BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

Theological-Political Treatise
where justice is neglected and in times of oppression, but not in a wellordered
state. Indeed in a viable state, where justice is protected, everyone
is obliged, if he wants to be considered just, to prosecute wrongs
before a court (see Leviticus 5.1), not so as to secure revenge (see
Leviticus 19.17^18) but to defend justice and his country’s laws and to
ensure that wrongdoing does not pay. All of this fully accords with
natural reason. I could give many other examples pointing in the same
direction, but consider these su⁄cient to explicate my meaning and the
usefulness of this method, which is what concerns me at present.
[8] So far we have explained only how to explore the meaning of biblical
statements about questions of daily life. These are issues which are relatively
easy to investigate since none of this was ever a subject of controversy
for biblical writers. But other matters to be found in the Bible concerning
purely philosophical questions, cannot be so easily resolved. The path to
be followed here is thus more arduous. As we have already seen, the prophets
disagreed among themselves in philosophical matters, and their
narratives of things are very much adapted to the presuppositions of their
respective times, and therefore we may not infer or explain the meaning of
one prophet from clearer passages in another, unless it is absolutely evident
that they both held exactly the same opinion. I will therefore now
brie£y explain how the mind of the prophets in such matters is to be
investigated by an enquiry into Scripture.
Here too we must again begin from the most universal things, by
inquiring ¢rst of all, from the clearest scriptural expressions, what prophecy
or revelation is, and what it chie£y consists in. Then we must ask
what a miracle is, and continue thus with the most general questions.
From these we must descend to the opinions of each individual prophet,
and from these in turn proceed ¢nally to the sense of each particular
105 revelation or prophecy, of each narrative and miracle. We have given
many examples above, in the appropriate places, showing how much care
is needed not to confuse the minds of the prophets and historians with
the mind of the Holy Spirit, so I do not think I need to discuss this at
greater length. I should remark, however, with regard to the meaning of
revelations, that our method only teaches us to investigate what the
prophets actually saw or heard, not what they intended to signify or
represent by these visions; that we can only conjecture, since we certainly
cannot deduce it from the principles of Scripture.
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