  Among the politically relevant claims that Spinoza makes in the first fifteen chapters of the work is that Scripture does not compete with philosophy as a source of knowledge; nor do the injunctions of Scripture compete with the commands of civil authorities. By separating faith from reason and making religion’s role in the public realm subordinate to that of the state, Spinoza tries to sanitize religion of its pernicious superstitious aspects. We may call the claim that faith is distinct from reason the separation thesis and the claim that religious law is dependent on and determined by civil law the single authority thesis.