Rough going so far, as Spinoza is both precise and uses words in the senses they had in Scholastic times.
I think I understand how Spinoza is not a pantheist, though: God determines Creation, in that the Creation is the maximal object that could be created from God, and the Creation determines God, in that God is the minimal object that could create the Creation, so they're two very distinct things, but in a 1:1 relationship.
(examples: intension/extension in logic, cones/gamut in vision, grammar/language in informatics)
I'm not sure how easy the distinction between his viewpoint and pantheism would have been to explain to someone with a XVII background, but Aquinas defo would've been unhappy with the "the deity can create any universe he wants, as long as it's black" part.
(hmm. if our universe only uses up two attributes, 'thought' for all the abstracts and 'extent' for all the concretes, are there any other universes lurking in the remaining infinity of attributes? this also opens the question of whether we're dealing with a countable infinity of attributes, or a higher cardinal...)
I think I understand how Spinoza is not a pantheist, though: God determines Creation, in that the Creation is the maximal object that could be created from God, and the Creation determines God, in that God is the minimal object that could create the Creation, so they're two very distinct things, but in a 1:1 relationship.
(examples: intension/extension in logic, cones/gamut in vision, grammar/language in informatics)
I'm not sure how easy the distinction between his viewpoint and pantheism would have been to explain to someone with a XVII background, but Aquinas defo would've been unhappy with the "the deity can create any universe he wants, as long as it's black" part.
(hmm. if our universe only uses up two attributes, 'thought' for all the abstracts and 'extent' for all the concretes, are there any other universes lurking in the remaining infinity of attributes? this also opens the question of whether we're dealing with a countable infinity of attributes, or a higher cardinal...)