The Relation between Nature and God in Spinoza's Philosophy

The relation between nature and God is among the long-standing questions in the history of philosophy. Nature for the pre-Socratic philosophers is the first thing with which they dealt, and for Socrates, Plato, and especially for Aristotle, was of special importance. The phrase "God or Nature" has been used for the first time by the Stoic philosophers. In the middle ages, the relation between nature and God has been put forwarded within the real of christian theology, and in the renaissance and modern times has continued to be disscussed from a new perspective. Our main concern in the present paper is to study the question in Spinoza's philosophy. In this regard, there dominates two viewpoints: a) atheism, b) pantheism; the former of which is believed by the Synagoge and, among the philosophers, by Hume, and the latter and more dominant, is maintained by the most of historian of philosophy. Ofcourse, there is a third viewpoint, i.e. panentheism, that in spite of its similarity with the pantheism, is more nearer to theism. The authors tries to show that the panentheistic interpretation of spinozism is more consistent with his system of thought than the atheistic or pantheistic ones.