[1] When I said above that only those who hold sovereign power have jurisdiction over everything, and that all authority depends on their decree alone, I had in mind not just civil jurisdiction but also that over sacred matters. For they must be both the interpreters and guardians of things sacred. I want to put a particular emphasis on this point concentrating on it in this chapter, because very many people vigorously deny that this right (i.e. jurisdiction over sacred matters) belongs to the sovereign authorities, and refuse to recognize them as interpreters of divine law. From this they also arrogate to themselves licence to accuse and condemn sovereigns and even to excommunicate them from the church (as Ambrose long ago excommunicated the emperor Theodosius). We shall see below in this present chapter that what they are in effect doing is dividing the sovereign power and attempting to devise a path to power for themselves.

[2] I intend first to show that religion has the power of law only by decree of those who exercise the right of government and that God has no special kingdom among men except through those who exercise sovereignty. I also wish to demonstrate that religious worship and pious conduct must be accommodated to the peace and interests of the state and consequently must be determined by the sovereign authorities alone.

[1] The word law (lex) in an absolute sense signifies that, in accordance with which, each individual thing, or all things, or all things of the same kind, behave in one and the same fixed and determined way, depending upon either natural necessity or a human decision. A law that depends upon natural necessity is one that necessarily follows from the very nature or definition of a thing. A law that depends upon a human decision, which is more properly called a decree (jus), is one that men prescribe to themselves and to others in order to achieve a better and safer life, or for other reasons. For example, the fact that when one body strikes a smaller body, it only loses as much of its own motion as it communicates to the other, is a universal law of all bodies which follows from natural necessity. So too the fact that when a man recalls one thing he immediately remembers another which is similar or which he had seen along with the first thing, is a law which necessarily follows from human nature.

But the fact that men give up their right which they receive from nature, or are compelled to give it up, and commit themselves to a particular rule of life depends on human decision. And while I entirely agree that all things are determined by the universal laws of nature to exist and act in a fixed and determined manner, I insist that these decrees depend on willed human decision, and I do so for two reasons.

[1] Prophecy or revelation is certain knowledge about something revealed to men by God. A prophet is someone who interprets things revealed by God to those who cannot themselves achieve certain knowledge of them and can therefore only grasp by simple faith what has been revealed. The Hebrew for ‘prophet’ is nabi, which means ‘orator’ or ‘interpreter’, but is always used in Scripture to mean an interpreter of God. We may infer this from Exodus 7.1, where God says to Moses, ‘Behold, I make you Pharaoh's God, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet’. It is as if God were saying that, since Aaron acts as a prophet by interpreting your words to Pharaoh, you will be like Pharaoh's God, i.e., someone who performs the role of God.

[2] We will discuss prophets in the next chapter; here we will discuss prophecy. From the definition of prophecy just given, it follows that the word ‘prophecy’ could be applied to natural knowledge. For what we know by the natural light of reason depends on knowledge of God and his eternal decrees alone. But the common people do not place a high value on natural knowledge, because it is available to everyone, resting as it does on foundations that are available to all. For they are always eager to discover uncommon things, things that are strange and alien to their own nature, and they despise their natural gifts. Hence when they speak of prophetic knowledge, they mean to exclude natural knowledge.

The present translation was first made by Michael Silverthorne and scrutinized by Desmond Clarke, then extensively revised by Jonathan Israel in close collaboration with the translator.

Spinozawrote his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus in Latin, and although some scholars regard it as quite likely that he also had some hand in the subsequent French (1678) translation, it is not certain that he did. Hence the Latin version, anonymously and clandestinely published and distributed in Amsterdamby Jan Rieuwertsz, ostensibly in 1670 (but in fact in 1669), is the original and only defnitely authentic version of the text. Despite its clandestine nature and the fact that it was widely banned, copies of the book surviving in libraries today are surprisingly numerous. This seems to have been mainly due to the brisk demand for copies all over Europe during the late seventeenth century and Rieuwertsz's ruse of issuing several unnoticed new editions through the 1670s, retaining what looked like the original title-page bearing the original false date and place of publication “Hamburg, 1670”

Until quite recently the best modern critical edition of the original text was that prepared by Carl Gebhardt and published atHeidelberg in 1925, in the third volume of his complete edition of Spinoza's works. An improved critical edition prepared by the expert Dutch Latinist, Fokke Akkerman, was published in a bilingual Latin–French version by the PressesUniversitaires de France, in Paris, in 1999.

[1] Those who do not know how to distinguish philosophy from theology dispute as to whether Scripture should be subject to reason or whether, on the contrary, reason should be the servant of Scripture: that is to say, whether the sense of Scripture should be accommodated to reason or whether reason should be subordinated to Scripture. The latter position is adopted by sceptics who deny the certainty of reason, and the former defended by dogmatists. But from what we have previously said it is obvious that both are absolutely wrong. For whichever position we adopt, we would have to distort either reason or Scripture since we have demonstrated that the Bible does not teach philosophical matters but only piety, and everything in Scripture is adapted to the understanding and preconceptions of the common people. Hence, anyone who tries to accommodate the Bible to philosophy will undoubtedly ascribe to the prophets many things that they did not imagine even in their dreams and will construe their meaning wrongly. On the other hand, anyone who makes reason and philosophy the servant of theology will be obliged to accept as divinely inspired the prejudices of the common people of antiquity and let his mind be taken over and clouded by them. Thus both will proceed senselessly, albeit the latter without reason and the former with it.

