Question

I would like to ask you a question that troubles me greatly about Maimonides’ view. Of course, it does not seem plausible to me that the answer is something along the lines that Maimonides was supposedly forced not to deny Aristotle completely in order to save the people of his generation, and so on. It seems to me rather that one has to understand their way of thinking, which was apparently different from ours. And for that I am asking for your help.
 
Maimonides wrote that if not for divine revelation, it would have been possible to understand that Aristotle was indeed right—that God has no will, and that the world proceeds from Him necessarily, like a shadow from a person. That is, the world proceeds from God necessarily, and was not created by will.

It is very hard for me to absorb such an idea, and I cannot find any opening through which to admit such a thought. After all, there is no common denominator whatsoever between God, who is necessarily existent, and the reality of the world, which is deficient, limited, and not itself the truth and what must exist. 
When there is such an inconceivable gap between the two, how can one speak of it coming about without will? There is no continuity connecting the true God to a creation that is not necessary, except that such is His will.
That is: even if we are troubled by an unresolvable difficulty (in the philosophers’ view)—namely, how there can be will in God—still, to say that He has no will is far more impossible, because here there is a world that is not God Himself, so how did it come to be? On the contrary: if you deny will because you do not understand how will can apply to a perfect being, then all the more should you wonder how there can be a world, which is not truth in and of itself, emerging from the perfect. We ought to have found only the perfect being and nothing more.
If the philosophers had said that the world is eternal and is, as it were, its own source, there would at least have been something the mind could accommodate. But since they too correctly understood that something which is only possibly existent must necessarily have the cause of its existence coming from elsewhere—then how can this be without the will of God?
In short, even if there are difficulties, one cannot say on that basis something that seemingly has no entry point in reason. 
Of course, in the matter of a shadow issuing from a person, or a physical body, we understand very well the continuity of the process. But here they connected two things that contain the greatest gap our minds can tolerate. It is like a far-fetched analogy, as if one were to say that an idea has a shadow and takes up space. How much more so, a thousandfold, in the difference between the true God and the possible, limited world. If the philosophers had no grasp of God’s perfection, then I would not be troubled. For in such a way of thinking, God too would be nothing more than something resembling a body. But I am asking about them precisely from the point that they did understand divine perfection. How then could they continue to say that the world could come from Him without intention and conscious will?
 

And I will explain in a somewhat different formulation: how can one conceive of there being a world that is not necessarily existent and is not its own source, and yet did not come from the will of God, when beforehand there was nothing at all? This I cannot find any place in my mind to understand, because…
After all, God has a completely different character: He is necessarily existent and truth. The world is not like that. So how could such a thing come from Him without a deliberate will to make something entirely different from Himself? That is, there neither is nor can be any continuity between the Infinite and the truth, and something limited and not necessary. So how could it even enter one’s mind, in the remotest possibility, that this could come from Him without will and intention? 
In short, they too knew that God and the world are things differing in the extreme, so how did they think there was continuity here?
Even if the possibility of creation ex nihilo was not conceivable to them, they should have said that the world is necessarily eternal on its own account. (Which of course the intellect does not accept, because then we would have to think of the world as something that must exist, not something merely possibly existent.) But that the world proceeds from God automatically—that seems utterly absurd, and we should not say such a thing even if there were intellectual difficulties beyond measure. Indeed, it seems that the root of their thought lay in the fact that their minds could not contain the concept of creation out of nothing, as Maimonides argued against them—that they did not distinguish between after something was created and before that, and that one cannot infer from one to the other. But I still insist strongly that to attribute creation, with all the distinctions that divide it, to God as something necessitated by Him is impossible by any avenue or opening in reason. (And so I am especially astonished at Maimonides, since he taught us the understanding to grasp the course of creation—how then did he not continue on and cry out that Aristotle’s words are therefore totally impossible? What sense is there in saying that a world that is not truth should be necessitated by the God of truth? There is no continuity one can even imagine.)
 
 Especially in light of Nethanel Rubin’s book, What God Cannot Do, in which he broadly surveyed all the nonsense that has been said about God over the generations. There he explained at length that it was the philosophers who insisted that impossibility has a fixed nature, and that one cannot attach to God whatever one wants. And “perfect” means what is truly perceived as perfect, not something that includes opposites together. So I stand and ask: is what they said not an even greater impossibility than what the Christians said, that God became incarnate? I think the philosophers’ view is much more impossible. Because what the Christians said was that God is all-powerful, and in His will He can be whatever He wants. At least they explained some sort of logical continuity, however slight. But in the philosophers’ words there is not a trace of comprehension or any continuity between God, who is necessarily existent, and the world, which is only possibly existent; and between the Infinite and the limited. These are the things most radically different in essence, and we have no greater division than this. We have only the possibility of creation ex nihilo, after complete intention and will, with not the slightest side or word of anything being necessitated from Him.
 
I think, seemingly, that they had a different kind of thought from ours, and that is why they could accommodate such an idea. It is this order of thought that I want to understand. I will give an example. Perhaps in future years we will stand and ask: how could many scientists investigate creation and not ask what its original source is? How could their limited intellect accommodate a kind of answer that the beginning is not a matter for science, and that that is enough? And we will cry out to the heavens: how is it possible? How do you not think about the source? Can the Big Bang come from itself? But today, since we are familiar with such limited minds, we understand very well from what place their thinking emerged. Once there is a kind of reduced outlook that deals only with what exists, one can reach such thoughts. I want to understand something similar with respect to the philosophers’ thinking, and I cannot. Perhaps you can help me with that.
 
P.S. What was the philosophical reason that led the sages of the nations to abandon Aristotle’s view? (Aside from the scientific reason. And in general, has science proved that the world was created ex nihilo?)
 
Thank you in advance. I would be very, very glad for a prompt answer.