Spinoza's Account of Miracles

Lee C. Rice

I. Introduction

The sixth chapter of Spinoza's Tractatus theologico-politicus (TTP)! is

devoted wholly to a discussion of the nature and possibility of miracles, but
it is a text which has attracted little attention in contemporary Spinoza
scholarship,2 and even less in the more extended debate on the concept of
the miraculous in contemporary philosophy.3 Parkinson proposes a cause
for such benign neglect: "".recent criticisms of miracles tend to follow

IThanks for comments on earlier drafts of this paper are due to Samuel
Shirley (England), William Innis (Milwaukee), and Steven Barbone (San Diego).
Translations from the text ofSpinoza, where given, are my own; though I have also
made use of the excellent translation of the TTP by Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1998). References to the Ethica and other works of Spinoza are the
standard internal abbreviations. Akkerman reviews the Latin textual variants and
several of the translation-interpretations, including the partial English version of
Wernham: see "Etablissement du texte du Tractatus Theologico-Politicus," Groupe
de Recherches Spinozistes, L 'Ecriture sainte au temps de Spinoza et dans Ie
systeme Spinoziste (Paris: Presses de l'Universite de Paris-Sorbonne, 1992).

20nly G.H.R. Parkinson and A. Fox provide extensive analysis ofthe chapter:
see Parkinson, "Spinoza on Miracles and Natural Law," Revue internationale de
philosophie 8 (1977):35-55; and Fox, Faith and Philosophy: Spinoza and Religion
(Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1990) especially pp. 132-55.
References to Chapter 6 are scant and passing in the more general treatments ofthe
TTP such as Leo Strauss's "Comment lire Ie TraiN? theologico-politique," Le
testament de Spinoza: ecrits de Leo Strauss sur Spinoza et Ie judaisme, eds. G.
Almaleh, A. Baraquin, M. Depadt-Ejchenbaum (Paris: Cerf, 1991). Gilbert Boss
offers a brief comparative analysis of the positions of Hume and Spinoza: see La
difference des philosophies: Hume et Spinoza, 2 vols. (Zurich: Editions du Grand
Midi, 1982) 2:817-30.

3For example, no mention ofSpinoza's analysis is made by R.M. Burns, The

Great Debate on Miracles: From Joseph Glanville to David Hume (Lewisburg:
Bucknell University Press, 1981); R. Hambourger, "Belief in Miracles and Hume's
Essay," Nous 14 (1977):587-604; orR. Swinburne, The Concept ofMiracle (New
York: Macmillan, 1970) and "Violation of the Law of Nature," Miracles, ed. R.
Swinburne (New York: Macmillan, 1989) pp. 75-84.
25
P. l. Bagley (ed.), Piety, Peace and the Freedom to Philosophize, 25-44.
© 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
26 PIETY, PEACE, AND THE FREEDOM TO PHILOSOPHIZE

Hume rather than Spinoza; the line of attack is not that miraculous events
are impossible, but that it is impossible to have adequate evidence for a
miracle.,,4 In this he follows Flew's reading,S which sees Hume's argument
as primarily epistemic in nature; whereas, according to Parkinson,
Spinoza's attack is directed fundamentally at the possibility of miracles
rather than at the possibility of our knowledge of them.
In what follows I shall examine firstthe general structure ofSpinoza's
analysis in Chapter 6 of the TTP, and its opening arguments, which are
primarily ontological in structure. In the second section I shall be concerned
with a second set of arguments raised by Spinoza, fundamentally epistemic
in nature and largely ignored by Parkinson. Finally in my third section I
want to suggest that Spinoza and Hume are not so divergent in their
analyses as Parkinson and others have suggested, and that the contemporary
neglect of Spinoza by those dealing with the question of miracles is
probably unwarranted.

II. Miracles: Psychology and Logic

Spinoza reminds his readers rather late in Chapter 6 that his analysis of
miracles, unlike his discussion of prophecy, is wholly philosophical (non-
theological).6 Such an approach is necessary, he adds, because the problem
of miracles centers upon the concept of nature and its laws. 7 An immediate
consequence of this is that, although he believes his explanation to be in
accordance with scripture, acceptance of his (or any other) account is not

4"Spinoza on Miracles and Natural Law," p. 157.

5See, for example, A. Flew, "Hume's Check," The Philosophical Quarterly

9 (1959):1-18 and "Fogel in on Hume on Miracles," Hume Studies 16 (1990):
141-44. The latter essay is a reply to R. Fogelin's "What Hume Actually Said
about Miracles," Hume Studies 16 (1990):81-86.

6" • .. namely, that in here discussing miracles, I have adopted a method very
different from the one employed when dealing with prophecy. In the matter of
prophecy, I made no assertion which I could not infer from grounds revealed in
Holy Scripture, whereas in this chapter I have drawn my principal conclusions from
basic principles known by natural reason .. . " (03 :95/S85).

