FLORREN F.

LACUÑA BSOA 2202

RIZAL’S DEISM
Deism refers to what can be called natural religion, the acceptance of a certain body
of religious knowledge that is inborn in every person or that can be acquired by the use of reason
and the rejection of religious knowledge when it is acquired through either revelation or the
teaching of any church.
To make it easy to understand:
 Revealed religion teaches that men is fallen being that is in need of redemption. In order
to get that redemption someone should have faith and to trust the authority of the bible or
the church because the bible and the church have special revelation from god.
 Natural religion believes we screw up not because we are fallen but we are ignorant and
we need to be enlightened rather than redeemed. You need to start using human reason.
You need to start trusting not in faith but in evidence.
During the enlightenment, this was the time when people emphasizing the use of reason
and empiricism. Now, what empiricism is that you trust what you can see and deduce logically.
The empiricist of enlightenment formulated this religion known as Deism, which comes from the
Latin word deus meaning God. So essentially, Deism is somebody who believe in god but
doesn’t really subscribe to any other articles of faith and they restrict themselves to believing
only what they see in nature.

I. RIZAL WAS A DEIST.

Evidence of Rizal’s deism
1. Tasio el Filosopo of the Noli me tangere.
Tasio was a secular prophet of the age, a social critic who poked at the consciences of
men, a preacher of the gospel of progress and reason’s sovereignty, a philosophe as Voltaire was.
Voltaire Obsessed of the eradication of all religions with its superstition, fanaticism, intolerance
and obscurantism. (but he mainly aims eradicate Catholicism).
2. Rizal-Pastells correspondence
Pastells would preach religious things and Rizal would state what he believed in. He
believed deeply in God as expressed in nature, that’s what Rizal said.
“I believe in revelation, but in the living revelation of nature which surrounds us
everywhere, in the voice speaking out through nature — powerful, eternal, unceasing,
incorruptible, clear, distinct, and universal as the Being from which it comes. It is this revelation
that I believe in, which speaks to us and penetrates our being from the day we are born to the
day we die. Can any other books reveal to us more faithfully God’s work, His goodness, His love,
His providence, His eternity, His glory, His wisdom?” That’s what Rizal wrote in his third letter
to Pastells.

—Deism constructed the theory of “Natural Revelation” as a substitute for Christian revelation.
FLORREN F. LACUÑA BSOA 2202

“ ……..for me nature is the only divine book of unquestionable legitimacy, the sole manifestation
of the Creator that we have here in this life clear, perennial, living, powerful, capable of
overcoming our blunders and errors, incorruptible, one that cannot play false in spite of human
caprice, with its laws constant and unchangeable in all places and for all times.” (Rizal,1893)

—I come to the conclusion from my humble reasoning that he believed the Creator desires man
to perfect himself by growing in knowledge—Same as deism. Deism  claims God gave humans
the ability to reason.

3. He had mention that the Sacred Scripture is merely the work of human being (purely
human authorship).
—That means inevitable with errors and inconsistencies.

II. Rizal was more of Rousseau deist than Voltaire.

Nature is god open book. What is not found in nature has been implanted in the human
heart, God’s temple.
“I strive to read and find god in his creature like myself and in the voice of conscience,
which only can have come from him….I have better guide to lead me than my conscience, my
conscience alone, which decides and qualifies my action.”
Now, who is Rousseau. Rousseau focused on the role of the heart, conscience,
sentiments, feeling and moral institution in the conduct of moral life.
“Crush the infamous one” Voltaire certainly meant the church (Catholicism), when he
said that. But for Rizal, the infamous one, was not Catholicism as such, as it was for Voltaire nor
even the catholic clergy, but the friars.

III. RIZAL WAS A FREEMASON

Masonry was the only institution you joined if you were against the Catholic Church.
Rizal was initiated in masonry at London (1988-99). He began to attack friars with his
writing (attacking their religion, Catholic religion).
Rizal said he was attacking Catholic religion, not as such but only insofar as the friars
were hiding behind it as a shield.