Frederik van Leenhof

Frederik van Leenhof
Portrait from 1709. Engraving by P. van Gunst.
Born	(1647-09-01)1 September 1647 Middelburg, Netherlands
Died	13 October 1715(1715-10-13) (aged 68) Zwolle, Netherlands
School	Cocceianism, Spinozism
Main interests	Ethics, theology

Frederik van Leenhof (1 September 1647 – 13 October 1715) was a Dutch pastor and philosopher active in Zwolle, who caused an international controversy because of his Spinozist work Heaven on Earth (1703). This controversy is extensively discussed in Jonathan Israel's 2001 book Radical Enlightenment.

Leenhof studied theology in the 1660s at Utrecht University under Voetius, and at Leiden University under Cocceius during the Voetian–Cocceian dispute. He served as pastor in Abbeville (1670–71), Nieuwvliet (1672–78) and Velsen (1680–81), before finally settling in Zwolle in 1681. During his first period of writing from 1673 until 1684, he fervently chose the side of the Cartesio-Cocceians against Voetian fundamentalism. He accused his opponents of smear tactics and straw men, denying the claim 'that out of Descartes' school come atheists and libertines'. However, a letter correspondence with Christopher Wittich (briefly his host in Leiden shortly before 1681), in which Leenhof defended Baruch Spinoza's views on substance and creation, was published after Wittich's death in 1687 without Leenhof's permission under the name Anti-Spinoza. When pressed, he admitted having written them, so by 1681 Leenhof must have already been familiar with Spinoza's thought, and accepted important core concepts of it. His 1684 work Keten der Bybelsche Godgeleerdheit ("Chain of Biblical Theology") was later found to contain typically Spinozist views.