John Adams, Zionist Unitarian Universalist
Jonathan Rowe on Sep 25th 2006
This week’s quotation of John Adams is quite interesting:
I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation. For as I believe the most enlightened men of it have participated in the amelioration of the philosophy of the age, once restored to an independent government & no longer persecuted they would soon wear away some of the asperities and peculiarities of their character [and] possibly in time become liberal unitarian Christians for your Jehovah is our Jehovah & your God of Abraham Isaac & Jacob is our God.
John Adams to Mordecai Noah, March 15, 1819. Adams Papers (microfilm), reel 123. Quoted from James H. Hutson’s The Founders on Religion, p. 127.
It’s interesting that Adams thought it would be a good idea for Jews to convert not just to Christianity, but to “liberal unitarian Christianity,” which arguably isn’t Christianity at all, but what Gregg Frazer has termed Theistic Rationalism. The Theistic Rationalists believed that all religions, even those outside of the “Judeo-Christian” tradition, contained the same basic Truth as Christianity, and were thus valid ways to God. They believed all religions, especially orthodox-Trinitarian Christianity, had been corrupted. Once you stripped away the “corruptions” from all world religions, the same Truth would be revealed. And that Truth was, conveniently, the tenets of Theistic Rationalism (or as Adams terms it here, “liberal unitarian Christianity”).
Dr. Frazer, an orthodox Christian himself, though he approaches the Founders’ religion with fairness, notes from the perspective of an evangelical, the Founders’ theological assertions at times seem quite arrogant.
Regarding the fact that Adams states he and the Jews worshipped the same God — the God of “Abraham Isaac & Jacob” — two things should be noted. First, Adams didn’t mean this in an exclusivist way, but an inclusivist. Washington likewise said similar things when he addressed the Jews. And Michael Novak, in his book on Washington’s faith, misreads Washington’s remarks and notes that the proper name for Washington’s God was “Jehovah” and that Washington’s God was “Judeo-Christian.” Well, no. The God of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Franklin was actually universalist, and though It encompassed the Judeo-Christian religions, It also extended beyond such systems to the pagan, Eastern, Muslim, and Native American religious systems. These Founders believed all these religions worshipped the same God, who came to different peoples through different names. This may not be sound theology, but it is what they believed.
Second, Adams and the other rationalist Founders believed in the God of the Bible and Scripture, but only insofar as Scripture was reasonable; to them, parts of it were; parts of it weren’t. So if we want to say Adams et al. worshipped the God of the Bible, we could say yes they did minus everything written in the Bible that didn’t comport with their notion of man’s reason, like God’s irrational wrath and jealousy. The parts of the Bible that showed God’s benevolence remained.
Filed in The Belfry
You wrote:
“It’s interesting that Adams thought it would be a good idea for Jews to convert not just to Christianity, but to “liberal unitarian Christianity,” which arguably isn’t Christianity at all, but what Gregg Frazer has termed Theistic Rationalism.”
I do not think the relevant quote actually supports anything about “convert[ing] … to Christianity.” It seems instead that Adams was theorizing that a centralized nationalism would incorporate the far-flung faith of the time, and force a more liberalized movement within the system (much as Jesus is said to have taught) and away from the orthodoxy. Such tends to happen in urbanized and centralized regions where a particular faith is practiced versus its rural or less agrarian parents in more disperse areas. This, then, would suggest that Adams was not hoping that Jews would become Christians, but as you said, they would end the same faith. Since Adams himself was not in essence a “Christian” in the modern sense, he could not actually “convert” without accepting dogmas, and his view appears to have been that centralization or nationalization would act to absolve dogmatism.
An interesting and provocative post, as usual, Jon. I would like to look a bit closer to Adams’ phrase “a unitarian Christian.” Notice he uses unitarian as an adjective modifying the term Christian. He considers himself a Christian but a Christian of the unitarian persuasion. What, then, did a unitarian mean during the time of Adams? The faith was known as Socinians in England. What they believed, along with the Calvinist Arminians, was that the Son was subject to the Father, not co-equal. It has been said that they did not believe in hell. They didn’t. But this does not mean they were universalists. What they meant was, all those who died but had not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior simply ceased to exist after death. Their souls were simply snuffed out, ergo, no hell. This tenet is not conducive to seeing all religious paths lead to the same God. Only those who accepted Christ as the messiah would continue to live after death.
So when Adams proclaims he is a unitarian Christian, he is saying I believe the Son is subjected to the Father. He is the promised messiah. And, that all who do not accept him as such will cease to exist in any form after death. This hardly makes him an Universalist.
Jon: “They believed all religions, especially orthodox-Trinitarian Christianity, had been corrupted. Once you stripped away the “corruptions” from all world religions, the same Truth would be revealed. And that Truth was, conveniently, the tenets of Theistic Rationalism (or as Adams terms it here, “liberal unitarian Christianity”).”
