Reason and Scripture in the Ethics and Tractatus Theologico-Politicus: Jarig Jelles and Preface to the Nagelate schriften van B.D.S (1677)

Baruch Spinoza’s friend Jarig Jelles delivers an account of the philosopher’s thought in the Preface to the posthumous Dutch edition of Spinoza’s writings. Spinoza’s philosophy, Jelles argues, neither contradicts nor challenges the basic principles of Christianity. To make this point, Jelles describes how everything that is required for salvation is evident in nature and may be understood by the light of reason alone. In other words, Jelles insists that Spinoza, Christ, and the Apostles all share an ethics that Jesus summarized when he asserted that “God must be loved above all, and our neighbors as ourselves.” In the Preface, however, Jelles derives these principles solely from the Ethics; by reading the Ethics and the Tractatus theologico-politicus together, in turn, Jelles directs scrupulous readers to distinguish between these crucial minimal principles in Scripture and its many other aspects. Jelles’s Preface affords us insight into how contemporary readers understood Spinoza’s thought not as distinct from Christianity but as a summary account of its basic principles.