Maimonides And Aquinas Analysis

Many prominent figures in the discipline of philosophy have struggled with explaining God, his nature, being, and existence, in their work. Two such figures include Maimonides and Aquinas; though the former worked primarily through a Jewish context, which was better perceived by the Christian community than the Jewish, while the latter had a more Christian perspective. A review of Maimonides’ The Guide of the Perplexed and Aquinas’ Summa theologiae, with focus on chapter thirteen specifically, will illuminate how we are meant to think about God, what features are meant to be attributed to him, and how this pertains to the human existence. Furthermore, as well as the similarities and agreements between the two being examined, their differences …show more content…
Maimonides attempts to explain the attributes of God in a way such that it aligns with philosophical thought, rather than the two contradicting each other. However, Maimonides also believes that people have to be instructed according to their own level of comprehension; thus, the great truths ought to be and are hidden. Therefore, he provides truth in The Guide of the Perplexed in a hidden manner, and through philosophical and metaphysical analysis one can unconcern the truth of scriptures and understand them correctly by finding that necessary premises lead to necessary conclusions in these religious texts. Maimonides recognizes that most people have a anthropomorphist understanding of God; making sense of him through similes and metaphors and rationalizing his existence by attributing to him properties that they attribute to other human beings. This is where we begin to see Maimonides’ explanations of how we are and are not meant to understand terms that we apply to …show more content…
By the latter method one must recognize that by accepting the unity of God, that God is one and incorporeal, on must also accept that without a body God also cannot have fundamental attributes. He continues by addressing a distinction between two forms of attributes: essential attributes and accidents. Maimonides explains that essential attributes are an explanation of a term or thing itself, it is the essence of the thing that it is attributed to. The second is an attribute that is different from the essence and just an idea that is added to it, making it an accident. It is explained then that essential attributes are to be rejected with reference to God, addressed later, and thus the attributes that are ascribed to God are accidents. Even denying that God’s attributes are accidents does not change the fact that they are. Maimonides explains, “Every new idea added to the essence is accessory to it, not completing its inherent character; that is exactly what ‘accident’ means” (Maimonides,