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Part One · Chapter Thirty-Five — What Is Not a Secret: Denying God's Corporeality
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Do not suppose that everything we have laid down as a foundation in these foregoing chapters — concerning the greatness of the matter, its hiddenness, the remoteness of its apprehension, and its being kept from the multitude — means that the denial of corporeality and the denial of affections fall within that. The matter is not so. Rather, just as the young ought to be reared, and it ought to be proclaimed among the multitude, that God, mighty and exalted, is one and that none ought to be worshipped besides Him, so too they ought to accept on authority that God is not a body, that there is no likeness at all between Him and His creatures in any of the things, that His existence is not like their existence, His life not like the life of the living among them, His knowledge not like the knowledge of any who has knowledge among them; and that the difference between Him and them is not by more and less only, but in the very species of existence. I mean that it should be settled with all that our knowledge and His knowledge, or our power and His power, do not differ by more and less, by stronger and weaker, and the like — for the strong and the weak are necessarily alike in species, and one definition comprises them; and likewise every relation is only between two things under one species, as has been shown in the natural sciences. Rather, everything ascribed to Him, exalted be He, is disparate from our attributes in every respect, so that no definition comprises them at all; and likewise His existence and the existence of what is other than Him are called 'existence' only by equivocation of the name, as I shall explain.
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This measure suffices the young and the multitude, to settle their minds upon there being a perfect existent, neither a body nor a force in a body — He is the Deity — whom no kind of deficiency befalls; and therefore no affection befalls Him at all.
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But the discourse on the attributes — how they are denied of Him, and what is the meaning of the attributes ascribed to Him; and likewise the discourse on His creating what He created, and on the manner of His governance of the world, and how His providence is over what is other than Him, and the meaning of His will, His apprehension, and His knowledge of all that He knows; and likewise the meaning of prophecy and how its ranks differ; and what is the meaning of His names, signifying one though they be many names — all these are recondite matters, and they are in truth the 'mysteries of the Torah,' the 'secrets' that are continually mentioned in the books of the prophets and in the words of the Sages, of blessed memory. These are the things of which one ought not to speak save in 'chapter headings,' as we have mentioned, and with the qualified individual as well.
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As for the denial of corporeality and the removing of likeness and affections from Him, it is a matter that ought to be declared explicitly and made clear to everyone according to his measure, and given on authority to the little ones, the women, the dull, and the deficient of nature, just as they accept on authority that He is one, that He is eternal, and that none is to be worshipped besides Him. For there is no true unity except by the removal of corporeality, since a body is not one but composite of matter and form, two by definition, and is also divisible and admits of partition. So when they have accepted that and grown accustomed to it and been reared upon it, and have grown up and become perplexed at the texts of the prophetic books, their meaning is made clear to them, and they are roused to interpret them, and alerted to the equivocation of the names and their metaphors which this treatise contains — that the soundness of belief in the unity of God and in the trustworthiness of the prophetic books may be made secure for them.
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And as for one whose mind recoils from understanding the interpretation of the texts and from grasping the agreement in the name together with the difference in meaning, let it be said to him: this text the people of knowledge understand its interpretation, but you — know that God, mighty and exalted, is not a body and is not affected, for affection is change, and He, exalted be He, is not befallen by change, and does not resemble anything of all that is other than Him, and no definition of the definitions comprises Him together with anything of them at all; and that this prophetic discourse is true and has an interpretation. And one halts with him at this measure. And no one ought to be left in a belief of corporeality, or in a belief of some affection of the affections of bodies — just as one ought not to be left in a belief of the nonexistence of the Deity, or of associating a partner with Him, or of worshipping another besides Him.