Q&A: The Attributes of God
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.
The Attributes of God
Question
With God’s help,
when you argue that there is a cognitive relation between the phenomenon and the noumenon, and at the same time you argue that positive attributes can be stated about God, doesn’t that imply a multiplicity of entities, as Professor Schwartz writes: “Since God is eternal… then if He has attributes, they too must be eternal in the same sense…” (Guide for the Perplexed, Part I, Chapter 51)
Answer
Attributes are not entities. The source of a table’s brown color is some crystalline structure of the material from which it is made. That structure is a property of the table and not something separate from it. The Holy One, blessed be He, has “properties,” and if He is eternal, then they are eternal as well.