Spinoza's God

[Charlemagne_III]

Here is a philosophical brain twister for you.

The philosopher Spinoza rejected all claims of religious revelation in favor of a strictly rational approach to the problems of philosophy. Hence, there is no rational approach to God that allows for a personal God, since the personality of God could only be revealed by God.

All Spinoza could say about God is that God is infinite and eternal. This is deduced by the fact that if God was not infinite and eternal, there would be limits to his being, and therefore he would not be God. But Spinoza goes further. He insists that God is not separate from the universe and its Creator. If that was so, Spinoza argues, there would be limits to God (that is, God would not be infinite because God could not be both Creator and Created simultaneously). God’s being would end where the Creation begins. From this, Spinoza reasons that God and the universe are one. That is, the universe itself is both infinite and eternal, and the mind of God is, put simply, the laws of the universe.

How would you answer this reasoning?

 

[tomarin]

Here is a philosophical brain twister for you.

The philosopher Spinoza rejected all claims of religious revelation in favor of a strictly rational approach to the problems of philosophy. Hence, there is no rational approach to God that allows for a personal God, since the personality of God could only be revealed by God.

All Spinoza could say about God is that God is infinite and eternal. This is deduced by the fact that if God was not infinite and eternal, there would be limits to his being, and therefore he would not be God. But Spinoza goes further. He insists that God is not separate from the universe and its Creator. If that was so, Spinoza argues, there would be limits to God (that is, God would not be infinite because God could not be both Creator and Created simultaneously). God’s being would end where the Creation begins. From this, Spinoza reasons that God and the universe are one. That is, the universe itself is both infinite and eternal, and the mind of God is, put simply, the laws of the universe.

How would you answer this reasoning?

I don’t follow Spinoza’s logic when you say “there is no rational approach to God that allows for a personal God, since the personality of God could only be revealed by God.” Do you mean that divine revelation is by definition irrational because it is supernatural?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I don’t follow Spinoza’s logic when you say “there is no rational approach to God that allows for a personal God, since the personality of God could only be revealed by God.” Do you mean that divine revelation is by definition irrational because it is supernatural?

I don’t see Spinoza saying that. It seems Spinoza is saying God is not even supernatural. God is the infinite and eternal universe, the totality of all that is, has been, and ever will be. Pantheism is another word for Spinoza’s conception of God. He does not recognize in this God the personality we recognize in ourselves. This, as I understand it, is the same perception Einstein had of God, or so he claimed. So this God cannot be loving, merciful, just, angry, or any of the other attributes a personal God would be expected to have.

If we humans did not exist, God would still exist because the totality of all that exists would still exist. The laws of the universe are all that we can ever understand of the mind of God. To that extent do we participate in the Godhead.

 

[tomarin]

I don’t see Spinoza saying that. It seems Spinoza is saying God is not even supernatural. God is the infinite and eternal universe, the totality of all that is, has been, and ever will be. Pantheism is another word for Spinoza’s conception of God. He does not recognize in this God the personality we recognize in ourselves. This, as I understand it, is the same perception Einstein had of God, or so he claimed. So this God cannot be loving, merciful, just, angry, or any of the other attributes a personal God would be expected to have.

If we humans did not exist, God would still exist because the totality of all that exists would still exist. The laws of the universe are all that we can ever understand of the mind of God. To that extent do we participate in the Godhead.

Pantheism was all the rage in the Romantic era especially in Germany. So it wouldn’t surprise me if Spinoza subscribed to it. But why is his conclusion about God better than yours or mine or Pope Francis’s? Why isn’t it simply his opinion? What are the reasons he gives for his pantheistic views?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

What are the reasons he gives for his pantheistic views?

I think I gave them in the first post. God, to be infinite, must be all that exists. If God is not the universe, then God is not infinite, since there is something that is not God. So God must be the infinite and eternal universe.

 

[tomarin]

I think I gave them in the first post. God, to be infinite, must be all that exists. If God is not the universe, then God is not infinite, since there is something that is not God. So God must be the infinite and eternal universe.

Oh I see. God must be coterminous with and therefore identical to the universe. Orthodox Christians of course believe that God created the universe and that God pre-existed and therefore is not coterminous with His own creation. So there is something greater than the infinite universe. Perhaps since Spinoza was Jewish it would be appropriate to request a religious Jewish response to Spinoza.

