Negativetheology (also known as apophatic theology) is the approach to understandingthe divine nature that emphasizes that what we know about God is what he is notrather than what he is.  One might takethe strong view that all of ourknowledge of God’s nature is negative in this way, or the weaker position thatmuch (but not all) such knowledge is negative. The medieval Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) is amongthe most famous of negative theologians. He takes the stronger position. More precisely, his view is that when we predicate something of God, weare describing either his effects in the world of our experience, or the divinenature itself, and in the latter case we must understand our predications in apurely negative way.

For example,suppose we say that God is merciful toward the righteous and takes vengeance onthe wicked.  For Maimonides, the rightway to understand this is as saying that God causes the righteous to berewarded and the wicked to be punished. It is a statement about the effects of God’s actions, not about thedivine nature itself.  Or suppose we saythat God is omnipotent.  For Maimonides,this should be understood as a statement to the effect that there are in God nolimitations of the kind that constrain the power of created things.  It is a statement about the divine nature,but only about what is not true ofit, rather than a positive attribution. 

In hisfamous The Guide of the Perplexed,Maimonides defends Aristotelian arguments for the existence of a divine firstcause.  He also defends the doctrine ofdivine simplicity, according to which God is in no way composed of parts.  It is in light of this fact about the divinenature, says Maimonides, that we can see that our knowledge of it can only benegative.  He argues as follows:

It has been proved that God exists by necessity and that Heis non-composite… and we can apprehend only that He is, not what He is.  It is therefore meaningless that He shouldhave any positive attribute, since the fact that He is is not something outsideof what He is, so that the attribute might indicate one of these two.  Much less can what He is be of a compositecharacter, so that the attribute could indicate one of the parts.  Even less can He be substrate to accidents,so that the attribute could indicate these. Thus there is no scope for any positive attributes in any waywhatsoever.  (Book I, Chapter LVIII, atp. 80 of theabridged Rabin translation)

Let’s unpackthis.  In this passage, it seems,Maimonides tries to show that divine simplicity all by itself entails anexclusively apophatic theology.  Howso?  Start with the point he makes in themiddle of the paragraph, concerning the proposal that to speak of a divinepositive attribute “could indicate one of the parts” of God.  Obviously this would be ruled out by divinesimplicity, which denies that God has any parts.  Nor, as he says at the end of the passage,could a positive attribute be an accident inhering in the divine substrate,because divine simplicity also rules out any distinction in God betweensubstrate and accidents.

The thirdoption Maimonides considers and rules out is the proposal that a divinepositive attribute might be identifiable with either “the fact that He is” or “whatHe is” – that is to say, with either God’s existence or his essence.  The idea here seems to be that someone whothinks we can predicate positive attributes of God might suppose that God’sexistence is a positive attribute distinct from his essence, which we canpredicate of that essence; or that God’s essence is a positive attributedistinct from his existence, which we can predicate of that existence.  And the trouble with this proposal,Maimonides says, is that given divine simplicity, there is no distinctionbetween God’s essence and his existence. They are one and the same thing.

Theargument, then, seems to be that these three proposals would be the only waysto make sense of positive divine attributes, but all three are ruled out bydivine simplicity; therefore, as he concludes at the end of the passage, “thereis no scope for any positive attributes in any way whatsoever.”

The readermight wonder, though, exactly why we should regard these three as the onlyoptions.  Some remarks Maimonides makesearlier in Book I of the Guide indicatethe answer.  In Chapter LI, he writes:

It is thus evident that an attribute must be one of twothings.  Either it is the essence of thething to which it is attributed, and thus an explanation of a term… Or theattribute is different from the thing to which it is attributed, and thus anidea added to that thing.  Consequentlythat attribute is an accident of that essence. (p. 67)

It is nothard to see why Maimonides would deny that God has attributes in the secondsense, for that would be ruled out by the thesis that there is, given divinesimplicity, no distinction in God between substrate and accidents.  But what about attributes in the first sense,that is to say, an attribute understood as “the essence of the thing to which it is attributed, and thusan explanation of a term”?  And whatexactly does Maimonides mean by this?

