Voltaire is the Imposter

Voltaire the Learned and Jesus the Charlatan

Voltaire, a French philosopher and an agnostic/atheist, wrote a pamphlet over a course of time that was published in 1770. The pamphlet was a discourse on religion and looked at the three leaders of the monotheistic faiths: Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed. In his work, he claims, "It is therefore no marvel that Jesus Christ had no Learned men among his followers, he knew well that his Law could not be made to agree with good sense; this no doubt, is why he declaimed so often against the wise whom he excluded from his Kingdom, where he admits none but the poor in the spirit, the simple & the imbeciles: Reasonable minds should console themselves that they have no business with madmen," (Voltaire 26). He wants us to have our minds and eyes open to the fact that Jesus, like Moses and Mohammed, are just con men, charlatans, and masters of illusion and deceit. People might ask why we should care about a French philosopher who wrote something about religion 250 years ago. I would say to this, listen to any Atheist or Agnostic speak about Jesus. I think you will discover that many hold to Voltaire's view of Jesus. He's simply a madman, a con man or his followers were con men who created Christianity after Jesus died. They all deny Jesus' divinity because they start with Voltaire, whether they know it or not. Voltaire's writings bleed through history like any religious text. HIs writings formed a religion where one of the tenets is to find religious leaders as disgusting because he hit on a truth about religious leaders. Almost all of the religious leaders throughout history are disgusting. I admit far too many are frauds and con artists. Far too many use religion to further their own goals. Far too many see an individual as something to use and consume and certainly not as something to be redeemed.
And maybe he is right about Jesus. If we do not take Voltaire seriously, then we won't be able to see into the hearts and minds of his followers and adherents. We all know of individuals who have started religions or cults. Jim Jones is not remembered as a righteous leader of a religion, but as a cultist who murdered his followers. David Koresh claimed he was the messiah to his people and had sex with the women in his cult, denying marital sexual relationships to the men. He died in fire thanks to an overzealous FBI who should have arrested him and put him on trial. We see myriad examples of leaders who abuse their followers and lead them astray. But let's look at one of Voltaire's claims. He calls the followers of Jesus ignorant, specifically there were "no Learned men," among them (Voltaire 26). It is true that all of the followers of Christ were not educated in the finest Universities of Europe at the time and hence are not "Learned Men". Voltaire sets up an example of what people ought to be, more so men than women, but he believes they should have an education to help them see past their daily ignorance. But this is a false dualism. Being "Learned" as he uses it, does not preclude one having faith. Many people will claim education enlightens the mind, giving them a superhuman ability to past the ignorance of others. They feel superior in their knowledge and their ability to shed superstition. But there is little evidence that any person really sheds their superstition and faith as even faithless societies like the USSR turned faith in God into faith in the State and it's hard to deny how fervently they worshipped the state.
So, I disagree that having an education can free your mind so that you have an enlightened position. Sometimes education can create chains and barriers and silo your mind into one way of perceiving the world, limiting your ability to process new information which might be disruptive. It can make you slow to adjust to new standards and new concepts. It can lock you into a pattern where the world is as narrowly defined as any one who lives in ignorance and yet refuses to see other ideas and engage with them. Willful ignorance and the ivory tower professional both are sure of their own conclusions: they are intellectual married cousins.

If the followers of Jesus demonstrate anything throughout the Gospel accounts, they demonstrate the inability to understand what Jesus is saying to them. They don't quickly change their point of view. Instead, they demonstrate intellectual ignorance based on the silo of their culture, religion, and education. The disciples will acknowledge him as God at moments, but in the next moment, they willfully misunderstand his mission and how they will be saved. They consistently demonstrate a set of beliefs that have siloed them into certain conclusions. Why are we acknowledging their limitations? Their failures to understand Christ demonstrates they lived in the real world and had real world expectations of how life should work. They were not ignorant savages; they were not gullible and ready to follow Jesus's teachings which contradicted their worldview. In fact, their worldview is what led to many of the problems they had with Jesus. It is why all of them fled and denied Christ but John.

