Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Maimonides 13 Principles of Faith: 1. Existence of God

1. I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, is the Creator and Guide of everything that has been created; He alone has made, does make, and will make all things.

In Rabbinic Judaism
Orthodox Rabbinic Judaism has universally held to the existence of God. The question is not so much whether God exists as it is what God is like.

Many Orthodox Jewish thinkers believed that God is capable of doing the logically impossible. They argued that our idea of what is logically possible is a human limit, not a limit on God.

R. Moses Taku wrote "They are issuing a decree to the Creator as how he must be. By oding so they are degrading themselves."

R. Nachman of Bratslav also argued that God can do the logically impossible. On his view, God can make a triangular rectangle, or a square circle. Faith is to exist even in the face of logical absurdity.

The second part of this principle of faith is that God exists a se, or by himself, not being dependent upon anything.

In Christian Theology
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. (John 1:1-3)
The earliest creeds also affirm that God is the creator of all things, both visible and invisible. The audience of the book of John was well aware of Platonism and the theories of abstract objects. Therefore if abstract objects exist, then they too are the work of divine creation. Dr. Craig has a video on this:

Conclusions
If Orthodox Rabbinic Judaism allows for God to do the logically impossible, then there can be no grounds for rejecting any of the beliefs associated with Christianity. If God can do the logically impossible, then one can say that Christian theology fits completely within what Orthodox Judaism allows, because God can do the logically impossible. God can be tri-personal and also be not tri-personal. God can be essentially unembodied and be embodied. God can be a man and still not be a man.

In short, if God can do the impossible, one can affirm everything that Evangelical Christian theology teaches about God without denying anything that Orthodox Judaism teaches about God.

If this "universal possibilism" is an acceptable part of Orthodox Jewish theology, then it follows that one can hold to a full Christian theology and fit fully within Orthodox Judaism. I'm tempted to just mic drop right now, since this alone would prove that Christian theology isn't heretical by Orthodox Jewish standards.

So the rest of my posts will assume that this argument fails for some reason, and that even if it does, Christian theology still fits within the parameters of Orthodox Jewish theology.

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