"Now, we occupy a lowly position, both in space and rank in comparison with the heavenly sphere, and the Almighty is Most High not in space, but with respect to absolute existence, greatness and power"
About this Quote
A medieval ego-check disguised as metaphysics, Maimonides pulls the reader away from the comforting geography of faith. In a world where the heavens were not just poetic scenery but a literal, ranked architecture of reality, “lowly position” lands as both cosmology and moral instruction: humans are small, and the universe is not arranged for our vanity. That’s the first move. The sharper second move is theological: God is “Most High not in space.” Maimonides is fencing off the divine from the childlike picture of a gigantic being hovering above the stars, and he’s doing it with the cool confidence of a thinker trying to make revealed religion compatible with rigorous philosophy.
The subtext is a warning against idolatry of the imagination. If you treat “Most High” as a spatial claim, you reduce God to a super-creature inside the cosmos. Maimonides insists on a different kind of hierarchy: “absolute existence, greatness and power.” He’s smuggling in negative theology and Aristotelian influence, arguing that God’s superiority is categorical, not locational. God isn’t higher the way a mountain is higher; God is “higher” the way necessity outranks contingency.
Context matters: this is the Jewish intellectual tradition negotiating with the prestige of Greek science and the Islamic philosophical milieu of the 12th century. The line reads like a bridge between synagogue and academy, offering believers a way to keep reverence without surrendering to literalism. It works because it doesn’t flatter the listener; it reorients them. Humility becomes an epistemological discipline.
The subtext is a warning against idolatry of the imagination. If you treat “Most High” as a spatial claim, you reduce God to a super-creature inside the cosmos. Maimonides insists on a different kind of hierarchy: “absolute existence, greatness and power.” He’s smuggling in negative theology and Aristotelian influence, arguing that God’s superiority is categorical, not locational. God isn’t higher the way a mountain is higher; God is “higher” the way necessity outranks contingency.
Context matters: this is the Jewish intellectual tradition negotiating with the prestige of Greek science and the Islamic philosophical milieu of the 12th century. The line reads like a bridge between synagogue and academy, offering believers a way to keep reverence without surrendering to literalism. It works because it doesn’t flatter the listener; it reorients them. Humility becomes an epistemological discipline.
Quote Details
| Topic | God |
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