I know most people I talked to about it find the whole Geometric format to be off-putting; I actually idiosyncratically disagree here, since I like the style and don't think Spinoza's really misusing it.

He makes mistakes, I think, in his reasoning, but that's not really the fault of the method, only the reasoner; as I've said, I think *most* of his reasoning is valid, and accept [at least some version of] his axioms as sound.

Really I think what people are reacting to is Spinoza's insistence that we have strong metaphysical certianties; most people would balk at that sort of thing outside logic and mathematics. (Inconsistently, I think, since I doubt even 9/10ths of what we take as "mathematical certianties" would hold up as certain under the scrutiny most philosophers nowadays apply to metaphysics, amoung other things)

I'm glad to hear that a classical theist appreciates Spinoza. Most theists either don't know who he is or else dismiss or under appreciate him. I think there's a lot to learn from Spinoza even if one doesn't accept his radical conclusions. And indeed: the scholasticism is definitely there. In my studies, understanding the scholastic background with which Spinoza was thinking (e.g., Aquinas, Suarez) made it such that when I returned to the Ethics it was like seeing in colour compared to black and white. Spinoza's definition of substance has spawned a lot of debate. It's an interesting question whether he's on to something, or if he's question-begging, or if he's doing something else. It's also an interesting question of how it came about given the traditional notion of substance. Aristotle's Categories and other works only sometimes gesture at anything remotely like Spinoza's notion of substance. Descartes, however, comes much closer to his Principles 1.51, in which he says that since substances are independent beings, God is the only a substance in the strict sense, whereas finite things are substances in a weaker sense in that they only depend on God. Spinoza arguably took this very seriously and wanted to be consistent unlike Descartes on the matter, and together with his commitment to thoroughgoing intelligibility (via a strong PSR), he arrived at his radical doctrine of substance monism. I'm not sure the theist can agree with everything Spinoza says just short of 1p14, however, though I think there's a lot of theists can agree with. To paraphrase Spinoza's view of God as the only and infinite substance: God is a substance exemplifying every possible fundamental way of being (e.g., extension, thought) and every possible derivative way of being (e.g., being liquid, being the idea of purple). If God, so understood, exists at 1p11, then the conclusion at 1p14 is basically already affirmed. The theist will have to reject Spinoza's steps earlier on, or even just outright reject Spinoza's notion of substance. I was a theist with classical leanings in the past but later found Spinoza, and have since been most attracted to his view of God. Nonetheless, I see classical theists as allies in many respects. But one thing that has been a strong pull on me toward Spinoza is his idea of God as the most perfect or greatest conceivable being, metaphysically speaking. As such, God is metaphysically infinite and unlimited in his being. If God is such a being, I have a hard time seeing how God could fail to be anything else than the only substance, and everything else his modes. Of course, theists are understandably appalled by such a conclusion. They typically tell me that Spinoza's God cannot be the most perfect being since it lacks the familiar moral attributes. But in short, I don't find this rebuttal very convincing, personally, because it seems to entail that God is metaphysically finite and limited in his being. Any thoughts on this guys? There is an old video (with some flaws on YT) on the argument here if you'd like to know more. The video is called "The Ontological Argument from Infinity (Against Theism)."