How Baruch Spinoza Lived the Teachings of Yeshua the Nazarene Every Day

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:03]So, we're going to deal with a philosopher Baruch de Spinoza and what he thought the teachings of Yeshua would mean for daily life.

[00:00:15]Uh what do what does it really mean?

[00:00:18]Not just for an hour on a Sunday, but for all the 168 hours in a week.

[00:00:25]So, let's see what he had to say.

[00:00:27]Let's just review. De Spinoza was a Dutch Jewish philosopher, primary figure in the 17th century uh school of rationalism along with René Descartes and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. So, he's best known for his radical redefinition of God and his uncompromising defense of individual liberty and democracy.

[00:00:55]I He was born in Amsterdam to a family of Portuguese Jews who had fled the Inquisition out of Portugal. Uh early on he attended a a uh yeshiva where he was a star pupil and he was potentially being groomed to be a rabbi.

[00:01:14]But at age 23 and he only lived till he was age 44 he was issued a writ of excommunication and this is the most serious possible excommunication. He was excommunicated from his uh synagogue from having anything to do with any of the people in the synagogue and with having anything to do with any business of any of the people in the synagogue.

[00:01:42]And this was for monstrous deeds and abominable heresies.

[00:01:47]So, after he was expelled he adopted the name of Benedictus, which is the Latin version of Baruch, and he lived a largely secular life, but we'll see what that was.

[00:01:59]He to support himself he worked as an optical lens grinder, which is probably what contributed to his early death uh because of the little shards of glass that he constantly was grinding away on and he inhaled them and that probably killed him in the end.

[00:02:17]He lived a very modest frugal life in a bunch of towns in the Netherlands and he turned down prestigious teaching positions so that he would be free to do whatever he wanted to do.

[00:02:29]And he died [clears throat] most likely from silicosis and so forth. Now, one of the things to keep in mind here is that he had access to phenomenal source materials in Amsterdam. This is the high point of the Dutch and everything that the Dutch were doing and so he he saw manuscripts that probably came from Alexandria that came from all over the world coming through Amsterdam coming through the ports there of the Dutch.

[00:03:01]And he he read these things. He was he was able to read Aramaic. He read Greek.

[00:03:08]He read uh clearly Dutch, Portuguese Spanish uh and so forth and Latin of course.

[00:03:17]So, uh uh this is this is what it means to be a star pupil.

[00:03:22]But he you know, even though he had a short life, he had an incredible impact on what came after and as you'll see.

[00:03:30]Uh he his magnum opus, which he called Ethics, was published in 1677 posthumously because he knew if he published it when he was alive that he would be absolutely fried. He followed the methods of Euclid. He used axioms and proofs and he argued that God and nature are one in the same, Deus sive Natura.

[00:03:57]Uh and this is an amazing uh work that you can still get today and I encourage you to go read it.

[00:04:05]He also published again after uh anonymously, but during his lifetime the Theological-Political Treatise where he argued for freedom of speech, secularism, and a historical critical approach to the Bible.

[00:04:22]So, he had very very radical ideas.

[00:04:25]First was there was a pantheism. He rejected a personal God in favor of an infinite substance indistinguishable nature.

[00:04:34]He argued for determinism. Everything that's in the universe follows necessarily from the nature of God leaving no room for free will.

[00:04:43]Uh he argued for happiness through reason that human well-being comes from understanding our place in the natural order and controlling our passions through reason.

[00:04:53]So, although he's often called the prince of philosophers for his moral character and his revolutionary depth it this paved the way for the age of enlightenment that came after him.

[00:05:06]Uh he argued for secular democracy. He was the first modern philosopher to argue that democracy is the most natural and stable form of government. And the United States was the first real experiment in seeing was as true.

[00:05:23]He argued for separation of church and state, insisted society cannot be built on theological criteria.

[00:05:32]And therefore he paved the way for modern secularism.

[00:05:37]He argued for freedom of expression. His Theological-Political Treatise really was a bombshell that argued for absolute freedom of thought and speech as essential for peace.

