If many of us today enjoy the freedom to speak and write openly about religion, politics, and countless other subjects, we owe a debt of gratitude to the brave freethinkers of the early modern period who fought—and often sacrificed dearly—for those liberties.
Among them was the seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, who, for defending precisely this freedom, was expelled from Amsterdam’s Portuguese-Jewish community—in the harshest of terms—and forced to publish some of his most important works either anonymously or after his death, out of fear of censorship, imprisonment, or worse. Yet without this sacrifice, it would have undoubtedly taken humanity far longer to escape the shackles of ecclesiastical thought control.
The debt we owe Spinoza cannot be overstated. In fact, no other work of early modern religious dissent exerted a greater influence on the Enlightenment than Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise. As Spinoza scholar Steven Nadler observed:
Without a doubt, the Theological-Political Treatise is one of the most important and influential books in the history of philosophy, in religious and political thought, and even in Bible studies. More than any other work, it laid the foundation for modern critical and historical approaches to the Bible. And while often overlooked in books on the history of political thought, the Treatise also has a proud and well-deserved place in the rise of democratic theory, civil liberties, and political liberalism.
In the Treatise, Spinoza articulates a novel and revolutionary worldview where God and nature are one and the same, miracles are impossible, the Bible is a man-made work of literature, and anthropomorphic gods are relegated to the same realm as ghosts, centaurs, and witches. It’s no wonder, then, that Spinoza received “the harshest writ of herem…ever pronounced on a member of the Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam.”
The Treatise, viewed from an orthodox perspective, is unapologetically heretical. But it is also, above all, a philosophy of freedom—a plea for a society “where everyone’s judgment is free and unshackled, where each may worship God as his conscience dictates, and where freedom is esteemed before all things dear and precious.” It envisions a republic in which faith is judged “only by its fruits,” and where “nothing would be publicly honoured save justice and charity.”
Spinoza was an early champion of freedom of conscience and religion, despite his atheistic leanings. While he had no use for a personal god, he did believe that a god of this sort was required for the masses, and that scripture could, at least in principle, command the kind of pious obedience that served the common good. The challenge, then, was to determine how religion might be made to serve that purpose. So he set out to establish a “universal faith” capable of guiding the religious toward peace and social harmony. Meanwhile, nonbelievers would be held to the same standards of ethical conduct while being allowed to think and say whatever they please.
Spinoza began by noting that the narratives of scripture serve primarily as instruments of obedience. Moses and Jesus, after all, offer little in the way of arguments rather than outright commands. Scripture is meant to inspire moral conduct, and it is this outward behavior—not one’s esoteric theology—that ought to be judged. Since religion and philosophy occupy different domains, the truly pious believer ought to be measured not by the doctrines they profess (as in philosophy) but by the justice and charity they practice. The upshot, for Spinoza, is that to persecute an outwardly virtuous person because their theology is deemed “incorrect” is among the gravest of sins:
The sacred books were not written by one man, nor for the people of a single period, but by many authors of different temperaments, at times extending from first to last over nearly two thousand years, and perhaps much longer. We will not, however, accuse the sectaries of impiety because they have adapted the words of Scripture to their own opinions; it is thus that these words were adapted to the understanding of the masses originally, and everyone is at liberty so to treat them if he sees that he can thus obey God in matters relating to justice and charity with a more full consent: but we do accuse those who will not grant this freedom to their fellows, but who persecute all who differ from them, as God’s enemies, however honourable and virtuous be their lives; while, on the other hand, they cherish those who agree with them, however foolish they may be, as God’s elect. Such conduct is as wicked and dangerous to the state as any that can be conceived.
Spinoza, in this passage, sounds much like James, the brother of Jesus, who famously declared that “faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead” (James 2:17). Genuine faith is revealed not through creeds or professions, but through one’s works. As James put it, “Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds” (James 2:18). On this point, Spinoza could hardly have agreed more:
From these texts, I repeat, it follows that we can only judge a man faithful or unfaithful by his works. If his works be good, he is faithful, however much his doctrines may differ from those of the rest of the faithful: if his works be evil, though he may verbally conform, he is unfaithful. For obedience implies faith, and faith without works is dead.
The Bible, a man-made work of literature though it is, has a relatively clear overarching message—according to Spinoza—that even the bitterest of theological opponents might concede: the duty to love one’s neighbor. “It cannot, therefore, be denied that he who by God’s command loves his neighbour as himself,” Spinoza writes, “is truly obedient and blessed according to the law, whereas he who hates his neighbour or neglects him is rebellious and obstinate.” The philosopher, Spinoza reminds us, can discover these higher moral truths “from nature alone,” but the religious must acquire them from scripture.
