ABSTRACT
In the Jewish tradition, God is understood as the divine creator, designer and ruler of the universe. The belief in God is the foundation of the Jewish religion and the basis of the legal system. The Bible portrays creation and God’s activity in the history of ancient Israel. Medieval Jewish philosophers sought to demonstrate the existence of God and investigated the nature of the divine attributes. Kabbalists explored the hidden depths of the Godhead and God’s activity in the world.
Challenges to the understanding of God are made via Spinoza and pantheism. There is criticism of the value of God as a mystery, a mystery requiring a leap of faith or Tertullian’s acceptance of Christian belief in impossibilities. Versions of the Design Argument for the existence of God are examined, including the Fine Tuning Argument, with Cohn-Sherbok defending. Religious belief and talk of a transcendent being are suggested by Cave as ‘binding a community’ rather than as a realist view regarding a ‘something’ supernatural.
