# Short Treatise on God/Life of Spinoza/4

§ 4. SPINOZA'S ALIENATION FROM THE SYNAGOGUE—1654-1656
Spinoza had an inborn passion for clear and consistent thinking. And the great intellectual gifts with which fortune had unstintingly endowed him were abundantly exercised and sharpened in the prolonged study of the Hebrew legal and religious codes. These abound in subtle problems and subtler solutions. And whatever Spinoza may have subsequently thought of their intrinsic merits, yet their value as a mental discipline was undeniable. But this power of penetration was slowly but inevitably bringing him into antagonism with the very sources from which it had drawn strength. Moreover, even quite apart from this sharpening of his reasoning powers, his Hebrew studies provided him also with ample material and stimulus for the exercise of his critical acumen. The spirit of rationalism pervades the whole literature of the Jews of the Spanish period, and the masterpieces of that literature were the pride of the Jewish refugees from the Peninsula, indeed, of all Jews. In the commentary of Abraham Ibn Ezra (1092-1167) he found many bold and suggestive hints. In the Preface, ​Ibn Ezra states that he "will show no partiality in the exposition of the Law," and although the promise seems bolder than the fulfilment, yet now and again one meets with "a word to the wise" which is just sufficient to direct attention to some inconsistency in Scripture, to the post-Mosaic authorship of certain passages in the so-called Five Books of Moses, or to the different authorship of the first and of the second parts of Isaiah. These hints, obscure as they may seem, justify Ibn Ezra's claim to be called "the father of the Higher Criticism of the Bible," and they certainly led to Spinoza's subsequent important contributions to this kind of Biblical criticism. In the Guide of the Perplexed of Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) his attention was drawn to certain crudities and inconsistencies in Biblical theology, which Maimonides, indeed, tried to explain away, or to reconcile with the requirements of reason, though apparently, in the judgment of Spinoza, with little success. And Maimonides' treatment of the institution of sacrifices as merely a temporary concession or device to wean Israel from idolatry could not but suggest to Spinoza that other religious customs, too, were only temporary in character and validity. In the writings of Gersonides (1288-1344) he saw rationalism encroaching on miracles and on prophecy, so as to explain away their supposed supernatural character. Maimonides had already boldly asserted that any passage in the Bible which appeared to conflict with reason must be so reinterpreted as to be in harmony with it. This method of "interpreting" Scripture into conformity with reason still seemed to save the priority of the Bible over human reason—though only in appearance. Gersonides went further than that. Frankly admitting the possibility of a real conflict between Reason and Revelation, he openly declared that the Bible "cannot prevent us from holding that to be true which our reason prompts us to believe." Moreover, the tendency towards free thought was very much in the air ​ever since the Renaissance, and it affected young Jews as it affected others. For example, in 1628 there arrived in Amsterdam a Jewish scholar, Joseph Delmedigo by name, who had studied at the University of Padua. He was well versed in philosophy, medicine, physics, and mathematics, as well as in Hebrew literature, and he had also studied astronomy under Galileo. He seems to have stayed several years in Amsterdam, where Manasseh ben Israel published a selection of his works for him. He was a remarkable product of that age of conflict between the old and the new. Unsettled by the new spirit of the age, yet faithful to the old, his mind inclined now towards scepticism and again towards mysticism, and his nomad life was at once typical and expressive of a restless, vacillating mind seeking in vain to regain its equilibrium. And, to judge from contemporary complaints, Amsterdam Jewry had not a few of such religious malcontents, and the leaders had to cope with the trouble as best they could. Already in 1623 Samuel da Silva, a Jewish physician at Amsterdam, was called upon to write a defence of the immortality of the soul, and the inspiration of the Bible, against the sceptical views aired by Uriel da Costa. In 1632 Manasseh ben Israel published the first part of his Conciliator, wherein he sought to reconcile the apparent inconsistencies of Scripture. The Marano refugees, like others who threw off the yoke of Roman Catholicism, turned back to the Bible, and the difficulties which some of them encountered there may have been one of the causes which prompted Manasseh's enterprise. Spinoza, no doubt, knew this book. But he probably appreciated the problems which it attacked much more than the solutions which it offered. And if the Bible already presented difficulties, how extravagant and unwarranted must have appeared that elaborate superstructure which the Rabbis had reared upon it "line upon line and precept upon precept"! At all events, Spinoza's difficul​ties, in so far as they turned on the narrower problems of the Hebrew Scriptures and Jewish ceremonial, were by no means new. They had been clearly realised, and partly dealt with, by others long before him.
