BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

On miracles
[15] Yet someone may perhaps object that we ¢nd a whole host of
things in Scripture which do not seem capable of being explained by
natural causes at all, for example, that men’s sins and prayers can be a
cause of rain or of the earth’s fertility, or that faith can heal the blind,
and other things of this sort narrated in the Bible. But I think I have
already answered this; for I showed that Scripture does not explain
things by their immediate causes, but rather relates things in a style
and language that will encourage devotion, especially among the common
people. For this reason, it speaks in a wholly inexact manner about
God and things precisely because it is not seeking to sway men’s reason
but to in£uence and captivate their fancy and imagination. For if
Scripture related the destruction of an empire in the way political historians
do, it would not appeal to the common people; but it is very
appealing to them when everything is narrated poetically and all things
are ascribed to God, as the Bible normally does. When therefore
Scripture says that the earth was sterile due to men’s sins, or that blind
men were healed by faith, it should move us no more than when it says
that God is angry or saddened by men’s sins or repents of a promise or
favour he has given, or that God remembers his promise because he
sees a sign ^ and a whole host of other things which are either
expressed poetically or have been related according to the author’s
beliefs and preconceptions.
Thus, we conclude without reservation that all things that are truly
reported to have happened in Scripture necessarily happened according to
the laws of nature, as all things do. If anything is found which can be
demonstrated conclusively to contradict the laws of nature or which could
not possibly to follow from them, we must accept in every case that it was
interpolated into the Bible by blasphemous persons. For whatever is contrary
to nature, is contrary to reason, and what is contrary to reason, is
absurd, and accordingly to be rejected.
[16] (4) It remains only to make a few remarks about the interpretation
of miracles, or rather to recapitulate these (for the major points of this
have already been given), and illustrate them with one or two examples, as
I promised to do here as my fourth goal. I need to do this, so that no one
giving a defective interpretation of some miracle, will leap to the unfounded
conclusion that he has hit on something in Scripture that does contradict
the light of nature.
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