[00:05:50]>> [gasps] >> Now, several people followed him. Figures like Diderot and Baron d'Holbach used De Spinoza's monism, the idea of one single substance to build a purely materialistic and aesthetic view of the universe.

[00:06:07]The French Encyclopédie, the largest entry on any modern philosopher in Diderot's famous Encyclopédie, was dedicated to Spinoza.

[00:06:18]But it was written very carefully so he wouldn't be censored.

[00:06:22]The Germans followed this in the late 18th century. There was a pantheism controversy that brought Spinoza to light profoundly influencing Hegel and Lessing.

[00:06:33]And then centuries later Einstein famous famously stated he believed in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of the universe.

[00:06:45]So, you can see big footprints for someone uh of such a short span of life.

[00:06:52]He viewed the Bible as history. He pioneered the method of treating the Bible as a historical document rather than the direct divine revelation. He rejected the idea of miracles arguing everything in nature follows immutable laws, a foundation for the modern scientific worldview.

[00:07:12]And while modern enlightenment thinkers sought to reconcile reason with traditional faith, Spinoza's system demanded a complete break from religious authority in politics and science.

[00:07:24]So let's let's dig into it now to see what's really going on.

[00:07:29]Uh he Spinoza viewed the forms of Plato, the Platonic forms, as an unnecessary dualism and he replaced them with the single infinite substance, God or nature, where everything is a real expression rather than a shadow. So, for Yeshua the Nazarene Spinoza stripped away supernatural claims portraying him as a supreme philosopher who perceived eternal moral truth through reason rather than imagination.

[00:08:00]So, while Plato saw the physical world as the collection of imperfect copies of eternal forms, Spinoza Spinoza argued that everything in existence is a direct and fully real manifestation of God.

[00:08:15]Uh there's monism and dualism. Plato separated reality into two realms, the material and the ideal. The material resonates imperfectly with the ideal.

[00:08:27]Spinoza believed there's only one substance which he called Deus sive Natura, God or nature. There's the real versus the copy.

[00:08:37]In Plato's cave, a chair is a shadow of the form of a chair. For Spinoza, that chair is a mode of God's attribute of extension. It's 100% real and necessary.

[00:08:51]Spinoza's eternal order shares its flavor with Platonic forms because both seek unchanging truths, but Spinoza's truths are laws of physics and logic, not distant abstract ideals.

[00:09:06]So, Spinoza's critique of the life of Yeshua was not an attack on the man, but on the supernatural narrative that surrounded him, what was passed off as what really happened.

[00:09:18]He stripped away the magical elements of the Gospels and he found a historical figure who embodied pure reason rather than divine mystery.

[00:09:28]Uh in his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Spinoza presented a radical secularized history of Jesus paving the way for modern biblical criticism. The mouth of God Spinoza claimed God had an unmediated intellectual apprehension of God's laws making him superior to prophets like Moses who relied on imagination and visions. He rejected the divinity of Jesus, virgin birth, and physical resurrection viewing them as theological myths or human inventions added later to control the masses. These are powerful images and people many people would just accept them blindly without thinking.

[00:10:12]Universal ethics. Spinoza believed Jesus' true mission was to replace local Jewish law with the universal religion of justice and charity. Message he felt was later corrupted by the Apostle Paul and the church into complex dogmas.

[00:10:31]Spinoza was the first to treat the New Testament as a set of human written documents subject to historical and linguistic analysis rather than divine dictation.

[00:10:43]He categorically rejected the virgin birth as a biological impossibility that violated the fixed laws of nature. He argued that Jesus had a human father and was born just like any other man. And for Spinoza came from natural capacities and choices rather than a miraculous origin or special privileges from God.

[00:11:04]He viewed the title son of God not as a literal biological claim but as a metaphor for someone who had fully awakened to their divine essence through wisdom.

[00:11:15]Spinoza believed that Jesus' education was unique but not in the traditional sense of schooling.

[00:11:21]While prophets like Moses relied on imagination and external voices, Spinoza claimed Jesus communicated with God mind to mind mente ad mentem.