As regards the wider philosophical questions, it is difficult to say what Spinoza s philosophy was like at that epoch of his life. One can scarcely suppose that his thought was already systematised into a definite philosophic theory. Most likely his views were as yet but loosely connected, and, in the main, negative rather than positive in tendency. And these views also were, in very large measure, if not exclusively, suggested to him by Jewish writers. These more philosophical problems, too, were not altogether new, they had been realised, and grappled with, by other Jews before him. The popular conception of Creation (creatio ex nihilo) had been denied by both Ibn Ezra and Gersonides, who maintained the eternity of matter. Crescas (1340-1410) had maintained that God had extension, and the Jewish Mystics taught that Nature was animated. Maimonides had denied that man was the centre of creation, maintaining that each thing exists for its own sake, and Crescas denied the validity of final causes. Maimonides also had suggested the relativity of good and evil, and Ibn Ezra and Crescas had maintained a thoroughgoing determinism.
Spinoza, however, felt the accumulated burden of all these problems, and he may already have been sufficiently influenced by Cartesian thought to refuse to accept any unproved assertions. Moreover, Spinoza lacked the power (one is almost inclined to call it a gift) which his Jewish predecessors possessed, namely, the power of detaching their theories from their practical everyday life. However advanced or heterodox their views may have been, yet they were conservative in feeling, and conservative in practice, and observed religious customs just like the most orthodox. Such an attitude may easily be accused of duplicity; but ​we do not really explain it by calling it bad names. It is often perfectly honest, and it is to be met with in all creeds, at the present no less than in the past. And, after all, the difference is mostly one of degree rather than of kind. Even Spinoza s feeling remained to the end more conservative than his thought. That was why he could not help using the language of religion long after his thought seemed to have emptied it of its religious meaning. At all events he made no secret of his views, and he grew lax in the matter of ceremonial observances, whose theoretic basis no longer appealed to him. The elaborate dietary laws of orthodox Judaism must have been something of an obstacle in his intercourse with Christian friends, and although he, no doubt, observed these laws for a time from sheer force of habit, even when their raison d'être had already lost its hold on him, still he probably got weary of excusing his apparent unsociability on the ground of a custom in which he no longer believed. Moreover, the comparatively liberal religion of his Mennonite and Collegiant friends, their Quaker-like simplicity, their brotherly equality, their humanitarian repudiation of strife and war, the plain decorum of their prayer-meetings—all this must have tended to make him increasingly dissatisfied with the over-elaborated ceremonial of his own community, and the comparative indecorum of their Synagogue services. On the other hand, his Jewish neighbours were beginning to feel scandalised by this breach of ritual observances, his frequent absence from the Synagogue, and the reports of his attendance at Christian prayer-meetings, especially so, considering that his father and grandfather had held office in the Synagogue, and Baruch himself had been looked upon as a promising " light of the Exile." Mutual distrust developed into mutual antipathy. The conservatives could not understand how any one could, merely on account of personal inconvenience, deliberately ignore divinely ordained ​precepts—except from sheer perverseness. They failed to realise that any one who did not accept the divine origin of such customs, and did not see any very obvious moral purpose in them, would simply not think it worth while sacrificing time or anything else on their account. And Spinoza himself was almost equally unsympathetic when he failed to realise that customs which seemed a burden to him were nevertheless felt to be a blessing and a privilege by those who sincerely regarded them as divine ordinances, as opportunities of serving God; while the apparent indecorum of the Synagogue was largely the outcome of Israel's feeling of familiarity with God. Such mutual misunderstandings neither began nor ended in the days of Spinoza. At all events trouble was brewing. After his father's death Spinoza probably became less cautious than before. He did not entirely sever his connection with the Synagogue, for the Synagogue accounts show that he was present in the Synagogue on the Sabbath, the 5th of December 1655, and made an offering. It was the Sabbath of the Feast of Lights, in memory of the Maccabean uprising against Antiochus Epiphanes, and Spinoza had a warm admiration for all enemies of tyranny—did he not actually picture him self in the guise of Aniellos, the Neapolitan rebel against the tyranny of Spain? That Spinoza should have kept up his connection with the Synagogue stands to reason. He could hardly resist the call of filial piety to recite the mourner's prayer for his father, even as, in the days