Joseph Albo - Distinctive Features

Distinctive Features

In contradistinction to Maimonides' thirteen and Crescas' six, Albo limited the fundamental Jewish principles of faith to three:

1. belief in the existence of God
2. belief in revelation
3. belief in divine justice, as related to the idea of immortality.

In the formulation of other articles of faith, the controversies to which the compilers had been exposed influenced both the selection of the specific principles to be accentuated, and the way that they were presented. Similarly in the case of Joseph Albo, his selection was made with a view to correct the scheme of Maimonides in those points where it seemed to support the contentions of the Christian dogmatists and controversialists.

Maimonides himself had been influenced by a desire to obviate certain Christian and Muslim claims. His emphasis upon the absolute incorporeality of God only finds its true light when the Christian doctrine of the incarnation is borne in mind. His Messianic expectation, with the stress upon the constancy with which its future fulfillment is to be looked for, had also an anti-Christian bearing. But this very point, the Messianic dogma, had in turn soon become a source of anxiety to the Jews, forced to meet in public disputations the champions of the Church. Among the spokesmen of the Church were some converts from Judaism. These were not slow to urge this Messianic dogma of Maimonides as far as they might, to embarrass the defenders of Judaism. Before the time of Maimonides the question of the corporeality of the Messiah appears not to have been among the problems discussed in the polemics between the Church and the Jewish community. But half a century after him, when his Messianic doctrine had been accepted as one of the essential articles of the faith, it was this point that was pushed into the foreground of the discussions.

Having participated in one of these public disputations, Albo must have become conscious of the embarrassment which the Maimonidean position could not but occasion to the defenders of Judaism. In his scheme, therefore, the Messiah is eliminated as an integral part of Jewish faith. In its stead he lays stress upon the doctrine of divine justice.

The title of his book indicates his method at the outset. Basic to his investigation is the recognition that "human happiness is conditioned by knowledge and conduct." But "human intellect can not attain unto perfect knowledge and ethical conduct, since its power is limited and soon exhausted in the contemplation of the things the truth of which it would find; therefore, of necessity, there must be something above human intellect through which knowledge and conduct can attain to a degree of excellence that admits of no doubt."

The insufficiency of human intellect postulates the necessity of divine guidance; and thus it is the duty of every person to know the God-given law. But to know it is possible only if one has established the true principles, without which there can be no divine law. Seeing that on this vital theme there are so much divergence, confusion, and shallowness, Albo resolves to erect a structure for the true religion.