7"But here, concerning miracles, since the subject of our inquiry - namely,
whether we can admit that something can happen in nature contrary to its laws or
which could be contrary to them - is plainly of a philosophical character, and I
required no such procedure" (G3:94-95/S85).
 LEEC.RICE 27

necessary for salvation; so that everyone may think as he will. s Since

Spinoza concludes that belief in miracles results from inadequate imagi-
national knowledge, his own methodology requires, not merely that he
account for its falsehood, but also that he explain its origin in the human
affects.9
It is with such an account of psychological origins that Spinoza begins.
Belief in miracles is rooted in the fact that the vulgus suppose that God's
power is most clearly displayed in events which are both unusual (by
deviating from nature's common order), and a sign of divine favor directed
at the believer. 10 This belief in turn leads to that of a dualism of potentiae
- divine and natural, the latter suspended whilst God is acting (causas
naturales tamdiu esse otiosas. quamdiu deus agit). He goes on to add that
these beliefs lead naturally to a duality between nature (whose laws are not
teleological) and a supernatural order as evidenced by miracles seen as
providential events. Such a dualism, he adds, originated with the Jews. In
refuting the beliefs of Gentiles, who were worshippers of "visible gods"
(deos visibiles, e.g., the sun, moon, water, air), they sought to prove that
these gods were weak and under the dominion of an invisible God who
directed the whole of nature for their (the Jews') benefit (G3:81-821
Sn-73)Y Note that, for Spinoza, the role of a miracle is fundamentally
teleological. At its core is God's special favor, while its nonteleological
content (definition) may vary with historical period and circumstances.
Spinoza is not claiming that the Jews believed in a natural order under the
dominion of laws of nature and in contrast with a supernatural order under

g.'Nevertheless, though I say that this is Scripture's teaching, I do not thereby

understand that Scripture enjoins this teaching as something necessary for
salvation ... " (G3 :96/S85). For the sense of 'salvation' here being employed, and
the documenta which are necessary to it, see my "Faith, Obedience, and Salvation
in Spinoza," Lyceum 6 (1994):1-20.

9This methodology (a logical account of truth juxtaposed to a psychological

account of error) is adumbrated in the preface to E3.

IO"For the common people (vulgus) think that God's power and providence
are most clearly displayed when some unusual event occurs in nature, contrary to
their habitual beliefs, especially if such an event is to their profit or advantage"
(G3 :8I1S72).

IIThis is one aspect ofSpinoza's interpretation of the 'election' of the Jews,

which he considered "une maniere de parler de la reussite temporelle momenta-
nee." See G. Brykman, "L'election et I'insoumission des Hebreux selon Spinoza,"
Spinoza: science et religion, ed. Renee Bouveresse (Paris: Vrin, 1988) p. 142.
28 PIETY, PEACE, AND THE FREEDOM TO PHILOSOPHIZE

the dominion ofthe divine will. He specifically denies in Chapter 4 that the
early Jews held any consistent beliefs concerning the natural order and its
laws. He also notes later in Chapter 6 that many of the events described as
miraculous in scripture are perfectly 'natural' events, in any sense of this
phrase, but that the sense of 'miraculous' is that they served a purpose
which was the expression of God's favor. 12 In short, the early Jews had no
concept of the supernatural because they had no consistent concept of the
natural:

Therefore there can be no doubt that all events narrated in

Scripture occurred naturally; but yet they are referred to God
since, as we have already shown, it is no part of Scripture to
explain events through natural causes (G3 :90-9 I/S78-79). 13

So the vulgus to which Spinoza refers in the opening lines of ITP 6 is not
the vulgus of his own day, for whom the notion of a miracle is understood
in opposition to the laws of nature - or at least to the nomothetic frame-
work of modem science as it was developing in Spinoza's day. The telos
or function of the miraculous remains the same, but its modem adaptation
is now to a new conceptual framework of God and nature. 14
Within this new framework Spinoza insists that no event can be
conceived to contravene (repugnare) nature in the sense that the laws of
nature are either suspended or contradicted. This claim is in fact the upshot
of his analysis of 'laws of nature' in Chapter 4, one which he insists is
consistent with (though certainly not taught by) Scripture (G3:57-601

12A good example is God's sending Saul to Samuel, related in I Sam. 9. The
manner by which Saul came to Samuel was perfectly ordinary, but it served a
providential purpose: see Chapter 6 (G3:89/S80).

13Spinoza's historico-cultural approach to biblical exegesis often permits him

to conclude only to what Scripture does not imply, rather than to any positive
interpretation. On that point, see Pierre-Fran~ois Moreau, "La methode d'inter-
pretation de I'Ecriture sainte: determintaions et limites," Spinoza: science et
religion, pp. 109-14; and "Les principes de la lecture de I'Ecriture sainte de Ie
T.T.P.," L 'Ecriture sainte au temps de Spinoza et dans /e systeme Spinoziste; also
see J.D. Jimenez "B. Spinoza (1632-1677): la religion en el Tractatus the%gico-
po/iticus (1670)," Estudios Fi/osoficas 42 (1993):503-27.

14"This notion has found such favor with humankind that they have not ceased
to this day to invent miracles with a view to convincing people that they are more
loved by God than others, and are the final cause of God's creation and continuous
direction" (G3 :82/S73).
 LEEC.RICE 29

