In his affirmation of the belief in one god, Mr. Paine attempts to explain how this god of his mind revealed himself to mankind. In this section, Mr. Paine comes very near to presenting some reasonable truth. However, the very truth he is articulating is the very Scriptures he is detesting. "But some, perhaps, will say: Are we to have no word of God no revelation? I answer, Yes; there is a word of God; there is a revelation.
THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD and it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man. . . .
It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The Creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they may 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.
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 the book called the Scripture, which any human hand might make, but the Scripture called the Creation." - Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason)
It is here Mr. Paine in his work came very close to the truth. In Romans, Paul is articulating the very thing Mr. Paine is seeing.
Romans 1:18-23 ESV
(18) For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
(19) For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
(20) For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
(21) For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
(22) Claiming to be wise, they became fools,
(23) and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Although Mr. Paine is correct in his assertion, his error is thinking it is sufficient to bring man to a saving knowledging, for that he must have the Gospel. Mr. Paine says, "only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite." But does not human history tell us otherwise? Paul explained in verse (23) the creation brought an awareness of God, but it did not compel them to honor him as God. Instead, they imagined gods in their mind similar to mortal man, created images of birds and other creatures and bowed down and worshiped them, and said, these are the gods that created all this. This has not brought unity in the revelation of God, but confusion and division. All peoples have perceived there must be a God, yet they cannot agree on who he is or what he is like. It is easy even to determine the god Mr. Paine envisioned in his mind is like a mortal man, for he constantly leaned upon human reason to explain him.
Mr. Paine asked, "Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the Creation."
We do see the power of God demonstrated in the immensity of Creation, but it is in the Gospel that the power of salvation is made known. The immensity of creation is truly great, the raising of a spiritually dead condemned creature that hates its Creator and giving it spiritual life and a love for the one who made it truly is the greatest demonstration of the power of God.
Romans 1:16 ESV
(16) For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
1 Corinthians 1:18 ESV
(18) For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
1 Corinthians 2:5 ESV
(5) so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
2 Timothy 1:8 ESV
(8) Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God,
Mr. Paine asks, "Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible whole is governed!"
God's wisdom truly can be contemplated in His creation, but the greatest wisdom is seen in the Gospel, where this foul condemned creature is forgiven and his sin remitted. The wisdom is demonstrated in the Gospel, in that God accomplished this in the creature without betraying the absolute justice that was demanded by the creature's rebellion.
1 Corinthians 1:20-24 ESV
(20) Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
(21) For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.
(22) For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom,
(23) but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles,
(24) but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
Mr. Paine asks, "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."
God's mercy truly can be seen in that he does not withhold good things from unthankful, the greatest mercy is seen in the Gospel where He offers Himself to the creature who hates Him.
Ephesians 2:4-9 ESV
(4) But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
(5) even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
(6) and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
(7) so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
(8) For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,
(9) not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Mr. Paine tried to make an argument for the creation being the only revelation of God because it was not possible to do so with human language.
"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, as those world-saviours believed, and continued to believe for several centuries (and that in contradiction to the discoveries of philosophers and the experience of navigators), that the earth was flat like a trencher, and that man might walk to the end of it.
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. Scarcely any two nations speak the same language, or understand each other; and as to translations, every man who knows anything of languages knows that it is impossible to translate from one language to another, not only without losing a great part of the original, but frequently of mistaking the sense; and besides all this, the art of printing was wholly unknown at the time Christ lived.
