Mitzvot of the Week: #2, #3 - Not to believe in other gods/To believe that God is one

Introduction:

The Rambam doesn't make things easy here.  By my reading, there is a "double-double" approach to the uniqueness of God.  First, as in Week 1, he seems to approach this mitzvah from two different angles, "belief" in vs. "knowledge" of God's oneness.  Second, the mitzvah is really two mitzvot, one positive, one negative.  So what we have here, at first blush, are four possible approaches -- (1) to believe in God's oneness and (2) not to believe in other gods (from Sefer HaMitzvot); and (3) to know that God is one and (4) not to consider that there are other gods (from Mishneh Torah).  I look at his arguments for all four of these positions, but I adhere to the Rambam's classification system by considering that these positions really constitute two mitzvot, opposite sides of the same coin.

In Sefer HaMitzvot (Negative Commandments - Mitzvah 1), "The exhortation against believing [מלהאמין] in the Divinity of aught beside Him" is stated as the first negative commandment.  The Rambam here cites Exodus 20:3:  "There shall not be unto you any other gods before my presence" (לֹא-יִהְיֶה לְךָ אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים, עַל-פָּנָי).  As with the first mitzvah concerning belief/knowledge of God, he cites Makkot 23a as to the status of this "exhortation" as a negative commandment. 

On the positive side (Positive Commandments - Mitzvah 2), he writes that to believe in God's oneness means "to believe [להאמין] that the Maker of the creation and its First Cause is one, as the Exalted One has said (Deuteronomy 6:4): "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one." "The intent here," Rambam continues, "is that He took us out of the house of bondage and bestowed upon us what He did out of lovingkindness and beneficence only, so that we believe in the Unity, as is our obligation." This mitzvah, he says, is also known as "mitzvath yichud" (i.e., the commandment of unity).

In the Mishneh Torah, however, these mitzvot are explained slightly differently.  In Chapter 1.6, he explains that "Anyone who presumes [המעלה על דעתו] that there is another god transgresses a negative commandment" [emphasis mine] while in Chapter 1.7, he writes "The knowledge of this concept [that God is one] fulfills a positive commandment, [as implied by Deuteronomy 6:4]..." [emphasis mine]. 

Some preliminary thoughts and questions:

1. At first glance, these mitzvot are in many respects similar to Mitzvah #1 (to believe in God), but they're also different in that they can't stand on their own:  you have to do Mitzvah #1 to be able to do Mitzvot #2 and #3.  (I wonder how many mitzvot are interdependent in this way, i.e., to observe mitzvah X necessitates observing mitzvah Y.)
   
   
2. Furthermore, like mitzvah #1, what is being commanded here -- whether knowledge or belief -- is an intellectual rather than physical task, what the good folks at Aish (I know, I know!) call "Constant Mitzvot" in the sense that "Rather than requiring the performance of a certain action, these mitzvot are a state of being, of living with the reality of God's existence."  Therefore, this week will most likely be spent studying and thinking about the mitzvah rather than tangible observance per se.  (Or, rather, the study will be the observance.)
   
   
3. As noted above, in Sefer HaMitzvot the Rambam asks us to believe certain things about God, while in Mishneh Torah he asks us to have knowledge about these things. What is the difference? 
   
   
4. I struggle to understand Christianity's concept of the trinity in light of the Rambam's discussion of God.  I get it and I don't get it.  At the very least, I appreciate that the question is complicated (just try making your way through this discussion).
   
   

Things I am going to do this week

• I'm going to spend some real time studying the relevant portions of Mishneh Torah and the commentary on it. 
• I'm going to think about the distinctions between belief and knowledge, between doing something and not doing its opposite.
• Try to answer the question:  Am I really a monotheist?

And now for the week-2 roundup

• Clearly for the Rambam, knowledge is a (but not the only) basis for belief.  On the one hand, knowledge allows one to base belief on more than blind faith; it allows one to have reasons for having that faith.  On the other hand, as we saw with belief in/knowledge of God, he seems to say that belief doesn't require reason but rather, as Touger puts it, "to internalize that belief and [to] make it part of [one's] conscious process....the intellectual activity necessary for this process of internalization is an act which can be required of a person."  So, then, the mitzvah is the internationalization of the belief via the study the underlying philosophy.
  
