According to Maimonides, there are three beliefs about who can become a prophet.

  1. “some ignorant people who … think [that] God selects any person he pleases”
  2. “The philosophers hold that prophecy is a certain faculty of man in a state of perfection … if a person, perfect in his intellectual and moral faculties, and also perfect, as far as possible, in his imaginative faculty, prepares himself … he must become a prophet.
  3. “The third view is that which is taught in Scripture, [and is identical to the second view, except that] “it may yet happen that [such a person] does not actually prophesy. It is in that case the will of God” that he didn’t actually become a prophet.

Thus, we see that Maimonides believes that prophecy is not an accident which could happen to anyone by the arbitrary will of God, but instead, it is a certain set of faculties, which are inherent in human beings, brought to their utmost perfection.

Although the faculty is common to the whole race, yet it is not fully developed in each individual, either on account of the individual’s defective constitution, or on account of some other external cause. This is the case with every faculty common to a class. It is only brought to a state of perfection in some individuals, and not in all; but it is impossible that it should not be perfect in some individual of the class

He is thus ‘naturalizing’ prophecy to some extent, in agreement with ‘the Philosophers’, although he is keen not to keep God entirely out of it. So he allows for an arbitrary ‘veto power’ which God can use to withold prophecy even from someone who is otherwise ‘qualified’ to be a Prophet.