We must call attention here to a question concerning religious belief.
Is a person who professes a given religion permitted, or obliged, to
investigate the principles of his religion in order to see whether
they are true and in agreement with what we have laid down concerning
the principles of divine law or not? And assuming that he is permitted
to do this, has he the right to choose that religion which seems to
him the truer or not? Whichever alternative we adopt offers great
difficulties. In the first place, if we say that one professing a
religion is obliged to investigate the principles of his religion, or
is permitted to institute a comparison between the principles of his
religion and those of another, the result will be that no religionist
will be firm in his belief, and will therefore deserve no reward for
belief, if he is not firm therein and free from doubt. For we can not
call a thing belief except when the mind can not conceive the thing
being otherwise, as we explained before. But if he investigates, he
shows thereby that he is in doubt. And if we grant that he is
permitted to investigate, suppose he has investigated and compared the
principles of his religion with those of another, and found the
principles of the other religion truer than those of his own, is he
permitted to exchange his religion for the other? If he is permitted,
the result will be that no man professing a religion can be made happy
or be saved by his belief. For if, having compared the principles of
his religion with those of the other and found the latter truer than
his own, he has exchanged his religion for the other, it is still
impossible for him to be firm in the belief of the other religion
which he has chosen, because it is possible that after another
investigation and a comparison between the second religion and a
third, he may find the principles of the latter more satisfactory, and
will have to change the second for the third, and in the same way the
third for the fourth and the fourth for the fifth, and so on
indefinitely. The result will be that no man will be firm in his
belief until he has completed his investigation of all the religions
in the world and chosen one in preference to all the rest. But there
is the possibility that there is a religion at the extreme end of the
inhabited world which is unknown to him, and which is truer than all
the rest. No man therefore can be saved by his belief. For he can not
have perfect faith until he has investigated all religions, and he can
not investigate all religions, as we have seen. It would seem then
that a person should not be allowed to investigate the principles of
his religion so as to reach sure belief. But if our conclusion is
that one is not allowed to investigate the principles of his religion,
then one of two things must be true. Either all religions lead to
human happiness, and one has no advantage over the other in the matter
of reward and punishment, since no one is allowed to investigate the
principles of his religion nor to change it for another. But it is
quite impossible that religions which are directly opposed, the one
affirming what the other denies, the one trinitarian, the other
monotheistic, should equally lead to happiness. On the other hand, if
we say that they do not both lead to happiness, but one of them only,
a great absurdity will follow, namely that God is guilty of injustice
(Heaven forbid!) in punishing those who profess a false religion,
claiming to be divine, since the believer has no right to budge from
his religion, or to change it for another, or to entertain any doubt
concerning it. This difficulty applies to all divine religions and we
must try to solve it. Our solution of this question is as follows: If
it were true that all the known religions of the world are opposed to
one another, every one saying that the other is not divine, the
question we raised would be a difficult one indeed and hard to solve.
But since all religions agree in accepting the divinity of one of
them, the only objection to it being that, according to them, it was
temporary in character and its time has passed, our opinion is that
every one should investigate the principles of his religious belief.
This applies without any doubt to those religions which are opposed to
the one divine law, for no one should allow himself to be persuaded to
believe something in opposition to the admittedly divine law, except
after an investigation of the law, the second or the third, which he
is inclined to believe, and the principles thereof, as we explained in
the eighteenth chapter of this Book. As for the admittedly divine
law, one who professes it should also inquire whether it is temporary
or eternal; and if it should turn out not to be eternal, wherein the
change is likely to occur. This is also Maimonides’ reason for saying
in the fortieth chapter of the second book of the Guide of the
Perplexed that it behooves every one to investigate the religion which
he professes. He says there that the investigation should embrace two
aspects. First, the religion itself. He must examine the commands and
prohibitions, and if he finds that their sole purpose is to remove
wrongdoing and violence and to maintain order in the affairs of the
state, he must know that it is a conventional and not a divine law.
If, on the other hand, he finds that in addition to removing
wrongdoing and violence, it also takes care to inculcate true ideas
about God and the angels, and endeavors to enlighten mankind and to
awaken them to the nature of truth in relation to all things, that
shows it is divine. The second aspect of investigation is that of the
founder of the law in question. The alleged prophet or messenger who
claims that the law is transmitted through him by God must be examined
with a view to determine whether his claim is genuine or whether the
contents of his law are borrowed from some one else. The thing to
examine is the man’s character and conduct. The best test of
genuineness is that he abstains from corporeal indulgences and holds
them in contempt, especially the sense of touch, which is a disgrace
to us, as Aristotle said. This is the gist of Maimonides’ words in
that chapter. When he says that a test of the law itself is, if it
takes pains to inculcate true ideas about God, etc., he is alluding to
that religion which ascribes to God corporeality and trinity. And when
he speaks of testing the moral qualities of the founder of the
religion, he is alluding to that man who claimed that he was a prophet
of the Arabs. According to Arab accounts he was addicted to physical
and sexual indulgence. But this is not sufficient to enable us to
differentiate a law laid down by a wise man, containing true
principles such as a divine law might have, the founder himself being
a man of noble character and conduct, from a divine law. There is no
way of telling whether it is really a divine law or a human law which
resembles a divine. My opinion therefore is that the two-fold
examination of which Maimonides speaks is to be understood in the
following way. First, the principles of the religion in question must
be examined, to see whether they agree with the principles of divine
law which we have mentioned. Also the secondary principles derived
from the first must be examined, as we explained in the fifteenth
chapter of this Book. If we find that the religion in question is in
agreement with, or at least not in opposition to, the primary and
secondary principles, and at the same time it endeavors to suppress
wrongdoing and to inculcate true ideas among the people instead of the
foolish fancies in vogue among women and common people, and to arouse
them to a desire for human perfection, that shows it is divine.
Similarly our Rabbis say in Torat Kohanim: Rabbi Akiba said, Thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself is a great principle of the Torah.
Ben Azzai said, This is the book of the generations of Adam is a
greater principle of the Torah than that. By this is meant to indicate
that a divine law must embrace both topics, the suppression of
wrongdoing and violence among the inhabitants of the land, as alluded
to in the expression, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, and
the directing of the attention of the people to true ideas and to
human perfection, which is alluded to in the verse beginning, This is
the book of the generations of Adam, which continues with the words,
In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made He him,
indicating that man has a human form which is in the likeness of God.
And therefore he must be careful not to disgrace it, either in his own
person or in the person of his neighbor, and he must see to it that it
should survive death and unite with the celestial beings in the place
from which it originally came. All this a divine law should contain.
But it is still possible that it is the work of a wise man or wise
men. We must therefore examine it from another aspect, namely the
manner in which the messenger proved his authenticity, as one sent by
God to transmit a law. If this matter is proved in a direct manner, as
we explained in the eighteenth chapter of this book, the law is
divine; if not, it is spurious and merely pretends to be divine, even
though it acknowledges all principles, primary and derived, much more
so if it opposes them or any one of them.
I am not quite sure what his answer is.