S53-54). Spinoza devotes only two paragraphs to the claim that the concept
of the miraculous as something which contravenes the laws of nature is
inconsistent with the modem notion of divinity, but his analysis is clear and
direct. Though certainly no less adequately conceived than the notion of
friendly neighborhood divinities of earlier vulgus, divinity for the modem
vulgus is eternal (outside time) and simple (intellect and will are
identical). 15 While Zeus might well decree a law on Monday, only to decide
to violate it on Wednesday, such behavior is not part of the repertoire of the
Judeo-Christian divinity, however vulgarly conceived. That divinity is
conceived as the eternal origin of all laws of nature. By what non-temporal
mechanism could it be conceived to simultaneously or eternally will/decree
a law and its contravention?
The notion of a contravention, apart from its origins (or want of them)
in the divine intellect or will, is itself dubious. Was the parting of the Red
Sea a contravention? Of what law? The sea is parted whenever a ship
passes through it, or a fierce windstorm strikes it. If it was parted so that the
Israelites might pass through it, then something caused it to part. What was
miraculous was that this causal chain contributed to the escape of the
Israelites, but that returns us to Spinoza's first point: that the driving force
behind the miraculous is teleological. This is why, as Spinoza underlines,
the notion of the unusual has no role to play in the understanding of the
miraculous. The laws of nature describe the manner in which things must
behave; and, if they behave in ways which are unexpected to us, that is a
fact about us and not about nature itself.16 We can conclude with Spinoza
that miracles, in the sense of divine contraventions of natural laws which
are themselves of divine origin, cannot exist: such a concept is con-
tradictory. That does not mean that miracles cannot exist, but only that they
cannot do so in this sense. This is not a consequence peculiar to Spinozism,
since Spinoza claims that he is still working with a minimal (inadequate)
concept of divinity (that of the modem vulgus). So another sense of the
miraculous must be sought.
While the telos of the miraculous remains, its conceptual (descriptive)
content has changed with time and with a new and better understanding of

15This does not imply that the modem vulgus's concepts of eternity and divine
simplicity are either consistent or in accordance with Spinoza's analysis, but only
that, under the pressure of speculative theology, these concepts had evolved
considerably from any analogous concepts which Spinoza might attribute to the
early Hebrews. I am indebted for this point to Samuel Shirley.

16< •••• for the common people (vulgus) are not satisfied that they understand

something until they regard it without awe" (03:84/S75).

30 PIETY, PEACE, AND THE FREEDOM TO PHILOSOPHIZE

the world and nature. It is the explicitation of this content which Spinoza
says must first be undertaken. 17 The primary conceptual and non-
teleological component of the miraculous is that its cause cannot be
explained through natural causes; but this claim, Spinoza remarks, can be
understood in two ways: either it has natural causes which cannot be
determined by the human intellect, or that it has no cause except God or
God's will. IS
Remarking that things which happen in nature are also attributable to
God's will, we can eliminate the 'natural causality' clause : " . ..it really
reduces to this, that a miracle, whether or not it have natural causes, is an
event which cannot be explained through a cause, i.e., an event which
surpasses human understanding" (G3 :8S/S76).19The predicate, 'surpasses
human understanding', cannot be temporal here. At one time or another,
just about everything surpassed humarLunderstanding, but the miraculous
does not depend on gross stupidity (though, as Hume noted, claims of the
miraculous are often aided by it). So it must mean that such an event can
never be humanly understood. One consequence of this which Spinoza
could have drawn, but did not, is that claims to the miraculous are always
predictions about the future, and as such are enormously fallible. There
may indeed be events the very existence of which surpasses human
understanding; but, if there are, we could never have even reasonably
certain knowledge for any given event that it was a member of this class.
This sounds like one interpretation (albeit an incorrect one, as I shall
shortly suggest) ofHume's argument: it is clearly epistemic in nature,pace
Parkinson.

I7"Nothing can occur contrary to nature, which preserves an eternal, fixed,

and immutable order" (G3 :84-85/S73).

IS"This can be understood in two ways: either that it does have natural causes
which the human intellect cannot ascertain, or that it has no cause but God or
God's will" (G3:85/S76).

19The argument is valid. If we let 'n' mean that 'the event has natural causes',
'g' that it has God only as cause, and 'k' that its causes are knowable, we have:
[(n & -k) u (- n & g)]
[n :::) g]
[-n :::) -k] (unstated premise) So (-k)
And thus (-k) is the conceptual core which is sought.
 LEEC. RiCE 31

Parkinson raises an additional question worth considering: why should

we accept Spinoza' s analytic definition?20 One may counter by pointing out
that, if we are to reason about the possibility and prospect of miracles, we
must begin with some definition which is consistent and reasonably clear.
Hume begins with the unanalyzed notion of a miracle as a "violation of the
laws of nature,,,21 but Spinoza has taken pains to show that this simply will
not do. Spinoza has argued that the notion contains a contradiction even
given the ordinary notion of divinity. Were we to disagree with Spinoza's
definition, it would still hold that the notion cries out for analysis and
clarification before undertaking any examination of the possibility or
knowability of its instantiations. Spinoza offers just such an analytic
clarification: in this respect, again pace Parkinson, he is closer to us (or at
least to analytic philosophy) than was Hume, who plunged into a critique
without prior analysis of the function and meaning of the concept.
The challenge, "why should I accept your definition of the mirac-
ulous?," might of course be offered with an alternative proposal at hand.
Swinburne offers such an alternative, putatively following Aquinas's claim
that the miraculous is supra naturam:

It is indeed, Aquinas would say, contrary to the nature of the sea

that it "open up and offer a way through which people may pass,"
but its doing so at the moment of the Israelite exodus from Egypt
was part of a divine plan for the human race, and so in a sense
very much a natural event. 22

If the notion of what is 'contrary to nature' in this sense determines the

miraculous, then the Panama Canal would have to be counted as an even
greater miracle: the issue here, as Spinoza has noted, is not what happened
but rather the (causal) explanation of it. Remarks about the divine plan are
here irrelevant: though Spinoza would agree with them, they form the
teleological core of the miraculous rather than its causal or descriptive

20<'Spinoza on Miracles and Natural Law," pp. 151-52.

21David Hume, Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding and Con-

cerning the Principles ofMorals, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1902 [2nd editionD.

22The Concept ofMiracle, p. 9.

