"It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes"

Thomas Paine’s assertion , “It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes” , is a radical indictment of the way divinity is portrayed within certain passages of the scriptures. Paine, a champion of Enlightenment reason, identifies what he perceives as a severe moral dissonance between the commonly held conception of God as an embodiment of justice and goodness, and the actions attributed to God, especially in the Old Testament. For Paine, accounts of divine vengeance, arbitrary punishment, demands of obedience through fear, and instances of cruelty or partiality challenge the notion that the biblical deity universally upholds justice and benevolence.

He is not simply concerned with isolated stories, but the general theological framework that emerges when these stories are taken together , one in which God acts as an authoritarian figure, meting out suffering and coercing loyalty through threats of torment. Such depictions, for Paine, resemble not the ideals of justice, mercy, and wisdom that he and his contemporaries associated with Enlightenment humanism, but the traits historically ascribed to malevolent beings. The term “devil,” in his usage, is not a literal reference to the Christian adversary but an epithet denoting cruelty, caprice, and evil justified by power.

Paine’s criticism is rooted in a broader philosophical project: the liberation of religious belief from dogma and fear, and the alignment of the divine with the principles of reason, morality, and compassion. In rejecting the God of the Bible as depicted in some narratives, he is urging his audience to reconsider the sources and content of their religious convictions. True reverence for the divine, he suggests, should not be based on tradition or authority, but on the capacity of such beliefs to inspire virtue and rationality. In equating biblical depictions of God with a “devil,” Paine challenges his readers to evaluate religion by the highest standards of justice and empathy, instead of blind obedience.