153. - Prophecy

Summary

Spinoza’s analysis of prophecy challenged the influential view that, since the biblical prophets speak with the voice of God and thus with unimpeachable epistemic authority, believers are bound to accept the truth of their revelations. Spinoza disagrees. In his view, philosophically grounded conclusions have a stronger epistemic warrant than the insights revealed by prophets, and can sometimes override them (E4p23). In at least some cases, we are free to reject what prophets say. We can judge the importance Spinoza attaches to this debate from the fact that he devotes the first two chapters of the TTP to prophecy and prophets. Before he can examine the relation between theology and philosophy, he needs to provide an account of revelation; and to make his account persuasive, he needs to couch it as far as possible in terms that he and his opponents share. To establish a common starting point he turns to Scripture. By taking account of everything the Bible says about prophets and the phenomenon of prophecy, we can put ourselves in an optimal position to work out what kind of epistemic authority the biblical prophets possessed (TTP1.7).