32 PIETY, PEACE, AND THE FREEDOM TO PHILOSOPHIZE

core. 23 Miracles in the sense of what is contrary to the nature of this or that
object (the sea, the air, the land) are commonplace events, since nature is
full of objects, and the laws of nature are no less full of ceteris paribus
clauses. I conclude that Swinburne's alternative to Spinoza does not
succeed, since no definition is in fact provided which is even minimally
coextensive with the class of miracles as commonly understood (by any
vulgus at any time).
In a personal communication, Samuel Shirley calls into question my
suggestion that the validity of Spinoza's arguments depends upon his
distinguishing between "two kinds ofvulgus.,,24 To this point I would reply
that Spinoza need not distinguish between kinds so much as between the
types of belief which form the basis of the superstition with which he
customarily describes the vulgus. While we have seen that Spinoza denies
that the early Hebrews had any firm conception of a distinction between
natural and supernatural orders (except perhaps in the order of teleology),
their concept of a personal and judicial godhead certainly lies at the root of
such a notion. But I follow Koyre and other historians of science in
believing that the scientific revolution, in its first centenary as Spinoza
writes the TTP, had its effects upon the socio-cultural notions of a 'natural
order'. If anything, these effects exacerbated the force of the distinction.
What characterizes the body of beliefs attributed to the vulgus cannot,
therefore, be static; but whether the differences are those of kind or of
degree does not greatly effect my analysis.
If causality, or the lack of it or the lack of our understanding of it, is
at the core of the notion of the miraculous, then the occurrence of a miracle
should tell us something about causality, or at least about our knowledge
of it; and it is to this problem, the next enumerated by Spinoza as well, that
I now turn.

23It does not follow from the statement that events are described tele-
ologically,pace Bennett, that Spinoza is a closet teleologist; but rather simply that
teleological descriptions (which are never explanations) are eliminable in favor of
causal ones. See my "Spinoza, Bennett, and Teleology," Southern Journal of
Philosophy 23 (1985):241-53 .

24"For my part, I do not see how people can live - that is, deal with their
environment - without some conception, however dim, of the regularity ofNature.
No doubt this vague expectation of regularity had developed into something more
like the 'nomothetic framework of science' in Spinoza's time. But, given the
difference of cultural environment, I do not see that the gulf between the two
conceptual attitudes is as great as you depict."
 LEEC. RICE 33

III. The Epistemic Argument

I begin by agreeing with Curley that Spinoza's notion of explanation is

unabashedly a Hempelian cover-law model. 25 The explanans of an event is
a set containing its temporal antecedents (which Spinoza calls 'proximate
causes') and a nontemporal causal law, from which the explanandum is
deducible. Parkinson expends several pages bemoaning the fact that
Spinoza's detenninism does not fit our contemporary science, but most of
his discussion misses the mark. 26 Popper's account offalsification, cited by
Parkinson as a counterexample to Spinoza,27 deals with hypothesis for-
mation and testing and has nothing to do with detenninism. And even if we
conceive the laws of nature as stochastic in fonn (contrary to Spinoza), then
the cover-laws in question will be stochastic, but no less causal for all of
that. So the issue of detenninism here is a red herring. The prevalence of
explicari in Spinoza's analysis of the miraculous makes it clear that he sees
the issue as primarily one of knowledge or belief; and my analysis of his
arguments in the preceding section suggests that he is correct.
We can return to the disjunction utilized by Spinoza to conclude that
the question of knowledge is critical. Ifwe select an arbitrary event tagged
as miraculous and ask for an explanation of it, Spinoza's originating
disjunction ('either it has unknowable natural causes or owns only God as
its cause') gives us two mutually disjoint possibilities:

I. There is a causal explanation, but we cannot know it; or

2. God caused it directly.

25See E.M. Curley, Spinoza's Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969) pp. 50-55. This model is often
referenced as the 'causal model' . Iwould argue that Hempel provides necessary,
but not sufficient, conditions to meet Spinoza's requirement that explanation be
causal. In agreeing with Curley that the model is Hempelian, I am not agreeing with
his particular reading of Spinoza's 'attributes' as cover-laws: see Spinoza's
Metaphysics, pp. 55-60. For details of Hempel's analysis, see his Aspects of
Scientific Explanation (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins Company, 1948) pp.
135-75. For the argument against Hempel's analysis providing sufficient
conditions, see Baruch Brody "Towards an Aristotelian Theory of Scientific
Explanation," Philosophy ofScience 39 (1972):20-31.

26"Spinoza on Miracles and Natural Law," pp. 154-57.

27Ibid., p. 157.
34 PIETY, PEACE, AND THE FREEDOM TO PHILOSOPHIZE

The first of these can actually be expanded into three cases: (i) We know
the causal chain, but can never know the cover-law; (ii) We know the
cover-law, but can never know the causal-chain; or (iii) We can know
neither the cover-law nor the causal chain. The distinction among these
cases is not germane to my discussion: for any of the three we lack an
explanation (now and forever).
The second disjunct is a bit stickier, since it looks as though some sort
of explanation were being provided. The causal chain is just the set of
{events, God} which is antecedent to the miracle, and we could surely
paste together some nomological claim about the divine will. The problem,
of course, is that 'God caused it' is very much like 'it's magic' - neither
claim provides an explanation because neither provides a cause in any
recognizable sense of that term. It might be claimed, of course, that gods
are always causing all sorts of things in all sorts of religious contexts; and,
of course, Spinoza speaks of divine causality in both the TTP and the
Ethics. But Spinoza's divine causality is immanent, and prospects the very
natural laws knowledge of which is here said to be irrevocably wanting: a
transcendental causality on the part of a being lying outside the causal order
of nature provides no such intelligible 'hook' on which explanations could
be anchored. 28
We can give the above point a Humean or Kantian flavor. Ifthere were
a direct divine causality which did not operate through the medium of
natural causes, we would by definition have no experience of it; and the
ascription of 'causality' to such an event would lack any cognitive mean-
ing. Our experience, and thus our knowledge, of causality is tied to causal
chains operating within nature and causal laws which tell us how these
chains operate. Describing the event as having 'supernatural' causality is
empty:

