47 pages • 1 hour read
Thomas PaineThe Age Of Reason
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1794A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Preface Summary: “To the Ministers and Preachers of All Denominations of Religions”
Paine introduces Part 3 by referring to Old-Testament prophecies often interpreted as predicting the coming of Jesus Christ. He denies that these prophecies had anything to do with Christ and thus denounces them as the foundation of false belief. Paine criticizes preachers who preach salvation on this basis. He concludes this brief preface by explaining that his religious writings have the same purpose as his older political writings—to free mankind from ignorance and submission to lies.
Introductory Chapter Summary: “An Essay on Dreams”
Since the Old Testament is filled with dreams that are said to be prophetic, Paine opens with a supposition about how the mind actually works. He identifies the “three great faculties of the mind” as imagination, judgment, and memory (169). He confesses that we cannot know exactly how these faculties operate, but he envisions a great watch that functions on its own and then compares these faculties to different parts of the watch. During sleep, imagination remains active, but judgment and memory are suspended in slumber, which explains the curious nature of our dreams and why we so often cannot remember them.
This speculation serves as a prelude to a critique of religions that rely upon the interpretation of dreams. The Old Testament, for instance, gives an exalted place to prophets while at the same time denigrating the Almighty by making Him nothing more than the avenging God of the Jews. Somehow, priests and fanatics have imposed this false God on gullible believers. For centuries the supposed prophecies of Jesus Christ have helped connect the fraudulent Old and New Testaments, so Paine proposes to debunk these prophetic claims.
Section 1 Summary: “The Book of Matthew”
The first section of Part 3 is lengthier than all five succeeding sections combined. In the New Testament’s Book of Matthew alone, Paine identifies 12 passages said to be prophecies fulfilled by Jesus Christ. Paine then uses textual evidence from the Old Testament to show that these passages refer to contemporaneous individuals or events and thus cannot be interpreted as predicting the coming of Christ or any of the circumstances surrounding Christ’s life and death.
Paine begins his critical analysis with a passage in the Old Testament’s Book of Isaiah that supposedly prophesies the virgin birth. Paine uses textual evidence to conclude that Isaiah was actually referring to the birth of his own child. Likewise, Matthew’s version of King Herod, who fears the prophesied birth of a new king in Judea, is inconsistent with the relevant Old-Testament passage, which refers to a military leader. Section 1 continues in this fashion, as Paine identifies and then debunks 10 additional prophecies. Three of these 10 additional prophecies concern Christ’s infancy, King Herod’s fear of a new king and subsequent slaughter of infants, and the angels who appeared in the dreams of Joseph, Jesus’s father. The seven remaining prophecies relate to Jesus’s adult life, ministry, and the circumstances of his death.
Of these seven prophecies, three appear in the Book of Isaiah; one appears in each of Zechariah, Jeremiah, and Psalms; and one is a general claim of prophecies fulfilled, so it cannot be traced to a specific book. In each instance Paine either reveals the actual (or likely) subject of the supposed prophecy as identified by the relevant Old-Testament book, or, in one case, he shows that the New-Testament authors combined unrelated passages to create the appearance of prophecy and thereby produce a “forced and far-fetched piece of imposition” (185). Amidst this lengthy textual analysis, Paine intersperses appeals for the reader to see the light, reject revealed religion, and embrace Deism. He concludes that the “Book of Matthew is fable and falsehood” (202).
Section 2 Summary: “The Books of Mark and Luke”
Paine finds far fewer prophecies in the other three books of the Gospel. The Book of Mark transforms a prophecy of Elijah, himself a prophet, into a prediction of John the Baptist. The Book of Luke contains no prophecies. These two books are noteworthy, therefore, for the manner in which they conflict with Matthew’s account. Luke, in particular, contradicts Matthew on key parts of the narrative to which Matthew ascribes prophecy. Paine regards these contradictions as further proof that the New Testament is false.
Section 3 Summary: “The Book of John”
Paine again acknowledges that there are fewer prophecies here than in the Book of Matthew. Nonetheless, the Book of John does identify two passages from the Old Testament as prophecies of Christ. Paine locates these passages in Deuteronomy and Exodus. From textual analysis he concludes that the first of these refers to Joshua, Moses’s successor, while the second refers to circumstances of the Israelites’ deliverance from Egypt. The Book of John, according to Paine, has “filled up the measure of apostolic fable” (210).
Section 4 Summary
Apart from the earlier section on the Book of Matthew, Section 4 constitutes the lengthiest section in Part 3. Having completed his textual analysis of supposed prophecies in the New Testament, Paine draws conclusions. Many of these conclusions are re-assertions of claims he makes throughout Age of Reason, but two are new. First, he announces “a well-founded suspicion” that Jesus Christ “did not exist even as a man” (211). Then, in this section’s final sentence, he proclaims, “HE THAT BELIEVES IN THE STORY OF CHRIST IS AN INFIDEL TO GOD” (223). In between these two declarations, Paine denounces revealed religion and continues his appeal for a reason-inspired faith based on God’s observable Creation.
