Q&A: Question about the first lesson (audio) on negative attributes
Question about the first lesson (audio) on negative attributes
Question
Hello,
I hope I’m asking in the right place.
In this lesson you describe what can be said about God according to the philosophical approach that preceded Maimonides, and the answer is: nothing, with two exceptions:
1. Statements that relate to God’s essence — that is clear to me.
2. Statements that describe God’s actions — He created the world, gave the Torah, and the like. Here I understand less.
After all, as I understand it, a statement of this kind is not a statement about God’s essence but about His attributes — saying that He created the world means that He has the ability to create and exercised it.
Later on it sounds like you qualify this somewhat, around the issue of the cosmological proof, and argue that the statement is that He exists and that He is separate from the world. Those are indeed statements about His essence, but the difficulty regarding statements about His actions still remains.
I would be happy for an explanation if possible, and thanks in advance
Answer
I didn’t understand. Of course one can say things about His actions. What is the question?
Discussion on Answer
I honestly don’t remember what I said there or the context. There is no problem at all with saying something about His actions, and the conclusions about Him and about His abilities you can infer or not infer. By the way, even saying that He can create is not really a statement about Him.
Thank you very much
The question is within the framework of the philosophical approach that preceded Maimonides, as you described it, according to which nothing can be said about God’s attributes. Then you qualified that and said that in fact statements about God’s actions are statements that relate to His essence and not statements that relate to His attributes, and that’s what I don’t understand.
After all, as I wrote, the statement that God created the world appears on its face to attribute a property to Him — the ability to create. Just as the ability to bear the body of the person sitting on it is a property of the chair, and not a statement relating to its essence.
Of course one can always say anything, but the question is why a statement about God’s actions is a "legitimate" statement within that approach.