THE PANTHEIST
(1632-1677)
"Whatever is, is in God."
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THE PANTHEIST (1632-1677) "Whatever is, is in God." |
"Love towards a thing eternal and infinite alone feeds the mind with pleasure, and it is free from all pain; so that it is much to be desired and to be sought with all our might."Baruch Spinoza was born in Amsterdam of Jewish parents who were refugees from the Spanish Inquisition. He was raised and educated as an orthodox Jew, but was expelled from the Jewish community for heresy in 1656. From this time, his friends were found among the Protestant Christians. Even in the tolerant atmosphere of the Netherlands, his 1670 treatise in defence of freedom of thought and speech was published anonymously, as was his other major work, "Ethics". He adopted the symbol of the rose as a flower of secrecy and the motto Caute (Be cautious) which was inscribed on his grave after he died of a lung problem caused by glass dust, a result of his occupation of lens grinder.("Ethics" 229)
This was a time when telescopes and microscopes were being used to reveal new universes, when science challenged long held beliefs. Spinoza tried to reconcile religion and the new scientific and philosophical view of the universe by providing mathematical arguments, styled after Euclid, that there is but one substance and that is God. Because to Spinoza, God is the material universe, God is Nature, he is often described as a pantheist. To Jew and Christian alike, this view was heretical. It implied that God did not create the world out of nothing in six days; it was not created. God's existence and his attributes are infinite. And since God is not a supernatural being outside of nature, it also follows that he does not intervene in the lawful course of natural events. He is not accessible to prayer or worship.
