ABSTRACT
This chapter examines John Toland's intellectual debt to Spinoza is far deeper than most scholarship has hitherto suggested. Methodologically, Toland follows Spinoza almost unswervingly in offering an 'immanent critique' of Scripture, in which the principal evidence offered comes from within Scripture itself. Arguably, Spinoza's stress on the autonomy of Scripture or, rather, his naturalistic inversion of the standard Protestant notion of Scriptura sui interprets is the greatest innovation provided in the Theological-Political Treatise. Methodologically, perhaps the most striking aspect of Christianity Not is its commitment to Spinoza's very particular scripturalism' that is, Spinoza's radical appropriation of the notion of Scripture as its own, autonomous interpreter. The most important theme, and the main structural principle, of Christianity Not Mysterious in its totality the radical equation of contra rationem and supra rationem is fully operative in terms of the specific treatment of miracles.
