Benedictus de Spinoza

The etymological connection between “mode” and “mood” may illuminate this metaphysical point: a human life is to God what one of my moods is to me—ephemeral, substanceless, and impossible to conceive as separate from or independent of my existence. More metaphorically still, we are to God as waves are to the ocean.

This new account of ontological difference has a clear religious significance: it indicates that we are at once closer to God, and more different from God, than we may have imagined. Since we are in God, we are inseparable from this divine source of our being; yet since God is substance while we are modes, the nature of our existence is different in kind from God’s existence.

. In this way his “panentheism” opposed not just atheism, but also deism, which became widespread in the eighteenth century, propounding the idea that God is merely the architect of the universe, like a watchmaker who designs his creation, sets it in motion, then leaves it to function on its own.