Emunah Peshuta - True or False.

I always get irritated when people refer to ignorance as Emunah Peshutah. Nebech an idolater is still an idolater and a person that believes in a comprehensible God is wrong and does not believe in the God of Israel.

Rambam in Moreh 1:35 states;

“That God is incorporeal, that He cannot be compared with His creatures, that He is not subject to external influence; these are things which must be explained to every one according to his capacity, and they must be taught by way of tradition to children and women, to the stupid and ignorant, as they are taught that God is One, that He is eternal, and that He alone is to be worshipped. Without incorporeality there is no unity, for a corporeal thing is in the first case not simple, but composed of matter and form which are two separate things by definition, and secondly, as it has extension it is also divisible. When persons have received this doctrine, and have been trained in this belief, and are in consequence at a loss to reconcile it with the writings of the Prophets, the meaning of the latter must be made dear and explained to them by pointing out the homonymity and the figurative application of certain terms discussed in this part of the work. Their belief in the unity of God and in the words of the Prophets will then be a true and perfect belief.”

In other words if a child is taught that God is transcendental and as he grows up he is confronted with the text which seems to contradict that, he is forced to think about this. His Rebbis should grasp the opportunity and explain to him why we understand God this way. As he grows further he will come to know more and understand more. The Torah’s goal is to teach man and it does it by forcing him to confront the contradictions of our existence. We can only understand the physical but we know and can infer that there is a God/Creator whose essence is not understood or known. Rambam continues:

“Those who are not sufficiently intelligent to comprehend the true interpretation of these passages in the Bible, or to understand that the same term admits of two different interpretations, may simply be told that the scriptural passage is clearly understood by the wise, but that they should content themselves with knowing that God is incorporeal, that He is never subject to external influence, as passivity implies a change, while God is entirely free from all change, that He cannot be compared to anything besides Himself, that no definition includes Him together with any other being, that the words of the Prophets are true, and that difficulties met with may be explained on this principle. This may suffice for that class of persons, and it is not proper to leave them in the belief that God is corporeal, or that He has any of the properties of material objects, just as there is no need to leave them in the belief that God does not exist, that there are more Gods than one, or that any other being may be worshipped.”

Emunah Peshuta is not to believe in a God of our imagination, never mind how comforting a personal, knowable and tangible God is, but accepting on faith what smarter people have concluded about God. That He is not a body nor anything physical, nor anything that a human can understand or know no matter how brilliant they are. That is Emunah Peshuta. However it is not a goal in itself but must be seen as a stepping stone that will allow for greater insight and understanding. To be satisfied with Emunah Peshutah, even the correct belief, is avoiding to fulfill one's obligation of Yedias Hashem.