of his childhood, he had done for his mother. The prayer was innocent enough. Though a "mourner's prayer," it was not a prayer for the dead, in fact it contained no reference what ever to the dead. It was a prayer for peace, and its ground-note was that of praise of God, which, coming at the moment of profoundest sorrow, was regarded as the finest expression of resignation and faith. Spinoza could scarcely have taken any serious objection to it, at that time, and on such ​an occasion, and he would thus remain attached to the Synagogue during his year of mourning. In the months of September, October, and November fell the anniversaries of the deaths of his sister Miriam, his stepmother, and his mother respectively. He would be expected to attend Synagogue on these occasions, and hardly be disinclined. We need not, therefore, be surprised to find him again in the Synagogue on the 5th of December. In all probability that was not the last occasion either on which he was seen in Synagogue—the anniversary of his father's death, in March 1656, most likely saw him there again. What exactly happened in the interval between March and July 1656 is not certain, though it may not be difficult to conjecture. Possibly some of his young Jewish friends spoke to him on the subject of death—a subject natural enough under the circumstances—and may have been surprised and shocked to hear from him that in his view the Bible did not teach the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and that, in the Bible, "soul" was simply synonymous with "life." This might have led up to the more general question of the existence of disembodied spirits or angels, which Spinoza then described as unreal, and mere phantoms of the imagination. But what about God? would be the natural rejoinder. God, said Spinoza, was also not incorporeal, but extended. At all events, it was these heretical views which were soon afterwards made the ground of his excommunication; but they were not really the whole ground—there were other reasons.
Reference has already been made to the fact that, on the death of their father, Rebekah endeavoured to keep her half-brother from his share in the inheritance. Her idea no doubt was that Spinoza might earn his livelihood, whereas she had nothing wherewith to support herself, and ought therefore to be provided for. Possibly her brother-in-law, de Casseres, a prospective Rabbi, learned in the ​Law, and uncommonly shocked by Spinoza's religious lapses, of which Rebekah probably knew much and told him more, advised her that according to strict Jewish law Spinoza's delinquencies disqualified him from inheriting his father s property. Spinoza naturally resented such high-handed methods, and appealed to the law of the land, which of course took no notice of the subtleties of Rabbinic legislation. Spinoza won his lawsuit, but, realising the moral claims of his sister's position, he refrained from taking anything beyond a bedstead, and that very likely as a memento quite as much as an article of value, or of which he had need. This appeal to the secular arm against his sister hardly tended to make him more popular with his people, however little some of them may have sympathised with her peculiar methods. Moreover, the report of his heresies, on which Rebekah had based her exclusive claims, got abroad and was duly magnified as it passed from mouth to mouth. Meanwhile Spinoza had to earn his bread. He could hardly think of staying with his sister, or with any other relative, after this family quarrel, and he had nothing very definite to fall back upon for his support. Fortunately Van den Enden, realising his pupil's plight, came to his rescue. Spinoza assisted him in his school, and, in return, Van den Enden provided him with a home and all necessaries at his own house. This, of course, entailed a complete breach with the Jewish dietary laws. But this was not all. Van den Enden, as already remarked, had an evil reputation, and his school was strongly suspected of being a centre for the teaching of atheism. Whether Van den Enden really merited his ill repute is by no means certain. That he was not particularly orthodox in his views may be granted; he knew too much to satisfy the requirements of the zealots. On the other hand, it must be remembered that when Dirck Kerckrinck wooed Clara Maria Van den Enden, he had to turn Roman Catholic before her father consented to ​the marriage (1671). Be that as it may, the school had a bad name, and Spinoza's reputation did not improve by his more intimate connection with it. Possibly some of the fathers, who subsequently earned the daily blessings of their sons for taking care in due time "to remove them from the school of so pernicious and impious a master" as Van den Enden was reputed to be, were not slow in fastening some of the blame on his Jewish assistant; and Spinoza, who was as yet too inexperienced to appreciate the wisdom of discretion, may have given utterance to many a heterodox thought. If so, the scandalised fathers who repeatedly tried to persuade the city magistrates to close Van den Enden's school, and who actually did succeed in driving him out of Amsterdam eventually, would not keep very quiet about Spinoza, and the Jewish authorities would have good reason to take alarm.
