Is the Decalogue a Moral Law?

18 May 2026

This is Part 3 of a series on Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise.

In this article:

• Natural and Positive Law
• Human and Divine Law
• Is God a Sovereign Legislator?
• Why Were the Ceremonies Instituted?
• The Ceremonial Sabbath
• The Purpose of the Law and Ceremonies

Christianity has long been characterized by the belief that the main purpose of our lives is to achieve a moral end whose value is extrinsic to our present bodily existence. It teaches that because everything that happens is willed by a benevolent God, who providentially guides history to its culmination in a perfect world, existential value comes from our participation in this moral process. However, in my view, there is a potential problem with this moral standpoint. When we posit something outside ourselves, such as an ultimate good, to be the sole source of our existential value, we implicitly deny that human life has any intrinsic value unless people are aligned with this ultimate good. We could therefore conclude that we do not need to treat others as valuable unless they are inclined to act morally. Because this moral standpoint admits the possibility of exceptions whom we are not morally obligated to treat with love and respect, treating others well cannot be considered a universally binding duty.

Those who believe that achieving an extrinsic moral end is the entire purpose of human existence have lost a sense of the practical purpose of moral activity. The value of moral activity does not reside in a realm wholly transcending our existence. Rather, it is valuable because it enables us to live harmoniously with one another in a way that is conducive to our well-being and fulfillment. Unless we find it necessary to get along with one another to achieve these shared goals, there is no need for us to act morally or in consideration of others’ interests.

Adventists, in particular, seem to forget this when they suggest that the purpose of human existence is to vindicate God’s law, as embodied in the Ten Commandments. For them, human existence is only valuable insofar as we prove God’s love by obeying him. However, if this is the case, it is, at best, merely accidental that morality should be conducive to human well-being. We are expected to obey God’s law regardless of whether it is beneficial to us—a fact that could hardly motivate anyone to do so unless they are afraid of divine punishment.

The question I want to examine in this essay is whether the Ten Commandments are universally binding moral laws. Are they the eternal embodiment of our moral duties, or are they merely a historical codification of the moral norms by which one ancient community guaranteed its social cohesion and welfare? I suggested in the previous part of this series that the Jewish laws were intended as the constitution of the ancient Israelite state. With this in mind, I will argue that the moral value of the Ten Commandments lies entirely in the extent to which they are conducive to their original function. Rather than the Ten Commandments being the standard by which human existence may be considered valuable, our existence is the standard of whether obedience to the Ten Commandments is valuable.

To this end, I will examine Benedict de Spinoza’s arguments concerning the nature of the Jewish law in the fourth and fifth chapters of his Theological-Political Treatise. After introducing Spinoza’s distinction between the various kinds of law, I will consider why the Ten Commandments and other Levitical laws were instituted. I will then analyze the purpose of the Old Testament law, as it was understood by the apostle Paul and by later Jewish and Christian theologians. I will show that Spinoza correctly interprets the law’s original purpose as it has been understood by the Jewish and Christian traditions.

Natural and Positive Law

In Romans 2:25–26, Paul states, “Circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you are a transgressor of the law your circumcision has become uncircumcision. So, if the uncircumcised keep the requirements of the law, will not their uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision?”¹ This establishes a distinction between what we might call the divine moral law and the human ceremonial law. The ceremonial law includes the commandment to circumcise one’s sons, while the moral law contains the law which, as Spinoza notes, “has been revealed to everyone without exception,” the essence of which is the commandment to do good. In Chapters 4 and 5 of the Theological-Political Treatise, Spinoza turns to a more detailed discussion of the moral and ceremonial laws. As will become clear, his conclusions concerning the distinction between these two kinds of law differ significantly from that which is central to Adventist theology.

Spinoza defines law as “that in accordance with which each individual thing, or all things, or all things of the same kind, behave in one and the same fixed and determined way, depending upon either natural necessity or a human decision.” This definition distinguishes between two kinds of law: natural law, which “necessarily follows from the very nature or definition of a thing,” and positive law or decrees, which is a law “that men prescribe to themselves and to others in order to achieve a better and safer life, or for other reasons.”² Spinoza notes a tension between these two kinds of law. Since he maintains that human beings are part of nature, any action that they perform necessarily results from natural laws. Thus, to a certain extent, positive laws, which are decreed by human beings acting from natural laws, are themselves a subset of natural laws. But although this is the case, people are not necessarily compelled to obey others’ decrees.

