One God - One God
- Category: Noahide Laws
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G-d is non-corporeal. In the history of monotheism, which began with Adam and continues to this day, error often began by attributing some type of physical existence to God. The Torah speaks in a way where it seems that God may have some kind of corporeal existence. We are told such things as G-d's sees, stands, or know. At times the teachers of Israel have had to correct these misunderstandings. The Rambam in "The Guide for the Perplexed" covers this issue in great detail. According to the Rambam: "We have stated, in one of the chapters of this treatise, that there is a great difference between bringing to view the existence of a thing and demonstrating its true essence (Rambam, 59)." The fact that G-d exists and his essence, what He is, are often confused with physical bodies since, "That God exists was therefore shown to ordinary men by means of similes taken from physical bodies; that He is living, by a simile taken from motion, because ordinary men consider only the body as fully, truly, and undoubtedly existing; that which is connected with a body but is itself not a body, although believed to exist, has a lower degree of existence on account of its dependence on the body for existence. That, however, which is neither itself a body, nor a force within a body, is not existent according to man's first notions, and is above all excluded from the range of imaginations." and he goes on to say, "...The perception by the senses, especially by hearing and seeing, is best known to us; we have no idea or notion of any other mode of communication between the soul of one person and that of another than by means of speaking, i.e., by the sound produced by lips, tongue, and the other organs of speech. When, therefore, we are to be informed that God has a knowledge of things, and that communication is made by Him to the Prophets who convey it to us, they represent Him to us as seeing and hearing, i.e., as perceiving and knowing those things which can be seen or heard. They represent Him to us as speaking, i.e., that communications from Him reach the Prophets; that is to be understood by the term "prophecy," as will be fully explained" (Rambam, 60). The Rambam's meaning is that human beings are limited by their knowledge of what it means to exist because they their senses is the only way they know how to "know" something as existing. Human beings often misunderstand these similes that are attributed to G-d. Therefore, when we say that G-d spoke to a prophet it is often understood by most people that G-d spoke to that prophet through the same organs of communication that we use to communicate with other humans. This is one of the origins of idolatry—wrongly attributing human activities as being identical to G-d's activities. That is why the term 'prophecy' will be explained, later in his book, to make clear what is meant by communication between G-d and a prophet. The following verses attest that G-d is not a physical being. Numbers 23:19; Deuteronomy 4:11-12; 5:23 I Kings 8:27