And at this point I do not acknowledge any difference between an

event contrary to nature and one above it ... For since a miracle
occurs not externally to nature but within it .. . it must necessarily
interrupt nature's order which otherwise we would conceive as
fixed and immutable by God's decrees (G3:86/S77).

28See M. Walther, "Spinoza's Critique of Miracles: A Miracle of Criticism?"

Spinoza: The Enduring Questions, ed. Graeme Hunter (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1994) p.IO?: "For, if for some event no determinate cause can be
given, that event is unexplained. To trace it back to a direct act of God does not
change its status, for that in no way increases our understanding of the event's
constitutive conditions."
 LEEC. RICE 35

The epistemic consequence is immediate: a miracle could not provide

knowledge of God 's existence.29 Setting aside the prospect of some friendly
neighborhood divinity operating within nature, the miraculous offers no
ticket to knowledge of the divine.
The above argument may appear to have missed a central point: the
believer in miracles already accepts the existence of a deity, so the claim
to the miraculous, while it may not buttress any such existential claim, can
at least tell us something about a god whose existence is already in some
sense 'given' (in Spinoza's terminology, its essence). Spinoza deals with
this question by appealing to the identity of its existence with the divine
essence; but one might claim that such an identity, or at least the manner in
which it is here being understood, is indigenous to Spinozism rather than
to a more general web of belief which might incorporate miracles as a
component.
But what sort of knowledge could be derived from a statement of the
miraculous of the type we are considering? The event has God as its cause,
and no known (or knowable) causal law which explains the relation
between cause and effect. As Spinoza notes in Chapter 6, "the most we
could conclude is the existence of a cause whose power is greater than that
effect" (G3:86/S77): so we are back again to the friendly neighborhood
divinities. In short we have an event, the absence of any causal law, and a
claim that this event is caused by something in a sense of causality of which
we can have no possible experience. So we have no knowledge of divine
properties as such, nor any adequate grasp of the divine nature. What about
a lelos - could we at the least conclude to an expression of favor, by
means we cannot understand and through a causality which is beyond
experience? As easy to conclude would be that the divinity has a sense of
humor, or hidden purposes which, like the causality itself, lies wholly
outside the scope of our knowledge. The derivation of purposes from
behavior whose explanation is in principle inaccessible is a tenuous
procedure: where explanation is in principle wanting, talk of purpose is in
fact empty.
The situation is, however, even worse than this: as Spinoza notes, not
only would the miraculous (that which is above knowledge) provide no
knowledge of the godhead, but it would decrement what little knowledge
we have of it. By casting doubt on the uniformity of causal laws, such a
belief reduces also our knowledge of nature, and with it our knowledge of
nature's god (G3:86/S77). Spinoza generalizes these consequences further

29"For because a miracle is an event of limited nature, expressing a power

which is never other than fixed and limited, we could not possibly conclude from
such an effect the existence of a cause whose power is infinite" (G3 :86/S79).
36 PIETY, PEACE, AND THE FREEDOM TO PHILOSOPHIZE

by claiming that they would lead naturally to atheism (Le., universal

scepticism). Had he lived to read Hume, he could certainly have cited him
as an example. 30
The balance of Chapter 6 is devoted to a discussion of biblical
narratives ofthe miraculous, with which Spinoza concludes that his account
of miracles is consistent (neither a consequence of them nor a belief
required for salvation, as we have seen earlier), and need not detain us.
Before proceeding into that topic, however, Spinoza provides a brief
summary of his findings:

I think that I have now established my second point on firm

footing, from which we may again reach the conclusion that a
miracle, either contrary to nature or above nature, is mere absur-
dity; and therefore that a miracle in scripture can mean nothing
else (as we have said) but a natural event which surpasses, or is
believed to surpass, human understanding (G3:86/S77).

Of the three possible meanings for the miraculous, Spinoza has eliminated
two as inconsistent (the miraculous in these senses cannot exist: an
ontological conclusion), the third as correct. In this third sense miracles can
exist, but their epistemic pedigree is almost nugatory: for any given event,
the claim that it is a miracle is a prediction about future knowledge (very
likely to be false), and if true it could provide no knowledge of the nature
of its cause, and could equally threaten to undermine our understanding of
nature itself (and, with it, of the divine).
There is, of course, more to Spinoza's strictures on the miraculous
than has been presented here; for his rejection of teleology implies not only
a limitation on our descriptive knowledge of the miraculous, but also upon
the very notion of divine purpose which (as we have seen) he finds at its
core. 31 The belief that God acts purposively with ends in view and takes
appropriate means to achieve them as a favor to human beings is the
superstition which lies at the root of the belief in the supernatural itself. For

lOA more detailed analysis ofSpinoza's argument that beliefin miracles leads
logically to atheism is given by Walther, see "Spinoza's Critique of Miracles: A
Miracle of Criticism?" p. 107.

