Q&A: Response on Positive Commandment 1 in Maimonides
Response on Positive Commandment 1 in Maimonides
Question
Hello Michi,
I’ll write this email in English (but I have no problem if you answer in Hebrew).
My father-in-law holds a doctorate on Maimonides (the theory of providence in the Guide) and is also an Arabist. Therefore, I asked him the question about the first commandment in the Sefer HaMitzvot. How can there be a commandment about a fact? How can God command us to believe in Him?
He replied that the translation from Arabic is faulty, and that I should look in the Mishneh Torah, where Maimonides writes: “The foundation of foundations and the pillar of wisdoms is to know that there is a First Being.” He told me that the term “know” is the equivalent of the Arabic philosophical term “i’tiqad,” which means “to know firmly” (whereas the Arabic equivalent of the term “faith” is “amana”). He suggested that the point of the commandment is to make our knowledge of God a firm one.
This commandment takes for granted that we believe in the Revelation at Mount Sinai (the source of the authority of the commandments). It is only about having firm knowledge of God. Hence the details: “It is the commandment by which He commanded us to believe in divinity, namely that we believe that there is a cause and source who acts upon all existing things.” And this is His statement: “I am the Lord your God.”
Concerning the principles of faith, about which the question “How can one command facts?” can also be asked, I simply thought that Maimonides is saying: “If you believe in those thirteen principles, then you are not a heretic. If you happen not to believe in one of them, even if you are convinced that it is wrong, you are out of the game. I am simply informing you that you are a heretic.” But Maimonides is not forcing us to believe in those thirteen principles. There is no problem of a commandment concerning facts.
All the best,
Answer
There are two different suggestions here.
1. To make knowledge firm means to examine and deepen it, which is roughly what I said in the lecture. But even so, if my conclusion is that there is no God, you still can’t say that I have neglected a positive commandment. According to this, as I answered a question I was asked in the lecture, rabbis who say not to examine faith intellectually are leading people to neglect a positive commandment.
2. You are suggesting that this is only a definition and not a commandment. But about that I said in the lecture that this is also what I had thought (that it is a definitional commandment, like positive commandments 95-96 in Maimonides), and Pixler corrected me and showed me that I was mistaken, because Maimonides counts this within the framework of the sixty constant commandments that a person fulfills constantly. One cannot fulfill a definitional commandment.