BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

Apostles and prophets
amount to no more than a conventional £ourish with which he predicts
the future defection of the people in a rhetorical manner and as vividly as
he could imagine it. The reason why I claim Moses did not say these
things on his own initiative in order to make his prediction probable to
the people, but as a prophet on the basis of revelation, is that verse 21 of
the same chapter says that God had revealed this very thing to Moses in
other words. It was thus not necessary for Moses to be convinced of this
prediction and decree of God by probable reasoning. It was necessary 153
only that it be vividly impressed in his imagination, as we showed in
chapter 1, and this could be done only by his imagining their present
disobedience, which he had often experienced, as continuing. This is
how all of Moses’ arguments in the Pentateuch are to be understood;
they are not drawn from the repertory of reason, they are simply turns of
phrase by which he expressed God’s edicts more e¡ectively and imagined
them more vividly.
[4] I do not mean to say categorically that the prophets were incapable of
presenting arguments on the basis of revelation. I a⁄rm only that the
more prophets argue cogently, the more their knowledge of what was
revealed approximates to natural knowledge and that they are perceived to
possess supernatural knowledge chie£y from their proclaiming pure
dogmas, or decrees, or [unsupported] opinions. Likewise, it is on this
account that Moses, the supreme prophet, put forward no orderly arguments.
By contrast, the long deductions and arguments of Paul, such as are
found in the Epistle to the Romans, were by no means written on the basis
of supernatural revelation. Rather, the Apostles’ modes of discourse and
discussion in their Epistles reveal very plainly that they did not write
them on the basis of divine command and revelation, but simply on that of
their own natural judgment. For these letters contain nothing but brotherly
advice mixed with courtesies (which of course are totally alien to prophetic
authority), like Paul’s excusing himself at Romans 15.15 by saying,
‘Brethren, I have written to you rather too boldly’.
We may reach the same conclusion from another direction: for we
nowhere read that the Apostles were commanded to write; they were
ordered only to preach wherever they went and con¢rm their words with
signs.Their presence and these signs were absolutely essential to convert the
nations to religion and strengthen them in it, as Paul himself makes very
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