Jesus is constantly disrupting their way of seeing the world. He challenges them. He doesn't leave them in their ignorance of their cultural and religious education. This points to why Jesus, as a conman, would have been better off amplifying their ignorance and leaning into their religion and cultural limitations. But he said things like, "“Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days," countering their ideas that Jerusalem will become the center of the world in a great triumph over the Roman empire, (John 2:19 NIV).
Jesus, if he is a con man, is a terrible charlatan. He works against his disciples and frustrates them. But my argument doesn't really prove he's not a charlatan. He could have been charismatically frustrating his disciples to somehow gain power and riches in the material sense. When he is with them, he doesn't seek privation with his disciples which is a pretty common feature of cult leaders. Or at least in public. Some cult leaders feign asceticism in public and behind closed doors practice gluttony and orgies. Christ was never accused of asceticism or hedonism. He was accused of enjoying food and accused of spending time with people that no religious leader should spend time with so he could teach them about salvation. He gains nothing from these people beyond friendship. A con man seeking out friendship is a pretty lousy con man.

In most cults, people must sacrifice their happiness and well being for the community to thrive. In many cults, the leaders become quite wealthy. But in reading the gospel, it appears Jesus and his followers did not seek privation. He denied fasting with his disciples. He said, "“How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? They cannot, so long as they have him with them," (Mark 2:19 NIV). He is doing the opposite of requiring his followers to fast and seek privation and to punish themselves. When they make mistakes, Jesus doesn't condemn them to isolation or shunning or any punitive measures, but helps them correct their mistakes. Name me one cult leader who has this level of patience with his or her followers? The kinds of abuses we hear about from Cult Leaders should chill your bones, but Jesus doesn't do this to his followers. While there are some Catholic traditions which have held to this type of abuse of the body, most Christian denominations have recognized this behavior, this Ascetic self-abuse and privation, as heresy and not Biblical.
So Jesus doesn't lean into His disciple's current beliefs and expand upon them. He challenges them. He also doesn't do privations, punishments, or killing of nonbelievers, like Mohammed. The only time he showed violence was to drive away the people who were cheating and stealing from the Israelite followers of God. He stopped a practice, at least for one day, that the Pharisees should have stopped and prevented from happening. It broke the very fabric of penitent sacrifice and atonement God had created for Israel. It was so important, Jesus was willing to step in with a whip to stop them from destroying that sacred institution. So Jesus is at least a different kind of Charlatan, unlike most cult leaders. But maybe Voltaire is right and it is still just all a "fable". And I can't prove it isn't, but I want us to consider the disciples and how they perceived Jesus.
Before the Crucifixion of Jesus, his followers recognized that there was something special about Jesus. On ten recorded occasions they called him the Son of God. You think if you really believe that about a person, you would have at least stayed near him. But they didn't stay near him during his trial and crucifixion. They all ran, but John. John was the only one who remained. Of the other eleven, they went into hiding. I think Judas is a great example of a disciple who did the right thing. If Christ was as con man, then Judas recognized he had been duped and went to the authorities to have him arrested for his crimes. The crimes of Christ were mostly disagreeing with the Pharisees and Sadducees, performing miracles and claiming he raised Lazarus from the dead. Say none of those witnesses actually saw what they thought they saw and Jesus played tricks on each of them. Let's say those were all fake and that Judas was justified in helping Jesus be arrested. Judas should be a hero. He stopped another false messiah from rising up and revolting against the Roman establishment and the Jewish theo-political system. But Judas wasn't accepted back by the Pharisees as a hero. He regretted turning Christ in to be crucified and he tried to return the silver. He was so anguished over his actions against Jesus, he hung himself and his body splattered across the pavement. (Matthew 27:5 and Acts 1:18). Further, the other disciples didn't try to murder him for the betrayal of Jesus. They were all too busy betraying Jesus, minus John. Judas, far too late, realized that his Learned approach to Christ, like Voltaire, had been wrong. Judas knew he hadn't betrayed a charlatan, but he knew he had betrayed the Son of God. I don't think we can conclude anything different from his behavior. He didn't try to help round up the other disciples to gain more notoriety or more silver to become wealthy. He didn't live out his days happy because he had stopped a false messiah. In his mind, he had helped crucify the Son of God and he couldn't take the shame and the guilt and he killed himself.
The other disciples might not have traded silver to betray Christ, but they still either denied him like Peter or they fled and hid. None of the disciples look good in the gospel accounts. They are cowards. They were all still stuck in the old way of thinking about the world; the way of thinking like Voltaire has about religious figures. Jesus to them was an opportunity to get revenge, justice, power, or wealth. In their minds, he was not an opportunity to die. Jesus, as their Messiah, would kick out Rome and make Israel an empire. But it failed. Jesus failed to their way of thinking. Jesus looked like he had been lying to them the entire time and they became afraid and ran. These are not the men and women to build a mighty new religion. Their "Learned" perspectives had told them Jesus was God and could not be killed.
Unlike other religious leaders, Jesus wasn't interested in a conquering military empire. He was intensely interested in the individual: the lost sheep. So after his trial, after his beatings and scourging which nearly killed him, they hung this charlatan pretender on the cross as he deserved according to Voltaire: "Jesus Christ himself did not escape the just punishment which he merited," (Voltaire 5). Christ, if he was a charlatan and a false prophet who deceived people, deserved his death.
But the story doesn't end there as a footnote in history. Atheists will say many things about what happens next like the disciples, who were hiding to save themselves, decided to steal the body and pretend Jesus was raised from the dead. Yet, we know the disciples were scattered at this point and were cowards. They were not people who had a grand plan.

