Joseph Albo - Fundamental Principles and Their Derived Truths

Fundamental Principles and Their Derived Truths

According to Albo, the first of his fundamental root-principles, the belief in the existence of God, embraces the following shorashim, or secondary radicals:

  1. God's unity
  2. God's incorporeality
  3. God's independence of time
  4. God's perfection: in God there can be neither weakness nor other defect.

The second root-principle—the belief in revelation, or the communication of divine instruction by God to man—leads him to derive the following three secondary radicals:

  1. The Hebrew prophets are the mediums of God's revelation
  2. The belief in the unique greatness of Moses as a prophet
  3. The binding force of the Mosaic law until another shall have been divulged and proclaimed in as public a manner (before six hundred thousand men). No later prophet has, consequently, the right to abrogate the Mosaic dispensation.

From the third root principle, the belief in divine justice, he derives one secondary radical: the belief in bodily resurrection.

According to Albo, therefore, the belief in the Messiah is only a "twig". It is not necessary to the soundness of the trunk. It is, hence, not an integral part of Judaism. Nor is it true that every law is binding. Though every ordinance has the power of conferring happiness in its observance, it is not true that every law must be observed, or that through the neglect of a part of the law, a Jew would violate the divine covenant or be damned.

Read more about this topic:  Joseph Albo

Famous quotes containing the words fundamental principles, fundamental, principles, derived and/or truths:

    “... the fundamental principles of ecology govern our lives wherever we live, and ... we must wake up to this fact or be lost.”
    —Karin Sheldon (b. c. 1945)

    “I believe that the fundamental proposition is that we must recognize that the hostilities in Europe, in Africa, and in Asia are all parts of a single world conflict. We must, consequently, recognize that our interests are menaced both in Europe and in the Far East.”
    —Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)

    “It is the genius of our Constitution that under its shelter of enduring institutions and rooted principles there is ample room for the rich fertility of American political invention.”
    —Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)

    “If all political power be derived only from Adam, and be to descend only to his successive heirs, by the ordinance of God and divine institution, this is a right antecedent and paramount to all government; and therefore the positive laws of men cannot determine that, which is itself the foundation of all law and government, and is to receive its rule only from the law of God and nature.”
    —John Locke (1632–1704)

    “The middle years are ones in which children increasingly face conflicts on their own,... One of the truths to be faced by parents during this period is that they cannot do the work of living and relating for their children. They can be sounding boards and they can probe with the children the consequences of alternative actions.”
    —Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)