heavenly bodies. Levi ben Gerson's proofs are teleological rather than mechanical. Aristotle said a moving body must
have a mover outside of it, which if it is again a body is itself in motion and must have a mover in turn. And as this
process cannot go on ad infinitum, there must be at the end of the series an unmoved mover. As unmoved this mover
cannot be body; and as producing motion eternally, it cannot be a power residing in a body, a physical or material power,
for no such power can be infinite. Gersonides is not satisfied with this proof. He argues that so far as the motions of the
heavenly bodies are concerned there is no reason why a physical power cannot keep on moving them eternally. The
reason that motions caused by finite forces in our world come to a stop is because the thing moved is subject to change,
which alters its relation to its mover; and secondly because the force endeavors to move the object in opposition to its
own tendency, in opposition to gravity. In the case of the heavenly bodies neither of these conditions is present. The
relation of the mover to the moved is always the same, since the heavenly bodies are not subject to change; and as they
are not made of the four terrestrial elements they have no inherent tendency to move in any direction, hence they offer
no opposition to the force exerted upon them by the mover. A finite power might therefore quite conceivably cause
eternal motion. Similarly an unmoved mover cannot be body, to be sure, but it may be a physical power like a soul, which
in moving the body is not itself moved by that motion. Aristotle's proofs therefore are not sufficient to produce the
conviction that the movers of the spheres and God himself are separate Intelligences.[349]
Gersonides accordingly follows a different method. He argues that if a system of things and events exhibits perfection not
here and there and at rare intervals but regularly, the inference is justified that there is an intelligent agent who had a
definite purpose and design in establishing the system. The world below is such a system. Hence it has an intelligent
agent as its author. This agent may be a separate and immaterial intelligence, or a corporeal power like a soul. He then
shows that it cannot be a corporeal power, for it would have to reside in the animal sperm which exhibits such wonderful
and purposive development, or in the parent animal from which the sperm came, both of which, he argues, are
impossible. It remains then that the cause of the teleological life of the sublunar world is an immaterial power, a separate
intellect. This intellect, he argues further, acts upon matter and endows it with forms, the only mediating power being the
natural heat which is found in the seed and sperm of plants and animals. Moreover, it is aware of the order of what it
produces. It is the Active Intellect of which we spoke above (p. 337). The forms of terrestrial things come from it directly,
the heat residing in the seed comes from the motions of the spheres. This shows that the permanent motions of the
heavenly bodies are also intelligent motions, for they tend to produce perfection in the terrestrial world and never come
to a standstill, which would be the case if the motions were "natural" like those of the elements, or induced against their
nature like that of a stone moving upward. We are justified in saying then that the heavenly bodies are endowed with
intellects and have no material soul. Hence their movers are pure Intelligences, and there are as many of them as there
are spheres, i. e., forty-eight, or fifty-eight or sixty-four according to one's opinion on the astronomical question of the
number of spheres.
Now as the Active Intellect knows the order of sublunar existence in its unity, and the movers of the respective spheres
know the order of their effects through the motions of the heavenly bodies, it follows that as all things in heaven above
and on the earth beneath are related in a unitary system, there is a highest agent who is the cause of all existence
absolutely and has a knowledge of all existence as a unitary system.[350]
The divine attributes are derived by us from his actions, and hence they are not pure homonyms (cf., p. 240). God has a
knowledge of the complete order of sublunar things, of which the several movers have only a part. He knows it as one,
and knows it eternally without change. His joy and gladness are beyond conception, for our joy also is very great in
understanding. His is also the perfect Life, for understanding is life. He is the most real Substance and Existent, and he
i s One. God is also the most real Agent, as making the other movers do their work, and producing a complete and
perfect whole out of their parts. He is also properly called Bestower, Beneficent, Gracious, Strong, Mighty, Upright, Just,
Eternal, Permanent. All these attributes, however, do not denote multiplicity.[351]
From God we now pass again to his creation, and take up the problem which caused Maimonides so much trouble,
namely, the question of the origin of the world. It will be remembered that dissatisfied with the proofs for the existence of
God advanced by the Mutakallimun, Maimonides, in order to have a firm foundation for the central idea of religion,
tentatively adopted the Aristotelian notion of the eternity of motion and the world. 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. Besides, the assumption of the world's eternity with its
corollary of the necessity and immutability of its phenomena saps the foundation of all religion, makes miracles
impossible, and reduces the world to a machine. Gersonides is on the whole agreed with Maimonides. He admits that
Aristotle's arguments are the best yet advanced in the problem, but that they are not convincing. He also agrees with
Maimonides in his general stricture on Aristotle's method, only modifying and restricting its generality and sweeping
nature. With all this, however, he finds it necessary to take up the entire question anew and treats it in his characteristic
manner, with detail and rigor, and finally comes to a conclusion different from that of Maimonides, namely, that the world
had an origin in time, to be sure, but that it came not ex nihilo in the absolute sense of the word nihil, but developed from
an eternal formless matter, which God endowed with form. This is the so-called Platonic view.