[1] No one who peruses the New Testament can doubt that the Apostles were prophets. However, as we showed at the close of chapter 1, prophets did not always speak on the basis of revelation; indeed, they rarely did so. Hence, we may wonder whether the Apostles composed their Epistles as prophets on the basis of revelation, and by explicit command, like Moses and Jeremiah, and so on, or whether they wrote them as private individuals or teachers. This is open to question especially since Paul mentions in his First Epistle to the Corinthians 14.6. that there are two different forms of discourse, one based upon revelation and the other upon knowledge. This is why, I maintain, one needs to enquire whether in their Epistles the Apostles are prophesying or teaching.

The style of the Epistles, if we are ready to study it, we shall find to be very different from the style of prophecy. Whenever the prophets testified, they invariably declared that they were speaking at the command of God: ‘Thus says God’, ‘the God of hosts says’, ‘the word of God’, etc. This was apparently their style not only in their public proclamations, but also in those of their letters that contain revelations, as in that of Elijah to Jehoram (see 2 Chronicles 21.12), which begins, ‘Thus says God’. We find nothing comparable in the Apostles' letters; on the contrary, at 1 Corinthians 7.40 Paul speaks according to his own opinion.

[1] I pass to the remaining books of the Old Testament. About the two books of Chronicles I have nothing to say that is certain and worth anything, other than that they were composed long after Ezra, perhaps even after Judas Maccabeus had restored the Temple. For in 1 Chronicles 9 the historian tells us ‘which families first (i.e., at the time of Ezra) lived in Jerusalem’, and then in verse 17 records the names of the ‘gatekeepers’, two of whom are also mentioned in Nehemiah 11.19. This shows that these books were written long after the rebuilding of the city. But nothing seems to be established about their true author or their authority, utility or doctrine. In fact, I am extremely surprised that they were admitted among the sacred books by the same men who excluded the Book of Wisdom, Tobias and the other so called apocryphal books from the scriptural canon. However, it is not my intention to detract from their authority; as they have been universally accepted, I leave it at that.

[2] The Psalms too were collected and divided into five books in the period of the Second Temple. According to Philo Judaeus, Psalm 88 was published when King Jehoiakim was still in prison in Babylon, and Psalm 89 after the same king had regained his liberty, something I do not think Philo would have said, were it not either the received opinion of his time or had he not received it from others worthy of credence.

[1] Just as men habitually call that knowledge which surpasses human understanding ‘divinity’, so they likewise classify any phenomenon whose cause is unknown by the common people ‘divine’ or a work of God. For the common people imagine that the power and providence of God are most clearly evident when they see something happen contrary to the usual course of things and their habitual views about nature, especially should it turn out to their benefit or advantage. They also suppose the existence of God is proven by nothing more clearly than from what they perceive as nature failing to follow its normal course. For this reason they suppose that all those who explain or attempt to explain phenomena and miracles by natural causes, are doing away with God or at least divine providence. They evidently hold that God is inactive whilst nature follows its normal course and, conversely, that the power of nature and natural causes are superfluous whenever God is active. Hence, they imagine that there are two powers, distinct from each other, the power of God and the power of natural things, and that the latter is determined by God in some way or, as most men think in our day, created by him. But what they understand by these powers, and what they understand by God and nature, they certainly do not know, except that they imagine the power of God to be like the authority of royal majesty, and the power of nature to be like a force and impetus.

[1] For a true knowledge of faith it is above all necessary to acknowledge that the Bible is adapted to the understanding not only of the prophets but also of the fickle and capricious common people among the Jews. No one who studies this point even casually can miss this. Anyone who accepts everything in Scripture indifferently as God's universal and absolute doctrine and cannot correctly identify what is adapted to the notions of the common people, will be incapable of separating their opinions from divine doctrine. He will put forward human beliefs and fabrications as God's teaching and thereby abuse the authority of the Bible. Who does not see that this is the principal reason why sectaries teach so many mutually contradictory beliefs as doctrines of faith, and support them with many examples from Scripture, so much so that the Dutch long ago produced a saying about it: ‘every heretic has his text’? For the sacred books were not written by one man alone, nor for the common people of a single period, but by a large number of men, of different temperaments and at different times, and if we calculate the period from the earliest to the latest, it will be found to be around two thousand years and possibly much longer.

We do not mean to charge these sectarians with impiety for adapting the words of the Bible to their own beliefs.