Non-believers will say Jesus didn't really die and then he recovered from his grievous wounds. For this to be true, you have to believe that the Romans were completely inept at killing and crucifying. To believe Jesus recovered from his wounds is like believing you can gut a fish and the throw it back in the water and it will swim away. He was staked to the cross after having the flesh ripped off his back. The nails went through his ankles, destroying his ability to ever walk again. The nails through his wrists would have made his hands useless for the rest of his life. According to this Swoon Theory, even having a spear thrust in his side didn't kill him either. Even the disciples were quite aware he had died. And a Pharisee and a Sadducee buried his body before the Sun went down. Then the disciples, the women who were braver, planned to follow Jewish law to wait after Passover and the Sabbath to handle the body of Christ and clean it. The disciples kept following Jewish Law even after Christ was dead. Even his death hadn't disabused them of everything they knew about the world unlike so many cults. Cults break down their followers, leaving them with nothing of who they were or what they were. Then the cult pours into you a copy of the leader so you don't become a new person, but a shadow of a person. Christ, the supposed charlatan, didn't destroy their faith or their culture, but fulfilled it as he said he would. So following Jewish Law, braving the Roman repercussions of even attempting to clean the body, the women show up to the empty tomb to be told by an Angel he was gone and he had risen.
Then Christ appeared to people all over and to the disciples, according to the Gospels. People who had no expectation of a bodily resurrection saw one and believed. Even Thomas, who raised valid doubts in the way he saw the world, saw a real body of Christ. People did not come back from the dead under their own power. No one describes Jesus as a spirit after his resurrection. Christ is also openly using the power of God like someone who has won a victory. He is walking through walls and vanishing and reappearing miles away until his ascension and transfiguration. And yet, he's still human and eats with them and has scars from his injuries on the cross. He cures Thomas's doubts. Thomas had every right to have his doubts and we should give him credit for standing on his beliefs until he was shaken in his beliefs. Then he gets more credit for accepting Christ had returned from the dead. \

