A Review of the Age of Reason (Part 2): God's Revelation
Revelation
Having seen that Paine found fault particularly with the Catholic Church, which seemed to bias him against the Bible itself, we next notice his argument against any written revelation, as it comes from God. Although he believed that the natural revelation that God gave mankind spoke loudly and eloquently, he believed that written revelation was worthless.
No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication, if he pleases. But…it is a revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all these persons. It is a revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and consequently they are not obliged to believe it.
It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication—after this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him… (8-9).
The reader will notice a hint of arrogance in the writer, which becomes even more apparent as the book unfolds. Early on, Paine has decided that he knows more than God about how God ought to do things. Imagine telling the Creator of the universe that His revelations are invalid to more than just the one who received them! Imagine a commander of troops in the Revolutionary War being handed a slip of paper, on which it is written that General Washington wanted him and his men to attack a certain position at dawn three days hence. Would he say, “General Washington may indeed have written this note, but I didn’t see him do it”?
What folly would such an attitude be! Is Washington’s order consistent with the concept of fighting the war? Yes. Did the revelation come from someone trustworthy? Yes. Does anything about the revelation suggest fraud or deceit on the part of persons unknown? No. The idea that God must speak to every individual on the face of the earth in every age is preposterous. Paine is far from rational on this subject.
Consider the message that God gave Noah concerning the Flood that was about to occur. Did God give this message to anyone else besides Noah? There is no reason to believe that He did. Did the now-famous patriarch communicate that message to others? Yes. An inspired apostle said that Noah was “a preacher of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5). Should the people have believed Noah’s message—though God had given it only to him? They should have for two reasons: 1) The people were oozing with sin from the inside out. Every imagination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually (Gen. 6:5). If anyone should have known that they were about to reap what they had sown, it was that generation. One cannot heap wickedness upon wickedness and not expect to be punished. Noah’s message had the ring of truth, although the world rejected it. 2) Although any madman might claim the world was going to be deluged with water, not many would go to the trouble of building a huge ark. It should have been obvious to all that Noah believed his message of the flood to come.
But there is a third consideration. God had prophets before Noah, who, if they did not speak concerning the Flood, did prophesy concerning the punishment of sin. Enoch (Noah’s grandfather) was translated into heaven instead of seeing death; he had foretold of the day when the Lord would come with ten thousands of His saints to execute judgment upon the ungodly (Jude 14-15). God expected man to reason correctly about his sin and the need for repentance. They failed.
Revelation and Moses
The only valid point that Paine raises is to point out that anyone may say that he has had a revelation from God. Joseph Smith claims to have been the recipient of God’s revelation, and many people sincerely believe that he was a prophet. But upon what basis have they accepted this error? Today, most people are born into it, but as anyone knows who has been visited by the Mormons, their proof is entirely subjective: “I prayed for God to show me that the Book of Mormon is true, and He did.” Such a notion constitutes no proof at all—unless it be that God will allow people to be deceived (2 Thess. 2:10).
Pentecostals imagine that they receive new revelations daily, but few feel obligated to believe them. Various cults arise periodically; they usually have a charismatic leader who places himself above the Word of God. People rightly challenge the “revelations” of those who claim to be speaking for God. God knew that mankind would require evidence. He supplied it in abundance.
When Moses traveled to Egypt, he had to convince the Israelites to follow him. Then he had to convince Pharaoh, and that task took a considerable amount of evidence. After the death of the firstborn, Pharaoh let the Israelites leave Egypt, but then he regretted the decision and pursued them. Passing through the sea on dry ground, Israel escaped the mighty Egyptian army when the walls of water collapsed upon them. The power of God was not lost upon those who heard (second hand) of this event. Forty years later, a mere harlot in Jericho (who was not even born at the time it happened) was impressed enough to tell two spies of Israel:
“I know that the Lord has given you the land, that the terror of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land are fainthearted because of you. For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were on the other side of the Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. And as we heard these things, our hearts melted; neither did there remain any more courage in anyone because of you, for the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath” (Joshua 2:9-11).
Had Paine lived in Jericho, he might have said these words were just hearsay, but the people of the land regarded them as historical fact. Furthermore, God spoke the Ten Commandments to all of Israel. They heard His voice. A nation of more than a million witnesses is going to have the facts for a long time. Their children would not regard these truths as hearsay. In fact they would be much more faithful than their parents who experienced those things firsthand! Those born into the nation of Israel knew that God had revealed His covenant to Moses.
Jesus and the Apostles
When it was time for God’s final revelation to mankind, which involved Jesus dying for our sins, God once again supplied abundant evidence. First of all, the doctrine that Jesus taught had the ring of truth, just as Noah’s did; people were astonished at what Jesus taught (Matt. 7:28-29). He was not wishy-washy, as many of the teachers of that day were. He spoke with authority. “But what about when He made claims to be the Son of God?” Certainly, that was astounding—especially since He looked like any other man. For that reason He performed miracles, signs, and wonders.
“Yes,” Paine would say, “but that is all hearsay to this generation.” In return, we might ask, “How do we know anything from the past?” Did Paine regard Julius Caesar as hearsay? How about Augustus and the Roman Empire? On what authority did he believe the testimony regarding the sale of indulgences? By his own logic, would not a corrupt priest have to personally approach him with an offer, lest those reports were just hearsay? A defender of this founding father might say these are historical facts which are well documented.
That is correct, and that very principle comes from the Scriptures. The testimony of two or three witnesses is to be believed if they are reliable and no evidence of false testimony exists (Deut. 17:6; 19:15-19). The doctrine of Jesus itself bore witness to the truth; the miracles also bore witness that what He spoke was the truth. In fact, John recorded these miracles so that people might believe. If more miracles were forthcoming after the apostolic era, then John would not have needed to have written them down. But he did record them, and so did the other writers of the New Testament.