[1] The Hebrew state, as we analysed it in the last chapter, might have lasted for ever, but no one can now imitate it, and it would not be wise to try to do so. For if anyone wished to transfer their right to God, they would have to make an explicit covenant with God, just as the Hebrews did, and this would require not only the will of those who were transferring their right, but also the will of God to whom it was to be transferred. But God has revealed through the Apostles that His covenant is no longer written in ink or on stone tablets but rather on the heart by the spirit of God. Moreover, such a form of state would probably only be useful to those desirous of living without interacting with others, shutting themselves up within their own borders and separating themselves from the rest of the world, but not to those who need to have commerce with others. There are very few who would find such a form of state advantageous to them. Yet though it cannot be emulated as a whole, it nevertheless has numerous features that are at least well worth noticing, and which it would perhaps be very wise to imitate.

[2] Since, as I said above, it is not my intention to discuss the state systematically, I will leave out a great many things and specify only what is relevant to my purpose.

[1] If men were always able to regulate their affairs with sure judgment, or if fortune always smiled upon them, they would not get caught up in any superstition. But since people are often reduced to such desperate straits that they cannot arrive at any solid judgment and as the good things of fortune for which they have a boundless desire are quite uncertain, they fluctuate wretchedly between hope and fear. This is why most people are quite ready to believe anything. When the mind is in a state of doubt, the slightest impulse can easily steer it in any direction, and all the more readily when it is hovering between hope and fear, though it may be confident, pompous and proud enough at other times.

[2] I think that everyone is aware of this, even though I also believe that most people have no self-knowledge. For no one can have lived long among men without noticing that when things are going well, most people, however ignorant they may be, are full of their own cleverness and are insulted to be offered advice. But when things go wrong, they do not know where to turn and they will seek guidance from anyone. No suggestion they hear is too unwise, ridiculous or absurd to follow. Moreover, for the flimsiest of reasons they are conditioned one moment to expect everything to go better and the next to fear the worst.

[1] How much the investigation we have made into who really wrote these books improves our understanding of them is readily seen merely from the passages cited above confirming our view of that question. Without it, anyone would certainly find them highly obscure. But apart from the question of authorship, there are other aspects of the books themselves which remain to be remarked on which popular superstition does not permit ordinary people to come to grips with. The foremost of these is that Ezra (whom I will continue to regard as their author until someone demonstrates a more certain candidate) made no final version of the narratives contained in them, but merely collected narratives from different writers, sometimes just copying them out as they were, and passed them on to posterity without examining them properly and setting them in due order. I cannot conjecture the reasons (except perhaps an early death) that prevented him from completing this task in every respect. But the fact itself is abundantly attested even though we lack the [works of] the ancient Hebrew historians, by the very few fragments of their works that remain to us.

[2] The history of Hezekiah (2 Kings 18.17 ff.) is related as it was found written in the ‘Chronicles of the Kings of Judah’. For we find the whole of this history in the book of Isaiah, and the book of Isaiah itself was contained in the ‘Chronicles of the Kings of Judah’ (see 2 Chronicles 32.32).

[1] All men are ready to say that Holy Scripture is the word of God that teaches us true happiness or the way of salvation, but their actions betray a quite different opinion. For the common people, the last thing that they appear to want is to live by the teaching of Scripture. We see them advancing false notions of their own as the word of God and seeking to use the influence of religion to compel other people to agree with them. As for theologians, we see that for the most part they have sought to extract their own thoughts and opinions from the Bible and thereby endow them with divine authority. There is nothing that they interpret with less hesitation and greater boldness than the Scriptures, that is the mind of the Holy Spirit. If they hesitate at all, it is not because they are afraid of ascribing error to the Holy Spirit or straying from the path of salvation, but rather of being convicted of error by others and seeing themselves despised and their authority trodden underfoot.

If people truly believed in their hearts what they say with their lips about Scripture, they would follow a completely different way of life. There would be fewer differences of opinion occupying their minds, fewer bitter controversies between them, and less blind and reckless ambition to distort our interpretation of the Bible and devise novelties in religion.

Spinoza's aims

The Theological-Political Treatise (1670) of Spinoza is not a work of philosophy in the usual sense of the term. Rather it is a rare and interesting example of what we might call applied or ‘practical’ philosophy. That is, it is a work based throughout on a philosophical system which, however, mostly avoids employing philosophical arguments and which has a practical social and political more than strictly philosophical purpose, though it was also intended in part as a device for subtly defending and promoting Spinoza's own theories. Relatively neglected in recent times, and banned and actively suppressed in its own time, it is also one of the most profoundly influential philosophical texts in the history of western thought, having exerted an immense impact on thinkers and writers from the late seventeenth century throughout the age of the Enlightenment down to the late nineteenth century.

Spinoza's most immediate aim in writing this text was to strengthen individual freedom and widen liberty of thought in Dutch society, in particular by weakening ecclesiastical authority and lowering the status of theology. In his opinion, it was these forces which were chiefly responsible for fomenting religious tensions and hatred, inciting political sedition among the common people, and enforcing damaging intellectual censorship on unconventional thinkers like himself. He tried to lessen ecclesiastical power and the prestige of theology as he himself encountered these in the Dutch Republic – or, as it was then more commonly known, the United Provinces – partly as a way of opening a path for himself and those who sympathized with his ideas, or thought in similar ways, to propagate their views among contemporaries freely both verbally and in writing.