The Catholic Church purported to revoke its Index of Forbidden Books in 1966. The most dangerous book? Some say Spinosa’s (often spelled Spinoza) Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. This translates from Latin as Theological-Political Treatise and is commonly known as Spinosa’s First Tractus.
The Tractus was published in Holland around 1670. German Catholic theologian Jacob Thomasius reviewed it. "A godless document," Thomasius wrote. "Ban it immediately --in all countries--lest its dangerous message reach the masses."
In Holland, University of Utrecht Professor Mansveld wrote the First Tractus “harmed all religions” and "ought to be buried forever in an eternal oblivion."
A Dutch merchant wrote "this atheistic book is full of abominations, which every reasonable person should find abhorrent." Another Catholic theologian claimed First Tractus was "a book forged in hell, written by the devil himself.”
Had the last been true, logical, or remotely possible, then the First Tractus would not have been so influential. God apparently not being available to write her own rebuttal, earthly critics quickly came to consider Tractus the most dangerous book ever published.
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus was published anonymously. The author and the publishers feared death or torture, as suffered by William Tyndale and others. People soon learned its author was an excommunicated Jew from Amsterdam: Baruch de Spinosa.
Spinosa was born a scion of a group of Jews known as Maranos. The Bible promises that the Jews are God’s chosen. However, Isreal and its temple was conquered first by the Bablylonians, then by the Romans, and then by Muslims. By Spinosa's time, there was much evidence then that God's alleged promises to his Jewish Chosen had proven incorrect. Still, practitioners of the Jewish religion remained fervent.
While Israel was no more, groups of Jews existed throughout the Mediterranean border states. By 1500, Jews had lived in Spain for 2000 years. The Catholic Church's inquisitions ended that. Around 1300, Jews were forced to recant their faith or die. Some, called Maranos, lived in Spain and kept their Jewish roots secretly. In 1492, the Alhambra decree expelled the Jews from Spain and, knowing Maranos remained, pertained to any of Jewish descent. The Maranos fled first to briefly France and then tried to settle in Portugal. There, the Inquisition followed in 1531. Forced to leave Spain, then France, then Portugal, then England, around 60 or so Jews found tenuous refuge in Holland.
In Holland also there was also danger. Holland had waged an 80 year war for freedom from Spain and the Catholic Church; although Holland had finally won that war, the Catholics remained determined to renew their authority in the unified Dutch states. Meanwhile, Calvinists attempted to assert theocratic authority over the state. In Spinosa's day, Catholics, Calvinists, Royalists, and various elected groups fought for control of Dutch society. To Holland's German East, Martin Luther's questioning of the Italian dominated Catholic Church caused numerous religious schisms and the Protestant break from Papal authority. Throughout Europe, people demanded the right to be allowed to worship in their own languages, questioned why an organization with so many examples of obviously corrupt individuals wielding power within it should be the final font of human authority, questioned why an Italian dominated group should govern the rest of Europe. The Catholic Church attempted to keep control. The arguments soon turned violent; religious tinged wars ravaged Europe.
Spinosa, despite his keeping to religious forms and making yearly donations to the Temple even while his family was under financial duress, was cast out by his Jewish community at age 23. A brilliant polymath, Spinosa resolved to study the superstitious portions of religion at its base: could there be a supernatural being which was omniscient and directly influenced human affairs? He started his inquiry by asking questions about the nature of such a being.
Starting with assumptions that any rational thought must be based on logic and ascertainable reality, Spinosa concluded that a deity which directly influenced human affairs was not logically possible. If God had a body, as the Bible says, of what shape did it take? If all things were part of God, then how could some things not be part of God? Where did such a being reside? If infinite, should not all reality be part of it? If infinite, how could it be divided into parts? If not infinite, then it must be finite, and so could not be all powerful.
If there was a supernatural being who directed all earthly affairs, how could such a being function? How could it influence affairs without being omnipotent, omniscient and omni-temporal? If it knew and could influence all things, it must know the future consequence of any of its actions. So what could possibly explain its motives? And there was further the problem of parallelism: How could any God simultaneously satisfy competing but disparate individual interests?
This was, of course, a logical refutation of various superstitions. And those form a large part of many religions, including quite a few of the Christian ones. The Christian sects fought huge wars, for example, over the nature of Jesus Christ, be he a man, a God, the son of God, and, if God, what sort of God. After a few hundred years of arguments (and not a little killing), the Catholic Church finally settled on the triple divinity theory held by most Christian sects.
Spinosa then divided religions and the groups which hold them into supernatural and practical components. He posited a God which set laws, which existed in all things, but, once rules having been set, was no longer involved in minute affairs. God was all infinity, was nature. In short, the deism to which most of the Founding Fathers subscribed.
