Thomas Paine the
Subject of California Seminar
James
Tepfer and Maurice Bisheff -- both
of the TPF Board of Directors -- were the key presenters at a recent seminar on
Thomas Paine, sponsored by the Institute of World Culture in Santa Barbara CA. Tepfer presented Paine's thought on religion and politics,
and he also read out his own "commentary" after each topical section.
Bisheff focused on Paine's political
principles--including Paine's most radical social proposals. A lively
discussion ensued; the seminar was thought-provoking and well
received, with people suitably impressed and keen to learn more about Paine.
Tepfer reports
that the three-hour seminar was well attended and included a wide range of
people: members of the Nuclear Peace Foundation, junior high and high school
teachers, city college instructors, businessmen, students, artists,
housewives and, last but not least, an elderly gentleman, Frank Kelly, who
was a speech writer for President Truman and is Vice President for the Center
for the Study of Democratic Institutions (also known as the Fund for the
Republic).
Each person in attendance took home Tepfer's
Paine quotes on "religion," arranged in six topics: Deism; God; Man; Religion;
Science and Theology; Society and Government. Tepfer encouraged the attendees to share the quotes with
friends and he has already received requests for extra copies. He also attached
a separate copy of an article that he
wrote for the Bulletin two years ago ["Tom Paine: Lover of Deity
and Man," Bulletin, vol. 5, no.
4, page 6, January 2005], which he had slightly updated to reflect the present
political situation.
James Tepfer's
paper consists of six topics. The Bulletin
is printing the paper in three installments, starting in this number
with the first
two topics, I. Deism, and, II. God. Maurice Bisheff's
paper is complete in this number of the Bulletin.
The Religious and
Political Philosophy of Thomas Paine
by James Tepfer
Soon after I published the pamphlet
COMMON SENSE, in America, I saw the
exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be
followed by a revolution in the system of religion. The adulterous connection
of church and state, wherever it had taken place, whether Jewish, Christian, or
Turkish, had so effectually prohibited, by pains and penalties, every
discussion upon established creeds, and upon first principles of religion, that
until the system of government should be changed, those subjects could not be
brought fairly and openly before the world; but that whenever this should be
done, a revolution in the system of religion would follow.
(-- The Age of Reason, page
51, In: Foner, Citadel Press, 1988)
(For those who prefer poetry over philosophy, the
following poem expresses the essence of Paine’s religious views.)
“The world’s the book where the eternal Sense
Wrote his own thoughts; the living temple where,
Painting his very self, with figures fair
He filled the whole immense circumference.
Here then should each man read, and gazing find
Both how to live and govern, and beware
Of godlessness; and seeing God all-where,
Be bold to grasp the universal mind.
But we tied down to books and temples dead,
Copied with countless errors from life, –
These nobler than that school sublime we call.
O may our senseless souls at length be led
To truth by pain, grief, anguish, trouble, strife,
Turn we to read the one original.” ®
-- Tommaso Campanella
I. Deism
1.
The true deist has but one Deity; and his religion
consists in contemplating the power, wisdom, and benignity of the Deity in his
works, and in endeavoring to imitate him in everything moral, scientifical, and mechanical. (AoR, p. 84)
2.
The Creation speaks a universal language, independent
of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they be. It is an
ever-existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot
be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be
suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be
published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other.
It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this Word of God reveals to
man all that is necessary for man to know of God. (AoR, p. 69)
3.
Deism then teaches us, without the possibility of being deceived,
all that is necessary or
proper to be known.
4.
The only religion that has not been invented, and that
has in it every evidence of divine originality, is
pure and simple deism. It must have been the first and will probably be the
last that man believes. But pure and simple deism does not answer the purpose
of despotic governments. They cannot lay hold of religion as an engine but by
mixing it with human inventions, and making their own authority a part; neither
does it answer the avarice of priests, but by incorporating themselves and
their functions with it, and becoming, like the government, a party in the
system. It is this which forms the otherwise mysterious connection of Church
and State; the Church humane, and the State tyrannic.
