The Torah

This chapter explores why a divine revelation, in particular the Torah, was given if destiny is defined in terms of intellectual perfection and involves knowledge of the sciences and metaphysics. It talks about Gersonides' whole enterprise of showing the philosophical provability of the fundamental truths of metaphysics, which pertains to true happiness and reveals his complete confidence in the powers of reason. The chapter describes one of the earliest Jewish theologians to confront the issue on the contrast or conflict between human reason and divine revelation head-on, Sa'adiah Gaon. Sa'adiah Gaon was quite confident in his own rational powers and throughout his book engaged in philosophical argument to show that Judaism was a religion wholly compatible with human reason, albeit revealed through prophecy. It points out how divine revelation, according to Sa'adiah Gaon, provides supplementary information that aids in applying the general teachings of the Torah to the specific circumstances of everyday life.

God and his Attributes

This chapter explains how the existence of God is philosophically provable. It adopts the terminology of Thomas Aquinas about some of the basic beliefs of monotheistic religion. In attempting to delineate the distinct domain of theology, Aquinas distinguished between the “preambles of faith” and the “articles of faith.” This chapter analyzes the underlying assumption that human reason can prove and explain some of the basic beliefs of monotheistic religion. Not only does it discuss the common ground for philosophy and faith, but it explains monotheistic religions without religiously based assumptions. It describes the ontological proof of Anselm of Canterbury and points out various arguments about the world and how they cannot be explained without positing the existence of God.

Divine Omniscience

This chapter focuses on the literature that concerns whether or not God has knowledge of everything. It talks about the dilemma stated by one of the most important teachers of the Mishnah, Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Akiva expressed that “All is foreseen; yet freedom is given.” The second clause seems to be an emphatic response to the objection that if God knows everything, how is human choice possible? Rabbi Akiva explicitly asserts that there is no problem in believing in both divine omniscience and the possibility of choice, that although God knows everything, people can still decide on their own. The chapter provides an insight on what motivated Rabi Akiva to enunciate the puzzling and intriguing dilemma.

Divine Omnipotence

This chapter discusses the question, “Is Anything Impossible for the Lord?” It points out that the very first sentence of the Bible seems to give a definitive answer to the question: God created the entire universe, which absolutely counts as greater proof of His omnipotence. The Bible records many divine acts that explicitly testify to His overwhelming power, especially to alter the natural behaviour of things. Every miracle is proof of divine power, as well as of divine providence. The very occurrence of miracles could have been used by Gersonides as evidence of individual providence. The chapter describes two particular miraculous events that formulate the general principle of divine omnipotence: Sarah's birth to a child in Genesis 18:14 and Job's confession of his ignorance in the face of God's power in Job 42:2.

Introduction: Life and Works

This chapter ranges over a lot of philosophical and theological territory, such as Gersonides' treatment of divine cognition that takes up Maimonides' theory of divine attributes. It provides an introduction to the immortality of the soul, dreams, divination, and prophecy, divine cognition and divine providence, the heavenly domain, and the creation of the world. The chapter also discusses two subsidiary theological issues: miracles, which is connected with the creation of the world, and “testing the prophet.” It talks about Gersonides' philosophical project, which he shared with several medieval philosophers. The project emphasized that human happiness is the perfection of what it is to be human, namely, the perfection of the intellect.

Conclusion

This chapter mentions German philosopher Immanuel Kant who wrote a treatise entitled Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone where he defended the thesis of the autonomy of philosophical ethics and the inherent rationality of the laws of morality. On the basis of this principle, Kant concluded that if religion is to be admitted as a legitimate mode of thought and practice it would have to be measured by reason. It explains Kant's further conclusions that among the three historical faiths: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, only Christianity in its Protestant form came close to satisfying the rational and moral conditions that reason and morality prescribe. The chapter also talks about the Jewish neo-Kantian philosopher Hermann Cohen who accepted for the most part Kant's general conception of a religion of reason but rejected his judgement concerning Judaism. In Cohen's last important work, The Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, he attempted to show the essential rationality of Judaism and its foundation in the moral law.

Divine Providence

This chapter analyzes questions about divine providence that have puzzled and perplexed not only philosophers and theologians but also the ordinary religious person throughout the ages. It gives insight as to whether God's care is universal or limited to certain kinds of creatures and to why divine providence seems to be arbitrarily distributed such that the righteous or the innocent suffer, whereas the wicked prosper. The general topic of providence is one of those questions where Greek philosophy and biblical religion come into contact, and in some cases confront each other with divergent points of view. In fact, it is an issue that is explicitly discussed in detail in one specific biblical book, the Book of Job, which may be considered to be the most philosophical book of the Bible. This chapter also mentions Plato who confronted an anonymous denier of divine providence by appealing to the perfection of the universe and the benevolence and omniscience of the gods.

Humanity and its Destiny

This chapter focuses on the topic of humanity's ultimate felicity, which is another common interest between some Greek philosophers and believers of scriptural religions. It discusses assumptions that a person's mundane existence as a material entity was not the end of the matter; that there had to be something more than a life of material pursuits and satisfaction. This chapter includes Plato's dialogues in Phaedo where he enunciated and argued for the doctrine that the human soul is immortal by virtue of its essential incorporeality and hence incorruptibility. In other dialogues of Plato, the core doctrine of an immortal soul is associated with the ancillary ideas of the pre-existence of the soul and of the transmigration of souls. It talks about how in later Platonism, especially the philosophy of Plotinus, the basic idea of an immortal soul is interpreted in terms of the doctrine of the ascent, or “reversion”, of the human soul to some higher entity, the World Soul, or even to the One, the ultimate reality.

Prophecy

This chapter explains how prophets play an important role in Gersonides' theories of providence and miracles. As the recipient of the highest level of individual providence, the prophet receives information that is not only of benefit to himself but is also providential for the community to which he is sent. And as a crucial factor in the occurrence of miracles, the prophet appears to have a special role in those moments in human history when the normal routine seems to be annulled and something strange but providential occurs. This chapter describes how prophecy was an essential element in biblical religion and the very medium through which the Bible itself is revealed. It explains how prophetic utterances and messages in the Bible are not just forecasts, but prophets transmit an entire legal and religious system. This chapter mentions that in Maimonides' theological creed prophecy is listed as one of the Thirteen Principles of Faith.

The Story of Creation

This chapter is devoted to the single problem of the creation of the world. According to Gersonides, Maimonides' theory of creation was deficient because of its hasty scepticism about the decidability of the question, but it was also erroneous in its uncritical adoption of the ex nihilo account of creation and in foisting the theory on Scripture. It provides Gersonides' argument against Maimonides that the creation of the world is provable, and the world was not created ex nihilo. This chapter also details an indirect criticism of Maimonides' cosmological scepticism by means of a direct refutation of Aristotle's cosmological dogmatism. Gersonides considered the creation of the world to be one of the central dogmas of Judaism, especially because it highlights the volitional and providential character of divine activity.