BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

Theology and reason
Although this author has been a great authority among the rabbis, on this
particular question most of them have deserted him and gone over to the
opinion of a certain Rabbi Jehuda Al-Fakhar, 1 who in attempting to avoid
Maimonides’ error has fallen into the opposite one. He took the position 2
that reason should be subordinate to Scripture and indeed wholly subjected
to it. He did not believe that anything in the Bible should be
explained metaphorically merely because the literal sense is in con£ict with
reason but only where it con£icts with Scripture itself, that is, with its evident
dogmas. Hence he formulates the universal rule that anything that
Scripture teaches dogmatically 3 and a⁄rms in explicit words, we must
accept as true unreservedly solely on the basis of its authority. Furthermore,
he maintained, no dogma will be found in the Bible which contradicts it
directly but only by implication, because Scripture’s modes of expression
often seem to assume something other than what it teaches directly, and
these are the only passages that need to be explained metaphorically.
For example, Scripture expressly teaches that God is one (see Deuteronomy
6.14), and there is no passage anywhere directly asserting that there
is more than one God. However, there are several passages where God
speaks of himself in the plural, as also do the prophets.This is a manner of
speaking which seemingly implies there are several gods, though the
intent of the expression does not assert it. All such passages should
therefore be explained metaphorically, not because they are in con£ict
with reason but because Scripture itself directly asserts that there is one
God. Likewise, because Scripture, at Deuteronomy 4.15, according to
Al-Fakhar, £atly asserts that God is incorporeal, we must believe, on the
basis of this passage alone ^ and not of reason, that God has no body, and
consequently, on the authority of Scripture alone, we must lend a metaphorical
interpretation to all passages which attribute to God hands and
feet and so on, whose phrasing by itself seems to imply a corporeal God.
[3] This is the contention of al-Fakhar, and in so far as it seeks to
explain Scripture solely via Scripture, I applaud it. But I am surprised that
someone endowed with reason should try so hard to destroy reason. It is
1 I.e. Jehuda al-Fakhar, a physician in early thirtheenth-century Toledo who was among the leading
rabbinic opponents of Maimonides’Aristotelian rationalism.
2 Spinoza’s footnote: N. B. I remember that I once read this in the letter against Maimonides, which
occurs among the so called ‘Letters of Maimonides’.
3 Spinoza’s footnote: see Annotation 28.
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