l'Bennett and others have claimed that there is a teleology at work in Spinoza.
I disagree with this analysis; but, even if it were true, it would not be relevant to the
kind of divine purpose supposedly at work in the miraculous (which Spinoza
clearly does reject in the Ethics and other writings, including the IT?). For more
details, see my "Spinoza, Bennett, and Teleology."
 LEEC. RICE 37

this reason Spinoza rejects petitionary prayer, speaking of those who

"mistaking superstition for religion, account it impious not to avert evil
with prayer and sacrifice" (G3:S/SI). Van Velthuysen writes to Ostens in
1671 that "the vulgus attribute miracles to the power of prayer and the
special direction of God, when, following some duly conceived prayers,
some imminent evil appears to have been averted or some sought good
appears to have been obtained"; and claims that Spinoza believes quite
otherwise. 32
In following the threads ofSpinoza's analysis and arguments, I have
been assuming that these say what Spinoza intends them to say, and that his
remarks on natural laws are of a piece with the more detailed metaphysical
exposition provided in the Ethics. In this I follow Curley, who argues that
the doctrines of the two works are overall consistent. 33 Against this inter-
pretive posture stands the Strauss ian claim of an esoteric doctrine,

32See Epistle 42, The Letters, trans. Samuel Shirley with introduction and
notes by Steven Barbone, Lee C. Rice, and Jacob Adler (Indianapolis and
Cambridge: Hackett, 1995) p. 225-236, especially p. 229. Van Velthuysen's
understanding of Spinoza's analysis of miracles differs structurally from the
analysis which I have offered. See our notes to Epistle 42; and also further
information on van Velthuysen (The Letters, pp. 33-39). Spinoza's attitude toward
non-petitionary prayer is less negative. See Epistle 21, where he writes to
Blijenbergh: "I do not deny the utility of prayer to us, for my intellect is too small
to determine all the means by which God leads men to the love of him, that is, to
salvation" (The Letters, pp. 151-58; and see our notes on pp. 22-25). On the
reactions of Spinoza's contemporaries to these elements of his interpretation of
Christianity, see M. Revault d' Allones, "Spinoza et Ie 'crise' du Theologico-
politique," Le religieux dans Ie politique: Ie genre humain (Paris: Seuil, 1991); M.
Benitez, "Du bon usage du Tractatus Theologico-Politicus : la religion du
Chretien," ed. O. Bloch, Spinoza au XVlIe siecle (Paris, Meridiens Klinksieck,
1990); c. Hubert, Les premieres refutations de Spinoza: Aubert de Verse, Wittich,
Lamy. Groupe de recherches Spinozistes: travaux et documents 5 (Paris: Presses
de l' Universite de Paris-Sorbonne, 1995); and R. Popkin, "The First Published
Discussion of a Central Theme in Spinoza's Tractatus ," Philosophia 17
(1987): 101-1 09.

33ln fact, Curley argues that the ITP itself constitutes an introduction to the
Ethics and its more detailed metaphysical exposition, see "Notes on a Neglected
Masterpiece II: The Theologico-Political Treatise as a Prolegemenon to the
Ethics," Central Themes in Early Modern Philosophy, eds. J. Cover and M.
Kulstad (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1990) pp. 109-59.
38 PIETY, PEACE, AND THE FREEDOM TO PHILOSOPHIZE

criticized globally by several recent authors. 34 In this implicit renunciation

of a Strauss ian approach, I am following Zac/ 5 who attempts a more
thoroughgoing analysis of the structure of the ITP than I can offer or
defend here. My analysis cannot determine the issue in the general case,
since it is restricted only to Chapter 6; and much of Strauss's interpretation
depends upon a structural analysis of the entire work. 36 I am able here only
to conclude that the Straussian methodology has no plausible justificatory
basis within Chapter 6.
How different is Spinoza's analysis, regardless of differences of style,
from what Hume offers? It is to that question which I turn in closing.

IV. Hume's Causal Analysis

Hume divides his discussion of miracles in the Enquiry into two parts, the
first usually called 'a priori' and the second 'a posteriori' by the com-
mentators. It is the first or a priori argument only which interests me here.
Hume claims that he has discovered an argument which "will, with the wise
and just, be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and

34See E.E. Harris's "Is There an Esoteric Doctrine in the Tractatus

Theologico-Politicus?" Mededelingen Vanwege het Spinozahuis 38 (Leiden: E.1.
Brill, 1978), which directs its critique at the text of Strauss. A more detailed
presentation of the methodological flaws in Strauss is provided by J. Moutaux,
"Exoterisme et philosophie: Leo Strauss et I'interpretation du Traite theologico-
politique," Spinoza au AXe siec/e, ed. O.Bloch (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1993).

35See S. Zac, Spinoza et I'interpretation de I'Ecriture (Paris: Presses

Universitaires de France, 1965), which offers a structural analysis of the rTP, but
deals only in passing with Chapter 6. Zac's negative evaluation of Strauss is found
on pp. 222-30.

36See Strauss' s "Comment lire Ie Traite theologico-politique de Spinoza," pp.