[00:11:34]There was eternal wisdom. Jesus did not need to be taught by men because he possessed an internal immediate apprehension of eternal moral truths.

[00:11:44]Spinoza portrayed Jesus as a philosopher who used parables only as a tool to teach universal morality to those who couldn't grasp pure logic.

[00:11:57]So Spinoza viewed the missing years of the life of Yeshua, the ages of 12 to 30, as a gap that allowed the church to invent a mystical authority.

[00:12:08]Spinoza argued that Jesus' actual life was a revolution against the rigid bureaucracy of the temple and the Pharisees. And Spinoza believed that the church later added dogmas like resurrection to turn Jesus' simple message of of justice and charity into a tool for political control and obedience. You start to see why he was excommunicated.

[00:12:36]Spinoza believed that Yeshua's core teaching was the true spirituality is identical to reason and active love. He saw Yeshua not as a religious leader setting up a new church but as a teacher of a universal religion available to every human being regardless of their heritage. So Yeshua's methods for integrating spirituality into daily life really focused on three practical pillars.

[00:13:04]First there was the law of justice and charity.

[00:13:07]Spinoza argued that Yeshua stripped away the 613 laws of Moses and replaced them with one simple rule for daily conduct.

[00:13:17]Love your neighbor as yourself. So everyday spirituality isn't found in rituals like keeping kosher or attending service but in how you treat others through social harmony by practicing justice, charity and individual aligns their personal power with the common good.

[00:13:36]Spinoza believed Yeshua taught that God is not a king on a throne but the internal order of the of the universe.

[00:13:44]This is the religion of the heart. You don't need a priest or a book to tell you what is right. Your own reason is the living word of God.

[00:13:52]Spirituality is integrated by using your mind to understand the causes of your emotions moving from passive feelings like hate or envy to active states like understanding and joy.

[00:14:06]And there's freedom from hope and fear.

[00:14:09]For Spinoza traditional religion uses fear of hell and hope of heaven to control people. He believed Yeshua taught a blessedness that is its own reward. True spirituality means doing the right thing because your mind sees it good not because you expect a prize later.

[00:14:28]There's mental peace. Integrating this means letting go of superstitions and the anxiety of pleasing a fickle God instead of finding peace in the necessity of nature. For Spinoza's Yeshua, the spiritual life is simply a life lived with clarity of mind. When you understand the world as it really is, you naturally stop hating, fearing and fighting and you instead act with kindness.

[00:14:55]So Spinoza viewed the parables as a bridge between pure reason and human imagination.

[00:15:01]He argued that while the supreme philosopher Yeshua understood eternal truths directly through logic, he used parables to translate these abstract ideas for the general public who rely on stories and emotions.

[00:15:17]First is the parable of the sower.

[00:15:19]This is in Matthew book 13 where he explains why Jesus taught differently to different people. For the masses, the story of seeds falling on different soils was a way to explain how the kingdom of God or inner wisdom thrives or fails based on a person's mental state. But for the disciples of Yeshua, Spinoza believed that this explained the eternal truths behind the story to his close followers freeing them from the bondage of the law and replacing it with an internalized reason.

[00:15:55]There's the good Samaritan. While not providing a line by line commentary, Spinoza's philosophy aligns perfectly with the good Samaritan as a lesson in universal morality.

[00:16:06]First is justice over doctrine. The Samaritan was one of the most despised of all the different sects that were there in in the Palestine in the time of Yeshua. So Spinoza believed this parable showed the true religion is found in justice and charity not in tribal identity or religious ritual. For Spinoza, the Samaritan acts according to the law of nature which is to preserve and help others demonstrating that spirituality is integrated in the life through action not just belief.

[00:16:45]The function of the parables was really a very good psychological purpose. It allowed the mind to adapt.

[00:16:52]Most people cannot follow complex logical or mathematical proof for God.

[00:16:58]Parables use metaphor and allegory to move the heart toward the same goal, peace and social harmony. By combating fear using stories that encourage love and mercy, Yeshua sought to replace superstitious fear of a punishing God with a rational devotion to goodness.