As also was the case with Noah, there can be no question but that the apostles believed what they preached and taught. Their lives conformed to the doctrine that they taught. Unlike Joseph Smith, they did not accumulate wives to themselves, thus indicating an ulterior motive for this new “religion.” Unlike some of the televangelists in recent decades, they did not preach a health and wealth gospel with the desire of accumulating wealth and property in this world. Furthermore, they were all faithful to the end of their earthly lives, giving themselves over to persecution and martyrdom. They truly believed what they taught and practiced.
Furthermore, the apostles’ teaching and miracles continued to convince multitudes of the truth of the resurrection of Christ. Why would people embrace this new religion, unless the evidence compelled them to? Were there not enough gods and goddesses around? Later, people would embrace the Muslim religion (or die), but the early adherents received gold, silver, and earthly goods from the battles they won. Muhammad did no miracles. His followers killed others. Christians allowed themselves to be put to death. Which has more credibility?
Jesus and “the ends of the earth”
The Age of Reason is rich in irony. Paine complains that men pray dictatorially, directing “the Almighty what to do” (38). Of course, in making this frivolous charge against the Christian, it never dawns on Paine that, throughout the book, he tells God what He should have done. The difference is that God invites the Christian to pray and make his requests known to Him (Phil. 4:6-7), but He never encourages any mortal to advise Him and tell him what He ought to have done. When Job attempted to do so, God asked Him some questions, which revealed to Job that God’s knowledge was far greater than his. It is too bad that this wonderful message did not sink into Paine’s ears.
The author also accuses men of not using God’s greatest gift, “the GIFT OF REASON,” with respect to the Bible and Christianity (38). (Apparently, if we reasoned correctly, we would all be skeptics in rejecting the written revelation of God, as Paine did.) But then notice how fallacious his use of logic is. He writes:
Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of being used as the means of unchangeable and universal information. The idea that God sent Jesus Christ to publish, as they say, the glad tidings to all nations, from one end of the earth to the other, is consistent only with the ignorance of those who knew nothing of the extent of the world, and who believed…and continued to believe for centuries (and that in contradiction to the discoveries of philosophers and the experience of navigators), that the earth was flat…and that they might walk to the end of it (38-39).
Paine cannot help getting in digs against the Catholic Church whenever possible, but here he is irrational in saying that the use of the phrase, from one end of the earth to the other, proves that the Bible writers thought the earth was flat (cf. Isa. 40:22). This is simply terminology that is commonly used, such as the four corners of the earth, which likewise does not imply a flat earth like a handkerchief but merely indicates the farthest parts of the four directions. In Matthew 24:31, Jesus said that, at the sound of a trumpet, the angels would “gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.” Was Jesus intimating that heaven was flat? No, He simply used a phrase to indicate the thoroughness of the matter. How logical was it for Paine to lodge such a frivolous analysis? His bias is clearly seen. He continues:
But how was Jesus Christ to make anything known to all nations? He could speak but one language, which was Hebrew, and there are in the world several hundred languages…. …it is impossible to translate from one language to another, not only without losing a great part of the original, but frequently mistaking the sense; and besides all this, the art of printing was wholly unknown at the time Christ lived (39).
Who said that Jesus could only speak one language? He used Aramaic expressions, and He quoted from the Septuagint, which was written in Greek. But beyond these, He was present at the Tower of Babel where all languages came into existence. He was also aware of their changes over the centuries. Later, the Holy Spirit would cause the apostles in speak in a variety of different languages (Acts 2:1-11). As God once said to Moses, “Who has made man’s mouth?” (Ex. 4:13). God invented human language to begin with. To say that Jesus only knew one language is laughable. Apparently, Paine thinks he is informing God of some new truth—that there are several hundred languages in the world. Imagine the Lord’s surprise—to learn of this fact? This is somewhat comparable to a second-grader trying to teach an NBA player how to play basketball.
And what was God thinking—sending Jesus into the world before the printing press was invented? Paine’s claims about translation are greatly exaggerated. Are some expressions difficult to put into another language? Sure. Idioms are always tricky. Careful translations, however, convey the appropriate message. Had Paine ever read the Iliad or The Odyssey? Homer wrote in Greek; so, according to Paine, he probably didn’t get the real story. Maybe Ulysses never actually made it home, and Penelope is still unraveling her burial shroud. Did Paine ever read any of the Greek plays? Did he understand Oedipus Rex, or was the translation so poor he couldn’t grasp the situation? Did he ever study Vergil’s Aeneid? It must have been translated from the Latin. Did he ever read anything written originally in French (Rousseau or Voltaire, for example) or German? The same problem exists for them as well. While there are difficulties with translation, they are successfully accomplished. Certainly it is not impossible to translate from one language to another.
The art of printing was not wholly unknown at the time: it was only wholly unknown to man. God knew when it would be invented. He also knew that the Scriptures would be translated into other languages very early on and that the manuscripts themselves would be copied in the Greek language (which was known throughout most of the world) and distributed. In fact, it was the universality of language that may have determined what was the best time for Christ to come into the world.
Paine admitted that the natural revelation proclaims the existence of God. He also acknowledged that God could have given an oral or written revelation if He so desired. Why did he not think that the One who could create the vastness of this universe could not also know about the shape of the earth He created, that it was hung upon nothing (Job 26:7), various languages, and how the gospel would be spread?
Like most skeptics, Paine really does have a problem with the power that God has, which includes inspiring His revelation to mankind. Most also have a high opinion of themselves and their own abilities (which God gave them). They think that if God were as smart as they were, He would have done things much better.