This introduces an ambiguity in the meaning of the word “law.” “It seems to be only a metaphor,” Spinoza states, “that the word law (lex) is applied to natural things. What is commonly meant by a law is a command which men may or may not follow, since a law constrains human powers within certain limits which they naturally exceed, and does not command anything beyond their scope.” Nonetheless, Spinoza does not regard the concept of natural law as merely metaphorical. It is only by some form of natural necessity that people are induced to obey a positive law—whether the threat of punishment or a rational persuasion that obeying common laws is conducive to one’s benefit.³

The distinction between these two motives for obedience is central to Spinoza’s conception of justice: “Truly he who gives other men what is due to them because he fears the gallows, is acting at the behest of another man and under a threat of suffering harm, and cannot be called just; but he who gives other men what is due to them because he knows the true rationale of laws and understands their necessity, is acting steadfastly and at his own and not another’s command, and therefore is deservedly called just.” Spinoza argues that this distinction between heteronomous obedience and autonomous reason is what Paul sought to affirm in Romans 3:20, which says, “For no human will be justified before him by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.” A person who obeys the law due to fear of what it prescribes as a punishment for disobedience is not justified before God, whereas a person who obeys the law because of an intrinsic conviction of its rightness (which Paul calls faith and Spinoza calls reason) is justified before God.⁴

Human and Divine Law

Spinoza further distinguishes between two kinds of positive law. One is human law, defined as “a rule for living whose only purpose is to protect life and preserve the country.” The other is divine law, “which looks only to the supreme good, that is, to the true knowledge and love of God.” That is, for Spinoza, the distinction between divine and human law is not that the former originates with God while the latter originates with human beings: all positive law has God as its ultimate source, given that human beings are the ones who promulgate positive law and are themselves a part of nature, which has God as its cause. Rather, what distinguishes divine and human laws are their respective aims: divine law is concerned with a knowledge of God, while human law is concerned with the preservation of a given society.⁵

Spinoza explains what constitutes the supreme good—and thus the aim of divine law—by summarizing an argument he develops more fully in his Ethics. He asserts that our highest good consists in the perfection of our understanding, and that “if we truly want to seek our own interest, we should try above all things to perfect it as much as possible.” He then argues that “since knowledge of an effect through a cause is simply to know some property of the cause,” and since God is the ultimate cause of all things, “nothing can exist or be conceived without God.” Therefore, “it is certain that every single thing in nature involves and expresses the conception of God as far as its essence and perfection allows, and accordingly the more we come to understand natural things, the greater and more perfect the knowledge of God we acquire.” Spinoza concludes that the supreme good therefore consists of “the knowledge and love of God,” as expressed in natural law. Moreover, he states, “the means required by this end of all human actions, which is God himself so far as his idea is in us, may be called the commands of God, because they are prescribed to us, as it were, by God himself so far as he exists in our minds, and therefore the rule of life which looks to this end is best called the divine law.”⁶

Since the divine law is present within our minds, when we obey it, we do so autonomously, rather than from a fear of punishment or an expectation of a pleasurable reward. Divine law can therefore be distinguished from human law, which consists of “all those edicts that have a different goal, unless they have been sanctioned by divine revelation.” What sets the Ten Commandments apart as divine law, although they are “not universal but adapted solely to the temperament and preservation of one people,” is that they were “confirmed by prophetic light” as a divine revelation. That is, the Ten Commandments can only be considered divine laws because they were sanctioned by a prophetic revelation, and not because they are inherently accessible or universally applicable to all people.⁷

The divine law “is universal or common to all men” because it is immanent within human nature. It “does not require belief in any kind of historical narrative” specific to one group of people. Although historical narratives can instill a sense of national unity, they cannot produce knowledge or love of God, which “has to be drawn from universal notions which are certain in themselves and well-known” (see Part 1 of this series, where I discussed this principle in the context of Spinoza’s use of the Cartesian method). Likewise, divine law does not require the observance of particular ceremonies, defined as “actions which are indifferent in themselves and are called good only by convention or which represent some good as necessary to salvation,” since natural reason, which is universal to everyone, requires nothing but that which is accessible to everyone. Rather, reason only requires “what carries the clearest evidence of being a good or a means to our happiness.” Ceremonies do not meet this criterion, since “things that are only good by command or tradition or because they are symbolic representations of some good, cannot improve our understanding.” In an allusion to Plato’s allegory of the cave, Spinoza states that ceremonies are “no more than shadows” of that which they symbolize.⁸

Is God a Sovereign Legislator?

