Reason, Truth, & God: The Heresy of Spinoza
Rev. Tim Temerson
UU Church of Akron
August 5, 2012
I want to begin by thanking all of you for coming to church this morning to
listen to a sermon about a philosopher whose works are no longer widely read and
are hard to understand and who died over 300 years ago. But as you heard a few
minutes ago, Baruch Spinoza caused quite a stir during his lifetime. His radical
ideas about God, about truth, and especially about religion got him
excommunicated from the Jewish community of Amsterdam and branded a heretic
for much of his life. His ideas were seen to be so threatening, in fact, that one of
his most famous works was labeled by one critic as “a book forged in hell.”
I must confess that I didn’t know much of anything about Spinoza until I
read a wonderful book about him a couple of years ago. The book is called
Betraying Spinoza and it was written by Rebecca Goldstein. I'll have a slide at the
end of the service showing that book and another for those who may want to learn
more about Spinoza.
As I read Goldstein’s book I remember thinking to myself, "This Spinoza
fellow was quite the heretic and certainly didn’t care much for organized religion.
Sounds like a good Unitarian Universalist to me.” I also remember adding the word
“Spinoza” to a long list of future sermon topics that I somehow never remember to
write down and that eventually get lost in the back of my mind.
The Spinoza sermon idea remained tucked away with countless others until
an evening last March when we held our reverse raffle/silent auction fundraiser
here at the church. I offered a sermon topic as an auction item and Dave Brown
very generously purchased it. As it turns out, Dave has a very strong interest in
Spinoza. That night after he had “won” the big sermon topic prize, Dave came up to
me and simply said “Spinoza.” For an instant I had a brain freeze and thought that
Dave was giving me a new nickname. Not that I would have minded. I mean, what
UU minister wouldn’t want to be compared to a famous heretic! That’s a badge of
honor for us! But, alas, my brain thawed out and I soon realized that Dave was
giving me my sermon assignment rather than promoting me to professional heretic!
A few minutes ago I read that very harsh decree of excommunication issued
against Spinoza by Congregation Talmud Torah in Amsterdam in the year 1656
when the philosopher was only 24. Wasn’t that language something? Spinoza
wasn’t simply being excluded or shunned; he was damned and cursed and it was
left to God to blot out his name for all eternity.
What brought on such a severe punishment and such harsh language? What
could have been so dangerous, so heretical, and so threatening about a quiet,
studious 24 year old that would lead the religious community of his childhood and
youth to fear and condemn him in such harsh terms?
I think we can begin to understand the fear and consternation Spinoza
caused not only in his religious community but throughout much of Europe if we
look at the language in the second reading. Spinoza speaks of the futility and
emptiness of ordinary life and the fact that humankind is so often driven by unreal
fears rather than what he calls “the true good.” I think it’s safe to say that much of
Spinoza’s philosophy is aimed at unmasking those unreal fears and challenging the
ideas and institutions he thought responsible for them while, at the same time,
providing humanity with a more objective and reasoned understanding of reality
and a path leading in a very different direction – one of joy, happiness, and the true
good.
Now while we mostly remember Spinoza as a philosopher, there can be little
doubt that much of his writing is motivated by and directed at the beliefs, the
institutions, and what he saw as the very negative role played by organized
religion. To say that Spinoza had a critical view of religion is an understatement. He
blamed religion, and especially what he saw as the religious mindset of
superstition, irrationality, and exclusiveness, for much of the war, the misery, and
the suffering that plagued, and I might add, still plagues, humankind.
Although Spinoza’s very negative view of religion put him in conflict with his
Jewish community and eventually led to his excommunication, those views was
deeply rooted in Jewish history, and especially in the experience of violence and
oppression shared by most in the Jewish community living in Amsterdam. You see,
many of the families in that community were recent émigrés who had been forced
to flee religious persecution in Spain and Portugal. Many like Spinoza’s family were
so called “conversos” – Jews living in Spain who had been forced either to convert
to Christianity or leave Spain forever. Converting did not offer Spanish Jews like the
Spinoza's much security as the violence and torture associated with the Spanish
Inquisition was increasingly directed at them. At first, the conversos to fled to
Portugal, including Spinoza’s family. But by the second half of the 16th century,
even Portugal had also been swept up in the furor of the Inquisition which lead
many, including Spinoza’s family, to seek refuge in the Netherlands, which had
been recently liberated itself from Spain and which had gained a reputation for
religious tolerance.
