BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

On the vocation of the Hebrews
the uncircumcised obey the command of the law, their uncircumcision is
regarded as circumcision’. Again 3.9 and 4.15 state that all men equally, that
is, both Jews and gentiles, were under sin, but that there is no sin without
commandment and law. It is entirely evident from this that the law has
been revealed to everyone without exception (as we also proved above from
Job 28.28), that all men have lived under it, and that this law is the law
which aims at true virtue alone, and is not the law which is shaped by the
form and constitution of one particular state and adapted to the character
of a single people. Finally, Paul concludes that God is the God of all
nations, that is, God is equally well-disposed to all, and all men are equally
under law and sin, and that is why God sent his Christ to all nations, to free
all men equally from the servitude of the law, so that they would no longer
live good lives because the law so commanded, but from a ¢xed conviction
of the mind.
Hence Paul teaches exactly what we want to a⁄rm. When he says that
‘the pronouncements of God were entrusted only to the Jews’, he must
mean one of two things. He may mean that the laws were entrusted in
writing only to the Jews and given to the rest of the nations by revelation
and intuition alone. Or he may be adapting his reply to the understanding
and beliefs of the Jews at that point in time (since he is striving to refute an
objection that could only have come from Jews). For in order to proclaim
what he had partly seen for himself and partly heard from others, he was
prepared to be a Greekwith the Greeks and a Jew with the Jews. 8
[11] It remains only to respond to some arguments by which certain
people seek to persuade themselves that the election of the Jews was not 55
temporal and applicable only to their commonwealth, but eternal.We see
(they say) that, after the loss of their state, the Jews were scattered everywhere
for so many years and separated from all nations, and yet they still
survived, as no other nation has. The sacred books, we see also, seem to
teach in many places that God has chosen the Jews for himself for ever, and
therefore although they have lost their state, they still remain the chosen of
God. The passages which they think show this eternal election most
clearly are: (1) Jeremiah 31.36, where the prophet testi¢es that the seed of
Israel will remain the people of God for ever and goes so far as to compare
them with the ¢xed order of the heavens and of nature; (2) Ezekiel 20.32¡.,
8 See 1 Corinthians 9.19^23.
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