BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

Theological-Political Treatise
which apparently means that although the Jews give every sign of abandoning
the worship of God, he nevertheless will gather them together
again from the many regions to which they have been scattered, and lead
them to a place which is empty of peoples, just as he had led their parents
to the empty places of Egypt, and in the end, after separating them from
the rebels and the backsliders, he will bring them from there to his holy
mountain, where the whole household of Israel will worship him.
Other passages besides these are frequently cited, especially by the
Pharisees [i.e. the rabbis], but I think that responding to these two will
adequately cover them all. I shall do it without much di⁄culty by
demonstrating from the Bible itself that God did not choose the
Hebrews for ever, but only on the same condition on which he chose the
Canaanites before them. They too, as we showed above, had priests who
worshipped God zealously yet God rejected them because of their luxury
and idleness and bad behaviour. Moses warns the Israelites (Leviticus
18.27^8) not to be polluted with incest like the Canaanites, lest the land
spit them out as it had spat out the nations that inhabited those places
before them. And at Deuteronomy 8.19^20 he threatens destruction in
very explicit words saying, ‘I attest today that you will utterly perish;
like the nations which the Lord caused to perish before you, so will you
perish’. Other things to this e¡ect are found in the Law, which expressly
indicate that God did not elect the Hebrew nation absolutely and for ever.
If therefore the prophets announced to them a new and eternal covenant
of God, a covenant of knowledge, love and grace, it is easy to show that it
56 was promised only to the pious. For in the same chapter of Ezekiel which
we have just cited, it is expressly stated that God will separate from them
the rebels and backsliders, and at Zephaniah 3.12^13 that Godwill take the
arrogant from their midst and conserve the poor. Since this election is
made solely on the basis of true virtue, it is unthinkable that it has been
promised only to pious Jews, to the exclusion of other pious people. Rather
we must accept that the true gentile prophets, who, as we have shown,
existed in all nations, also promised the same election to the faithful of
their peoples and o¡ered them its consolation.That this eternal covenant
of God, the covenant of knowledge and of love, is universal, is entirely
evident also from Zephaniah 3.10^11. On this issue then we can accept no
di¡erence between Jews and gentiles; and therefore there is no election
which is peculiar to the Jews except the one which we have already
explained.
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