Except by the select few, religious toleration was scarcely understood in those days, even in the Netherlands. That the persecuted turn persecutors has become a truism; it is sad, but it is true. In practice, the cry for religious toleration has all too often amounted to this: you have persecuted me long enough now, let me persecute you for a change. At the very commencement of their long struggle against the tyranny of the Inquisition, the mutual intolerance of the various religious sects in the Netherlands caused infinite trouble to William the Silent, and very nearly wrecked their enterprise. As their fortunes improved and the need of union became somewhat less urgent, intolerance became increasingly manifest. The Calvinists, who were in the majority, regarded their Church more or less as the established Church, to which the Reformed clergy tried their utmost to compel all others to conform. When Philip III. made a twelve years truce with the United Netherlands in 1609, he did so, it is said, in the sinister hope that mutual religious persecutions among the different religious sects ​would bring about that fall of the Netherlands which the Spanish troops had failed to effect. Sooth to say, there was considerable justification for that sinister hope. In 1610 the followers of Arminius (Professor of Theology at Leyden, died 1609) presented to the provincial parliament of Holland and West Friesland their Remonstrance against extreme Calvinism, and the struggle between the Arminians (or Remonstrants) and the extreme Calvinists (or Contra-Remonstrants) culminated in 1619, when the Synod of Dordrecht excommunicated the Arminians, closed their places of worship, and brought about the expulsion of Remonstrant preachers from most of the States. Barneveldt, the political head of the Remonstrants and reputed to have been the greatest statesman of the Netherlands, was executed; Hugo Grotius, one of their most eminent scholars, was thrown into prison, and only escaped from it through the bold ingenuity of his wife. One interesting result of the banishment of Arminian pastors was the formation of the Collegiant sect, which simply decided to dispense with the clerical office altogether, and held more or less informal gatherings (collegia) for prayers and religious discussions conducted entirely by laymen. (The Mennonites, with whom also Spinoza stood in friendly relations, had come into existence under very similar circumstances during the sixteenth century). The events of 1619 show clearly enough the temper of the dominant religious sect in the United Provinces. Fortunately, enlightened statesmen and magis trates generally managed to resist the persecuting zeal of the Reformed or Calvinist clergy. But not always; nor did the zealots relax their efforts in spite of repeated dis couragement. In 1653 the clerical Synods forced the States-General to issue a strict edict against the Socinians ​or Unitarians, many of whom consequently went over to the Collegiants.
After all, then, the decree of toleration embodied in the Union of Utrecht did not secure very much in the way of real toleration. Non-Calvinist Christians were allowed to live in the Netherlands without suffering in person or pro perty on account of their nonconformity. For those days even that was a great deal ; but the right of public worship was quite another matter. And if the Union of Utrecht did not secure real toleration for all Christian sects, much less did it guarantee anything to the Jews, who had not been contemplated in it at all, who had not even been formally admitted into the Netherlands, but whose presence had been more or less connived at. Even in 1619, when the Jewish question was definitely raised in the Netherlands, it was decided to allow each city to please itself whether it would permit Jews to live there or not. Their position was precarious indeed. They had to take care not to give offence to the religious susceptibilities of their neighbours. And their troubles commenced soon enough.
