Spinoza has been called both a God-intoxicated man and an atheist, both a pioneer of secular Judaism and a bitter critic of religion. He was born as a Jew but chose to live outside any religious community. He was deeply engaged both in traditional Hebrew learning and in contemporary physical science. This study brings together Spinoza's fundamental philosophical thinking with his conclusions about God and religion. It explains how he identifies God with nature or substance, a theme which runs through his work, enabling him to naturalize religion but equally important to divinize nature. He emerges not as a rationalist precursor of the Enlightenment but as a thinker of the highest importance in his own right, both in philosophy and in religion.
