A forerunner of the Enlightenment, Baruch Spinoza was born in the multi-cultural Dutch Republic of the 17th century, to Jewish parents who had from the Portuguese Inquisition. In his philosophical explorations, Spinoza rejected Biblical portraits of God maintained in Judaism and Christianity. Taking the ontological argument for God (famously developed by Descartes) even further, Spinoza stated “whatever is, is in God” — developing a metaphysics in which God is identical with the universe. Spinoza summarized this idea with the phrase “Deus sive Natura” (God or Nature), which some readers have taken as an equation of God and Nature (pantheism) or a replacement of the idea of God with Nature (atheism). John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at the development of Spinoza’s theology within its historical and cultural context.