So these disciples and followers, who were more than ready to abandon Christ and try to find a way out of danger, they go and put themselves back in danger. Jesus even forgives Peter at the end of John in one of the most beautiful passages in the Bible on forgiveness. Why would they do that except for the resurrection? If the resurrection is true, then it is all true. The virgin birth is true and Jesus is the Son of God is true and the Miracles are true and His salvation is true and the Scripture is true. It all hinges on the Resurrection. All the crazy, nonsense things are true if the resurrection is true. And the disciples, who did not stay with Jesus through his trials, go against their best interests and their first instincts. Instead of hiding, something so disruptive happens to them that they go out and tell the entire world about Jesus. And the only thing disruptive enough to their world view is the resurrection of Christ There is simply no reason for them to believe in Christ resurrecting himself outside of the resurrection actually happening. They gain nothing. All but one of the disciples will die because of their beliefs. They don't go out and rape and murder and pillage and conquer like an army or an empire. They don't attack Roman soldiers and ambush them. They don't attack Jewish men and women and force conversion on them. They never cause harm, but receive harm every step of the way. They would never have risked their lives for anything less than a resurrection. Ten of the remaining disciples, among with many others, would be martyred in horrible ways either by the Romans or by the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem for their faith. Tacitus, a Roman historian who did not like Christians, would say, "their hatred of mankind," killed them. He could not see their martyrdom as love.
So Voltaire won't confront the text of scripture. He never once quotes from it. He won't confront what the disciples wrote about Jesus or what Jesus said himself. He dismisses Christ entirely on the basis that most people who are religious are ignorant and have no idea they have been tricked into believing nonsense. He states, "Such is the malice & stupidity of men. They pass their lives quibbling & persist in respecting a book [Bible] in which there is no more order than in the Alcoran [Quran] of Mahomet [Mohammed]; a book, I say, which no one understands," (Voltaire 12-13). All believers are simply stupid. Willfully so. The disciples are no better than Jesus who uses deceit and illusion learned while He was in Egypt as a child, if under Voltaire we can even believe that claim. He won't confront the Resurrection and its impact on the Disciples. It simply can't be true. Religion is only useful to control the ignorant.
Voltaire only frees the Learned Men from the restraint of religion. They are the only ones who can see past the farce of God and the spiritual world. They have an elite status in society and have duties to guide the ignorant. And anyone who creates a religion is a charlatan. Though I would argue he has created a religion of non-belief in many people. They follow a theology of elitism and exceptionalism and see themselves above ordinary mortals. They become the new gods; the new gods are called the Learned Men. 


The Resurrection of Christ stands against the Learned Men. It doesn't make any mortal special or give any mortal the right to carry the mantle of god. God stands alone and is unique. There is no pantheon of gods, constantly fighting for top spot. The Resurrection tears down the old gods and the new gods. It defies every religion out there and demonstrates that the people who spread the religion are meant to be servants and ministers and not conquerors or tyrants. We have seen the result of the Learned Men and their effect on political power in the centuries after Voltaire. Honestly, we don't really need to look further than to what his Learned Men are capable of than looking at the French Revolution which killed 40,000 people in a short reign of terror.

You must ask yourself a serious question if you continue to doubt the Resurrection. And while I recognize that I haven't eliminated all other options, ask yourself if Jesus is a charlatan? If he is one, then who should you follow? Voltaire demonstrates you cannot follow yourself nor can you shed yourself of religion nor are you better than the ignorant masses. If Jesus is a Charlatan, then everyone is and there is absolutely no one in this world you can trust or count on. If you believe Jesus is the Son of God as he claims he is, then you are part of a family of believers and you can rely on His Truth and His Love for you. If he is the Son of God, He died for you as you are and loves you as you are and doesn't seek to destroy you. He wants you to reach your full spiritual growth in him. If Voltaire and his Learned Men are right, then you will never be good enough and you will always stand in the way of perfection. If perfection is the goal, then any means justify the end. Killing people to get perfection is perfectly acceptable. God doesn't need you to be perfect. You are covered by his perfection through his salvation. God doesn't have to kill you to make a perfect world.