192-200. The only French interpreter who appears reliant on Strauss's structural
analysis is Tosel, though Tosel's Marxist interpretation differs in many details from
Strauss. For a general statement of methodology, see especially A. Tosel, Du
materialisme de Spinoza (Paris: Editions Kime, 1994) pp. 17-36. That study and
another by Tosel, Spinoza ou fe crepuscufe de fa servitude (Paris: Aubier, 1984),
are developed from his doctoral dissertation, Religion, politique, phifosophie chez
Spinoza (unpublished), Universite de Paris I-Sorbonne, 20 March 1982. Tosel, like
Strauss, devotes little attention to Chapter 6 of the rTP.
 LEEC. RICE 39

consequently, will be useful as long as the world endures.'m A fundamental

key to experience, he goes on to explain, lies in the recognition of
regularities in the world; and, with respect to these, some events follow
with more certainty than others. Through experience of these, the wise
discern a constant conjunction of events, and from this they infer that such
events will always occur pairwise, i.e., that there is a necessary connection
between them. When we receive testimony concerning the extraordinary or
the marvelous, our lack of experience of a relevant connection mitigates the
evidence of the testimony. In short, we have more experience of false
testimony than we do of the occurrence of events of extremely low
probability; so that our experience always rejects the latter and infers the
former.The case, he goes on to explain, is much worse for the miraculous:

But in order to increase the probability against the testimony of

witnesses, let us suppose that the fact, which they affirm, instead
of being only marvelous, is really miraculous; and suppose also
that the testimony, considered apart and in itself, amounts to an
entire proof; in that case, there is proof against proof, of which
the strongest must prevail. .. A miracle is a violation of the laws
of nature; and, as a firm and inalterable experience has
established these laws, the proof against any miracle, for the very
nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience
can possibly be imagined (Enquiries, p. 114).

What Fogelin calls the traditional interpretation of this passage claims that,
while Hume does not offer an argument whose intent was to demonstrate
the impossibility of miracles, he does intend to show that no evidence or
testimony, regardless of its strength, could ever make the report of a
miracle credible. 38In rejecting the first of these claims, Fogelin relies
heavily on Hume's summary of the argument:

There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against every

miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that
appellation. And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof,
there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact,
against the existence of any miracle; nor can such a proof be

J7D. Hume, Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding and Concerning

the Principles of Morals, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902)
p. 110. It is to this edition of the Enquiries that further references will be made.

38RJ. Fogelin, "What Hume Actually Said about Miracles," p. 82.

40 PIETY, PEACE, AND THE FREEDOM TO PHILOSOPHIZE

destroyed or the miracle rendered credible, but by an opposite

proof which is superior (Enquiries, p. II5)?9

Fogelin argues that the first part of this text purports to offer a proof against
the existence of miracles, whereas the second (beginning with "nor can ... ")
offers a proof against the credibility of any counterargument (based on
testimony of witnesses) to it.
Fogelin's reading ofHume's argument(s) seems both straightforward
and clear. The existence-claim is clearly ontological, the second argument
clearly epistemic in nature. Within Hume's system, of course, ontological
claims do tend to reduce to epistemic ones, so that a negative epistemic
result (as above) would also yield a negative ontological one. But Hume
does not here use this consideration to reinforce the logic of the first
argument, though some interpreters have done so. It is to this sort of
interpretation that Parkinson alludes when he claims that it is the uniformly
epistemic nature of Hume's argument which has made it more interesting
to contemporary commentators than the ontological character of Spinoza' s
argument. In Spinoza's system, the order of dependence is often contrary
to that of Hume, since for Spinoza epistemic claims often reduce to
ontological ones. In any case, I have already indicated that there is an
epistemic argument also in Spinoza, disregarded by Parkinson. I shall now
suggest that Fogelin is correct and Parkinson incorrect in their readings of
Hume; and that there is an ontological argument there as well. 40
Antony Flew, arguing against Fogelin, offers the most recent defense
of the epistemic interpretation. He argues that all Hume intends to do in the
entire discussion of the miraculous is to place an "everlasting check [on] all
kinds of superstitious delusion" (Enquiries, p. 110), and thus to instill
systematic scepticism:

The first thing which we need to recall is that Hume certainly

does not present, and in consistency could not present, what is
the most obvious a priori argument to show that miracles,

39The emphasis is taken from Fogelin (ibid., p. 82). I am indebted to an

unpublished paper by William Innis in my discussion of the dispute between
Fogelin and Flew.

4°lndeed, the ontological version of the argument in Hume is more

rationalistic than in Spinoza. See J-M. Gabaude, "Critique rationaliste de la religion
dans Ie Tractatus the%gico-politicus," Le dialogue humaniste, ed. Y. Gauthier
(Montreal: Les Presses de I'Universite de Montreal, 1993).
 LEEC. RICE 41

defined as supernatural overridings of the order of nature, must

be (naturally and physically) impossible. 41

As Flew's analysis goes on to indicate, it is the consistency argument which

is fundamental. Flew is deriving an 'is' from an 'ought': Hume is not read
as offering an ontological claim because he ought not to do so on his own
principles. Why not? - because Flew denies that for Hume one can isolate
any necessary connections between events in nature, so that such
connections always reduce to inferences of the mind based on habit. 42 But
this will not do. Hume's analysis of the notion of necessary connection is
designed to show its nature and limitations (in experience), but assuredly
not to deny its legitimacy in our understanding of nature. When Hume
encounters 'exceptions' to well-entrenched natural laws, he does not
dismiss the laws (using the sort of Popperian falsificationism embraced by
Parkinson), but rather assumes that there must be a "secret operation of
contrary causes" at work (Enquiries, p. 87). This is little different in
principle, and in no way different in practice, from Spinoza's willingness
to tamper with ceteris paribus clauses in his own explanation of the
miraculous: I should hasten to add that it is also perfectly sound scientific
method. Despite the epistemic nature of his discussion of causality, Hume
does not rule out physical impossibility (as Flew seems to suggest that he
must), and his discussion, "Of Liberty and Necessity," in the Enquiries
makes this abundantly clear (see pp. 80-103).
The traditional or epistemic interpretation ofHume' s argument against
miracles flies not only in the face of the most straightforward reading of his
discussion, but also ignores the strength which Hume imports to his own
remarks throughout: when he speaks of a "direct and full proof... against
the existence of any miracle," for example, the very tone of his remark
weighs heavily against the traditional reading. Boss sees the same moti-
vation operative in both Hume and Spinoza in their arguments against
miracles, insofar as the existence of the miraculous threatens the very
framework of necessity upon which our understanding of nature itself is
based:

Le raisonnement de Hume met en parallele la causalite psychique

et la physique. II montre que nous n'avons aucune raison de

4lFlew, "Fogelin on Hume on Miracles," p. 141.

42Ibid., pp. 141-42.

42 PIETY, PEACE, AND THE FREEDOM TO PHILOSOPHIZE

refuser Ie determinisme dans les actions de I'homme que nous ne

puissions avancer aussi pour refuter Ie determinisme naturel. 43

In this respect Hume's argument, far from offering an alternative to

Spinoza's approach, parallels it quite closely. In three other respects, how-
ever, their approaches differ quite fundamentally; and it is to the superiority
of these in Spinoza which I should like to turn in closing.
In criticizing Hume' s implicit definition of the miraculous, Swinburne
notes that if a god were to intervene in the natural order to make a feather
land here rather than there, or to upset a child's box of toys only for spite,
we should not naturally describe such an event as a miracle. 44 To be a
miracle, he adds, an event must contribute significantly toward an holy and
divine purpose which God has for the world. In characterizing the mi-
raculous in terms of the events which such a description encompasses,
rather than in terms of the purpose for which such a concept is to serve,
Hume has ignored the teleological component of the miraculous. It is
precisely this component with which Spinoza begins his own discussion,
arguing that the descriptive meaning could and does shift with different
views of nature precisely because of the stability of the teleological
component. Here we see Spinoza the psychologist at work: an under-
standing of the role which a concept plays in the cultures where it evolves
is a necessary propaedeutic to any conceptual analysis of its meaning or
truth. This is, of course, the basic principle with which Spinoza approaches
Scriptural texts in general. Hume pays little attention to the functional
components of the notion. 45
Spinoza's willingness to revise or redefine the concept of the mi-
raculous follows from the above preoccupations. The very argument which
Hume uses to reject the existence of miracles is, as we saw, one component
of Spinoza' s argument for redefining the concept - or at least for repos-
itioning it in relationship to a modern concept of natural laws which he
believes (correctly) to be a part of his culture but absent from that of the
early Jews. This one might describe as the analytic moment in Spinoza's
discussion: before rejecting a concept straightaway, examine its function

43Boss, La difference des philosophies: Hume et Spinoza, 1:284.

44S winburne, The Concept ofMiracle, p. 8.

45It is just this aspect of Hume's virtually stipulative definition of the

miraculous upon which B.F. Armstrong centers in concluding that Hume's argu-
ment is ultimately question-begging: see "Hume on Miracles:Begging-the-Question
Against Believers," History of Philosophy Quarterly 9 (1992):319-28.
 LEEC. RICE 43

and determine the possible cluster of meanings which it may have. It would
appear to me that, contrary to Parkinson, this approach more nearly
approaches our contemporary model of philosophical analysis than does
that of Hume.
In his analysis of Spinoza's critique of the miraculous, Walther sug-
gests that Spinoza's approach differs from Hume in yet another manner. 46
In an important sense, Spinoza creates in Chapter 6 the paradigm which
both modern and liberal theology was to follow. The hermeneutics of this
paradigm begins with 'form criticism' but its logical progeny extends even
to the 'theology of demythologization'. Implicit in Spinoza's analysis
throughout the opening chapters of the lTP is the distinction between the
religious (practical) sense of biblical texts and the historically contingent
resources of self-expression available to their narrators, and a critique of
the tendency to convert these contingencies dogmatically into teachings of
theoretical relevance at the expense of their kerygmatic content.
Finally, perhaps most importantly, whatever Spinoza's disagreements
with the purported cognitive deliveries of revealed religion (and they are
many), his attitude throughout his writings, and particularly in the lTP,
makes it clear that he sees religion as a natural outgrowth of human
development and as a necessary component of our experience of the world
(an experience no less affective than cognitive). Compare the tone of his
entire analysis with Hume's closing remark on miracles:

So that, upon the whole, we may conclude, that the Christian

Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at
this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without
one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity:
And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a
continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the
principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to
believe what is most contrary to custom and experience
(Enquiries, p. 131).

Spinoza, of course, does not share Hume's proclivity for literary cuteness;
but, questions of style aside, Hume's analysis remains logically and
culturally detached from the religious experience which lies at the root of
the miraculous. However much Spinoza may qualify or deny the cognitive
pretensions of such an experience, his method requires that he see both the

46See Walther, "Spinoza's Critique of Miracles: A Miracle of Criticism?" pp.

110-11.
44 PIETY, PEACE, AND THE FREEDOM TO PHILOSOPHIZE

experience and its pretensions as arising from the very laws of nature to
which Hume sees it as in some sense contrary. In trying to clarify Spinoza's
understanding of miracles, both in its similarities and dissimilarities with
that of Hume, I am suggesting that the contemporary disregard of his
discussion is not justifiable, and that many elements of his analysis are both
cogent and contemporary.