Spinoza's Christian Writings and Thinking

The assembling and study of a Corpus of Spinoza's Christian writing and thinking produces a paradigmatic shift in understanding Spinoza's life's purpose, and the intended purpose of his life's work. Spinoza undertook to correct the degeneration of the "old Religion", which Spinoza identifies as the Christian religion taught through the stories of Christ written in scripture. Much more importantly Spinoza recognized that the old Religion is actually present in the very nature of people...
More Description

The assembling and study of a Corpus of Spinoza's Christian writing and thinking produces a paradigmatic shift in understanding Spinoza's life's purpose, and the intended purpose of his life's work. Spinoza undertook to correct the degeneration of the "old Religion", which Spinoza identifies as the Christian religion taught through the stories of Christ written in scripture. Much more importantly Spinoza recognized that the old Religion is actually present in the very nature of people inscribed in them by the spirit of Christ. Using that illumination he provides both a critique the deterioration of the old Religion and more significantly a method or way to rejuvenate the practice of Christian religion. Consequently, he became a veritable, rejected and offensive anathema of a 'voice crying in the wilderness', in Europe's 17th and 18th century post-reformation landscape of both Christian and Jewish establishment churches. Of people identified as radical Protestants, Spinoza it seems was the most sophisticated and most radical. Many of the radical Protestant movements retained or developed practices that over time became acceptable to the mainstream churches. This has yet to happen to Spinoza's work as a Christian philosopher and theologian of the radical Christian kind. This booklet is an exegesis of some specific critical texts from Spinoza's works that reference: the spirit of Christ, Christ according to the spirit, the mind of Christ, Christ, and rebirth or second birth. The texts are quoted in the main body of the article. Comments and other references are footnoted. The booklet is meant for study more so than for reading, therefore a copy of the texts without the comment is included.