It is always necessary that the means that are to accomplish any end be equal to the accomplishment of that end, or the end cannot be accomplished. It is in this that the difference between finite and infinite power and wisdom discovers itself. Man frequently fails in accomplishing his ends, from a natural inability of the power to the purpose, and frequently from the want of wisdom to apply power properly. But it is impossible for infinite power and wisdom to fail as man faileth. The means it useth are always equal to the end; but human language, more especially as there is not an universal language, is incapable of being used as an universal means of unchangeable and uniform information, and therefore it is not the means that God useth in manifesting himself universally to man." - Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason)
His reasoning again becomes irrational and it is difficult to follow the point he is trying to make. He is somehow trying to make a comparison between the fact that language changes and people have believed the earth was flat. I suppose he is simply trying to convey an image in his own mind. However, his argument is absurd, for how else would we know anything. It is true that language changes, however, that does not mean we lose the language. There are many extinct languages today that or thousands of years old, yet we are still able to translate and understand the meaning. There are even some languages that are thousands of years old and are still spoken today. Mr. Paine was again speaking from a subject he did not understand or was purposely trying to mislead.
The16th Century BC offers us a little insight, Mycenaean Greek is the most ancient form of the Greek language and was used by the Mycenaean Greek civilization from the 16th - 12th centuries BC. The earliest written text of the language is from Crete and dates back to before the 14th century BC.
For many years, Mycenaean Greek tablets and texts were undecipherable, but an English architect deciphered Mycenaean Greek’s written form in 1952, most of the texts consist of lists and inventories of which have been translated today.
16th Century BC also offers another example of Mr. Paine's error, Hittite is the oldest of the Indo-European languages with written evidence and the best known of Anatolian languages, which are an extinct branch of Indo-European languages that were spoken in Asia Minor. Compared to the other ancient languages on this list, Hittite did not last long as it started to be replaced by a similar language, Luwian.
Although the Hittite empire consisted of people from many different cultures and linguistic backgrounds, Hittite was used in most of their secular written texts. While most people refer to the language as Hittite, it is also called Nesite or Neshite. These languages, though difficult, can be translated today.
Akkadian is an extinct East Semitic language (modern-day Semitic languages include Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic) that was closely related to Sumerian. It is the earliest written Semitic language dating back to about 2500 BC. Although the language is named for the city of Akkad, which was a major center of Mesopotamian civilization from around 2334 – 2154 BC, the Akkadian language is older than the founding of Akkad.
Before eventually dying out sometime during the 1st to 3rd century BC, Akkadian was the native language of several Mesopotamian nations such as Babylonia and Chaldea.
The ancient Egyptian language is probably one of the most widely recognized ancient languages due to the prevalence of hieroglyphs in popular culture. It is often regarded as one of the oldest recorded languages and the earliest known complete sentence dates back to about 2690 BC.
While the original Egyptian language is no longer spoken in modern Egypt (they speak Egyptian Arabic), it survived in a way as Coptic. Coptic was spoken until the late 17th century BC but was eventually replaced by Egyptian Arabic. Some modern Egyptians do still speak Coptic, mainly in the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. It is difficult to know why Mr. Paine insisted upon such fallible and unsubstantiated information by which to make his arguments.
Mr. Paine states, "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."
On almost every page Mr. Paine demonstrates his ignorance of the subject of which he was trying to write. It is becoming a monotonous phrase in this discourse, but it must be repeated that the reader will understand this work cannot be understood as it was intended, for it is based upon false and misleading information. When Jesus was born, He was surrounded by family and neighbors who spoke Aramaic. To read the scriptures, He had to know Hebrew. To interact with Gentiles and participate in the marketplace, He had to speak Greek. To interact with Roman officials, He had to speak Latin. Mr. Paine offers only a false dichotomy for an argument.
We will take a look at one last statement in this chapter before moving on, Mr. Paine asserts, ". . . every man who knows anything of languages knows that it is impossible to translate from one language to another, not only without losing a great part of the original, but frequently of mistaking the sense; and besides all this, the art of printing was wholly unknown at the time Christ lived."
It is true that translating languages is a sometimes difficult process, but Mr. Paine insists that it is impossible to do so accurately. Every man, whether he knows anything of languages or no, knows that is a false assertion. It is also true the art of printing was unknown at the time Christ lived, however, the fact we have in existence over 5 thousand copies of these ancient texts remaining demonstrates Mr. Paine again was ignorant of his subject or was simply misleading his readers for a proposed agenda.
