Crescas Hasdai (d.1412), Spanish Jewish philosopher, theologian, and statesman. He was a well-known representative of the Jewish community in both Barcelona and Saragossa. Following the death of his son in the anti-Jewish riots of 1391, he wrote a chronicle of the massacres (published as an appendix to Ibn Verga, Shevet Yehudah, ed. M. Wiener, 1855). Crescas’s devotion to protecting Spanish Jewry in a time when conversion was encouraged is documented in one extant work, the Refutation of Christian Dogmas (1397–98), found in the 1451 Hebrew translation of Joseph ibn Shem Tov (Bittul ‘Iqqarey ha-Nofrim). His major philosophical work, Or Adonai (The Light of the Lord), was intended as the first of a two-part project that was to include his own more extensive systematization of halakha (Jewish law) as well as a critique of Maimonides’ work. But this second part, ‘Lamp of the Divine Commandment,’ was never written.
Or Adonai is a philosophico-dogmatic response to and attack on the Aristotelian doctrines that Crescas saw as a threat to the Jewish faith, doctrines concerning the nature of God, space, time, place, free will, and infinity. For theological reasons he attempts to refute basic tenets in Aristotelian physics. He offers, e.g., a critique of Aristotle’s arguments against the existence of a vacuum. The Aristotelian view of time is rejected as well. Time, like space, is thought by Crescas to be infinite. Furthermore, it is not an accident of motion, but rather exists only in the soul. In defending the fundamental doctrines of the Torah, Crescas must address the question discussed by his predecessors Maimonides and Gersonides, namely that of reconciling divine foreknowledge with human freedom. Unlike these two thinkers, Crescas adopts a form of determinism, arguing that God knows both the possible and what will necessarily take place. An act is contingent with respect to itself, and necessary with respect to its causes and God’s knowledge. To be willed freely, then, is not for an act to be absolutely contingent, but rather for it to be ‘willed internally’ as opposed to ‘willed externally.’ Reactions to Crescas’s doctrines were mixed. Isaac Abrabanel, despite his respect for Crescas’s piety, rejected his views as either ‘unintelligible’ or ‘simple-minded.’ On the other hand, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola appeals to Crescas’s critique of Aristotelian physics; Judah Abrabanel’s Dialogues of Love may be seen as accommodating Crescas’s metaphysical views; and Spinoza’s notions of necessity, freedom, and extension may well be influenced by the doctrines of Or Adonai. See also GERSONIDES , MAIMONIDE. T.M.R.