Spinoza proceeds to consider whether we can rationally conceive of God as an anthropomorphic legislator. Since we are not necessarily compelled to obey positive laws, he suggests that the answer to this question is “no.” He argues that “God acts and governs all things from the necessity of his own nature and perfection alone, and his decrees and volitions are eternal truths and always involve necessity.”⁹ When we regard God’s decrees as though they are optional, we do so only because we fail to understand the necessary consequences or the impossibility of our obedience or disobedience.

According to Spinoza, God’s will and intellect are identical. To say that God decrees or wills something to be the case—such as that the angles of a triangle should add up to 180 degrees—is the same as saying that God conceives this fact as being true in his intellect or mind. This is because “God’s affirmations or negations always contain an eternal necessity or truth.” Setting aside the issue of whether God could decree things to be other than as they are (which Spinoza also denies), insofar as God’s intellect does affirm certain things as being the way they are, he necessarily also enforces them as being this way.¹⁰

Applying this insight to the story of Adam and Eve, Spinoza states, “If … God said to Adam that he did not wish him to eat of ‘the tree of knowledge of good and evil,’ it would entail a contradiction for Adam to be able to eat of it, and therefore it was impossible that Adam should eat of it.” But since, according to the Genesis account, Adam did eat from the tree of knowledge, “we must necessarily infer that God only revealed to Adam the bad effects that would necessarily befall him if he ate of the tree, but not the necessity whereby that bad consequence would follow. This is how it was that Adam perceived that revelation not as an eternal and necessary truth but rather as a ruling, that is, as a convention that gain or loss follows, not from the necessity and nature of the action alone, but only from the pleasure and absolute command of the prince.”¹¹

Given Spinoza’s deterministic conception of God, it is difficult to ignore the implication that if the story of Adam and Eve was a historical occurrence rather than a mythological allegory, God must have decreed that Adam and Eve should eat from the tree of knowledge. (Spinoza, for his part, interprets this story as an allegory.) But setting aside this theodicean issue, we can see that Spinoza’s concern is primarily to show that if, by applying our reason, we properly understand the effects that necessarily follow from our actions, then we will decide whether to do those actions by considering whether they will benefit us. Since we do not always understand the effects of our actions, however, we are inclined to view moral commandments issuing from a prophetic revelation as the arbitrary decrees of a divine monarch.

Spinoza argues, “It is for this reason too, namely deficiency of knowledge, that the Ten Commandments were law only for the Hebrews. Since they did not know the existence of God as an eternal truth, i.e., that God exists and that God alone is to be adored, they had to understand it as a decree.”¹² In other words, because the ancient Israelites did not apply their reason to recognizing the necessary existence of God, they had to receive the law from Moses as a decree that they could only obey through deference to his heteronomous authority. The Ten Commandments were therefore given only to the Israelites, not because other nations did not have a rational obligation to recognize God’s existence, but because the Israelites in particular needed prophetic assistance in realizing this obligation.

This is due to no particular flaw of the Israelites: Spinoza states that Christ also “issue[d] laws in the name of God” to reach both Jews and Gentiles. Nonetheless, what distinguished Christ from the prophets is that he “understood things truly and adequately. Christ was not so much a prophet as the mouth-piece of God,” and thus God did not need to adapt “his revelations to Christ’s beliefs” as he had to do for other prophets. (Of course, a Christian might take Spinoza’s claims about Christ a step further: it is not merely the case that Christ was God’s mouthpiece; rather, Christ’s will was identical to that of the Father.) To the extent that Christ promulgated decrees, this was only “because of the ignorance and obstinacy of the people.” Spinoza argues that this is confirmed by the apostle Paul. Citing Romans 3:18, which says, “we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law,” Spinoza suggests that by “faith,” Paul “certainly means nothing other than full mental assent.” Moreover, he notes that according to Paul, “no one is blessed unless he has the mind of Christ in him (see Romans 8:9) whereby, undoubtedly, one may understand God’s laws as eternal truths.”¹³

Why Were the Ceremonies Instituted?