Is the universe infinite by the way?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Is the universe infinite by the way?

Not according to the Big Bang theory. Spinoza had no way of knowing that in his day.

But naturalists (scientists who believe there is no supernatural reality) are looking for a way to get infinity back into the world picture. That is, they are looking for a multi-verse (or infinity and eternity of universes) that could bring the infinite God of Spinoza back into the picture without resorting to a personal God. This might have been Einstein’s approach too if he had lived long enough to seek the multi-verse as an alternative to a mere finite universe that the Big Bang posits.

 

[Karen107]

God is spirit and outside of our earthly realm, but spirits can affect the ones in the earthly realm (the created) just as if love, or beauty or passion, or hate can affect people…All are realities of life, just different realms…However the things of God are eternal where the things of man are temporary or limited.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

God is spirit and outside of our earthly realm, but spirits can affect the ones in the earthly realm (the created) just as if love, or beauty or passion, or hate can affect people…All are realities of life, just different realms…However the things of God are eternal where the things of man are temporary or limited.

So you are saying that God can be infinite spirit without entering the universe?

That way Spinoza’s objection is proved invalid.

 

[Nihilist]

Very interesting.

But assuming that the universe is not infinite- couldn’t the Universe be ‘part’ of God? But then, wouldn’t this conflict with God’s simplicity (i.e. God cannot have parts)? And also the total transcendence of God?

Moreover, I don’t see the logical necessity of God being ‘infinite’, in all respects- for example He can be infinitely simple- without necessarily being infinitely ‘big’.

Could Spinoza be understood mystically? I have heard of certain orthodox, Catholic mystics talk about seeing God in all things and all things in God…

I am keen to here more of Spinoza. I tried to read him once (I think his Ethics), but got bored…

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I am keen to here more of Spinoza. I tried to read him once (I think his Ethics), but got bored…

Point well taken. Spinoza is arguably the most talked about and least read philosopher ever.

Spinoza also denied the existence of free will. So between being a pantheist and a determinist, he turned out to be persona non grata to most people in his day (born 1632).

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Spinoza’s approach to the study of Ethics is geometrical, which partly explains why he is so dry to most readers. He sets up his study according to the various terms of Geometry: Definitions, Axioms, Propositions, Corollaries, and Demonstrations. In some ways his methodology resembles that of Aquinas, but it is never so interesting as the dialectical oppositions that Aquinas arranges to discuss each topic. His contempt for revealed religion is spread throughout his work, and he hardly misses a chance to preen himself on the excellence of his logic as opposed to the imagined defects of revealed theology. In the Amsterdam of his day, it was widely feared by his friends that he would become a prime target for persecution, and they did everything they could to protect him from the charge of atheism because they believed in his personal integrity.

 

[Nihilist]

Point well taken. Spinoza is arguably the most talked about and least read philosopher ever.

Spinoza also denied the existence of free will. So between being a pantheist and a determinist, he turned out to be persona non grata to most people in his day (born 1632).

With my interest re-awoken by your post- I have been reading Spinoza again- it is his book ‘Ethics’ that he talks about God.

He reasoning seems sound. God must exist, since a infinitely powerful being must be able to exist, if finite beings are able to exist. (I suppose a lot like the ontological argument)

Then if God is ‘greatest’ of everything, all characteristics or properties attributed in limited degrees to finite things must be attributable to Him, even more so. Fair enough.

Then, if God is infinite, there can be nothing ‘outside of God’.

This is as far as I’ve got. It all seems logical and orthodox so far.

Do you know if he goes so far as to say “God is the Universe” (which would seem to limit God), or merely the “The Universe is within God” (which would seem acceptable)?

I’d be interested to here from a ‘Spinozist’ if there is one out there…

 

[Duder]

Respectfully.

Spinoza is ultimately missing the absolute central metaphysical truth that God and the world (i.e., Creation) are really distinct. To refer to the original post, verbatim: “He insists that God is not separate from the universe and its Creator.” This precisely is Spinoza’s error. We must recall the contribution of St. Thomas Aquinas to metaphysics, that is, the doctrine which states the “real distinction” between essence and existence. I use these terms in strict scholastic fashion so as to bring out the weightiness of the error of Spinoza as well as that of the essence-existence distinction.