(AoR, p.
186)
5.
Any system of religion that shocks the mind of a child
cannot be a true system. (AoR, p. 83)
Continued on page 8, Paine's
Religious Philosophy
6 Bulletin of Thomas Paine
Friends, vol. 8, no. 1,
March 2007
…Paine's Religious Philosophy (by J. Tepfer), from page 6
II. God
1.
The only idea man can affix to the name of God, is that
of a first cause, the cause of all things. And, incomprehensibly difficult as it
is for a man to conceive what a first cause is, he arrives at the belief of it,
from the tenfold greater difficulty of disbelieving it. It is difficult beyond
description to conceive that space can have no end; but it is more difficult to
conceive an end. It is difficult beyond the power of man to conceive an eternal
duration of what we call time; but it is more impossible to conceive a time
when there shall be no time. (AoR, p. 70)
2.
In like manner of reasoning, everything we behold
carries in itself evidence that it did not make itself. Every man is an
evidence to himself, that he did not make himself…; neither could any tree,
plant, or animal make itself; and it is the conviction arising from this
evidence, that carries us on, as it were, by necessity, to the belief of a
first cause eternally existing, of a nature totally different to any material
existence we know of, and by the power of which all things exist; and this
first cause, man calls God. (AoR, p. 70)
3.
God is the power of first cause, nature is the law, and
matter is the subject acted upon. (A
Discourse of the Society of Theophilanthropists,
1797, Paris)
4.
When at first thought we think of a
Creator, our ideas appear to us undefined and confused; but if we reason
philosophically, those ideas can be easily arranged and simplified. 'It is a
Being whose power is equal to his will.' Observe the nature of the will of man.
It is of an infinite quality. We cannot conceive the possibility of limits to
the will. Observe, on the other hand, how exceedingly limited is his power of
acting compared with the nature of his will. Suppose the power equal to the
will, and man would be a God. He would will himself eternal, and be so. He
could will a creation, and could make it. In this progressive reasoning, we see
in the nature of the will of man half of that which we conceive in thinking of
God; add the other half, and we have the whole idea of a being who could make
the universe, and sustain it by perpetual motion; because he could create that
motion. (A Discourse
at the Society of Theophilanthropists, 1797,
Paris)
1.
Do we want to contemplate His power? We see it in the
immensity of the Creation. Do we want to contemplate His wisdom? We see it in
the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible WHOLE is governed. Do we
want to contemplate His munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he
fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate His mercy? We see it in His not
withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to
know what GOD is? Search not written or printed books, but the Scriptures
called the creation. (AoR,
pp. 69-70)
6. Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection? No; not only because
the power and wisdom He has manifested in the structure of the creation that
I behold is to me incomprehensible, but
because even this manifestation, great as it is, is probably but a small
display of that immensity of
power and wisdom, by which millions of other worlds, to me
invisible by their distance, were created and continue to exist. (AoR, p. 72)
7. But it is necessary to the
happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not
consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it
consists in professing to believe what he does not believe….
It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that
mental lying has produced in society. (AoR, p. 50)
Commentary
·
Clearly, Paine is
no atheist. He is deeply convinced of the reality of Deity. Deity is not just
an explanatory principle, not just a rational necessity to account for the
world. It is that but it is more. Deity is a vibrant presence and is everywhere
evident.
·
Yet, atheism does
have its point. It is rational to a degree because it rejects an
anthropomorphic conception of God. To the conventional atheist, the personal
God of organized religion is a fanciful imputation, the ‘magnified silhouette’
of man as it were.
·
Paine put his own
twist on the true meaning of atheism, however, by claiming that belief in an
anthropomorphic God of love and rage was, in reality, another species of
atheism – and a more dangerous one. The most damaging form of atheism is not
the rejection of God so much as it is the disfiguring of Deity through the
limited imagination and the flawed intellect. For this reason, Paine held that
conventional atheism that rejects God altogether is only half rational. It
denies a personal God but is itself occluded from recognizing the existence of
an impersonal Deity in all its majesty.
