Spinoza's God

Albert Einstein was once asked by a rabbi, 'Do you believe in God?' This was in 1929, after he had published his two seminal works on relativity, but before he migrated to the US in 1933, due to the growing Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany. Einstein replied, 'I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals Himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns Himself with fates and actions of human beings.'

Who is Spinoza's God? Baruch Spinoza was of Portuguese Jewish origin. His family had escaped persecution of Jews at home in the 17th c. and settled in the Netherlands. He defined God as 'a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence', and since 'no cause or reason' can prevent such a being from existing, it must exist.

Friedrich Schlegel, a German Romantic who studied Sanskrit, is often credited with calling Spinoza a 'European Hindu'. Spinoza, he said, wasn't denying God; he was affirming God in the most absolute and all-encompassing way possible - a way that Hinduism had long understood.


However, Spinoza's concept is devoid of scriptures, rituals and devotion, central to Hinduism. Also, it is a product of rigid logical deduction, unlike the intuitive, experiential knowledge, Jnan, of Vedanta.