ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on Spinoza's revision of religion, is the correlation between religion and knowledge and the way in which Spinoza revises the concept of God, the organizing concept of religion, in each of the three kinds of knowledge respectively. It explores the contradictions that arise from Spinoza's neglecting and contradicting his own axiom of causality, the contradiction between the finite and the infinite and the contradiction between immanence and transcendence in Spinoza's concept of God. The book also focuses on the contradiction that arises from Gods intellectual love of himself does not destroy the concept of God in the third kind of knowledge, but constructs it in that it ensures Gods salvation, who loves God by means of his intellect. It also explores the conatus, a principle situated at the heart of Spinoza's metaphysical system, and reveals five contradictions embedded in it.
