BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

Theological-Political Treatise
that God was unknown to the patriarchs by that title and, likewise, in
Exodus 3.13 Moses desires to know God’s name, whereas had it been previously
known, he too would have known of it. One must therefore conclude,
as I contend, that the faithful patriarchs were ignorant of this divine
name, and that knowledge of God is God’s gift but not his command.
[8] (2) We should now pass on to our second point and demonstrate
that the only knowledge of Himself God requires of men, via the prophets,
is knowledge of His divine justice and love, that is, those attributes
of God that men may emulate by a sound rationale of life.
171 Jeremiah teaches this in so many words. At 22.15^16 speaking of King
Josiah, he says: ‘Your father indeed ate and drank and passed judgment
and administered justice, then it’ (was) ‘well with him, he defended the
right of the poor and indigent, then it’ (was) ‘well with him, for’ (N.B.)
‘this is to know me, said Jehovah’. No less clear is 9. 23: ‘but in this alone
let each man glory, that he understands me and knows me, that I Jehovah
practise charity, judgment and justice on earth, for in these things I
delight, says Jehovah’. This is also the signi¢cance of Exodus 34.6^7
where when Moses desires to see and know God, God only reveals to
him His attributes of justice and love. Lastly, a verse of John, 3 which
I shall also discuss later, is particularly relevant. It explains God by love
alone, since no one has seen him, and concludes that he who has love,
truly has God and knows him.
We see, then, that Jeremiah, Moses and John very succinctly summarize
the knowledge of God each man is obliged to have.They make it consist in
this one single thing, as we argued, that God is supremely just and
supremely merciful, or the one and only exemplar of the true life. Furthermore,
the Bible gives no explicit de¢nition of God, and does not
decree that any attributes of God be accepted other than those we speci-
¢ed just now, and these are the only ones that it commends. From all of
this, we conclude that intellectual knowledge of God, considering His
nature as it is in itself, a nature which men cannot emulate by a certain
rationale of living and cannot adopt as a paradigm for cultivating a true
rationale of living, has no relevance whatsoever to faith and revealed religion,
and consequently men may have totally the wrong ideas about God’s
nature without doing any wrong.
3 1 John 4.7^8.
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