Discussing Spanozian Pantheism possibly reconciled with Christianity

The Possibility of a Spinozian Christianity

Baruch Spinoza writes to prove a total pantheism in which God is the universe. His argument attempts to eliminate a supernatural creator of the world, and instead assert that the universe results from God’s necessary principles, manifested in cause and effect. This eliminates the possibility of anthropomorphizing God, and destroys the notion of worship. However, I will argue that Spinoza’s scheme leaves room for the possibility of a special mode which operates as the more traditional sense of “God,” and that this special mode is not only compatible with Spinoza’s overall argument, but also with the Christian worldview, as well as other religions which anthropomorphize God.
These are the premises of Spinoza’s argument. First, he argues that two separate substances can have no attributes in common. This is because he defines a substance as that which can be thought of on its own: “each substance must be in itself and be conceived through itself; that is, the conception of the one does not involve the conception of the other” (Spinoza 32). Take, for example, an ice cube. What makes it a separate substance (we will see this is wrong, but for the sake of argument) is the fact that it can be imagined as existing with nothing else in the universe. However, if two objects share an attribute, then to imagine one object a person must also imagine the other object sharing that attribute. As a result, these two objects are actually one substance, because if they were two they would not share any attributes.
Furthermore, separate substances can have no interaction. This follows from the fact that if there are to be really two substances, they could have nothing in common, and for if there were anything in common they would share an attribute. It is only by sharing this common attribute that one can affect the other; but if they are separate attributes they can have nothing common between them Therefore, there can be no interaction between separate substances. One can think of here the problem of Descartes’ substance dualism. If the mind is really distinct from the body, many materialists argue, then how can it affect the body? The mind/body problem thus becomes a great example of the sort of strange incomprehensibility in the idea of two separate substances interacting.
Spinoza continues on to argue that there can only be a single substance in the universe, since there can not be multiple substances of the same attribute (you could not tell them apart) and one substance cannot create another substance (after all, creation is interaction of a sort, and one substance creating another would be interaction. But interaction between separate substances has been disproven) ( 33). Spinoza argues that by substance, we mean that which exists, and therefore substances must exist. And he argues that the substance would have to be infinite, for if a substance is to be somehow limited it would have to be by another substance. But since separate substances cannot interact, all substances must be infinite, and since there is only one substance, it must be an infinite one.
Traditionally, God has been defined by Medievalists as an infinite substance possessing the greatest attributes. As has been argued above, from Spinoza, the one substance is infinite, and since it is the only substance, it must necessarily possess all attributes in the universe, since there are no substances to hold other attributes. This definition of substance is the same definition of God. Therefore, substance is God, and God is the universe. Stated another way, God is the infinite substance of the universe which possesses all possible attributes.
The question, of course, is how the universe looks so complicated if there is only one substance. He begins to answer this by positing that the infinite substance of God has all attributes. His next step is to explain that there are, in a sense, two levels to the attributes of God. There is first the basic, eternal nature of God which never changes, and which underlies the entire universe. “All things, I repeat, are in God, and all things that follow from the necessity of his essence (as I shall later show)” (43). There are then the laws of cause and effect, which come from God’s second level, the necessity of cause and effect: “From the necessity of the divine nature there must follow infinite things in infinite ways (modis), (that is, everything that can come within the scope of infinite intellect).” So there is the highest level of necessity, where attributes of God cannot change. Then there are secondary attributes of God, modes, which change and manifest every possible thought of the “infinite intellect.” All of these modes are the single substance, but they are simply shaped, one could say, in a different way. So God is everything in the universe; each mode is part of the same substance, manifesting a different set of secondary attributes. This is, as I understand it, Baruch Spinoza’s pantheism.