About the year 1618 there had arrived in Amsterdam a Marano refugee from Portugal whose name was Gabriel da Costa. Both he and his late father had held office in the Catholic Church, but seized by a sudden longing to return to the religion of his ancestors, Gabriel fled to Amsterdam, where he embraced Judaism and changed his name from Gabriel to Uriel. His ideas about Judaism had been derived chiefly from reading the Old Testament, and his contact with actual Rabbinic Judaism somewhat disappointed him. He thereupon commenced to speak contemptuously of the Jews as Pharisees, and aired his views very freely against the belief in the immortality of the soul, and the inspiration of the Bible. These views were, of course, as much opposed to Christianity as to Judaism. The Jewish physician, de Silva, as already stated, tried to controvert these heretical ​views in a book published in 1623. Da Costa replied, in 1624, with a treatise which was very confused, and which, while accusing de Silva of slander against the author, actually reiterated those heresies. Partly from fear that an outcry might be raised against the Jews as promulgators of heresy, the Jewish authorities excommunicated Uriel da Costa, and as a kind of official repudiation of all responsibility for him, they communicated the facts to the civil authorities, who thereupon imprisoned him, fined him, and ordered his book to be burned. Shunned by Jews and Christians alike, da Costa found his existence very lonely and intolerable, and in 1633 he made up his mind, as he said, "to become an ape among apes," and made his peace with the Synagogue. But he soon got quite reckless again, and was excommunicated a second time. Again he grew weary of his isolation, and once more he approached the Synagogue authorities for the removal of the ban. Determined not to be duped again, yet reluctant to repel him absolutely, they imposed hard conditions on him. He submitted to the conditions—he recanted his sins publicly in the Synagogue, received thirty-nine lashes, and lay prostrate on the threshold of the Synagogue while the congregation stepped over him as they passed out. It was a cruel degradation. And so heavily did his humiliation weigh on his mind that he committed suicide soon afterwards. This happened in 1640, and Spinoza must have remembered the scandal.
If the Jewish community in Amsterdam felt it necessary to repudiate, in such drastic manner, their responsibility for Uriel da Costa's heresies, so as to avoid giving offence to their Christian neighbours, there was every reason why they should feel even greater discomfort on account of Spinoza's heresies in 1656. It was a critical period in the annals of Jewish history. During the Muscovite and Cossack invasion of Poland (1654-1656) entire Jewish communities were ​massacred by the invaders; nor did the Poles behave much better towards the Jews during the war. Naturally, whosoever could tried to escape from the scene of slaughter. There was consequently a considerable influx of Polish Jews into Amsterdam. Now, even in the twentieth century, when countless missionaries are sent to spread the Gospel from China to Peru, Jewish refugees have been shown but scant Christian charity under similar circumstances, so we have every reason to suppose that the condition of the Amsterdam Jewish community did not gain in security through this influx of destitute refugees. Then more than ever was it necessary to be circumspect, and avoid giving offence to the people of the land, especially in the matter of the most delicate of all things—religion. They did not want another scandal. One da Costa affair was enough, and more than enough. Yet they must not incur the responsibility for Spinoza s heresies. So at first they tried to bribe Spinoza. They promised him a considerable annuity if he would only keep quiet, and show some amount of outward conformity to his religion. They must have known well enough that silence and partial outward conformity do not alter a man's views; they were surely shrewd enough to realise that a heretic does not cease to be a heretic by becoming also a hypocrite. If their sole object had been to suppress heresy in their midst, that was not the way to gain their end. Heresy would not languish through becoming profitable. The real motive that prompted them must have been that just indicated—though it is very likely that they did not realise it so explicitly. If they had done so, and if they had urged these points on Spinoza, he would, undoubtedly, have appreciated the need for caution and silence. But they evidently did not understand him, they evidently misconceived his character entirely, and the ​attempt to gag him with a bribe was just the way best calculated to defeat their end. The only person who might have understood him, and whose intervention might have been successful, was Manasseh ben Israel. But he was in England then, on a mission to Cromwell. So threats were tried next; but the threat of excommunication had no effect on Spinoza. They had reached the end of their tether. The only course open to them, as they felt, was to put him under the ban. The feeling against him was, no doubt, so strong that a fanatic might have tried to do him some physical violence. And it may be that such an attack gave rise to the story of an attempt to assassinate Spinoza with a dagger, as he was leaving the Synagogue or the theatre. But there is no evidence of this, and the probability is decidedly against it.
