The title of chapter 4 announces that it is concerned with ‘divine law’. The opening couple of sentences draw a distinction between divine and human law:

It is striking what is elided in this distinction. Specifically, it does not say that the source or origin of divine law is revelation and that of human law is legitimacy or the sovereign as the one who has the authority to legislate. Further, the definition does not define the law in terms of command and obedience.

The reason for these omissions is that these traditional avenues of approaching the law are not open to Spinoza. Revelation, according to chapter 1, is a communication with God that is mediated through the proph-ets’ interpretation, which makes it a human construct. And the command and obedience model cannot account for divine law, since God or nature is understood in strictly impersonal terms by Spinoza. Instead of the traditional routes of approaching legality, Spinoza has recourse to a qualitative distinction between the absolute necessity of divine or natural law, and the dependence of human law on the will of a polity to preserve itself.

The title of chapter 4 announces that it is concerned with ‘divine law’. The opening couple of sentences draw a distinction between divine and human law:

No sooner has Spinoza solved one problem than another arises. The qualitative distinction between necessity and will may be challenged on the grounds that human will cannot be separated in reality from the necessity of nature. What we will and do forms part of the concatenation of causes and effects that constitute the totality of nature.