Having shown that the divine law is universal because it is innate to the human mind, Spinoza argues that the ceremonies, by contrast, were intended only for the ancient Hebrews: “these were instituted for the Hebrews alone and were so closely accommodated to their state that in the main they could be practiced not by individuals but only by the community as a whole.” Consequently, because the ceremonies are not essential to blessedness and virtue, but are rather only valuable insofar as they contribute to the cohesion of the Israelite state, they are only useful so long as the Israelite state persisted.¹⁴

Spinoza cites several Bible passages to support this claim. First, he discusses Isaiah 1, arguing that beginning in verse 10, Isaiah calls on his audience to receive the divine law from him. But after explicitly excluding sacrifices and festivals from his conception of the divine law, Isaiah indicates in 1:16–17 that the law consists of “purity of mind, a disposition or habit of virtue or good actions, and giving help to the poor.” Second, Spinoza quotes Psalms 40:6–8: “Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, but you have given me an open ear… . I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.” Thus, he states, the psalmist “applies the term ‘law of God’ only to what is inscribed in the entrails or heart, and excludes ceremonies from it; for ceremonies are good only by convention and not by nature, and therefore are not inscribed in the heart.” That the ceremonies were only intended for their institutional value, he continues, is evident in the rewards or punishments that were promised in exchange for observing or rejecting them. While those who obeyed the universal divine law were promised eternal blessedness, those who observed the ceremonies were merely promised “material pleasures and advantages.” Moreover, Moses did not instruct his people as a teacher by appealing to their reason; rather, he commanded them as a lawgiver by adding a penalty to the commands in case they disobeyed.¹⁵

Using the Torah’s prohibition against adultery as an example, Spinoza argues that the Jewish law was concerned primarily with securing the welfare of the community and the state:

If [Moses] had wanted to give moral instruction that would relate not only to the needs of the state but also the peace of mind and true happiness of each individual, then he would condemn not only the external act but also the consent of the mind itself, as Christ did, who taught only universal truths (see Matthew 5:28). This is the reason why Christ promises a spiritual reward, not like Moses a physical one; for Christ, as I said, was sent not to conserve a commonwealth and institute laws, but to teach the universal law alone.

In other words, Christ was not concerned with showing that true obedience to the law consists of having sanctified thoughts as well as good works. “Christ did not abolish the Law of Moses,” not because he was concerned with promoting true obedience to it, but because “he did not intend to introduce any new laws into the state.”¹⁶

The Ceremonial Sabbath

For Spinoza, no prophet affirmed the distinction between the universal divine law and the human ceremonial law more clearly than Isaiah. In Isaiah 58:8, the prophet states that in exchange for freedom and charity towards one’s neighbor, “your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.” By contrast, in exchange for keeping the Sabbath, Isaiah promises in verse 14: “then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob.” Spinoza concludes, “Thus we see that the prophet promises as a reward for liberating [the oppressed] and practicing charity, a healthy mind in a healthy body and the glory of God after death, but the reward for ceremonies is merely the security of the state, prosperity, and worldly success.”¹⁷

From this statement, it is clear that Spinoza, following his interpretation of Isaiah, regards the Sabbath as a ceremonial law rather than a universally applicable moral law. Why does he single out the fourth commandment in this way? Although Spinoza does not explicitly answer this question, there are two likely reasons—one biblical and one historical—why he might have been concerned to draw this distinction.

The biblical reason is that Spinoza relied heavily on Paul’s writings to defend his rationalistic interpretation of true faith, and thus he would have agreed with Paul’s suggestion that the Sabbath is ceremonial in character. Consider the arguments that Paul makes in Romans 13–14. Beginning in 13:8, Paul states, “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” What are the laws Paul has in mind? “The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet’; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.” Although Paul mentions that “any other commandment” is “summed up” in the command to love one’s neighbor, he only explicitly lists the last four of the Ten Commandments. But what about the other six, and, in particular, the fourth? In what way is the commandment to keep the Sabbath related to loving one’s neighbor?

