BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

On ceremonies and narratives
[16] Let us explain this more clearly. Among the questions the Bible
seeks to teach that require purely philosophical reasoning, the most
important are that there is a God, or being, that made all things and directs
and sustains all things with the highest wisdom, and who takes the greatest
care of men, or rather of those who live piously and honestly, while in£icting
many punishments on the rest and segregating them from the good.
These things Scripture proves by experience alone, by means of the histories
which it narrates. It provides no de¢nitions of these things but
accommodates all its words and reasons to the understanding of the common
people. But experience can neither yield nor teach any clear knowledge
of these matters, nor tell us what God is or how he sustains and
directs all things and cares for human beings, though it can still teach and
illumine men su⁄ciently to instil obedience and devotion in their minds. 78
From this I think it is clear for whom and for what reason belief in the
biblical narratives is necessary. From what we have just shown it very
plainly follows that knowing them and believing them is supremely
necessary to ordinary people whose minds are not competent to perceive
things clearly and distinctly. 11 It also follows that anyone who rejects these
histories because he does not believe there is a God or that He provides for
men and things, is impious. But in the case of someone who is ignorant of
them but who does know, by the natural light of reason, that there is a God
and so forth, as we have expressed it above, and who also possesses a true
code for living, he is entirely happy, and happier than the common people,
because, besides true opinions, he possesses a clear and distinct understanding
of them. It follows ¢nally that anyone who neither knows the
biblical histories nor knows anything by the natural light of reason, though
not actually impious or obstinate, is however inhuman and almost brutish,
and has no gift from God.
[17] We should add, though, that when we say an awareness of the biblical
narratives is most necessary for the common people, we do not mean
awareness of literally all the histories in the sacred writings, but only the
ones that are most important andwhich most clearly demonstrate, on their
own, apart from the others, the doctrine just mentioned, and which have
the most in£uence on people’s minds. For if all the biblical histories were
11 ‘Clearly and distinctly’ was almost a technical term in the late seventeenth century, being frequently
used by Cartesians to denote rigorous philosophical deduction that is (supposedly)
beyond challenge.
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