Voltaire’s encounter with the crucified Christ
The Enlightenment thinker was fiercely critical of religion. But what did he mean by religion?
Century illustration (Source images: Creative Commons)
“As long as there are fools and rascals there will be religions,” Voltaire declares in a letter to his friend Frederick II of Prussia. “Ours is assuredly the most ridiculous, the most absurd and the most bloody which has ever infected this world.” The royal recipient wrote back that the task of utterly expunging the crumbled remnant of Christianity had been reserved for Voltaire.
Voltaire’s stance appears straightforward: he condemns Christianity, and he is almost commissioned to complete its annihilation, to crush the infamy (écrasez l’infâme). However, before calling Voltaire a most fierce critic, it is worthwhile to take a look at his use of the word religion and its context.
“Religion” is an entry in Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary of 1764. It being a philosophical dictionary, the reader who anticipates translations or definitions of terms anticipates in vain. “Atoms,” “Lent,” “truth”— just to name a few examples—are discussed and fantasized about rather than defined. The entries often take interesting but unexpected turns, an amusing example being the curriculum in truth designed for Pilate in order to make him a theologian. The entry on religion, likewise, leads the reader on an unexpected track. It is significant for its thrilling insight into the spiritual perception of one of the most prominent thinkers of the Enlightenment, one that turns our expectations of Voltaire’s critique of “ridiculous” Christianity on its head.