Although Spinoza himself did not experience firsthand the suffering and
cruelty of the Spanish Inquisition, I believe that tragic episode and the intolerance
and oppression his own family experienced went a long way in producing both his
deep antipathy towards religion and his controversial philosophical ideas. Rather
than leading humankind toward joy and happiness, Spinoza thought religion
produced only suffering and misery. Rather than being anchored in reason and
rationality, Spinoza thought religion was rooted in superstition and fear. And rather
than encouraging the best in human nature, Spinoza accused religion of creating an
attitude of exclusivism that had led to acts of unspeakable violence and injustice,
like those experienced by the Jews of Spain.
I want to take a moment to explore two important aspects of Spinoza's
philosophy that flow directly from his critique of religion. First, there can be little
doubt that one of the most important and influential aspects of Spinoza's
philosophy is his fascinating understanding of God. That understanding has
attracted some of the world's great minds, including Albert Einstein, who claimed
repeatedly to believe in the God of Spinoza.
Rather than seeing God as many religions do - as a supernatural being
moved by very human emotions like jealousy and vengeance or sympathy and
compassion - Spinoza conceived of God as reality itself - as the very substance of
existence. God is not distinct from or above reality; God is reality. God is
everything - the air, the earth, you, me, the laws and regularities of the cosmos,
and so on. Spinoza often used a Latin phrase Deus Sive Natura, meaning God and
Nature, to describe ultimate reality. And this simple phrase points to his conviction
that God and nature are one reality and one substance, one causal source of
everything that exists. God and nature are one.
And if God is everything, if God is all of reality rather than a supernatural
being belonging to one faith or one sacred text, then much of what religion is based
on is just plain wrong. God, in Spinoza's view, is not a Christian or a Jew, not a
Hindu or a Unitarian Universalist. The divisions and conflicts waged in the name of
religion are rooted in a false view of reality. God is not on anyone's side and does
not choose one faith tradition or belief system over another. God does not work
miracles to show his approval for one person, one group, or one belief system. In
fact, there is only one side, one reality, one "fixed and immutable order of Nature,"
as Spinoza himself put it. Think about that for a moment. God is not particular or
parochial and no single group or belief is privileged or chosen over another. I think
you can begin to see why Spinoza's ideas got him into trouble with the religions of
his day, including his own Judaism.
And that leads us to the second key aspect of Spinoza's philosophy - his
belief in the transforming power of reason. According to Spinoza, while most world
religions are rooted in superstitions that appeal to our passions and fears, every
human being is endowed with reason and can, therefore, come to understand
themselves and God. For Spinoza, reason is the path to truth and that path is open
to all.
And it is the path of reason that will enable human beings to lead lives of
happiness, joy, virtue, and what Spinoza called blessedness. You see, Spinoza
believed that if human beings are free to learn, to seek, and to understand
themselves and the world as it is rather than as they are told to believe, our
understanding of ourselves and the world will broaden and become universal. We
will no longer see ourselves, our faith community, or our nation as the center of the
universe or as specially privileged and chosen by God above others. Instead, reason
will lead us to a kind of virtuous humility in which humankind will see itself as
deeply connected and part of a single, unified reality. I ask you, how much better
would our world be if we followed Spinoza's path of universal freedom and reason
rather than being drawn into parochial distinctions and loyalties that divide the
world into us versus them and friend versus enemy?
I want to leave you this morning by saying a word about the connections
between Spinoza's ideas and our own Unitarian Universalism. Prior to reading that
book about Spinoza, I must confess I had no idea how closely his ideas about
religious truth, God, and especially about the use of reason, echo those of our own
faith tradition. While I don't think its correct to say that Unitarian Universalism fully
embodies Spinoza's philosophy or that Spinoza was a Unitarian Universalist and just
didn't know it, there are clearly some striking similarities.
And none of those similarities is more important than the close connection
between Spinoza's faith in reason and Unitarian Universalism’s commitment to the
free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Like Spinoza, Unitarian
Universalism places its faith in the power and the possibilities of the open mind.
Like Spinoza, we seek virtue and joy in this world rather than waiting for it in the
next. And like Spinoza, we Unitarian Universalists find holiness in the dignity and
worth of all humankind and in nature, and seek to do all that we can to understand
and to live in harmony with the underlying unity of all existence. That was the "true
good" Spinoza sought in his own life and for the world and that is the vision that we
are called to make real this day and every day.
Thanks for listening and blessed be