BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

The teachings of Scripture
the divine promises and complained to God that instead of the promised
salvation the Jews’ situation was getting worse and worse.
The patriarchs, then, were ignorant of the unique name of God, and
God communicated it to Moses so as to extol their faith and the simplicity
of their hearts, and also to emphasize the singular grace granted to Moses.
From this, it follows most evidently, as we asserted in the ¢rst place, that
people are not obliged by commandment to know God’s attributes; this is a
particular gift bestowed only on certain of the faithful. It is not worth
adding further testimonies from the Bible to prove this; for who does not
see that the knowledge of God has not been equal among all the faithful
and that no one can be wise by command any more than he can live or exist
by command All equally, men, women and children, can obey by command
but cannot all be wise.
[6] But if anyone answers that there is indeed no need to understand
God’s attributes but only to believe them, quite simply, without demonstration,
he is certainly talking nonsense. For invisible things which are
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objects of the mind alone can not be seen with any other eyes than through
conceptual demonstrations.Those people therefore who do not grasp the
demonstrations, see nothing at all of these things, and therefore whatever
they report from hearsay about such questions, neither a¡ects nor indicates
their minds any more than the words of a parrot or a robot which
speaks without mind and sense.
[7] Now, before going any further, I need to explain why it is often stated
in Genesis that the patriarchs called God by the name of Jehovah. This
appears to stand in straight contradiction with what I have just said. If we
recall, however, what we proved in chapter 8, we shall readily be able to
reconcile this [seeming contradiction]. In that chapter we showed that the
compiler of the Pentateuch does not denote things and places with precisely
the names they had at the time to which he refers but rather with
those by which they were better known in his own time. God is hence
recounted in Genesis as being called by the patriarchs by the name of
Jehovah, not because he was known to them by that name, but rather
because this was a name supremely revered by the Jews.This is the inference
we must come to, I repeat, as we are expressly told in our text from Exodus 2
2 Exodus 6:3.
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