  
• Touger also points out that the Rambam goes through five halachot before arriving at the actual commandment to believe in one God (p. 143).  Why?  Doing so "implies that our knowledge of God's existence must be developed and cannot be left as a general, undefined conception."  I like this formulation, which reminds us that believing in something large and abstract may not have the same effect on us that a deeper, more differentiated understanding can have.  I can easily say, "I'm an American," but unless and until I spend some time thinking about what this actually means, it's not likely to mean much...
  
  
• It seems to me, though, that in the case of belief/knowledge in God's oneness, belief doesn't require knowledge whereas knowledge, at some level, does requires belief.  That is, you can take something on blind faith or you can have some intellectual basis for believing that something is true.  But if you do the latter in a case where empirical evidence is impossible (i.e., the existence of God), then at some point I think you do have to rely on belief.  This is tricky.
  
  
• In my opinion, the textual basis the Rambam provides for the belief in/knowledge of one God being a mitzvah -- basically the She'ma -- is fairly weak.  "Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one" doesn't actually command anything other than to hear that God is one.  It doesn't say to believe it.  At best, I think it says that Israel should know that Judaism understands that God is one.  I mean, if the Rambam (or anyone else) can glean a "commandment" from statements in the Torah that don't actually say or ask Jews to do something, then I suppose we could derive lots of things that aren't explicitly said.  This isn't to say I don't agree with/accept the commandment to believe in one God/not believe in other Gods; it's just that in my mind, there's a difference between the Torah saying "Do X, Don't do Y" on the one hand, and the Torah saying A and B which are then interpreted by others as saying "Do X, Don't do Y."
  
  
• I am very much impressed with the way the Rambam persuasively contrasts God as being fundamentally beyond, above and different than anything human language or intelligence can comprehend with human beings' inability to discuss or comprehend anything without using language to describe it.  That is, if we are to take God seriously, we have no language capable of offering an accurate description, but if we don't use language, then we as human beings have no way of even starting to approach the matter.  The solution, he seems to say, is to use human language but always be aware of what it can and cannot do in terms of understanding God.  "If so," he asks,
  

  what is the meaning of the expressions employed by the Torah: 'Below his feet [Exodus 24:10], 'Written by the finger of God' [ibid. 31:18], 'God's hand' [ibid. 9:3], 'God's eyes' [Genesis 38:7], 'God's ears' [Numbers 11:1], and the like?
  

  The answer?
  

  All these [expressions were used] to relate to human thought processes which know only corporeal imagery, because the Torah speaks in the language of man.  They are only descriptive terms... [Chapter 1.9]
  

  This is powerful stuff!  In short, we can't take the Torah literally when it comes to descriptions of God.  Of course this makes absolute, logical sense.  But it begs the question:  If we can't take certain descriptions of God literally, then what else can't we take literally?  What else wasn't intended to be taken literally?
  

Conclusions

1. Certain kinds of mitzvot are fundamentally intellectual rather than physical in nature; they're about attempting to understand and/or internalize certain ideas as opposed to taking certain actions.  (This is surprising to me, in a way:  I somehow had it in my head that Judaism was about doing rather than believing; but apparently I am wrong.)
   
   
2. There is some uncertainty over exactly what specific mitzvot are asking us to do.  Again, I thought differently:  I thought there were authoritative sources that could tell me specifically what a given mitzvah asks of me, but, it seems, this may not be so easy.  Sefer HaMitzvot doesn't, nor, really, does Mishneh Torah.  This is surprising.  Will this trend continue?
   
   
3. In the end, I am personally "persuaded" by the Rambam's logic about what it means to say that God is one and that we should not contemplate the existence of others.  To do so is to fundamentally look at the universe in a different way.  That's something I didn't realize before:  there is relationship between the way one looks at the world and the kind of God one believes in.  I also appreciate much better the extent to which I take much of monotheism for granted without having thought about what it means.

So for now, the tally is:

Mitzvot I can get on board with: 3
Mitzvot that I can't accept: 0
Mitzvot that no longer apply: 0
"Question marks": 0

Mitzvot tried out: 3
Mitzvot to go: 610

Stay tuned next week, for Mitzvot #4, #5: To Love God and to Fear God...