oa Spinoza: EEn natuurlijk theoloog?

In Spinoza-research the question has always been central how to harmonize Spinoza’s rejection, in his Ethics, of speaking philosophically of a personal God, with his descrip-tion in his Theologico-Political Treatise of God as one who forgives the remorseful. This question will be treated here from the dilemma evoked by Theo de Boer in his De God van de filosofen en de God van Pascal: a dilemma between the philosophical God and the biblical God. Not only De Boer, but also the Spinoza-scholar Van Bunge, holds that Spinoza chooses unequivocably for the philosophical God, and thus for the view-point of modern rationalism. This interpretation will be challenged here, by reading Spinoza’s works as an answer to the fragmentation of the ‘cosmos’ in modernity. The conclusion of the argumentation is that Spinoza departs, in his different works, from different, complementary, philosophical perspectives: the perspective of speculative reason on the one hand, and that of practical reason on the other. Within the lastmentioned perspective Spinoza can take seriously the idea of a personal God, who is a moral example to the believer.