Importantly, during all of this Spinoza is dismissing the idea of a supernatural being which can change the flow of cause and effect. After all, if God is the universe, then it does not make sense to think of God as poking the universe with his divine power. God does not cause the earth to rotate; the earth is part of God, and that part of God must necessarily rotate. This calls into question the Medieval assumption that God orders the universe: “Indeed, they hold it as certain that God himself directs everything to a fixed end; for they say that God has made everything for man’s sake and has made man so that he should worship God” (57). It does not make sense, according to Spinoza, to anthropomorphize God as actively ordering the universe in a Leibnizian way, because God simply is God, and if the universe is God, then God does not need to change the universe; in fact, God cannot change the universe. All God does is be the infinite substance, the eternal qualities which manifest as temporal modes.
There is a second reason why anthropomorphizing no longer makes sense in Spinoza’s world view. Humans are only one possible mode of God; there is an infinite possibility of other modes. Humanity is not an essential attribute of God, but only a secondary, temporal mode. It would then be wrong to ascribe human traits to God because the only part of God that is human is humanity itself. It would be like describing an entire car in terms of its steering wheel, and whenever a new part of the car is discussed, one tries to use terms which arise from studying the steering wheel, or depicting the car itself as one large steering wheel. This obviously makes no sense. Similarly, describing humanity does not describe many other possible modes of God, and it also does not describe the eternal, essential, necessary attributes of God. For these two reasons, God as Spinoza defines it should not be anthropomorphized.
However, Spinoza overlooks a possibility which his system could allow for: God is not the eternal attributes, but could be a special mode which shapes the substance into other modes. This argument could defend any version of theism, from monotheistic traditions to polytheistic ones. Zeus, Odin, and Thor could be especially juiced up modes which are filled with more attributes of greatness, power, and temporal existence than other modes. It seems logically possible, at least, that the essential attributes could somehow manifest themselves into such modes, which are greater than ordinary modes. Perhaps this is all that could be meant by the word “god”: modes which are notably more powerful or influential than ordinary modes. After all, the heat of the sun is simply a greater mode of fire than the heat in my electric fireplace. I can imagine quite easily a humanlike mode which is vastly more powerful than the ordinary human mode, and could in fact imagine that mode desiring to hurt me, protect me, save me, etc.
Of all religions, this is especially compatible with Hinduism. Hinduism, as taught in the Upanishads, teaches that there are many gods which are actually manifestations of the essential powerhouse of the universe, Brahma. Shiva, Vishnu, Krishna and so forth are indeed gods; they are modes of Brahma that proceed out of, and yet are a piece of, that energy source. Similar ideas could be applied to paganism, to the Greek, Norse, or Roman pantheons.
In a moment, I will turn to discussing this idea in terms of Christianity. First, I want to mention the fact that Spinoza attempts to give no account of how the eternal attributes of God are moved into modes. In other words, why is it that the substance of God starts a chain of cause and effect which manifests itself in different temporal modes? A possible answer is that within the substance, there was a mode that already existed. This could be a sort of special mode, which began the chain of cause and effect, and perhaps has the power to interact with those modes later on. This special mode would be very different from the other modes. First of all, to explain its uniqueness, it would have to be the first mode to exist, and would have to exist forever, in order to actively create new modes out of its substance. This would not necessarily have to be eternal existence. Medievalists make a distinction between eternal and everlasting. Eternal is always existing because it is outside of time; everlasting is always existing, but within time. Perhaps this special mode which causes and interacts with the lesser modes is such a thing. It could be a mode which always existed, always manifested its attributes, but also has temporal existence.
We don’t have to stop here in describing this possible mode. Not only could it be an everlasting mode, it could be the best mode. Like with the sun and the fireplace example, which are according to Spinoza modes, I can imagine modes having degrees of goodness, power, and so forth. If that is the case, I can also imagine a “best” mode of the eternal substance. I can imagine a mode which has always existed, a mode which is stronger than all other modes, a mode which is smarter than all others, and in general has more and better perfections than any other modes. These could all be secondary attributes, manifesting out of the essential attributes into this imaginable “best” mode.
This can perhaps reinstate the traditional notion of God, though in a pantheist sense. What we mean by God could be the best mode of a single substance, and we are modes of the same substance, but simply manifested at a lower level of greatness. We are lesser because unlike this initial mode, we do not have the secondary attribute of being everlasting, nor that of omnipotence, omniscience, and the rest.
