Wolff, Spinoza, and the Interpretation of Scripture

Despite his long-standing opposition to Spinoza, Christian Wolff was depicted by many as a crypto-Spinozist himself. Scholars have so far focused mainly on Wolff’s metaphysical doctrines in order to settle the issue of his alleged commitment to Spinozism. However, there is evidence that Wolff had already been suspected of Spinozism long before the 1720s, at the very beginning of his career, and not because of his metaphysics but because of his exegetical method and his defense of Copernicanism against the received interpretation of Josh. 10:12-13. This chapter offers a reconstruction of that episode and explores the hypothesis that remnants of Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus are present in Wolff’s early hermeneutics and especially in his reformulation of the so-called accommodation doctrine. The possibility that Wolff’s first contact with Spinoza did not concern the metaphysics of the Ethica but the exegetical principles of the TTP opens up a new perspective on Wolff’s complex relation to Spinozism.