Paul answers this question in the next chapter. After admonishing his readers to welcome those who are weak in faith and to avoid quarreling over opinions—such as whether a person is permitted to eat anything or only vegetables—he turns to the issue of holiday observance. “Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord.” To which “day” is Paul here referring? The answer to this question seems ambiguous: it can refer equally to a particular day of the week (i.e. the Sabbath) or a particular day of the year (e.g. Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement). However, that Paul (or pseudo-Paul) intended the Sabbath to be included among the optional holidays is evident from Colossians 2:16–17, which says, “do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths. These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.” This corresponds directly to what Paul states in Romans 14 concerning food and holidays, and it specifically includes the Sabbath among the holidays. This is consistent with Paul’s overall argument: since observing the Sabbath has no bearing on loving one’s neighbor and can become “a stumbling block or hindrance,” it is not only unnecessary for salvation but unnecessarily divisive. Although it is possible that he kept it himself, Paul considered Sabbath observance optional.

The historical reason why Spinoza argues that Sabbath observance is ceremonial rather than moral is that Sabbatarianism was the subject of significant theological and political controversy during his time. In the seventeenth century, Dutch society was divided between two sects within Calvinism. On one side were the conservative followers of Gisbertus Voetius, who, under the influence of the English Puritans, promoted Sabbatarianism.¹⁸ On the other side were the more moderate followers of Johannes Cocceius, who developed his covenant theology, in part, to show that observance of the Jewish law had been abrogated under the new covenant established by Christ.¹⁹

Although Spinoza was a freethinking Jew and not a Calvinist, he was embroiled in this theological debate because of his broader intellectual and political commitments. The Voetians and the Cocceians were divided on three significant issues: first, on whether Sabbath observance was necessary for salvation; second, on whether philosophy had any place in theology; and third, along party lines. The Voetians strongly opposed Cartesian philosophy, regarding it as an affront to the Aristotelianism that was central to the Scholastic tradition, while the Cocceians held a more favorable view of Cartesianism since they recognized its potential to eliminate doubt in God’s existence. Moreover, while the Cocceians supported the republican government of the Dutch political leader Jan de Witt, who promoted religious tolerance, the Voetians sought the support of the monarchical House of Orange in enforcing their religious agenda. Spinoza, who was firmly democratic in his political outlook, supported the republicans against the Orangists and found it advantageous to align with the Cocceians on social issues. To this end, much of his discussion of ceremonies and covenants in the Theological-Political Treatise engages with the theological views of the Voetians and the Cocceians, although this is not obvious from the text.²⁰

In short, Spinoza not only identifies Sabbath observance as a ceremonial rather than a moral law because it is consistent with Paul’s distinction between faith and works, but because it provided him a means of criticizing his political opponents: the monarchist, Sabbatarian Calvinists who threatened the freedom to philosophize in the Dutch Republic. By arguing that the ceremonies are not necessary for attaining blessedness or salvation, Spinoza hoped to undermine the Voetians’ desire to legally enforce the observance of these ceremonies. The ceremonies prescribed in the Old Testament, in Spinoza’s view, were intended for no other purpose than to convince the people “that they … should do nothing at their own discretion and everything at the command of another, and should confess by their every action and thought that they did not exist in their own right at all but were entirely subject to someone else,” namely, to Moses, who was the only person fit to wield political authority after the Exodus because he was raised in the Pharaoh’s court. By instituting the ceremonies, Moses sought to induce the Israelites to obey the laws of their new state “willingly and not through fear” of punishment. But although ceremonies can serve the politically useful purpose of uniting people in observance of a shared religion, Spinoza argues that they “have no connection with happiness.”²¹