·
If atheism is only
half rational because it rejects a personal God, then, in a similar manner, to
regard Deity as simply a transcendental First Cause is also only half right. A
close examination of Paine’s writings makes it clear that Deity is not simply a
remote Transcendent nor an impersonal First Cause. It
is in fact deeply meaningful to contemplate Deity and Nature again and again
because Deity is also immanent; it is the surcharge of all our profoundest
insights and noblest activities. Deity is a vibrant, intelligent presence. It
is neither locatable in some particular cosmic space nor is it frozen in some
cosmic moment of Fiat Lux.
It is a self-radiant and continuously creative center of existence. Its
continual contemplation and study through the works of Nature is an eternal
epiphany to the devoted individual.
·
Deity is analogous
to the Sun. The light of the sun is the luminous testimony of its existence and
its perpetual fecundity is the evidence of its immediate potency. Yet, it is also true that the Sun’s overwhelming
radiance is what keeps us from directly seeing its fullness or its real nature.
·
Thus, Deity, like
the Sun, is both distant and immediately present, both remote and near at hand.
Like the golden orb that graces the plenum, Deity is the impartial source of
all life and intelligence. It radiates, nourishes and destroys. It enlightens
and dispels shadows through the power of
rational
understanding. Its presence brings hope and its absence despair. Deity is,
according to St. Martin, the verb of Nature, the source of rhythm
and motion.
Continued on page 10, Paine's
Religious Philosophy
8 Bulletin
of Thomas Paine Friends, vol. 8, no. 1, March 2007
…Paine's Religious Philosophy (by J. Tepfer),
from page 8
·
Deity, according
to Paine, does not interfere in human affairs but invites us to emulate it by shedding
the light of reason on all human challenges and thus reshaping the world
according to its highest envisioned possibilities.
·
The secular
humanists who celebrate Paine’s stress on equality and the rights of man, but
blithely ignore his conviction that Deity is a directive, omnipresent force,
are only half Paineites. Secular humanists usually
turn to the materialism of science as an able ally to discovering the laws that
should regulate human life and society. They are clearly unconditional on human
rights but tepid at best about social obligations. What is more, their
philosophy, although man-centered is often materialistic and flawed.
Note
The Theophilanthropists: A society founded by Paine and others in 1797 in Paris. It was one of the first ethical societies of the
world. The name came from the Greek and meant, love of God and Man. The society met in a circle or a ring which symbolized
an unbroken or unending devotion to God. The spirit of humanity was the basis
for a moral life on earth. Theophilanthrophy was
rooted in the spiritual philosophy of the Illuminati that Bonneville brought
from Germany. God was responsible for creating the universe but not
responsible for man’s actions. Atheists are mistaken. They are short-sighted
because they ascribe everything they perceive to the innate properties of
matter and ignore the rest by saying that matter is eternal. God creates
everything, including the sun, stars, planets, etc. All the principles of
science are of a divine origin. Those principles are eternal and immutable.
They are immortal because they continue to exist after the matter that
expresses them has dissolved. Man, being in the position to rationally
apprehend these eternal principles, is himself immortal and his soul does not
die when the body turns to dust. Man accounts to God for his belief and not to
other men.
The
society studied Greek thinkers and poets as well as Confucius and other Chinese
philosophers. The idea of the society was to encourage people to live a life of
spiritual values and to come into harmony with God, Nature and Man.
[Editor's
note: Also on Paine, Deism and Theophilanthropy, see
"Thomas Paine the Deist," in Bulletin,
vol. 6, no. 3, page 5, October 2005.]
Bibliography
1.
Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, with an introduction
by Philip S. Foner, 1988, New York: Citadel Press, [ISBN 0-8065-0549-4]
2.
Thomas Paine, A Discourse at the Society of Theophilanthropists, 1797, Paris: can be found at website, www.infidels.com
10 Bulletin
of Thomas Paine Friends,
vol. 8, no. 1, March 2007