We cannot enter into all his details which are technical and fatiguing in the extreme, but we must give a general idea of
his procedure in the investigation of this important topic.
The problem of the origin of the world, he says, is very difficult. First, because in order to learn from the nature of existing
things whether they were created out of a state of non-existence or not, we must know the essence of existing things,
which is not easy. Secondly, we must know the nature of God in order to determine whether he could have existed first
without the world and then have created it, or whether he had to have the world with him from eternity. The fact of the
great difference of opinion on this question among thinkers, and the testimony of Maimonides that Aristotle himself had
no valid proof in this matter are additional indications of the great difficulty of the subject.
Some think the world was made and destroyed an infinite number of times. Others say it was made once. Of these some
maintain it was made out of something (Plato); others, that it was made out of absolute nothing (Philoponus, the
Mutakallimun, Maimonides and many of our Jewish writers). Some on the other hand, namely, Aristotle and his followers,
hold the world to be eternal. They all have their defenders, and there is no need to refute the others since Aristotle has
already done this. His arguments are the best so far, and deserve investigation. The fundamental fallacy in all his proofs
is that he argues from the laws of genesis and decay in the parts of the world to the laws of these processes in the world
as a whole. This might seem to be the same criticism which Maimonides advances, but it is not really quite the same,
Maimonides's assertion being more general and sweeping. Maimonides says that the origin of the world as a whole need
not be in any respect like the processes going on within its parts; whereas Gersonides bases his argument on the
observed difference in the world between wholes and parts, admitting that the two may be alike in many respects.
In order to determine whether the world is created or not, it is best to investigate first those things in the world which
have the appearance of being eternal, such as the heavenly bodies, time, motion, the form of the earth, and so on. If
these are proven to be eternal, the world is eternal; if not, it is not. A general principle to help us distinguish a thing
having an origin from one that has not is the following: A thing which came into being in time has a purpose. An eternal
thing has no purpose. Applying this principle to the heavens we find that all about them is with a purpose to ordering the
sublunar world in the best way possible. Their motions, their distances, their positions, their numbers, and so on are all
for this purpose. Hence they had a beginning. Aristotle's attempts to explain these conditions from the nature of the
heavens themselves are not successful, and he knew it. Again, as the heavenly bodies are all made of the same fifth
element (the Aristotelian ether), the many varieties in their forms and motions require special explanation. The only
satisfactory explanation is that the origin of the heavenly bodies is not due to nature and necessity, which would favor
eternity, but to will and freedom, and the many varieties are for a definite purpose. Hence they are not eternal.[352]
Gersonides then analyzes time and motion and proves that Aristotle to the contrary notwithstanding, they are both finite
and not infinite. Time belongs to the category of quantity, and there is no infinite quantity. As time is dependent on
motion, motion too is finite, hence neither is eternal. Another argument for creation in time is that if the world is eternal
and governed altogether by necessity, the earth should be surrounded on all sides by water according to the nature of
the lighter element to be above the heavier. Hence the appearance of parts of the earth's surface above the water is an
indication of a break of natural law for a special purpose, namely, in order to produce the various mineral, plant and
animal species. Hence once more purpose argues design and origin in time.
Finally if the world were eternal, the state of the sciences would be more advanced than it is. A similar argument may be
drawn from language. Language is conventional; which means that the people existed before the language they agreed
to speak. But man being a social animal they could not have existed an infinite time without language. Hence mankind is
not eternal.[353]
We have just proved that the world came into being, but it does not necessarily follow that it will be destroyed. Nay, there
are reasons to show that it will not be destroyed. For there is no destruction except through matter and the predominance
of the passive powers over the active. Hence the being that is subject to destruction must consist of opposites. But the
heavenly bodies have no opposites, not being composite; hence they cannot be destroyed. And if so, neither can the
sublunar order be destroyed, which is the work of the heavenly bodies. There is of course the abstract possibility of their
being destroyed by their maker, not naturally, but by his will, as they were made; but we can find no reason in God for
wishing to destroy them, all reasons existing in man for destroying things being inapplicable to God.[354]
That the world began in time is now established. The question still remains, was the world made out of something or out