The Purpose of the Law and Ceremonies

To evaluate Spinoza’s claims concerning God’s law, we should consider the original purpose of the Ten Commandments according to both Jewish and early Christian thought. In his book Moses, the Jewish theologian Martin Buber argues, effectively agreeing with Spinoza, that the original purpose of the Ten Commandments was to serve as the terms of a covenant between God and the Israelites. Conceiving the Torah as a record of the dialogue between “the ‘I’ of the speaking God and the ‘Thou’ of the hearing Israel,”²² Buber argues that the words of the Decalogue are only comprehensible to those “who literally felt it as having been addressed to themselves.” This is because the Decalogue was intended for the constitution of the covenant community established at Mount Sinai between God and Israel. Containing both “religious” and “ethical” elements, “the intention to be recognized in it refers neither to articles of faith nor to rules of behavior, but to the constituting of a community by means of a common regulation.” The “unifying force” that made this common regulation possible was the shared “conception of a divine lord.” As Buber explains, “Only as the people of YHVH can Israel come into being and remain in being. The constitution appears not as something objective, to be taken at its own intrinsic value, but as an allocution by Him, a thing which can be actualized only in and through a living relationship with Him.”²³

Each of the Ten Commandments, in Buber’s analysis, aims at preserving the covenant community established at Mount Sinai. The first three commandments secure the sole worship of God, without which the covenant community would have disintegrated due to the Israelites’ allegiance to conflicting tribal deities. The fourth and fifth commandments “ensure the continuity of national time” by preserving the “consecution of consecration” and the “consecution of tradition,” respectively. The sixth through ninth commandments prohibit violations of the “life, marriage, property, and social honor” of the community’s members. Finally, the tenth commandment prohibits envy, an “attitude … which destroys the inner connection of the Community even when it does not transform itself into actual action; and which indeed, precisely on account of its passive or semi-passive persistence, may become a consuming disease of a special kind in the body politic.” Buber emphasizes that the Decalogue was “not concerned with the soul of man,” but with securing “God’s dominion over the people and the inner cohesion of the people.” This much is indicated by the absence of commands to treat others kindly and justly, which are more directly related to morality than to political unity.²⁴

Although Buber’s understanding of the Decalogue, like that of Spinoza, conflicts with the traditional Adventist teaching that the Ten Commandments are universal moral precepts concerned with the soul of human beings (and, more importantly, with the vindication of God’s government), it is consistent with Jesus’ understanding of God’s law. In his Theology of the New Testament, the existentialist theologian Rudolf Bultmann suggests that the essence of Jesus’ original message may be found in the eschatological proclamation of Mark 1:15: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Given the imminence of God’s reign, Jesus taught that people needed to prepare themselves by repenting and obeying God’s will. But he distinguished God’s will from the ceremonial commands codified in Jewish law, which are inadequate expressions of humanity’s responsibility to God. This distinction is especially visible in the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus contrasted God’s will with the conventional wisdom of the Jewish teachers. According to Jesus, the essence of God’s law was to be found in the command to love God and one’s neighbor.

The ethical content of Jesus’ message was therefore inextricable from its eschatological content. Charity, for Jesus, was the only appropriate preparation for the arrival of God’s kingdom. Bultmann states, “Jesus’ eschatological message and his ethical message constitute a unity.” He continues,

The fulfillment of God’s will is the condition for participation in the salvation of God’s Reign in this sense, that it means nothing but true readiness for it, genuine and earnest desire for it. The Reign of God, demanding of man decision for God against every earthly tie, is the salvation to come. Hence, only he is ready for this salvation who in the concrete moment decides for that demand of God which confronts him in the person of his neighbor.

Bultmann notes that for Jesus, the proclamation of God’s will is not an ethic of world reform, but a prediction of the irruption of God’s reign, which would overturn the current order. The sign of this impending revolution was Jesus himself, through his performance of miracles.²⁵

