Jesus, Thomas Paine and The Age of Reason
In the early months of the Revolutionary War in America there was little talk of independence. Only a few bold spirits looked for it from the first. From the first Tom Paine felt that the country must struggle for nothing less than independence. England's vexatious policy gave him an opportunity. He exerted all his power at the very crisis of events. By his pamphlet "Common Sense" he reached the very hearts of the people. Led on by this bold pamphlet, the people became eager for independence. When it was known that Paine was its author he became famous. Thomas Paine's "Age of Reason," in which he gives expression to his deistic notions and endeavors to undermine the authority of the Bible, seemed to Americans an outrageous piece of work. The author of such a book appeared to them to be capable of anything that was bad. All manner of vice was attributed to him.
As Thomas Paine wrote in The Age of Reason "As it is nothing extraordinary that a woman should be with child before she was married, and that the son she might bring forth should be executed, even unjustly; I see no reason for not believing that such a woman as Mary, and such a man as Joseph, and Jesus, existed; their mere existence is a matter of indifference ... It is not then the existence, or non-existence, of the persons that I trouble myself about; it is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the New Testament, and the wild and visonary doctrine raised thereon, against which I contend. ...
"The first chapter of Matthew begins with giving a genealogy of Jesus Christ; and in the third chapter of Luke, there is also given a genealogy of Jesus Christ. Did these two agree, it would not prove the genealogy to be true, because it might nevertheless, be a fabrication; but as they contradict each other in every particular, it proves falshood absolutely. If Matthew speak truth, Luke speaks falshood; and if Luke speak truth, Matthew speaks falshood; and as there is no authority for believing one more than the other, there is no authority for believing either; and if they cannot be believed even in the very first thing they say, and set out to prove, they are not entitled to be believed in any thing they say afterwards.... If his natural genealogy be manufactured, which it certainly is, why are not we not to suppose, that his celestial genealogy is manufactured also; and that the whole is fabulous? Can any man of serious reflection hazard his future happiness upon the belief of a story naturally impossible: repugnant to every idea of decency; and related by persons already detected of falsehood? Is it not more safe, that we stop ourselves at the plain, pure, and unmixed belief of one God, which is deism, than that we commit ourselves on an ocean of improbable, irrational, indecent, and contradictory tales?
"But, exclusive of this, the presumption is, that the books called the Evangelists, and ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, were not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; and that they are impositions. The disordered state of the history in these four books, the silence of one book upon matters related in the other, and the disagreement that is to be found among them, implies, that they are the production of some unconnected individuals, many years after the things they pretend to relate, each of whom made his own legend; and not the writings of men living intimately together, as the men called apostles are supposed to have done: in fine, that they have been manufactured, as the hooks of the old testament have been, by other persons, than those whose names they bear.
"The story of the angel, announcing, what the church calls the immaculate conception, is not so much as mentioned in the / books ascribed to Mark, and John; and is differently related S in Matthew and Luke. The former says, the angel appeared to Joseph; the latter says, it was to Mary; but, either Joseph or Mary was the worst evidence that could have been thought of; for it was others that should have testified for them, and not they for themselves. Were any girl that is now with child to say, and even to swear it, that she was gotten with child by a ghost, and that an angel told her so, would she be believed? Certainly she would not. Why, then are we to believe the same thing of another girl whom we never saw, told by nobody knows who, nor when, nor where?
"The story of the appearance ol Jesus Christ is told with that strange mixture of the natural and impossible, that distinguishes legendary tale from fact. He is represented as suddenly coming in, and going out, when the doors are shut, and of vanishing out of sight, and appearing again, as one would conceive of an unsubstantial vision; then again he is hungry, sits down to meat, and eats his supper. But as those whe tell stories of this kind, never provide for all the cases, so it is here: they have told us, that when he arose lie left his grave cloaths behind him; but they have forgotten to provide other cloaths for him to appear in afterwards, or to tell us what he did with them when he ascended; whether he stripped all oft, or went up cloaths and all."
Though Tom Paine was blunt and irreverent he was not the licentious monster that he has been painted. To the deism of Paine can be traced a good deal of his eagerness for independence. In the American Revolution deism did not play the prominent part that atheism did in the French, where the rights of man overshadowed all thought of God. It was as an underlying power that deism had its force. Why was it that Paine was so hostile to monarchy, while other men were indifferent? It was in part at least because he was a deist. In none of the leading men of the Revolution was deism so pronounced as in Paine. Vermont's revolutionary hero, Ethan Allen, wrote a book, "Oracles of Reason" only open to less criticism than the "Age of Reason," because it was weaker. Though Franklin was a deist, little of his wonderful influence is ascribed to his religious notions. It is hard to find out much about Jefferson's religious opinions, but it is probable that his belief was largely akin to Paine's.
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