Voltaire's Views on Religion: Deism, Toleration, and the Anti-Clerical Crusade

Voltaire (1694–1778) was one of the most famous religious thinkers of the Enlightenment, and his views on religion have had a profound influence on the development of modern thought. This article examines the three main elements of Voltaire’s religious position: his deism, his campaign against the Catholic Church, and his defence of religious toleration.

The Deist Position

Voltaire was a deist, a position that held that God had created the universe and established its laws, but did not intervene in history through miracles, prophecy, or special revelation. The deist position was a common one among the leading figures of the Enlightenment, including Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, and it represented a middle ground between orthodox Christianity and outright atheism.

Voltaire’s deism was based on the argument from design. The order and complexity of the natural world, he believed, pointed to a divine creator who had designed the universe and set its laws in motion. But once the universe was set in motion, it ran according to its own laws, without the need for divine intervention. The miracles of the Bible, the prophecies of the Hebrew prophets, the incarnation of Christ, and the other supernatural claims of orthodox Christianity were, for Voltaire, inconsistent with the proper use of reason and incompatible with the regularity of the natural order.

Voltaire was not, however, a systematic theologian. He was suspicious of the more ambitious attempts to construct a natural theology, and he made fun of metaphysical systems in general. The Dictionnaire philosophique (1764), in the entry on “God,” presents a series of arguments for the existence of God, but it also makes clear that the proper religious attitude is one of humility and modesty in the face of the mystery of the universe.

The Critique of the Catholic Church

The most characteristic feature of Voltaire’s religious position was his lifelong campaign against the Catholic Church. The Church, for Voltaire, was a force of superstition, intolerance, and political reaction, and he devoted an enormous amount of his energy to attacking it.

The target of Voltaire’s attack was not religion in general but the institutional and political power of the Church. He was opposed to the wealth of the Church, the political power of the clergy, the censorship of the Church, the persecution of heretics, and the corruption of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The famous slogan “Écrasez l’infâme” — “Crush the infamous thing” — was directed at these abuses, not at religion as such.

Voltaire’s critique of the Church was developed in a long series of works, including the Lettres philosophiques (1733), the Dictionnaire philosophique (1764), and the various satirical tales of the period. He attacked the historical claims of the Bible, the absurdities of the Catholic theology, the immorality of many of the clergy, and the brutal history of the Church’s persecution of heretics and unbelievers.

The Defence of Toleration

Despite his anti-clericalism, Voltaire was a passionate defender of religious toleration. The proper response to error in matters of religious belief, he believed, was rational argument, not persecution. The attempt to compel belief was both futile and counterproductive, and it was inconsistent with the proper use of reason.

The most famous expression of Voltaire’s defence of toleration was the Traité sur la tolérance (1763), written in the course of the Calas affair. The work argued that all human beings deserve equal treatment under the law, regardless of their religious beliefs, and it became a foundational text of the modern human rights tradition.

Voltaire’s defence of toleration was not absolute. He was sometimes inconsistent in his application of the principle, and he was capable of intolerance towards religions that he found particularly offensive. But the basic commitment to toleration was central to his thought, and it has remained one of the most important features of his legacy.

The Legacy of Voltaire’s Religious Position

Voltaire’s religious position has had a profound influence on the development of modern thought. The deist position, with its affirmation of a creator God and its rejection of the supernatural claims of orthodox Christianity, was an important contribution to the development of modern religious liberalism. The critique of organized religion, with its emphasis on the political and economic interests that have often motivated the churches, was an important source of the modern secularist tradition. The defence of religious toleration, with its insistence on the equal treatment of all human beings regardless of their religious beliefs, has become a basic feature of contemporary human rights discourse.

Further Reading

• The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (plato.stanford.edu), relevant entry
• The Cambridge Companion to [Thinker] (Cambridge University Press)
• Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (1969)