Maimonides starts this chapter by proposing a classification of (human) actions.

  1. Purposeless (‘abas’ عبث): Actions that are not directed to any purpose, e.g., fiddling with your hands while thinking of something else.
  2. In vain (batil ﺏﺎﻄﻟ): Actions that do not achieve their purpose, e.g., if you look for something without finding it.
  3. Unimportant (la’b ﻞﻌﺑ): Actions that are directed to “an object that is not necessary and is not of great use … mere pastimes”.
  4. Useful (jayyid hasan جيد حسن): Actions that are “necessary or useful for the purpose which is to be attained”. Maimonides uses the word ‘good’ interchangeably with the word ‘useful’ here.

All of God’s actions, however, must be of the fourth category alone; as Genesis 1:31 says, “God saw everything that he had made, and behlod, it was very good.” Whatever God has made is necessary and useful for its intended purpose, i.e., the old Aristotelian maxim that nature has made nothing in vain, so that “everything that is not the product of human industry serves a certain purpose, which may be known or unknown to us”.

Maimonides strongly opposes the occasionalist theory that everything in the Universe is the “direct result of the Will of God”, with no relations of cause and effect between the various phenomena. “According to this opinion we cannot ask why has He made this and not that; for He does what pleases Him, without following a fixed system.” If this were true, then all of God’s actions would be purposeless, which would mean that God’s actions are inferior to man’s.

No notice need be taken of the nonsensical idea that monkeys were created for our pastime. Such opinions originate only in man’s ignorance of the nature of transient beings, and in his overlooking the principle that it was intended by the Creator to produce in its present form everything whose existence is possible; a different form was not decreed by the Divine Wisdom, and the existence [of objects of a different form] is therefore impossible, because the existence of all things depends on the decree of God’s wisdom

People are led to believe in the purposelessness of things in nature when they start by looking at the whole Universe. “They ask what is the purpose of the whole Universe? they necessarily answer, like all those who believe in the Creation, that it was created because God willed it so, and for no other purpose. The same answer they apply to all parts of the Universe”. This is an erroneous analogy, however, notwithstanding the Scriptural passages that seem to imply that God arbitrarily created all things in the world, e.g., Psalms 135:6, “The Lord hath done whatever he pleased”. The Universe is not only the result of God’s will, but also his wisdom.

The object of His will is only that which is possible, and of the things possible only such as His wisdom decrees upon. When God desires to produce the best work, no obstacle or hindrance intervenes between Him and that work. This is the opinion held by all religious people, also by the philosophers; it is also our opinion. For although we believe that God created the Universe from nothing, most of our wise and learned men believe that the Creation was not the exclusive result of His will; but His wisdom, which we are unable to comprehend, made the actual existence of the Universe necessary. The same unchangeable wisdom found it as necessary that non-existence should precede the existence of the Universe.

All parts of natural products are well arranged, in good order, connected with each other, and stand to each other in the relation of cause and effect; nothing of them is purposeless, trivial, or in vain; they are all the result of great wisdom. … This idea occurs frequently; there is no necessity to believe otherwise; philosophic speculation leads to the same result; viz., that in the whole of Nature there is nothing purposeless, trivial, or unnecessary, especially in the Nature of the spheres, which are in the best condition and order, in accordance with their superior substance

In his attack against the idea that God made some parts of the Universe without purpose and according to an arbitrary will, Maimonides diagnoses that there are two possible reasons why people may be led to think this:

  • “firstly, man has an erroneous idea of himeself, and believes that the whole world exists only for his sake”; if one believes this, then it does seem like, say, the meerkat serves no purpose.
  • “secondly, he is ignorant both about the nature of the sublunary world, and about the Creator’s interntion to give existence to all beings whose existence is possible, because existence is undoubtedly good.” These errors “lead many to imagine that some of God’s works are trivial, others purposeless, and others in vain.”

Summary

  • God intended to give existence to all beings whose existence is possible