BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

Theology and reason
what is properly termed the word of God, which does not consist in a 185
speci¢c collection of books (on this see chapter 12). If you consider the
commands or moral advice of theology understood in this way, you will
¢nd that it agrees with reason, and if you look at its intent and purpose,
you will see that in fact it does not con£ict with reason in anything. Hence,
it is universal to all men.
As regards Scripture generally, when considered as a whole, we have
already shown in chapter 7 that its sense must be determined solely from
its own history and never from the universal history of nature which is
the sole ground of philosophy. If we ¢nd, after we have investigated its
true sense in this way, that in places it con£icts with reason, this should
not trouble us at all. For we know for certain that nothing of this sort
encountered in the Bible, and nothing men can be ignorant of without
loss of charity, has the least e¡ect on theology or on the word of God.
Consequently, everyone may think whatever they like about such matters
without doing wrong. We conclude therefore without hesitation that
Scripture is not to be accommodated to reason nor reason to Scripture.
[7] Yet since we are unable to prove by means of reason whether the
fundamental principle of theology ^ that men are saved by obedience
alone ^ is true or false, are we not open to the question: why therefore do
we believe it If we accept it without reason, like blind men, are we not
acting stupidly andwithout judgment If on the other handwe try to assert
that this principle can be proved by reason, theology will then become part
of philosophy and could not be separated from it.To this I reply that I hold
categorically that the fundamental dogma of theology cannot be discovered
by the natural light, or at least that no one has yet proven it, and
that is why revelation was absolutely indispensable. Nevertheless, we can
use our judgment to accept it with at any rate moral certainty now that it
has been revealed. I say ‘with moral certainty’, since it is impossible for us
to be more certain of it than the prophets themselves were to whom it was
¢rst revealed, and theirs, as we showed in chapter 2 of this treatise, was
solely a moral certainty.
It is therefore wholly erroneous to try to demonstrate the authority of
Scripture by mathematical proofs. For the Bible’s authority depends
upon that of the prophets, and therefore cannot be demonstrated by
stronger arguments than those with which the prophets in their time 186
were accustomed to convince the people of their authority. Indeed,
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