Three Distinct Principles
We must still understand why there is a need for three distinct principles.
The first is to believe in reward and punishment in general. (This is Maimonides’ eleventh principle. It should also be noted that Maimonides considers the era of reward and punishment to be primarily the afterlife enjoyed by the soul divested of its body.) This principle also validates G-d’s justice and fairness, because it posits that the righteous will eventually get what they deserve and the wicked will get their just deserts.
There is then a second principle that speaks to the same objective, the validation of G-d’’ justice, the twelfth principle: the belief in the coming of the Moshiach who will usher in a Messianic Era. This belief adds on to the belief in the afterlife, because it a) gives the righteous greater opportunity to deserve even greater reward (as Maimonides explains in his Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Teshuvah, chapter nine and in other places); b) will finally bring and end to all suffering; c) it will enable us to finally comprehend the meaning of suffering.
The third principle associated with validating G-d’s justice is the belief in the Resurrection of the Dead, the thirteenth and last principle of faith. This adds on to the last principle, a) in that it allows those souls that had died before perfecting themselves in a Messianic Era to do so; b) the reward is absolute and complete (and according to the kabbalists it will endure forever.
The question, however, remains, why is it necessary to have three distinct principles of faith to support the same objective? Aren’t they just three stages in the journey of the soul, through which the soul’s suffering and apparent injustices meted out to the soul is reversed and explained? Aren’t they essentially three stages in the process of reward for the righteous? Isn’t the objective of the Resurrection of the Dead essentially the same as the objective of the Messianic Age and the Afterlife– to rectify the wrongs of the past and to establish G-d’s utter justness and fairness? Why couldn’t Maimonides and others have consolidated these three beliefs into one?
These difficulties could have prompted Abarbanel to explain Maimonides’ reason for considering the Resurrection to be a separate principle is because of the multiple times it is mentioned in the Talmud and that it is juxtaposed with other fundamental principles. Though it is not conceptually a separate principle, it should be listed separately because of the attention paid to it by our sages.
From the book Safe Kabbalah, Part Three: Journeys of the Soul by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.
