Question

Use the following excerpt below from Voltaire's A Treatise on Tolerance (1763) to answer the following question: When Bishop Alexander and Arius the priest began first to dispute in what manner the Logos proceeded from the Father, the Emperor Constantine wrote to them in the following words…: "You are great fools to dispute about things you can not understand." If the two contending parties had been wise enough to agree that the emperor was right, Christendom would not have been drenched in blood for three hundred years. Public Domain What view of religion does Voltaire express in this passage?

Answer 1

The view that since religious dogma is by its supernatural nature impossible to confirm or resolve, tolerance to dissenting religious points of view is not only sensible but safe for society. There is also the matter of a secular government authority that acts as the guardian of religious freedom and tolerance.

This treatise is one of the main sources of the French notion of secularism or “laicité”, where religion is a matter of strict personal conviction that is to be kept out of the public sphere, with all individuals being free to believe what they will but keeping it to themselves in order to avoid bloody religious conflict.