QuestionsShould we believe without proof?Of God we can say only what he is not: knowledge ends in silence
Should we believe without proof?Faith goes beyond

Of God we can say only what he is not: knowledge ends in silence

Negative theology; the way of negation; God's attributes (Maimonides)

Moses Maimonides 1138 · 1204Jewish physician and philosopher: of God we can say only what he is not, and the finest praise is silence.
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What it claims

Human knowledge of God is limited to his existence and what he is not; what he is exceeds reason, and the most fitting praise is silence.

Why

God is absolutely simple, so any positive quality would be false of him: we can say only what he is not.

The same idea through history
Moses Maimonides1190In the Guide, written in Judeo-Arabic, Maimonides holds that the positive terms of Scripture about God are ways of speaking for human beings, and that true knowledge proceeds by what can be denied of God.
Thomas Aquinas1268Thomas Aquinas keeps from Maimonides that we do not know what God is, but refuses to reduce all divine names to negations (Summa theologiae, I, q.13). His argument on faith and reason is another argument on this site.
In short

"Of God we can say only what he is not: knowledge ends in silence" is an argument by Moses Maimonides (Guide for the Perplexed, I, 58-60 (c. 1190), 1190) on the question "Should we believe without proof?" (answer: faith goes beyond). Its claim: Human knowledge of God is limited to his existence and what he is not; what he is exceeds reason, and the most fitting praise is silence. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Guide for the Perplexed, I, 58-60 (c. 1190)
Valid with an implicit premise

To say "God is good, God is wise, God is powerful", is that really to say something about God? Maimonides, a Jewish physician and philosopher from Cordoba, answers: no, not in the sense in which we say Socrates is wise. God is absolutely simple: he has no parts and no qualities added to his being. Any positive quality we lend him would therefore be false, or would speak only of his actions. What reason can establish is that he exists and what he is not (not a body, not changing, not many). The more things we prove he is not, the nearer we come to him; and the most fitting form of praise is silence. An important caveat: Maimonides thinks God's existence can be demonstrated; what exceeds reason is what God is. We quote Friedlander's English translation (1st ed. 1881-1885, revised 2nd ed. 1904, reprinted 1910), in the public domain.

P1God's existence is absolute and without composition: we comprehend only the fact that he exists, not his essence. No positive quality can therefore be attributed to him.
P2Every attribute predicated of God denotes either the quality of an action or the negation of the opposite: it does not say what God is in himself.
P3Each negation established by proof brings us nearer to the knowledge of God, whereas each positive assertion removes us from it, for it follows our imagination.
P4 · implicit premiseIf everything language says of God is action or negation, reason stops before what he is: God's essence exceeds human words and concepts.
Therefore human knowledge of God is limited to his existence and what he is not; what he is exceeds reason, and the most fitting praise is silence.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4 one can accept P1 to P3 while holding that our words, though imperfect, really say something of God (by analogy). Reason then does not stop at the threshold of the essence and the conclusion falls.
The argument is valid with the hidden premise P4. P1 sets God's simplicity and the absence of positive attributes; P2 says everything said of God is action or negation; P3 that true knowledge advances by negations; P4 concludes that reason does not grasp the essence. The debates concern P1 (absolute simplicity) and P2 (can negation be enough to speak of God, or do we end by saying nothing?).
Analogy. A hunter must recognise a beast he has never seen. He is told: it is not a bird, not a fish, not an insect, not a farm animal. By eliminating, he forms an idea of it, without ever having said what it is. Maimonides says our knowledge of God advances this way, by elimination.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Thomas Aquinas 1268 · attacks premise 2

In the Summa theologiae, Thomas Aquinas ascribes this thesis to "Rabbi Moses" and finds it insufficient. When believers say God is living, they mean more than "God is not inanimate" or "God is the cause of our life". Names like "good" or "wise" really signify the divine substance, but imperfectly, as creatures represent it imperfectly.

a defender replies
No reply possible: objection raised in 1268, after the author's death (1204).
D
David Burrell defender of the argument · 1986
In Knowing the Unknowable God, David Burrell argues that Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas are closer than they seem. For him it is less a matter of denying all content than of showing how our words, drawn from creatures, cannot work for God as they do for them: language about God is adjusted by negation, not abolished.
The debate goes on (our summary) Thomas himself opens his study of God's nature by saying that we cannot know what God is, but rather what he is not (Summa theologiae, I, q.3, prologue). The disagreement is therefore about what words say after the negations, not about the limit of knowledge.
Where the debate stands (our summary)A basic disagreement, but narrower than often said: both admit that God exceeds our concepts; they differ on the value of affirmations (analogy for Thomas, a way of speaking for Maimonides). Specialists still discuss how far apart they really are (our summary).
Hume (Cleanthes, in the Dialogues) 1779 · attacks the conclusion

In the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, the character Cleanthes asks Demea, who maintains God's absolute incomprehensibility, how these "Mystics" differ from the sceptics or atheists, for whom the first cause is unknown and unintelligible. If nothing can be said of God, talking about him has no meaning.

a defender replies
No reply possible: objection raised in 1779, after the author's death (1204).
Hume (Demea, in the Dialogues) defender of the argument · 1779
Demea replies by turning the charge around. By making God a mind like the human mind, one lends him a soul made of various faculties, passions and ideas succeeding one another: this fits badly with the simplicity and immutability that theists ascribe to him.
Hume (Cleanthes, in the Dialogues) 1779
Cleanthes answers that those who maintain so complete a simplicity are "complete Mystics", and that a mind wholly simple and immutable, without thought, reason, will or feeling, is no mind at all: to call it so is an abuse of terms.
The debate goes on (our summary) Hume writes nearly six centuries after Maimonides: he does not discuss him. The Dialogues are deliberately open, and Hume is not identified with any single character.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Open point: does a God of whom nothing positive can be said remain the God of a religion, or an absence of content? Defenders of the negative way answer that the aim is precisely not to reduce God to a human idea (our summary).
Alvin Plantinga 1980 · attacks premise 1

Plantinga disputes the absolute simplicity of God, from which Maimonides starts. If God is identical with each of his properties, then he is identical with a property, and a property is not a person who acts, knows and loves. Absolute simplicity therefore seems incompatible with a personal God.

a defender replies
No reply possible: objection raised in 1980, after the author's death (1204).
E
Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann defender of the argument · 1985
Stump and Kretzmann reply that the doctrine does not turn God into an abstract property. Our different words (good, wise, powerful) have different meanings but refer to one and the same reality, as "the morning star" and "the evening star" refer to the same planet. God remains a concrete being who acts.
Where the debate stands (our summary)A live debate: some philosophers defend divine simplicity by giving it weaker senses; others reject it. No position commands agreement (our summary).