Simply put: that there is a real distinction between essence (essentia) and existence (esse) means that we are able to make the most important of all distinctions, that between creation and the Creator. Spinoza did not make this distinction, or perhaps that fact is obvious. Regardless, the foundational principle that the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”, in the spirit of Pascal, is also possessed of a philosophical identification: “ipsum esse subsistens”, the subsisting act of existing itself, the act of to be, or simply “being itself”.

The Spinozic world is implicated here. As many have noted, we recall that, for Spinoza, God and Nature were interchangeable: “Deus sive Natura” as the old expression goes. In this situation, there would be no way to distinguish finite from infinite being, contingent being from necessary being. A situation like this, needless to say, would be rather unsettling and perplexing.

It seems to me, the proper response to Spinoza is not so much a lesson in logic but a lesson in metaphysics of the Thomistic mind.

The basic truth that needs to be brought home at all times is that you do not need to be. You will die one way. Then, once one admits the notion of contingent being, he cannot avoid also admitting the existence of necessary being – not if he wishes to remain intellectually honest. Having reached this level of metaphysics, one has postulated the existence of a being whose very essence is to exist: God.

At this point, we could work our way back down: We have reached the existence of divine being. What then? A moment’s reflection need not to be wasted to state the obvious truth that you and I are not divine.

Clearly there is a real distinction between existence and essence: between “that it is” and “what it is”. Spinoza was deeply in error.

 

[Dave_Noonan]

With my interest re-awoken by your post- I have been reading Spinoza again- it is his book ‘Ethics’ that he talks about God.

He reasoning seems sound. God must exist, since a infinitely powerful being must be able to exist, if finite beings are able to exist. (I suppose a lot like the ontological argument)

Then if God is ‘greatest’ of everything, all characteristics or properties attributed in limited degrees to finite things must be attributable to Him, even more so. Fair enough.

Then, if God is infinite, there can be nothing ‘outside of God’.

This is as far as I’ve got. It all seems logical and orthodox so far.

Do you know if he goes so far as to say “God is the Universe” (which would seem to limit God), or merely the “The Universe is within God” (which would seem acceptable)?

I’d be interested to here from a ‘Spinozist’ if there is one out there…

As far as I recall, Spinoza doesn’t use the term “Universe” but I haven’t actually looked that up. Since we tend to think of the Universe simply as matter (extension) Spinoza would likely point out that such thinking (“God = Universe”) ignores attribute of thought. In God is also the idea of everything. As you have observed, Spinoza argues that for God to really be God (existence), there can be nothing outside of God, or God would be limited in terms of extension. Whatever exists is in God or God is something less than God.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Do you know if he goes so far as to say “God is the Universe” (which would seem to limit God), or merely the “The Universe is within God” (which would seem acceptable)?

I’m not a Spinozist. But as to your question, the closest I can come to pinning Spinoza down is the following passage from Epistle 21.

“I take a totally different view of God and Nature from that which later Christians usually entertain, for I hold that God is the immanent, and not the extraneous, cause of all things. I say, All is in God; all lives and moves in God.”

Then he goes on to cite the apostle Paul. Acts 17:28

"For ‘In him we live and move and have our being,’

Not sure which later Christians he is talking about: Augustine? Aquinas?

 

[Aloysium]

:twocents:

Reality has to reveal itself in one way or another.

That a logical argument is something more than just organizing ideas in creative ways, is either revealed or taken on faith. All this thinking could all be like a form of mathematics that has no practical use. You need to know something is true to progress logically; to get to that fundemental truth, it must be realized, or in the context of our relationship with God, it is revealed.

There is a personal God, and since Spinoza’s logic cannot seem to reach Him, it must be faulty.

What God did in creating the Cosmos and populating it with beings having free will, is to permit us to choose, to participate in creation. The fact that this moment exists and that we can actually enter into a relationship with Him, is utterly amazing. It came, however, at a very, very great cost. The Word in creating us had to take in all the sin that we would do in order that we should know God. We sin, and God cannot. Pantheism fails. I love my wife. My wife is a soul (albeit incorporeal in this time); her soul has not merged into the eternal soul that is God. That Spinoza’s logic cannot know this subtlest reality, is proof to me that it is in error.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

There is a personal God, and since Spinoza’s logic cannot seem to reach Him, it must be faulty.

