The Argument What does Paine mean by deism, and how does he distinguish it from both organized Christianity and atheism? What is Paine's case that 'revelation' can never be secondhand — why does he think a book can't be the word of God? What specific problems does Paine raise with the authorship and internal consistency of the Old and New Testaments? How does Paine connect his religious argument to his political one — is this the same reasoning he used in Rights of Man?
Context & Legacy Why did Paine write this while the French Revolution was descending into the Terror, and how did his own arrest shape the book? Why was The Age of Reason so damaging to Paine's reputation in America, and was the 'atheist' label accurate? How does Paine's deism compare to the religious views of contemporaries like Jefferson and Franklin? What in Paine's method — textual criticism of scripture — anticipates later historical-critical Bible scholarship?