Heillustrates the idea with the example of asserting that “Man is a reasoninganimal.”  When we predicate of man theattribute of being a reasoning animal, we are really just picking out theessence of man, and thereby giving an “explanation of [the] term” (i.e. theterm “man”).  The attribute in this caseis nothing different from the essence or nature of the thing to which we areascribing the attribute.  To predicate ofGod a positive attribute in this sense, then, would be to explain the meaningof “God” by stating the divine essence. Yet Maimonides says that even here, “this kind of attribute we rejectwith reference to God” (p. 67).  Why?

The subsequentchapter of the Guide, Chapter LII,indicates the reason.  Suppose we try todefine God, in something like the way we define man as a reasoning animal.  This, Maimonides says, would imply that Godhas “pre-existing causes,” which as first cause he cannot have (p. 68).  How so? Maimonides’ meaning here seems to be this.  When we define man as a reasoning animal, weare identifying him as belonging to a certain genus (namely, animal) and as set apart from otherthings in that genus by a differentia (namely, reasoning).  Now, in a sense,animality and rationality are thus priorto man, and thus they are causes, of a sort, of his being.  Since God is uncaused, then, he cannot bedefined in terms of a genus and a differentia.  (Again, this seems to me to be what Maimonidesis getting at, though he doesn’t spell it out in the relevant passage inChapter LII.) 

Maimonidesthen says that another thing we might be doing when predicating an attribute ofsomething in the sense of defining it is describing it in terms of part of its essence.  We do this, for example, when we say that man is an animal.  But this too cannot be what we’re doing inthe case of God, because given divine simplicity, there are no parts to God’sessence.

Thus does Maimonidesclaim to show that we can say nothing positive about the divine nature.  But some readers may think he would stillneed to say more in order to make the case.  And they would be right.  For consider Aquinas’s alternative position.  Like Maimonides, he strongly affirms divinesimplicity, holds that we cannot strictly define the divine essence, and takesmuch of our knowledge of God’s nature to be negative.  But he rejects the extreme claim that we cansay nothing positive about him. 

Aquinasargues that Maimonides’ position does not adequately account for talk aboutGod’s goodness, wisdom, and the like.  He notes that the view that attributing goodness to God is really just a wayof saying that God is the cause of good things cannot explain why we say thatGod is good but not that God is a physical object – for, after all, God is thecause of physical objects too.  Aquinascontinues:

When we say, “God is good,” the meaning is not, “God is thecause of goodness,” or “God is not evil”; but the meaning is, “Whatever good weattribute to creatures, pre-exists in God,” and in a more excellent and higherway.  Hence it does not follow that Godis good, because He causes goodness; but rather, on the contrary, He causesgoodness in things because He is good. (SummaTheologiae I.13.2)

To be sure,this is not because there is some common genus to which God and other goodthings belong.  Nor does Aquinas think wehave a clear idea of the nature of God’s goodness.  Nor, given divine simplicity, does he thinkthat God’s goodness is distinct from his wisdom or his power or any of hisother attributes.  Still, when we saythat God is good, we are in Aquinas’s view saying something positive about him,and something literally true.

How can thisbe?  The answer has to do with Aquinas’sfamous view that not all literal language is either univocal or equivocal, butthat some is analogical, and thatthis is the case with predications of the divine attributes.  When we say that God is good, we are notsaying that he is good in exactly the same sense in which we are good (which wouldbe to use “good” in a univocal way), nor are we saying that he is good in somecompletely unrelated sense (which would be to use “good” in an equivocalway).  We are saying that there issomething in God that is analogous towhat we call “goodness” in us, even if it is not exactly the same thing.

Maimonideswould disagree.  For him, when we applyto God’s nature the same terms we use to describe created things, we speakequivocally.  This is true even when wesay that God exists, for God “shares no common trait with anything outside Himat all, for the term ‘existence’ is only applied to Him as well as to creaturesby way of homonymy and in no other way” (TheGuide of the Perplexed, Book I,Chapter LII, at p. 70).

This is nota dispute I will explore here.  Sufficeit for present purposes to note that while Maimonides writes as if the controversyover whether God has positive attributes hinges on whether or not one acceptsdivine simplicity, that is not in fact the case.  Rather, it hinges on whether or not oneaccepts that we can truly speak of God in analogical terms.

Relatedposts:

Dharmakīrtiand Maimonides on divine action

Tugwellon St. Albert on negative theology

McCabeon the divine nature

LaoTzu’s negative theology