Will, Bible, Inadequate Ideas

As theologically unconventional as his Ethics is, Spinoza's more notorious heterodoxy appears in the Theologico-Political Treatise, in which he pioneers the thesis that Biblical scriptures are primarily not literally true, but present sound practical precepts in figurative guise. In other words, those passages exemplify what he calls 'inadequate' ideas, beginning with that of a God that transcends its creation, e. g. his God-Mode relation is the adequate interpretation of the idea that God created humans in his "own image". However, Spinoza misses the significance of God's exhortation to "be fruitful and multiply", which here is interpreted as a Pluralistic principle. Accordingly, he misses the pluralistic implication of God's Extension, as well of that of its Modal correlate, here rendered as Will.