【英文原著类】Theologico-Political Treatise P3(神学与政治专题研究3).pdf

A Theologico-Political Treatise
A Theologico-Political
Treatise
Part III - Chapters XI to XV
Baruch Spinoza
1
A Theologico-Political Treatise
CHAPTER XI
AN INQUIRY WHETHER THE APOSTLES WROTE THEIR
EPISTLES AS APOSTLES AND PROPHETS, OR MERELY AS
TEACHERS; AND AN EXPLANATION OF WHAT IS MEANT BY AN
APOSTLE.
(1) No reader of the New Testament can doubt that the Apostles were
prophets; but as a prophet does not always speak by revelation, but only, at
rare intervals, as we showed at the end of Chap. I., we may fairly inquire
whether the Apostles wrote their Epistles as prophets, by revelation and
express mandate, as Moses, Jeremiah, and others did, or whether only as
private individuals or teachers, especially as Paul, in Corinthians xiv:6,
mentions two sorts of preaching.
(2) If we examine the style of the Epistles, we shall find it totally
different from that employed by the prophets.
(3) The prophets are continually asserting that they speak by the
command of God: "Thus saith the Lord," "The Lord of hosts saith," "The
command of the Lord," &c.; and this was their habit not only in
assemblies of the prophets, but also in their epistles containing revelations,
as appears from the epistle of Elijah to Jehoram, 2 Chron. xxi:12, which
begins, "Thus saith the Lord."
(4) In the Apostolic Epistles we find nothing of the sort.
(5) Contrariwise, in I Cor. vii:40 Paul speaks according to his own
opinion and in many passages e across doubtful and perplexed
phrase; such as, "We think, therefore," Rom. iii:28; "Now I think,"
[Endnote 24], Rom. viii:18, and so on. (6) Besides these, other expressions
are met with very different from those used by the prophets.
(7) For instance, 1 Cor. vii:6, "But I speak this by permission, not by
commandment;" "I give my judgment as one that hath obtained mercy of
the Lord to be faithful" (1 Cor. vii:25), and so on in many other passages.
(8) We must also remark that in the aforesaid chapter the Apost