The genealogy is pretty clear: Pietist-leaning Collegiants, with affinities to the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century, influence the theological and political view of Spinoza, leading him to write a treatise where he defends two central Anabaptist/Pietist clams: a) he attacks the tyranny of the letter and b) he argues for a liberal political system in which everyone is free to hold whatever theological opinions he wishes.
Spinoza’s Tractatus is one of the earliest treatises on liberal polity, preceding Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration by several decades. It is part of the invention of the liberal state, and it arises from Anabaptist/Pietist conceptions of piety and polity.
It is ironic, then, that some of the most vocal of today’s theological critics of liberalism work in an Anabaptist/Pietist framework.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Paul Ehrlich, False Prophet
Paul Ehrlich, noted author of The Population Bomb, died last week. Few people have been so consequentially…
Restoring Man at Notre Dame
It is fascinating to be an outsider on the inside of an institution going through times of…
Deliver Us from Evil
In a recent New York Times article entitled “Freedom With a Side of Guilt: How Food Delivery…
