• Aristotle’s arguments against the thesis that the world came into existence as a spontaneous result of chance.
  • Maimonides is in full agreement with Aristotle’s position. However, according to Maimonides, Aristotle did not — after rejecting the theory of spontaneity — conclude that there is a ‘Design’ or ‘Will’ behind the Universe, at least not in the way we usually think of ‘design’ or ‘will’.
  • Maimonides emphasizes that the two theories on this question (the one Mosaic and the other Aristotelian) are polar opposites:

    For as it is impossible to reconcile two opposites, so it is impossible to reconcile the two theories, that of necessary existence by causality, and that of Creation by the desire and will of a Creator

  • Maimonides believes that a belief in design/determination/will is completely incompatible with a belief in the eternity of the Universe.
  • Some recent Aristotelians, says Maimoindes — probably in order to reconcile their Aristotelianism with their faith — hold that the Universe is eternal but it is still the result of a Divine Will; they believe that for God, it is not necessary that the results of an act of will follow the act of will in time.
  • For Maimonides, this is not an adequate solution.

    [I]t is the same thing, whether we say in accordance with the view of Aristotle that the Universe is the result of the Prime Cause, and must be eternal as that Cause is eternal, or in accordance with these philosophers that the Universe is the result of the act, design, will, selection, and determination of God, but it has always been so, and will always be so.

  • Maimonides’ own belief goes against this Avicennan necessitarianism; for him,

    the Universe is not the “necessary result” of God’s existence, as the effect is the necessary result of the efficient cause; in the latter case the effect cannot be separated from the cause; it cannot change unless the cause changes entirely, or at least in some respect.

clearly, the ‘latter case’ delineated above would be inimical to Maimonides’ religious beliefs about God’s will, which is why he rejects this sort of determinism. He puts it even more clearly thus:

according to Aristotle everything besides that Being is the necessary result of the latter, as I have already mentioned: whilst, according to our opinion, that Being created the whole Universe with design and will (قصد و إرادة), so that the Universe which had not been in existence before, has by His will come into existence.