BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

On the divine law
as a ruling, that is, as a convention that gain or loss follows, not from the
necessity and nature of the action done, but only from the pleasure and
absolute command of the prince. Therefore that revelation was a law and
God was a kind of legislator or prince exclusively with respect to Adam,
and only because of the de¢ciency of his knowledge.
It is for the same reason too, namely de¢ciency of knowledge, that the
Ten Commandments were law only for the Hebrews. Since they did not
know the existence of God as an eternal truth, i.e., that God exists and that
God alone is to be adored, theyhad to understand it as a decree. If God had
spoken to them directly without the use of any physical means, they would
have perceived this same thing not as an edict but as an eternal truth.What
we say about the Israelites and about Adam, must also be said of all the
prophets who issued laws in the name of God: they did not perceive the 64
decrees of God adequately as eternal truths.
For example, it has even to be said of Moses himself that he grasped,
either through revelation or from principles revealed to him, how the
people of Israel could best be united in a certain part of the world and
form an integrated society and establish a state, and he also saw how that
people might best be compelled to obey. But he did not grasp, nor was it
revealed to him, that this was the best way, nor that the desired aim
would necessarily follow from the common obedience of the people in
such a part of the world.Thus he perceived all these things not as eternal
truths but as precepts and teachings, and prescribed them as decrees of
God. That is why he imagined God as ruler, legislator, king, merciful,
just, etc., despite the fact that all the latter are merely attributes of
human nature and far removed from the divine nature.
[10] I emphasize that these things must be said only about the prophets
who gave laws in the name of God, but not about Christ. For concerning
Christ, although he too appeared to issue laws in the name of God, one
must see, that he [on the contrary] understood things truly and adequately.
Christ was not so much a prophet as the mouth-piece of God. For, as we
showed in chapter 1, God revealed certain things to the human race
through the mind of Christ, as he had done previously by means of angels,
i.e., by means of a created voice, visions, etc. So it would be equally irrational
to think that God adapted his revelations to Christ’s beliefs as that
he had previously adapted his revelations to the beliefs of angels (i.e. to
the beliefs of a created voice and of visions) in order to communicate his
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