It’s worth pausing momentarily to note that, contra Spinoza, there are strong arguments to be made that Jesus’s teachings are deeply immoral. The commands, for example, to “not worry about tomorrow,” to surrender all your possessions, to abandon your family, and to blindly follow your master at all costs gives one the unmistakable impression of a cult leader.
Further, the commands to turn the other cheek and love your enemies—even when doing so results in great harm to yourself or others—is not only highly questionable, but makes sense only in the context of Jewish apocalypticism and the supposed imminent end of the world.
Toss in to the mix some cursed fig trees, demon-possessed pigs, vandalized temples, and the threat of eternal punishment, and you have the profile of an utterly unethical man. If Socrates told us that the unexamined life is not worth living, then what does that say for the life of an obedient, supplicant Christian whose very thoughts are under the constant surveillance and command of Christ?
Nevertheless, let’s try to be a bit more charitable, if we can. The interpretation of scripture in the context of apocalyptic theology is no longer necessary. The practicing Christian, Spinoza would say, must adapt the words of scripture to their own opinion and purpose. He would tell them to dig deeper to find the overarching message of scripture that is independent of historical context. And in this respect, the words attributed to Jesus could not be clearer:
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matt. 22:37-40).
Elsewhere in Matthew, Jesus says, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets” (Matt. 7:12), suggesting that the command to love your neighbor and to love God amounts to the same thing. This is further reinforced in the Parable of the Sheep and Goats (Matt. 25:31–46), which clearly conveys the message that whatever one does (or doesn’t) do for those in need, one does (or doesn’t) do for God.
God himself is said to be known only through acts of love: “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them” (1 John 4:16). To know God is to live in love, and to live in love is to treat your neighbor as yourself. The Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) then expands the concept of one’s neighbor to encompass anyone in need. This, for Spinoza, is the moral essence of scripture.
Yet in Spinoza’s view, Christianity had largely failed to live up to its own ideals. “I have often wondered,” Spinoza wrote, “that persons who make a boast of professing the Christian religion, namely, love, joy, peace, temperance, and charity to all men, should quarrel with such rancorous animosity, and display daily towards one another such bitter hatred, that this, rather than the virtues they claim, is the readiest criterion of their faith.”
Spinoza believed that orthodox Christianity had been overrun by superstition, sectarian conflict, and empty ritual, all sustained by corrupt ecclesiastics who exploited fear, hatred, and division to secure their own power. “Verily, if they had but one spark of light from on High,” Spinoza thundered, “they would not insolently rave, but would learn to worship God more wisely, and would be as marked among their fellows for mercy as they now are for malice.”
What was needed was a return to the essentials of faith, stripped of centuries of theological embellishment and distraction. Genuine faith, Spinoza said, requires only the belief that God exists; that God is one, omnipresent, supreme, merciful, and just; and “that the worship of God consists only in justice and charity, or love towards one’s neighbour.”
“How salutary and necessary this doctrine is for a state, in order that men may dwell together in peace and concord,” Spinoza concludes, “and how many and how great causes of disturbance and crime are thereby cut off, I leave everyone to judge for himself!”
From one perspective, history has done Spinoza no favors, revealing scripture as a reliable source for social division and animosity. Some of the most vicious persecutions of Christians have come at the hands of, well, other Christians. The European wars of religion are only the most obvious examples. The ambiguity of scripture all but guarantees constant in-fighting about matters that can never be conclusively resolved. Are we not better off, then, dropping the faith entirely, and building a society around the principles of secular humanism?
The answer would seem to be, yes.
Yet on the other hand, Spinoza was realistic enough to know that religion would not vanish from the earth simply because philosophers pointed out its several flaws. Large segments of society seem to require it. Might there then be some value in revisiting Spinoza’s project of universal faith—whereby the faithful are judged, not by the doctrines they hold, but by the extent of their benevolence? If religion cannot be abolished, can it be transformed in a way that aligns the behavior of its adherents with the principles of humanism practiced by nonbelievers?
At the very least, Spinoza leaves us with an uncomfortable question for Christianity. If love of neighbor, mercy, charity, and concern for the vulnerable really are the essence of the faith, then what should we make of Christians who loudly profess their allegiance to God while neglecting the people whom their own scriptures command them to love? To elevate doctrinal conformity above compassion is not merely to betray Spinoza’s ideal of religion. It is to turn the Sermon on the Mount upside down: to make the profession of faith more important than the practice of love.
References and Further Reading
Nadler, Steven. A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011.
Spinoza, Benedict de. Theologico-Political Treatise. Translated by R. H. M. Elwes. Scotts Valley, CA: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017.