There is compelling evidence on the religious record that Spinoza was atheistic, or more exactly that he failed to honor the claims of religion in his philosophy. In that regard, Harrington (RG18) cites Spinoza's assertion, consistent with the rationalist intellectual climate of the Enlightenment, that (secular) philosophy was to take precedence over scripture when the two were in conflict. Spinoza's chronology (1632-1677), places him squarely in the early Enlightenment tradition, which helped to secularize Western thought in general. Spinoza was also a Jew, which might help explain why he may have felt no compulsion to explicate his way through Christian thought toward secular thought. However, one analysis of Jewish intellectual tradition takes the view that Spinoza seems not to have been particularly enthusiastic about the idea of attempting to carve out a Jewish state, either in Europe or the Levant, on account of the marginal existence Jewish communities experienced in both Europe and the Levant (Harris 79-80). In any case, it could appear that Spinoza is a suspect character to those who would declare him an atheist.
But a careful look at Spinoza's texts reveals a more complex picture of his thought. Indeed, he defines God in terms of inexplicable power that could not even be conceived of (by man) were it not possible that such power existed. That is the explanation of his term "Cause of Itself" (capitalization Spinoza's) (Spinoza 105). According to Spinoza, God has one substance, one nature and--importantly--cannot be divided according to temporal and eternal existence. Rather eternity and time are unitary and infinite. Indeed, for Spinoza, God does not exist outside but must exist in the world. As Spinoza puts it: I understand Eternity to be existence itself, in so far as it is conceived to follow necessarily from the mere definition of an eternal thing" (106).
That idea is problematic from the standpoint of a faith that d...