The problem is Jon, there is no philosophical tradition, at the time of the Enlightenment, that supports this view. There seems to be three views of the relationship of reason to religion during the Enlightenment. 1. There were those like Francis Bacon, Descartes, Locke and Leibniz who thought that reason was not an acceptable tool to use with revealed religion. 2. The French materialists believed that reason was the foundation of human life and that religion was not needed. 3. Hume didn’t believe in revelation and, therefore, didn’t believe in the Bible. He wasn’t sure God existed but decried those who tried to use reason and religion together.
Non of these philosophical positions are amenable to attempting to discover the purity of the Christian faith. This effort belongs to the older tradition of the Reformation. Reformation thought and the Enlightenment thought can certainly coexist in the same culture because they involve different aspects of man’s life. The Reformation was concerned with restoring the purity of the Faith while the Enlightenment was about the things you could sense (a pre-science). Thus the interest in the Bible stemmed more from older Reformation thought than anything to do with the Enlightenment thought. This would explain the rise of Methodism in England during the 18th-century and the Enlightenment.
As far as Adams’ comment about the Jews and unitarian Christianity, all I think he is saying is that he would like to see the Jews accept Jesus as the promised messiah. Adams’ statement that the God of the Jews and the God of the Christians were the same came about because both religions accepted the Old Testament as the revealed word of God. There is nothing I have discovered about Adams that rejects the view that Adams was an old fashioned Arminian Calvinist which by 1819 meant a unitarian Christian.
Rich
“So when Adams proclaims he is a unitarian Christian, he is saying I believe the Son is subjected to the Father. He is the promised messiah. And, that all who do not accept him as such will cease to exist in any form after death. This hardly makes him an Universalist.”
The problem with your theory Rich is that Adams was a theological universalist. His writings make it clear that he believed all men will eventually be saved. That good people experience happiness immediately when they die, that bad people are temporarily punished in proportion to their sin, and then saved. Adams was also a universalist in the sense that he believed all religions including the non Judeo-Christian ones contained the same basic Truth as Christianity and were thus valid ways to God.
My blogs detail all of this. Do you want me to point you to the primary sources?
Also “Socinians” believed that Jesus was a man and a great moral teachers. “Arians” were the ones who believed Jesus was some kind of divine being, though separate from and inferior to God.
I don’t see how one can view Jesus as “Messiah” if one denies the Incarnation and the Atonement, as these Founders did.
But one thing is clear from their writings, they didn’t believe that you have to personally accept Jesus in order to be saved.
Finally, I think the word “Arminian Calvinist” is an oxymoron in that what distinguished Arminianism was its revolt from Calvinism. To my ears it sounds like saying “he was a Protestant-Catholic.”
Jon, “Finally, I think the word “Arminian Calvinist” is an oxymoron in that what distinguished Arminianism was its revolt from Calvinism. To my ears it sounds like saying “he was a Protestant-Catholic.”
Not quite. Let me explain. A number of reformed churches arose in Germany, England, Scandinavia, Holland etc. They all pretty much were organized around similar tenets. Many but not all of the tenets were derived from Calvin’s teachings. As such, the reformed churches gradually became known as Calvinists. The Calvinists in Holland came under the Hervormde Kerk (Reformed Church). It is now called the Dutch Reformed Church
In England two reformed churches arose. The Puritans believed that it was the responsibilities of the nation’s magistrates to help establish a community of believers (as understood by the Puritans). The other group believed that it was the job of each individual congregation to establish a community of believers. These became know as the Congregationalists. It was the Congregationalists that left England and stayed in Holland for a number of years before continuing on to America.
Jacob Arminius, the Dutch Reformed scholar, had earlier studied in Geneva under Theodore Beza. Beza was appointed to lead the Geneva church after the death of Calvin. Arminius came to the conclusion that certain Calvinist tenets were incorrect. Upon returning to Holland, he began to teach and preach in the Dutch Reformed Churches these ‘corrected’ teachings. The hard-line Calvinists objected to the changes. Thus a doctrinal split occurred in the Dutch Reformed Church. Both the conservative hard-line Calvinist ministers and the more liberal Arminian ministers were preaching and teaching the various Dutch Reformed Church. Because ministers from both factions held ministries in the Dutch Reformed Church, they were both Calvinist ministers. Arminius never refuted all the Calvinist tenets, only a few. Thus the Dutch Reformed (Calvinist) Church acquired a left and right wing. But both were Calvinists.
When the English Congregationalist lived in Holland, they were exposed to the Arminian brand of Calvinism. Many brought these teaching with them to America with them.
Jon: “Also “Socinians” believed that Jesus was a man and a great moral teachers. “Arians” were the ones who believed Jesus was some kind of divine being, though separate from and inferior to God.”
My assertions about the Socinian faith are based, in part, on an article by Dr. Sara Mortimer of New Collage, Oxford: “Radical heresy: Socinianism and Natural Law in the Early Seventeenth Century” The paper is available on-line by typing in “The Socinian synthesis” in your browser.
