A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy

by Isaac Husik

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 cœlo 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.