A Jew himself, Spinosa argued that religious groups such as the Jews, which still held to a superstition that they were the Chosen people of an all-powerful God despite 1500 years of much evidence to the contrary, were cemented by group dynamics, tribal patterns. In short, people are better off when they belong to groups. As the Viking descended Russians say, One man alone in the field: Worthless. More recently, Professor Ed Wilson and others have detailed the same rational reasons for why ants have largely taken over the insect world. That is, there are compelling rational reasons, other than superstitious, for humans to organize into groups.
As an initial question, First Tractus argued that a supernatural being who directly influenced human affairs could not be possible. Then, building on that conclusion, the fight or control over society based on a claim of moral authority from the supernatural deity was not logically founded. Using historically examples and carefully scrutinizing the first five books of the Bible, Spinosa carefully explained that even the Jewish claims to special designation by God were not logically founded: The Jewish covenant that started with Moses--keep these Ten Commandments and God would protect the Jewish state--ended with the first destruction of the Temple.
Since no one could have an actual mandate from a non-existent supernatural being and, if we accepted such a being, the covenant had ended long ago, Spinosa urged that no religious group should be allowed to use the force of collective government power to direct individual choices or decide morality. Rather, individuals should have the right to decide on how to worship--and it was the State's job to see such rights be protected.
To buttress his argument that God did not directly influence human affairs, Spinosa placed the Hebrew Bible under strict scrutiny. When so examined, it becomes readily apparent it was written by different men, at different times, emphasizing different things. Such a conclusion should be obvious from the names of the books themselves. Spinosa proposed the some later editor collected various sayings or works and wrote them down. Spinosa caste doubt on the alleged miracles, arguing they were a product of ignorance or later exaggeration.
Spinosa then used historical examples in which he showed that humans often use superstitions to gain special privileges for a power group. Indeed, the fight between Jesus Christ and the rulers of the Jewish Temple may be seen that way. According to the gospels, Jesus questioned the prevailing superstitions of his day and directly assaulted the few Rabbis who used the main Jewish Temple to mulct the public. He went so far as to confront them: the moneylenders in the temple. The four Gospels tell of how Jesus was widely popular among the common man; however, the Jewish powers that be prevailed on the Roman authorities to crucify the Jesus for questioning the Jewish superstitions and customs.
It is a rational conclusion that the Rabbis of the temple were likely most upset because Jesus directly attacked the unfair results benefiting themselves which flowed from their use of the Jewish superstitions to benefit only a few--but they were in charge of the Temple. Writing around AD 90, the Jew Josephus wrote that when the Romans sacked the Jewish Temple, so much gold flooded the markets that gold prices dropped precipitously and caused an economic depression in Rome itself.
Spinosa, by attacking the very possibility that a supernatural God who directly influences affairs can even exist, logically undermined people who believed in the Divine Right of Kings, or who claimed the Priesthoods could decide morality, or the people who claim God ordained other men should transfer them wealth, power, nubile sons and daughters.
Spinosa's work changed the argument then raging in wars throughout Europe--Who’s God is Bigger--to a different question: Can there even be being who can influence our daily events, make a single feather fall from a single sparrow’s tail, make a single bacterium go right or left, can such a being really exist?
Various church establishments--and to his own Jewish community, which likely banished him for them--found Spinosa's clear elucidations quite damaging to their own power. His work was banned throughout Europe.
Like the Jewish Rabbis of the long ago sacked Temple, Spinosa’s critics claimed Tractus threatened religious faith, everyday morality, and society itself. Spinosa's identity was sought. Then his name was slandered. He was branded a religious subversive, political radical, accused of seeking to spread atheism and libertinism throughout Christendom.
The Catholic Church banned Spinosa’s works, placing them on the Index of Forbidden Books.
While banned by the Catholics and Calvinists and others of similar ilk, Tractus and Ethics inspired many others. Tractus's publication and the subsequent uproar was one of the most significant events in European intellectual history.
Human societies, as the non-superstitious point out, limp along equally well, better as America shows, when minimizing superstitions and their influence. Common sense, the democratic invisible hand, will usually win out over group superstitions when people are informed and allowed to vote.
Those believing or beheld to societal structures based on superstitious beliefs continued the attacks on Spinosa and his works. Just to be accused of Spinocism--as it was called--ruined lives and careers.
Building on Spinosa's work, Montesquieu published The Spirit of the Laws, in which he argued for a separation of powers and, for proper analysis of the powers, posited that humans tend to form groups which can be described as three estates: nobles, clergy and commons. To prevent abuses by a theocrat plutocrat alliance between Nobility and Church, Montesquieu urged that democracy, which favors the commons, was the best form of government. In addition to Montesquieu, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Locke, David Hume, and Jeremy Bentham all found Spinosa’s insights logical.
Thus, Spinosa's banned works inspired many of the rules laid down by the original United States Constitution, particularly the rules pertaining to the separation of Church and State and mandating religious tolerance.
