Easter Story

 

Hardly has Christmas passed, it seems, when Lent is upon us with the prospect of an early Easter. In around three months or so, the Christian story unfolds from its beginning through to its end. And then, of course, beyond.

The Easter narrative is generally familiar, at least in outline, even to those who are not church attendees. Those with a fundamental conviction believe the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus to be literally true.

The 18^th Century deist, Thomas Paine, in his book, “The Age of Reason”, gives an account as to how he came to reject the Easter story from an early age. He heard a sermon, possibly delivered by his aunt Miss Cooke, on the subject, ‘Redemption by the death of the Son of God”

Aged about seven or eight, Paine was not impressed. “I revolted at the recollection of what I had heard…that it was making God Almighty act like a passionate man, that killed his son, when he could not revenge himself any other way…”

He went on to reflect, “How different this is to the pure and simple profession of Deism! The true deist has but one Deity…endeavouring to imitate him in everything moral, scientifical (sic), and mechanical.”

Paine goes on from that point to celebrate the scientific advances in understanding the world and the cosmos made up to that point over the three previous centuries. They were the wellsprings of his religious thinking, not recycled ancient mythologies as literal truth.

 

Quotations from, “The Age of Reason” by Thomas Paine, Dover Publications Inc., 2004. Pages 64-65.

The Age of Reason

When Thomas Paine wrote “The Age of Reason” it was a time of revolution in America and France. These were the political manifestations of what became known as The Enlightenment.

Paine took emergent scientific analysis and applied it to a forensic examination of the bible. He demonstrated that rather than being the word of God, scripture was most certainly the words of men.

His intention was not to refute religion, but purge it of traditions and customs hindering clearer understanding, so “…man would return to the pure, unmixed and unadulterated belief in one God, and no more.” The natural world was to be the new gospel.

220 years later this remains a seminal book, establishing the intellectual premises whereby reason rather than faith becomes the foundation of religious belief. This was a new religion, Deism, emerging from a millennium and a half of a catholic theism having its traditional underpinnings eroded by science.

There are anachronisms, such as referring to Islam as the “Turkish” faith, but all writing is bound to reflect the conventions of its time. It still reads as a pertinent and accessible book for an increasingly secular Britain.

Is Deism the future of religion? As Deists eschew the supernatural it is not possible to make predictions, however if it is not Deism then it’s likely to be something very much like it. Religion may have to throw off its burden of superstition, but it’s not going to go away.

For those nurturing a religious or spiritual impulse, however vague, without finding a niche in traditional religions, then Deism could well be for them. “The Age of Reason” is a good starting point, providing a rational critique of Christianity in particular and the other Abrahamic faiths by extension.

On such a solid analytical basis it is possible for an individual to begin constructing a religious viewpoint suiting them. Deism does not have creeds, so it is up to each Deist and ask, “Is there reason enough to suggest Nature is an on-going process indicative of a Natural Creator, albeit One beyond human fathoming.

Thomas Paine’s writings on religion are exemplars of the Deist method, through their application of reason to the subject. “The Age of Reason” is not an exposition of faith; no one is invited to believe anything.

Read the book. See for yourself.