One of the most provocative chapters in Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed is part 3, chapter 13. In this chapter, Maimonides criticizes anthropocentrism and teleology. He argues, inter alia, that it is pointless to seek the telos of the universe; that the universe was not created for the sake of humans; and that all beings were intended for their own sakes, not for the sake of something else. These views were rejected by many later philosophers, like Thomas Aquinas, Levi Gersonides, Moses Narboni, Hasdai Crescas, Isaac Arama, Saul Morteira, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Narboni wrote: “I am very perplexed by the Master! … [His words] contradict all the sciences. For the goal of all the sciences is to know the final end … This is no less than the abolition of the nature of the intellect!” Crescas wrote: “[It cannot be] what appears from the literal sense of the Master’s words. Heaven forfend that it should be attributed to God what would be a grave defect in any intelligent being,” namely, acting with no purpose! Arguably “[the most] systematic effort to rebut Maimonides’ discussion [in Guide 3.13]” was that of Saul Levi Morteira, Spinoza’s teacher. Spinoza, however, was not convinced by him. Indeed, he was the first major philosopher to embrace wholeheartedly Maimonides’ criticisms of anthropocentrism and teleology. Maimonides’ discussion in Guide 3.13, formatively influenced Spinoza’s celebrated assault on final causality in his appendix to part 1 of Ethics.

Within a participatory framework of metaphysics, evil is characteristically seen as a matter of privation. If all being, characterfulness, and action are had by creatures as a participation in, or from, God, then evil is a failure or occlusion of that participation. In this chapter, evil-as-privation is explored in terms of evil as washed-out, senseless, and always taking a form that is strictly relative to the particular good of the particular creature. The chapter ends with a discussion of the non-concurrence of God in evil, and how it might be that evil is possible. Evil is seen to have the character of non-relation between creatures.

In the third section of the book, a range of topics from doctrinal or systematic theology are considered, building on the survey of the first part of the book, which had dealt mainly with the doctrines of God and of creation. This chapter turns to Christology: to the doctrine of the Person of Christ and of the Incarnation, where participatory language and thinking have also been important. This is worked through in terms of a number of central contentions in traditional Christology. It also brings some less-often-considered aspects of the doctrine of Christ to the surface, such as Christ's participation in God through growth in virtues. A participatory account of Christology can bear witness to the full revelation and presence of God in, and as, Christ. This is contrasted with kenotic Christology.

Critics of divine determinism sometimes claim that determinists make God the author of sin. This chapter takes up the question of whether this is true. I begin by disambiguating the claim, focusing on reading the charge as equivalent to the claim that God causes sin. I begin by considering a reply to this objection rooted in the claim that evil is a mere privation. According to this particular reply, sin is composed of the positive act of being (which God does cause) and a defect, which is a mere privation. This defect, the reply claims, is not caused by God, nor by an act of a human agent, but instead by a privation. I present three arguments for thinking that this reply is insufficient. I then suggest that divine determinists consider a more robust reply built off of the same analysis of evil and sin, but which claims that privations, lacking all being, cannot be caused at all.