Of Reason & Revelation

Sacred Scripture offers one way of looking at life, man's reason another. Often the two seem to conflict. The problem of reconciling them is as timely as Tillich, but it is one that each generation has always had to face, struggling to find its own solutions.

Few efforts to bridge the gap be tween reason and revelation have had longer life or greater influence than the Guide of the Perplexed, written more than seven centuries ago by Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, better known (by the Greek form of his name) as Maimonides. Just published is the 20th century's first complete English version of Maimonides' classic Guide (University of Chicago; $15). Translated by Dr. Shlomo Pines of Jerusalem's Hebrew University, the Guide freshly emerges as a mirror of an age and as the intellectual masterwork of a remarkable man.

"From Moses to Moses." Maimonides lived at a time (1135-1204) when it was still possible for one man to aspire to master all knowledge, and he was equally famed as philosopher, physician, and interpreter of the Jewish Law. Of him it was said: "From Moses to Moses there is none like unto Moses." He was born in the Spanish city of Cordova, but Moslem persecution drove his family to Morocco, Palestine, and finally to Egypt, where the Sultan Sal ad in provided refuge for Jews who were persecuted by other Islamic regimes.

Maimonides was physician to the Sul tan's court, and legend has it that Rich ard the Lion-Hearted tried to lure him away from Saracen service during the Third Crusade. One of his century's medical pioneers, Maimonides wrote treatises on curing asthma, indigestion, hemorrhoids and various male sexual disorders. He was also appointed head of Egypt's Jewish communities, and wrote the 14-volume Mishneh Tor ah, a masterful, encyclopedic codification of Jewish Law that summarized 15 centuries of Talmudic interpretation.

The Guide of the Perplexed, written in Arabic and published in 1190, was an attempt to resolve the intellectual difficulties of Jews confronted with the work of Islamic sages, who had discovered Aristotle and grafted his ideas onto the prevailing Neoplatonism of the age. This synthesis seemed so reasonable that the devout Jew often found himself, said Maimonides, "in a state of perplexity and confusion." Should he "follow his intellect," renouncing what he knew from Scripture, the foundation of the Law? "Or he should hold fast to Scripture, and not let himself be drawn on together with his intellect?"

Aristotle Had a Point. Maimonides' solution to the dilemma was to argue that the conflict between Aristotle and the Bible did not really exist, since there was no inconsistency between the truths discerned by reason and those taught by religion. In large part, he accepted the validity of Aristotle's metaphysics, and tried to show that most of its apparent opposition to Scripture arose from failure to see that certain parts of the Bible should be interpreted as "parables" rather than as literal truth. He argued that there was no incompatibility between the personal God of Judaism and Aristotle's shadowy Prime Mover, since the Bible's anthropomorphic passages about God could not be considered literal descriptions of the essentially unknowable Supreme Being.

Maimonides believed that God had preordained that certain miracles would occur within the natural order, but admitted that many wonders recorded in the Bible were probably misunderstood natural events. He also argued that the duties and prohibitions of the Torah were as rational as Aristotle's code of ethics. "All the Laws have a cause," he wrote, "though we do not know the cause for some of them, and we do not know the manner in which they conform to wisdom."

Christian Admiration. After his death, medieval Judaism split between Maimunists, his supporters, and anti-Maimunists, who denounced the Guide to the Roman Catholic Inquisition. Because the church at the time also regarded Aristotelianism as a danger to the faith, the inquisitors agreed to ban Maimonides' book.

Later, when Aristotle became more respectable in the church's eyes, Maimonides' Guide came to find an appreciative audience among Christian thinkers. It was read and quoted by Albertus Magnus and Duns Scotus, and St. Thomas Aquinas followed the methods of "Rabbi Moses" in creating his own great synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy and Catholic doctrine. In Judaism, the Guide has even into the 20th century remained an extraordinary source of inspiration, aiding the perplexed in the ever-incomplete task of justifying the ways of God and the ways of man.

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