This could reinstate many of the traditional conceptions of God which Spinoza had first rejected. Spinoza admits that when we have the mode of God food, we are thankful that this mode of God is here for our advantage. To a greater degree, we are thankful for the mode of God we call the sun, because that mode is even more to our advantage than any food in particular. So the more good a mode does for us, the more thankful we are that God manifests in this way.
But it is possible that this special, initial mode, what I will call the Demiurge, to take a term from Plato, could be responsible for the existence of all other modes. It is a principle of logic that one thing which causes another is at least equal to, and is probably greater than, what it produces. So if a tree, a mode of God, produces a seed, also a mode of God, that seed is a lesser mode of God. In a sense, the seed owes its existence to the tree. Ultimately they both owe their existence to the essential attributes of God, but the seed seems to be also dependent upon the tree. Similarly, one can think of the Demiurge as the first, everlasting tree of God’s essential attributes, which produces the cause and effect “seeds” of the universe. It is, at the very least, logically possible that, within Spinoza’s system, such a mode as the Demiurge exists. Like the first tree, this Demiurge would be a greater mode than all modes which proceed it, and in fact, if it is the first and greatest of the modes, then the universe could in fact depend on it in a causal sense. The essential attributes of God, the essential attributes of the one substance, would still be more essential than the Demiurge, but just as the tree is essential to the seed, so the Demiurge could be essential to the universe in terms of causal necessity.
In effect, the theory of a Spinozian Demiurge saves Christianity, while retaining Spinoza’s pantheism. It is possible that the Yahweh, or Jehovah, is the Spinozian Demiurge of the Scriptures. After all, it says “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” There is nothing stating either way how this was done, nor exactly what was meant by “God.” It could have meant that there was this prime, greatest mode which proceeded to create all other modes in causal necessity, according to the essential attributes. This restores a great portion of Christian theology without destroying the pantheism. It may refute the notion of creation ex nihilo, but that doctrine is post-Scripture. God can still order the universe; he’s only doing it within the essential attributes which are both a part of him and the modes he is helping to create. This retains the notion of God as the greatest possible thing; he is greater than all other modes. Also, God can be worshipped, because he can still be the cause of all other modes, including humanity. For as has been mentioned, if we can be thankful that food is edible, we can be thankful that the Demiurge has shaped us into the modes that we are, and shaped many other modes to be beneficial to us.
Finally, this restores the ability to anthropomorphize “God.” Perhaps, as has been argued earlier, we cannot anthropomorphize “God” in the sense of “the essential attributes of the infinite substance,” or in the sense of “all the modes which comprise the infinite substance.” However, perhaps the Demiurge can be anthropomorphized. After all, as C.S. Lewis argues, humanlike personality is a great making attribute, intuitively, not a lessening one. He points out: “they say that God is beyond personality, [but] really think of Him as impersonal: that is, something less than personal” (160). That is to say, removing personality hardly makes God “beyond” personality.
We could take for an example a triangle. A triangle is a more complicated notion than a line. However, one will not say that since lines are less complicated than triangles, that triangles must not be made of lines. To the contrary, what makes a triangle greater is its inclusion of the line. Similarly, a pyramid is greater than a triangle because it includes many triangles, and a square, and lines, and other attributes. So, the Demiurge would in fact be greater if among its secondary attributes it also contained something like human personality, because it would have an added dimension, which would make it greater, not lesser. This vindicates the Scriptural notion that God “made man in his image,” and makes possible a certain degree of anthropomorphization, if by God we mean this notion of a Spinozian Demiurge.
I have summarized the argument of Spinoza, which argues that there is only one substance and that all things are modes of that individual substance. Then I have argued that his system overlooks the possibility of a greatest mode, which could be what we mean when we say “God.” This permits a connectedness between all modes through a single substance, while making possible reconciliation between pantheism and Christianity, insofar as Spinoza’s system is constructed.
Works Cited
Spinoza, Baruch. Ethics: An Emendation of the Human Intellect.

Lewis. C.S. Mere Christianity. Ed. Kathleen Norris. San Francisco: HarperSanFransisco, 1952.