Some time in June 1656 Spinoza was summoned before the court of Rabbis. Witnesses gave evidence of his heresies. Spinoza did not deny them—he tried to defend them. Thereupon he was excommunicated for a period of thirty days only—in the hope that he might still relent. But he did not. Accordingly, on the 27th July 1656, the final ban was pronounced upon him publicly in the Synagogue at Amsterdam. It was couched in the following terms:
"The members of the council do you to wit that they have long known of the evil opinions and doings of Baruch de Espinoza, and have tried by divers methods and promises to make him turn from his evil ways. As they have not succeeded in effecting his improve ment, but, on the contrary, have received every day more information about the horrible heresies which he practised and taught, and other enormities which he has committed, and as they had many trustworthy witnesses of this, who have deposed and testified in the presence of the said Spinoza, and have convicted him; and as all this has been investigated in the presence of the Rabbis, it has been resolved with their consent that the said Espinoza should be anathematised and cut off from the people of Israel, and now he is anathematised with the following anathema:
"'With the judgment of the angels and with that of the saints, with ​the consent of God, Blessed be He, and of all this holy congregation, before these sacred Scrolls of the Law, and the six hundred and thirteen precepts which are prescribed therein, we anathematise, cut off, execrate, and curse Baruch de Espinoza with the anathema wherewith Joshua anathematised Jericho, with the curse wherewith Elishah cursed the youths, and with all the curses which are written in the Law: cursed be he by day, and cursed be he by night; cursed be he when he lieth down, and cursed be he when he riseth up; cursed be he when he goeth out, and cursed be he when he cometh in; the Lord will not pardon him; the wrath and fury of the Lord will be kindled against this man, and bring down upon him all the curses which are written in the Book of the Law; and the Lord will destroy his name from under the heavens; and, to his undoing, the Lord will cut him off from all the tribes of Israel, with all the curses of the firmament which are written in the Book of the Law; but ye that cleave unto the Lord your God live all of you this day!
"We ordain that no one may communicate with him verbally or in writing, nor show him any favour, nor stay under the same roof with him, nor be within four cubits of him, nor read anything composed or written by him."
This amiable document of the "holy congregation" is nothing less than a blasphemy. It must be remembered, however, that the actual anathema was a traditional formula, and (unlike the preamble and conclusion) was not specially written for the occasion. No doubt it shows a greater familiarity with the phraseology of the Bible than with its best teaching. But the Jews who excommunicated Spinoza were no worse than their neighbours in this respect. These awful curses were but the common farewells with which the churches took leave of their insubordinate friends. Nor were these the worst forms of leave-taking, by any means. After all, swearing breaks no bones, and burns none alive, as did the rack and the stake which were so common in those days. The Catholic Church excommunicated only when it could not torture and kill; and then its anathemas, though they may have been more polished in diction, ​were incomparably more brutal in effect. The ban pronounced upon William the Silent, for instance, contained nothing less than an urgent invitation to cut-throats that they should murder him, in return for which pious deed they would receive absolution for all their crimes, no matter how heinous, and would be raised to noble rank; and that ban actually accomplished its sinister object! It is, therefore, unjust to single out this ban against Spinoza and judge it by present-day standards. Nor should it be forgotten that if Judaism alone had been concerned, more leniency would have been shown, the whole thing might have been ignored. Elisha ben Abuyah, the Faust of the Talmud, was not persecuted by the Jews, in spite of his heresies. The ban against Spinoza was the due paid to Cæsar, rather than to the God of Israel.
As in the case of da Costa, and for the same reasons, the Jewish authorities officially communicated the news of Spinoza's excommunication to the civil authorities, who, in order to appease the wrath of the Jewish Rabbinate and the Calvinist clergy, banished Spinoza from Amsterdam, though only for a short period.
On the whole there is some reason to suppose that the anathema was not a curse, but a blessing in disguise. It freed him entirely from sectarian and tribal considerations; it helped to make him a thinker of no particular sect and of no particular age, but for all men and for all times.
However reprehensible his heretical utterances and unorthodox doings may have been considered by some of his fellow-Jews, yet there can be no doubt that Spinoza did not really desire to sever his connection entirely with them. This is evident from the fact that he did not ignore, as he might have done, the summons to come before the court of Rabbis in order to defend himself against the charge of heresy. It is true that when informed of his final excommunication he is reported to have said: "Very well, this
* ↑ See the writer's Aristotle in Medieval Jewish Thought.
* ↑ The "five points" of the Remonstrance were (i) conditional election; (ii) universal redemption through Christ; (iii) salvation by grace; (iv) the irresistibleness of grace; and (v) the possibility of falling from a state of grace.
* ↑ That their apprehensions were not unfounded is clear from the fact that even some twenty years afterwards various Synods of the Reformed Church tried to induce the civil powers to pass strong measures for the forcible conversion of the Jews.