Philosopher Rebecca Goldstein writes that Locke, for one example, lived five years in Holland. Spinosa had died in 1677, before Locke arrived. However, Locke chose "from among the same freethinking members of dissenting Protestant groups as Spinosa’s small group of loyal confidants. Locke almost certainly met men in Amsterdam who spoke of the ideas of that renegade Jew who... insisted on identifying himself through his religion of reason alone."
Goldstein concludes it was clear Locke was deeply receptive to Spinoza's ideas, most particularly to Spinosa's arguments for political and religious tolerance, democratic rule.
Since religious groups should not be viewed as having some higher power because the supernatural God could not exist, and therefore was not influencing human events, the supplications or behavior of the religious was without meaning. This compels a conclusion that religious groups should not be allowed to obtain power over the rest of the populace based on their superstitions; nor should a minority dictate special treatment for itself at the expense of the commons and the rest of the populace. This theory is summarized as the separation of church and state.
Outside of his books, Spinosa lived a quiet life and died at 44. His later work, usually called Ethics, was published posthumously.
How large was Spinosa's influence? The Catholic Church claims little. John Locke, working directly from or taking the conclusions from Spinosa's First Tractus and Ethics, wrote various influential essays and books about how government should best be formed.
Locke’s work was in turn used extensively by our Founding Fathers. Direct quotations from Locke are found, for example, in the Declaration of Independence. There are also strong hints that the ideas of Spinosa directly influenced Locke, Hume, and Bentham-- all of whom are recognized for strong positive influences on our Founders when crafting the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
And how did Catholic Church’s Index of Forbidden Books deal with these scholars, who had so influenced the American Constitution and related writings? The Catholic Index of Forbidden Book bans them all. Spinosa, Montesquieu, Locke, Hume, and Jeremy Bentham are all on the Catholic Index of Forbidden Books.
While the Index itself was annulled in 1966, its underlying canons were not. The ideas were never accepted by the Catholic Church. Spinosa's work undermined its claim to be the sole moral authority for all mankind, based on directives from the almighty God himself.
This in turn explains Antonin Scalia's bombastic invective towards those who reject the Catholic Church as the ultimate authority, his disdain for other religions besides his own, his fabrication of case citations, and his seemingly complete rejection of the main tenants behind the liberal rules regarding separation of church and state. It also explains the votes of the five male Catholic jurists in three recent
Given the Index of Forbidden Books, given the Catholic Church rejected and still rejects Spinosa, Montesquieu, Locke, Hume, Bentham and the ideas which flowed from Spinosa's work, can it be surprising that Scalia, Alito, indeed all 5 male Catholic Supreme Court jurists, recently issued two opinions which relaxed the rules regarding ChurchState separation? That they believe the First Amendment actually meant to place Catholic groups and Catholic dogma as the supreme law of America?
All five jurists have consistently rejected the spirit, as well as the direct writings, of men like Spinosa, Montesquieu, Locke, Hume, Bentham, as well as the widely accepted Constitutional interpretation which flows from their ideas?
The superstitious can take heart. In a third ruling issued the same week as its Hobby Lobby decision, five Catholic Supreme Court jurists held the First Amendment and its related RFFA also give the Catholic Church the right to tell the IRS how it must draft its forms.
It took more than 200 years, but now the Index of Forbidden Books is triumphant.
They should be careful of what they wish for. Spinosa and the Founding Fathers were much closer to the religious wars than we are today.
Gary North, a Calvinist and home school advocate, wrote that once they get rid of the liberals and their treat everyone equally laws, then the Calvinists can get back to eliminating the other religious groups and what North describes as their obviously flawed Biblical interpretations.
As in Spinosa's time, today's world has multiple sects who all demand control based on their claim to a special relation with a supernatural God. Sometimes they call it morality; however, underlying all their claims is a demand they be placed in authoritative control, that their group be allowed to dictate behavior even if in a minority, that they be placed above the rules by others live.
They rationalize this with either a false or at best an unprovable claim a God who can directly influences human events placed them in charge.
But these sects do not agree on everything. As North's recent books explicitly explain, each sect demands complete control over society and the behavior of all individuals in it.
But they cannot all be in charge of everyone else.
Just as in Spinosa's time, muscular Christianity must inevitably degenerate into fights over which group of Christians is more muscular.
Source Citations: P.G. Wodehouse; Spinosa’s First Tractus, available for free from Amazon Kindle; Wikipedia pages for Spinoza, Locke and Hume; Garry Wills, Inventing American: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence; Steven Nadler, Spinoza: A Life, and The Best of All Possible Worlds: A Story of Philosophers, God, and Evil in the Age of Reason; W. Friedman, Legal Theory 5th Ed. 1967; Connell, Censorship and the Prohibition of Books in Catholic Church Law (1954) Colum. L. Rev. 699; Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity, cited in the Montreal Review 2009 A-book-forged-in-hell-Steven-Nadler; North The Failure of the American Baptist Culture; Josephus, A History of the Jews.
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