Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D
Recently I have been re-reading Spinoza’s Ethics. The more I read it, the more I like it.
Baruh Spinoza was a Dutch Jew, born in
Amsterdam in 1632. He was a philosopher who read Scriptures critically, and got
into trouble with the Jewish community, which actually banned him from the
synagogue.
I consider Spinoza to be a
God-intoxicated person. He did not believe in a theistically defined God as a
Person who created the universe and humanity. In his book, Ethics, written in
Latin between 1661 and 1675, and published posthumously in 1677, he defines God
as “an absolute infinite being of whom no attribute expressing the essence of
substance can be denied” (Proof to Proposition 14). God “necessarily exists”,
and “there is no other substance but God.” Very often, Spinoza equates God with
Nature. This God “ acts solely from the laws of its own nature,” (Prop. 1/17) “Whose
existence and essence are one and the same.” (Prop. 1/ 20). God is not the
“creator” of the universe because God and the universe are one and the same
thing.
According to Spinoza, God acts by
necessity and not with free will. God does not “hear” our prayers or respond to them. God does not reward or punish individuals. He would say, God was not
responsible for the Holocaust or other calamities that befell humanity. God
simply is. The laws of nature are an expression of God. I love that. It is so
rational. And it resolves the age old problem of evil. (If God is all-powerful
and all-good, why is there evil in the world?)
It is not very clear why the leaders
of the Jewish community of Amsterdam excommunicated him, at the age of 23, on
July 27,1656, on account of his “wicked ways, “abominable heresies” and “monstrous
deeds.” (Quotes from the Edict of Excommunication). At the time, he was only a
small businessman. True, he did not believe in a theistically defined God or
that the soul is immortal. The harshness of the decree is still puzzling.
Attempts to rescind the edict has
failed. In fact, recently in Nov. 2021, Yitzhak Melamed, a Spinoza scholar and
a Prof. of philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, who wanted to create a film
about Spinoza, was denied entry into the Amsterdam synagogue attended by
Spinoza in the past, on the basis that “the ban (against Spinoza) remains in
force for all time and cannot be rescinded.”(Quote from a letter written by
Rabbi Joseph Serfaty, on behalf of the Jewish community in Amsterdam).
This is sad and unacceptable. Spinoza’s
work will continue to influence many, as it did in my case. My religious
philosophy is in line with his thinking. (See, my new book, co-edited with R.
Agler, A God We Can Believe In). Spinoza died in 1677 at the age of 44. May
his memory be a blessing.
SONSINO’S BLOG, rsonsino.blogspot.com