[00:17:17]So for Spinoza, you have a high level of reason. You no longer need the parable because you see the truth directly.

[00:17:25]However, the parable remains as a necessary tool for base society.

[00:17:32]So how did Spinoza live what he preached? Well, he lived with a radical consistency that mirrored his philosophy. He turned down fame, wealth and power to maintain his intellectual freedom and mental peace. While he was one of the most brilliant minds in Europe, he chose to earn his living grinding optical lenses.

[00:17:53]He was he refused the prestigious professorship at Heidelberg University because he feared it would limit his ability to speak the truth. He lived in a rented rooms, ate simple meals like milk soup and owned very few clothes. He believed accumulating stuff led to the passive emotions of greed and anxiety.

[00:18:17]Spinoza practiced what he called amor fati, the love of fate, and the mastery of emotions through reason.

[00:18:25]When a religious fanatic tried to stab him outside a synagogue, Spinoza kept his torn cloak as a reminder that human passion, when not guided by reason, leads to violence. He didn't seek revenge. He sought to understand the cause. Why was this person trying to assassinate him? He was communicated in 1656 when his own community cast him out with a cherem, a brutal curse. This is the strongest excommunication possible. He responded with indifference. He reportedly said, "This compels me to nothing which I should not otherwise have done."

[00:19:07]He didn't just write about social justice and charity. He lived it in his daily lives with his neighbors. His Christian landlords in The Hague adored him. He would often come downstairs to discuss their sermons with them encouraging them to find peace and piety in their own faith even though he didn't even share their dogmas. He would help others. Despite his poverty, he frequently gave small amounts of money to those even poorer than himself viewing it as a rational duty to preserve the social fabric.

[00:19:39]Spinoza viewed death as a natural necessity not something to be feared or romanticized. He died of phthisis, most likely lung damage from inhaling glass dust while grinding lenses. He remained completely calm until the end, discussing philosophy with his doctor.

[00:19:58]He left no room for death deathbed conversions or theatrical displays, proving proving his point that a free man thinks of nothing less than of death.

[00:20:10]In Spinoza's daily routine, he he tried to protect his mental energy and minimize the passive emotions like anger or envy that come from social friction. He treated his life like like a laboratory for the rational living.

[00:20:26]He spent his mornings and afternoons grinding and polishing lenses for telescopes and microscopes. And this repetitive precision work provided a mental break from intense abstract theorizing. It required quiet attention, which mirrored his philosophical idea of focusing the mind on one clear idea at a time. And because he earned his own bread, he didn't have to please wealthy patrons or religious sensors.

[00:20:55]He was famous for his very sparse diet, often living on just gruel, milk, and a little butter.

[00:21:02]He believed that heavy food and excess wine clouded the intellect. So, by reducing his physical needs to almost zero, he eliminated the anxiety of wanting more. He was never disappointed be He required so little to be satisfied.

[00:21:19]He was a night owl who spent hours alone in his room writing his Summa Theologica, the book The Ethics.

[00:21:26]He often stayed in his room for two or three days at a time, having meals brought to him. So, this protected him from contagion of other people's irrational passions.

[00:21:37]He used the quiet of the night to follow logical chains of thought to their ultimate conclusion without interruption.

[00:21:45]When he did socialize, it was often with his humble landlords or their children's. One of his few recorded hobbies was watching spiders fight or looking at insects through a microscope.

[00:21:56]This wasn't just curiosity, it was a way to observe the laws of nature in action, reminding him that everything, including his own struggles, was part of a necessary, infinite system.

[00:22:09]So, the results of all this disciplined schedule is it created a buffer between Spinoza and the world. Because his days are so similar, he wasn't shocked by sudden changes.

[00:22:22]By removing himself from the prestige race of academia and high society, he achieved what he called "acquiescentia in se ipso", a deep, rational satisfaction with oneself.

[00:22:37]And so, there you have it.

[00:22:39]We're going to take a short break here.