Paine inserts lengthy excerpts from a letter written by Dr. Conyers Middleton, an early-18th-century Anglican clergyman, in which Middleton argues for Deism. For support, Middleton quotes the ancient Roman philosopher Cicero, and Paine writes approvingly of both men. Paine then resumes his criticism of the Old and New Testaments, which leads to his thunderous conclusion that Christians are infidels.
Section 5 Summary: “Contradictory Doctrines in the New Testament, Between Matthew and Mark”
In Section 5, little more than one page in length, Paine identifies conflicting passages in the Gospel. The Book of Mark connects eternal salvation to simple faith in Christ. The Book of Matthew, on the other hand, attributes salvation to good works. Paine accuses priests of neglecting Matthew’s call to good works because they are greedy, and they know that only the doctrine of salvation-by-faith will allow them to construct enormous and expensive churches.
Section 6 Summary: “My Private Thoughts on a Future State”
In this concluding section, also slightly more than one page in length, Paine declares that he believes he will have eternal life, but that this matter is entirely for the Creator to decide. With this in mind, he criticizes the Book of Matthew’s account of a supposed judgment day on which all souls will receive either salvation or damnation. He rejects this dichotomous view of God’s judgment on grounds that “the moral world [...] is composed of numerous degrees of character, running imperceptibly one into the other, in such a manner that no fixed point of division can be found in either” (225).
Paine concludes with a prediction that the righteous “will be happy hereafter” while “the very wicked will meet with some punishment,” for this “is consistent with my idea of God’s justice” (226).
Part 3 Analysis
Part 3 supplies the missing elements from Part 2: a book-by-book analysis of the four Gospels, and an explicit connection between the Old and New Testaments. Both of these elements involve claims of prophecy.
The problem of prophecy has troubled Paine since Part 1, where he claimed that the Old Testament’s prophets were actually Jewish poets and musicians, that the word prophet meant poet, and that these individuals were described as prophesying when they were performing, via either recitations of poetry or the playing of music. Instead of elaborating on this claim or presenting additional external evidence to support it—Paine is consistent in his desire to focus solely on the texts’ internal evidence—Paine instead speculates on the nature of dreams, which is the method by which many of the Old Testament’s prophets are said to have seen future events. This decision requires a brief explanation.
In light of Paine’s broader purpose, it is not enough to prove that the Old Testament prophets were not the far-seeing oracles of Christian imagination. He also must demonstrate that where Christianity is false, Deism is true. His analysis of dreams speaks to this objective. Paine admits that the true nature of dreams cannot be fully understood because the brain cannot be observed. In a telling passage, however, he identifies three relevant mental faculties—imagination, judgment, and memory—and then declares that “the operations of these distinct and several faculties have some resemblance to a watch” (170). This is a Deistic view of reality. Deists often referred to the Creator God as “The Great Watch-maker,” “The Great Clock-maker of the Universe,” or something of the kind.
Throughout Age of Reason but particularly in Part 1, Paine expresses admiration for the regular, orderly, harmonious movements of the heavenly orbs. They have a predictable, mechanical, clock-like quality. It makes sense, therefore, that Paine would envision the operations of the mind as a microcosm of the entire universe. Since Age of Reason is a paean to Deism, it also makes sense that he would explain dreams in this way. The prophets’ dreams, therefore, had no relevance to the coming of Jesus Christ because they had no relevance to anything at all. Dreams do not work that way. God reveals His word through the natural laws of His Creation, not through a series of disordered, confusing, nocturnal images or impressions.
Having established that prophecy itself is untrue, Paine proceeds to examine the four books of the Gospels to show that the specific prophecies mentioned in those books, in addition to being untrue by nature and therefore impossible, were in fact fabrications attributable to the carelessness or dishonesty of the New-Testament authors. It is clear that Paine goes through the Gospels book-by-book with the intention of executing the same kind of text-based evisceration of the New Testament that he performed on the Old Testament in Part 2.
He finds and debunks 12 prophecies in the Book of Matthew, but he also discovers that the other three books of the Gospels do not abound with such prophecies, which accounts for the brevity of those chapters in Part 3. He does not explain this discrepancy, though it is possible that no such explanation could be made. Instead, he cites the relative paucity of prophecies in Mark, Luke, and John as one more inconsistency that invalidates the entire New Testament.
Finally, Part 3 highlights several broad similarities between Paine and the Christians, but it also reiterates and amplifies one fundamental difference. Both Paine and the Christians agree on a Creator God. They also agree on the importance of living a moral life. Paine even cites the Book of Matthew’s call for good works, which Paine describes as “works of humanity and benevolence” (224) consistent with the true theology.
Like the Christians, Paine believes in an afterlife, though he denies the doctrine of salvation. On the other hand, it would be impossible to imagine a more immense difference than Paine’s dual assertion that 1) Jesus Christ probably never even existed, and 2) anyone who believes in Jesus Christ is an infidel. Leaving the truth or falsehood of these assertions to the reader’s judgment, it is important to note, for the purpose of understanding Age of Reason, that Paine’s hostility toward Christianity deepened and intensified over time.
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