It sometimes seems as if the interpretation of every major issue in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s thought is subject to contestation. This is certainly true for the subject of religion. The Social Contract and Emile, published in the same year (TK), are the most significant works in which Rousseau addresses religious issues, but they are far from the only ones. Religion figures directly or indirectly in almost all his political writings. In Rousseau’s God, John Scott steps sure-footedly into the morass of scholarly interpretation of this issue. He accomplishes his goal of offering a comprehensive account of religion in Rousseau’s thought by distinguishing two different aims: the truth and the utility of religion (pp. 15 and 220). Indeed, Scott’s emphasis is on the second of these: the political and moral importance of religion. He goes so far as to eschew any attempt to discover what Rousseau’s true views are about matters of faith, arguing that even his explicit statements about his own beliefs aim at the useful at least as much as the true.

Although Scott’s book is concerned specifically with Rousseau’s treatment of religion, in its course, he provides a systematic treatment of most of Rousseau’s writings with direct bearing on political theory. Scott uses the Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts to frame Rousseau’s view on the tension between what is true and what is politically and morally useful. He argues that what could be characterized as a theodicy in the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality is, in fact, more a justification of nature than of God. Scott brings these strands together in an especially fruitful discussion of the Letter to Voltaire on Providence in which he demonstrates that Rousseau’s apparent defense of optimism, contra Voltaire’s attack, combines an application of a naturalistic account of evil with a morally consoling religious doctrine. He also gives a provocative account of how Rousseau managed the tension between free will and necessity. Appropriately, the largest part of the book focusses on Emile. Scott examines Rousseau’s most important work in a chapter on the early books of Emile, followed by three chapters devoted to Rousseau’s longest discussion of religion in the “Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar.” The concluding chapter is an insightful treatment of the “civil religion” in the Social Contract. In every instance, Scott’s discussion shows his mastery of the complexities of both Rousseau’s thought and the relevant scholarly literature. It is particularly impressive to see an American political scientist address so much recent French scholarship.

The chapters on the “Profession of Faith” are particularly worthy of attention. The “Profession” was Rousseau’s most controversial work. Its departures from orthodoxy were at the center of the condemnation of Emile wherever this book was censored or burned by the public hangman. Today scholarly disputes are less over the substance of the “Profession” than over the question of whether this long digression (taking up about one-sixth of the entire book) presents Rousseau’s own opinions. The controversy arises from the fact that Rousseau inserts it into Emile by saying that he is merely its editor. The “Profession” is presented as narration of a speech heard by the narrator who makes a few of his own remarks about it. It is not even entirely clear whether the narrator is Rousseau or whether he has received it from an acquaintance. To complicate matters further, Rousseau also adds notes in his own name. If one takes the “Profession” as Rousseau’s own view, one is likely to read the rest of his works very differently than one would if one rejected it. For example, one would see him as a dualist who insists that the soul’s link to the body is the source of our vices and would dismiss or reinterpret the many passages in which he argues for a different source.

The majority view among scholars is that, by putting the Profession into the mouth of a Catholic priest, Rousseau was attempting to protect himself by means of a (more or less) plausible deniability. Those who hold this view rely on Rousseau’s claims later that his own reflections led him “more or less” to the same conclusions as the Vicar and his admission that an editor who published these conclusions must be assumed to “favor” them. It is, perhaps, amusing that the position that takes Rousseau at his word is a characteristic of Straussians, while it is non-Straussians who insist that his denials are merely exoteric.

Scott’s account of the controversy is both thorough and fair-minded. He is particularly good at showing the tensions, not to say contradictions, between the Vicar’s views and those expressed by Rousseau in his own name, not only in works such as the Second Discourse but also in Emile itself. In Scott’s reading, the “Profession” is Rousseau’s most important account of a religious teaching that is morally and politically useful in circumstances in which believers and nonbelievers stand in open hostility. His rigorous treatment is convincing, although some proponents of the majority view will probably remain less than completely persuaded.

Rousseau’s account of civil religion in the Social Contract has been the subject of disagreements of a somewhat different sort. For a long time, some commentators have seen this account as illiberal, or even totalitarian. Others, however, have argued that it is compatible with at least some versions of liberalism. Scott carefully explores the complications in what Rousseau says and cautiously reaches the conclusion (which he shares with Blaise Bachofen) that “rather than solving the theologico-political problem it should be considered as revealing it as an ‘impossible problem’” (p. 228). It is typical of Rousseau’s writings to present a dilemma that he investigates in a way that leads many readers to embrace one or another solution while failing to note that Rousseau himself leaves it unsolved.

Although Scott refuses to draw conclusions about Rousseau’s personal religious beliefs, it is possible to use his analysis to make some informed judgments. Rousseau’s consistent arguments against the doctrine of original sin (and his refusal ever to explain any human vice in terms of sin in any form) make it hard to believe that he accepted this doctrine in his heart. The same can be said about divine grace, to which he never refers. He tacitly excludes any divine commandments with moral force. He is skeptical about any revelation that goes beyond natural religion. Although he sometimes indicates that he does not think he can refute the possibility of miracles (including creation out of nothing), it is clear that he accepts none of the miracles that have been reported. He is silent about Jesus’ divinity and the resurrection. None of this prevents him from saying that he is a sincere Christian and that he has preserved the roots of religion while discarding only its branches. Even so, one can be excused for wondering what is left after his pruning. Scott’s book is the best possible guide to these issues.