What Jesus started by teaching that God’s demand encompassed more than obedience to the Jewish law, Paul continued by teaching that rather than being saved by the law, we are saved by faith in the kerygma or proclamation concerning Jesus. Of greater interest to Paul than the content of Jesus’ message were his death and resurrection, which Paul recognized as the “salvation-occurrence.” Paul’s preoccupation, as Bultmann states, was “whether he was willing to acknowledge in the cross of Christ God’s judgment upon his self-understanding to that time—i.e. God’s condemnation of his Jewish striving after righteousness by fulfilling the works of the Law.” Paul was persuaded that “the ultimate purpose of the Law is to lead man to death and thereby to let God appear as God, for the Law gives sin its power; … sin kills man by means of the commandment by dangling before him the deceptive promise of procuring him life (Rom. 7:11).” By causing people to recognize their sinfulness, “the Law leads man to God as the Creator who bestows life and from whom alone life can be given to man… . It is as this God that he appears in the ‘grace’ of the salvation-occurrence, and it is this God toward whom faith is directed.” The salvation-occurrence is an eschatological event, for “in the proclamation Christ himself, indeed God himself, encounters the hearer, and the ‘Now’ in which the preached word sounds forth is the ‘Now’ of the eschatological occurrence itself (II Cor. 6:2).”²⁶

In other words, while Jesus condemned the legalistic attitude of the Jewish religious leaders, arguing that the true essence of the Law was to love one’s neighbor, Paul took this argument a step further by suggesting that Jesus inaugurated a new covenant community by demonstrating the Law’s perpetual inability to secure our salvation. For Paul, Jesus’ resurrection was proof that his rejection of Jewish legalism was sanctioned by God. Moreover, the resurrection demonstrated that the alternative to legalism was to recognize through faith that God’s presence in our hearts, which has the power to overcome death, is the source of salvation. Instead of being saved by our obedience to a heteronomous law, Paul proclaimed that we are saved by autonomous faith in Christ’s resurrection, which demonstrated Jesus’ power to overcome the condemnation of death inherent in the Law. For Paul, faith and legalism could not be more opposed. In legalism, morality consists of obedience to a law that we can only be induced to obey by promises or threats. In faith, morality consists of the intrinsic virtue that results from our encounter with an immanent God. It is in this encounter that we experience salvation from our condemnation by the Law. We are not saved to keep the Law, as though we were still subject to the threat of punishment inherent in it; instead, we are saved to be the essentially good people whom God created us to be.

Spinoza is right to recognize a progression in the development of Jewish and Christian doctrine away from a conception of religion as obedience to codified, heteronomous laws intended for the constitution of a state, towards a conception of religion as immanent faith in a moral law accessible to our natural reason. For Spinoza, the Calvinists during his time who demanded the universal observance of certain religious ceremonies were not concerned with people’s salvation, but with securing obedience to a political order of their design. To this end, they insisted on obedience to an extrinsic law—as promulgated, of course, by the Calvinist church, and enforced by the Prince of Orange—rather than the cultivation of autonomous political virtue through the use of one’s reason. The parallels between the conservative Calvinists of Spinoza’s time and present-day Adventists are clear. Adventists likewise have not fully accepted Paul’s proclamation concerning Christ, and instead demand obedience to a heteronomous law, as though this were capable of securing our inner salvation and the vindication of God’s love for humanity.

The Adventist church insists on the continued observance of Old Testament laws that Paul (and Spinoza) considered to be ceremonial because it fails to recognize that the ceremonial laws and historical narratives contained in the Bible are not relevant to salvation, but only to persuading people of the moral importance of love for one’s neighbor. This is most evident in the church’s interpretation of the Jewish sanctuary, which it regards as symbolic not only of Christ’s earthly and heavenly ministries (which the Book of Hebrews endorses) but of the historical process by which God is vindicating the Ten Commandments, which are the basis of his government. In interpreting the Jewish sanctuary as a symbol of this historical process, the Adventist church not only seeks to portray the Jewish ceremonies as universal symbols of God’s vindication, but to demonstrate its unique role in hastening the plan of salvation to its culmination. It would not be a problem for the church to suppose that it has a special vocation were it not for its emphasis on heteronomous obedience to the exclusion of autonomous reason.

Unfortunately, however, in insisting that we ought to obey the Jewish ceremonial laws, the church precludes any further consideration of what constitutes the good in a contemporary context. It maintains that everything that can be known about our moral responsibilities and our place in history and the cosmos has already been fully encoded in the sanctuary ceremonies, which are only correctly interpreted by the Adventist church. This dogmatism not only breeds an indifference to the importance of science and social justice—which according to the church can yield no moral insights that have not already been attained by Adventist doctrine—but an anxiety, ripe for exploitation, over the question of why Christ has not returned if the church already believes what it is supposed to believe.