BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

Theological-Political Treatise
not concoct) predicted the future via some kind of diabolic power. The
passage which they chie£y cite from the Old Testament to lend authority to
their opinion is the text at Exodus 33.16, where Moses says to God: ‘how
shall it be known that I and your people have found favour in your eyes It
will surely be when you go with us, and I and your people are separated
from every people which is on the face of the earth’. From this passage,
I say, they want to infer that Moses was asking God to be with the Jews and
to reveal himself prophetically to them and, further, not to grant this
favour to any other nation.
It is of course ridiculous that Moses would begrudge the presence of
God to the nations, or that he would dare request such a thing of God.The
reality is that after Moses got to know the obstinate temper and spirit of his
people, he saw clearly that they were not able do what they had undertaken
to do, without great miracles, and special external from help God, and
would inevitably perish without such assistance. He therefore sought this
particular external help from God, so that it might be clear that God
wished them to be preserved. This is what he says (34.9): ‘if I have found
favour in your eyes, Lord, let the Lord, I pray, go among us since this
people is obstinate’, etc. Thus the reason why he sought special external
help from God, was because his people was obstinate, and what makes it
still plainer that Moses sought nothing other than this particular external
aid from God is God’s own answer. God immediately replies (verse 10 of
the same chapter): ‘Behold, I make a covenant that I will do before your
54 whole people marvels which have not been done in all the earth nor in all
the nations’, etc. Hence what Moses is discussing here is simply the election
of the Hebrews, as I have explained it, and he was not requesting
anything else of God.
However, I ¢nd another text, in the Epistle of Paul to the Romans, which
weighs still more with me, namely 3.1^2, where Paul appears to teach
something di¡erent from what we are asserting here. He asks: ‘What
therefore is the preeminence of the Jew Or what is the advantage of circumcision
Much in every way; for it is of the ¢rst importance that the
pronouncements of God were entrusted to them.’ But if we consider the
principal doctrine Paul is trying to teach here, we shall ¢nd that it does not
con£ict with our view at all; on the contrary, he is saying the same thing.
For at verse 29 of this chapter he a⁄rms that God is the God of the Jews
and of the gentiles, and at 2.25^6 he says: ‘if the circumcised break the law,
their circumcision will become uncircumcision, and on the other hand if
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