We know our personal God from revelation. Other civilizations have also had their personal gods, albeit they were sometimes imagined too obviously in the likeness of human beings with very human faults; whereas our God reveals to us that we are made rather in His likeness. We were made to be perfected as our final end, though we are free to reject perfection and to embrace imperfection to the nth degree. Spinoza rejected our personal God as a contemptible superstition, demonstrating a certainty for which he had no mathematical proof of any kind whatever (after all, he seemed to think God could be demonstrated mathematically). Indeed, Spinoza made himself superior to our personal God just by the fact that he has the ability to think and our personal God does not. It even seems superstitious for Spinoza to refer to God as God at all. Why not just refer to God as the Force, and make God out to sound like something about as impersonal as it can be?

 

[CHRISTINE77]

We know our personal God from revelation. Other civilizations have also had their personal gods, albeit they were sometimes imagined too obviously in the likeness of human beings with very human faults; whereas our God reveals to us that we are made rather in His likeness. We were made to be perfected as our final end, though we are free to reject perfection and to embrace imperfection to the nth degree. Spinoza rejected our personal God as a contemptible superstition, demonstrating a certainty for which he had no mathematical proof of any kind whatever (after all, he seemed to think God could be demonstrated mathematically). Indeed, Spinoza made himself superior to our personal God just by the fact that he has the ability to think and our personal God does not. It even seems superstitious for Spinoza to refer to God as God at all. Why not just refer to God as the Force, and make God out to sound like something about as impersonal as it can be?

I’m sure his philosophy had to do with the age he was living in. Science was beginning to be the way to prove or disprove everything, and yet everyone was required to believe in the Biblical God. Back then the Bible was still the source of all truth, but science was beginning to question the truth in the Bible. Hence all his Biblical references.

Today, science doesn’t even bother with the Bible as a source of truth.

 

[Dave_Noonan]

We know our personal God from revelation. Other civilizations have also had their personal gods, albeit they were sometimes imagined too obviously in the likeness of human beings with very human faults; whereas our God reveals to us that we are made rather in His likeness.

Spinoza would indeed reject the presupposition that God is somehow “personal,” because for him this would be confusing infinite and finite qualities. The view of God/gods as having anthropomorphic characteristics (that is, finite qualities such as emotions or needing to intervene in human affairs due to prior mistakes), especially in terms of the God of the Bible, has bothered philosophers at least since the time of Philo, a contemporary of Jesus, so this is not exactly new with Spinoza. Spinoza would argue that a personal God confuses God with human beings, sort of the “original sin” in a way (Gn 3:5).

We were made to be perfected as our final end, though we are free to reject perfection and to embrace imperfection to the nth degree.

For Spinoza, the idea that creation, which for him must entirely be in God, has some sort of error or needs perfecting would be admitting that God made a mistake in creation that needs to be tinkered with somehow or moved toward a divinely-orientated telos. For Spinoza that would be equating God with error and a misunderstanding of God.

Spinoza rejected our personal God as a contemptible superstition,

This much you do have correct, for the reasons already stated.

…demonstrating a certainty for which he had no mathematical proof of any kind whatever (after all, he seemed to think God could be demonstrated mathematically).

Spinoza’s not trying to demonstrate that God exists mathematically, he simply uses the logical of mathematical/geometric proofs to structure his arguments.

Indeed, Spinoza made himself superior to our personal God just by the fact that he has the ability to think and our personal God does not.

I don’t understand how this is the case. For Spinoza God is entirely infinite and has an idea of everything. Maybe I’m misunderstanding your argument.

It even seems superstitious for Spinoza to refer to God as God at all. Why not just refer to God as the Force, and make God out to sound like something about as impersonal as it can be?

I think to say that Spinoza equates God with “the Force” is oversimplifying Spinoza’s Ethics to the point of misrepresenting it. A force doesn’t have infinite qualities considered under the attributes of either thought or extension.