On Biblical Interpretation – an explanation from Spinoza

I find the strangest of things how people may assert different statements but belief blindly them to be connected in some way. Perhaps it is a psychological need for them to think they know something when, in fact, they know nothing of anything at all. Perhaps, again, they are too accustomed to superficial observation and plain memory that they become deprived of pure thought and systematic analysis. As Spinoza argue in “The Ethics”, human nature is naturally prone to this irresolute being of emotions – that the preservation of the intellect is the hardest of all. But my goal today is not to prove why human nature is like that. Instead, I would like to talk only of biblical interpretation and how the common view is opposed to reason.

I may have shown elsewhere some of these arguments within my blog, but would like to elucidate them here once more. I shall attempt to explain them as simply as possible.

Spinoza argues that all things have an object, an idea, an essence, and a substance in itself. The object is that which we plainly see or perceive with our senses. The idea of a thing is our imagining or recalling the image of the object in our mind, or rather, the proximate characteristics we attribute to the object of interest – a mental conception. The essence of a thing is that which is perceived and is without any qualification. Substance is that which is composed within all things.

We start off by stating that all things have a ‘telos’, which is the purpose of all things. However, as opposed to a knife which is designed to cut, I am here talking of things that grow and develop without the aid of an external agent. So, a seed’s ‘purpose’ is to grow into a tree, and so a child’s telos is to develop into a mature adult.

Our first axiom is first that reality has a telos, of which since we exist within it, it then too necessarily exists. This is self-evident. We can simply say that reality is a thing composed of many things, or a thing in itself. Our second axiom is that a thing must necessarily be caused or be a cause of itself, that is, to have necessary existence in relation to another existing thing or a necessary existence of utmost necessity that is not in relation to any existing thing. A logical argument, of which starts from axioms which are universal and self-evident, are the very building blocks of an argument which necessarily lead to some conclusion. So, the argument has a telos. And so, which is also self-evident, since all things must start from axiom(s), we say reality must ‘start’ from an axiom, or that it must be composed within a thing which is self-caused or self-preserved. This is God. We shall here re-define our axioms to make the previous explications clearer.

A substance is necessarily caused or self-caused, that is, to have necessary existence in relation to another existing thing or a necessary existence of utmost necessity that is not in relation to any existing thing. This latter substance we call God. And so if that be God, he must be self-evident and perfect in it-self. Perfection only means to contain the infinite necessary existence. God must only have this definition as he must be as simple as possible in order to encompass all things universally. However, if we say something exists outside of God which does not contain infinite necessary existence, we are also saying that God does not have this infinite necessary existence since God can and is limited by this thing which is imperfect. Therefore, since nothing can exist outside of God, nature necessarily is implicit of God’s definition or existence. The analogy is how the human body is implicit of the meaning of a human being. That is, without the human body, there is no human being. Therefore, the telos of God is the telos of nature. God’s will is most explicitly the very action potential of nature’s phenomena. Thus, in God we say his intellect and his will and his action is not actuality differentiated at all. For since he is that which has infinite necessary existence, and only this definition alone, anything which is in him is directly translated into nature itself. Therefore, whatever he wills or he intellectually perceives or desires are what we see in nature. Nature contains a divine decree or order. So, if anything can contravene nature’s divine order, or natural order, it is also opposed to God, which is also opposed to infinite necessary existence, which is absurd. Therefore miracles cannot actually occur since all things in nature must be caused following from God’s divine decree and order of all things in nature. In layman terms, God is nature itself.

So when we observe biblical scholars, theologians, and others of faith claim the many occurrences of so-called miracles, they are simply revealing their ignorance of their natural causes. Also, in saying that miracles occur, they do not realize that are also being heretical to nature’s divine order, which is God’s will and thus contrary to reason as they deny the truth or self-evidence of infinite necessary existence!