“[It was] the Socinian belief that men were naturally mortal; without any intervention from God their deaths would be final and there would be no afterlife in which sanctions could operate.” …. “It was through Christ’s words and not by the intuitions of reason that men could truly ascertain what God required of them.” …. “Through Christ, God had offered to all the ultimate reward: eternal life. Men could now be induced or expected to follow a stringent ethical code even where it brought no earthly benefits” …. “Through the resurrection of Christ they were given evidence that this would not be the case and now the virtuous man could embrace Christianity, assured that he would receive a reward for his pains.” …. “The Socinians insisted, then, that the New Covenant, and not the Old, held out the standard which God expected of those who sought eternal life.”
In an article on Annihilationism [http://www.the-highway.com/articleJuly04.html], Benjamin B. Warfield, adds these few thoughts. “A somewhat similar idea was announced by the Socinians in the sixteenth century (O. Fock, “Der Socinianismus,” Kiel, 1847, pp. 714 ff.). On the positive side, Faustus Socinus himself thought that man is mortal by nature and attains immortality only by grace. On the negative side, his followers (Crell, Schwaltz, and especially Ernst Sohner) taught explicitly that the second death consists in annihilation, which takes place, however, only after the general resurrection, at the final judgment.”
It would seem that Christ was more than just a moral teacher for the Socinians. Also, Socinians do not seem to be Universalists.
Jon: “The problem with your theory Rich is that Adams was a theological universalist.”
My view that Adams was probably an old fashioned Arminian Calvinist is based the reading of David Holmes’ book The Faiths of the Founding Fathers. Holmes claims that Adams was a deistic rationalist based on three things. Adams’ anti-trinitarian, his views against total depravity, and predestimation. All of these views can be found within the Arminian tradition.
Here is a case in point, sometime during 1754-55 the minister of Adams’ parish, First Parish in Braintree, began to preach denying the doctrine of original sin, election and salvation by arbitrary faith (good old fashion Arminianism). There was a strong effort by other ministers to get him thrown out of his ministry. However, his congregation (it was a Congregationalist ministry) refused to throw him out. Members praised Lemuel Bryant stating, “the pains he takes to promote a free and impartial examination into all articles of our holy religion, so that all may judge, even of themselves, what is right.”
Adams had planned to study for the ministry but when his religioius thoughts became known it was circulated he was an Arminian. He didn’t want the hassle and changed to study law. One does not have to look to the Enlightenment for the roots of Adams’ faith. As far as any universalist tendencies, may be so. The thing about people and their faith is that they don’t always confirm strictly to the dogma of their church. It doesn’t mean they didn’t believe. It just means people like to think for themselves. So again I repeat, everything I’ve read indicates that Adams was an old fashion Arminian Calvinist with, perhaps, some universalist leanings.
John Adams, though, clearly was a man of the Enlightenment. The term he uses, “liberal unitarian Christians,” smacks of Enlightenment rationalism.
Regarding his universalism, on page 221 on James Hutson’s book of quotations, under the heading “Universalism” (Hutson’s book is arranged by topic), he quotes Adams as stating, “I believe too in a future state of rewards and punishments too; but not eternal.”
Adams was a theological unitarian, a theological universalist, AND he elevated man’s reason over biblical revelation as the ultimate arbiter of Truth. This might not be strict deism, but it is, it seems to me an Enlightenment, not an “old fashion,” type of religion.
Also, Adams explicitly rejected the label “Calvinist” and bitterly ridiculed Calvin’s doctrines. See this letter to Jefferson which clearly lays out his religious beliefs (and the beliefs expressed in this letter are repeated over and over by Adams in his other private writings).
Adams elevates Man’s Reason so far above Biblical Revelation that he states to Jefferson had God Himself revealed the doctrine of the Trinity to him on Mt. Sinai, he still wouldn’t believe it because one was not three and three was not one period.
He also denies eternal damnation and claims, “The Calvinist, the Athanasian divines … will say I am no Christian. I say they are no Christians, and there the account is balanced.”
Jon, “Regarding his universalism, on page 221 on James Hutson’s book of quotations, under the heading “Universalism” (Hutson’s book is arranged by topic), he quotes Adams as stating, “I believe too in a future state of rewards and punishments too; but not eternal.”
So Adams believed after we die we receive rewards or punishments. Ask yourself, who offers the rewards? Who hands out the punishments? Upon what principle are awards and punishment given out. All this implies there are ‘rules’ by which adherence brings one rewards. And, fail to observe these rules brings you punishments after you die. He simply does not believe that the punishments will not last forever. I don’t know of a single major Enlightenment thinker that expressed these thoughts as part of their philosophy. These are Christian in origin.
Jon, “See this letter to Jefferson which clearly lays out his religious beliefs (and the beliefs expressed in this letter are repeated over and over by Adams in his other private writings).”
From Adam’s letter: “The human Understanding is a revelation from its Maker which can never be disputed or doubted.” Jon, this may come as a surprise but Medieval Theologians and Philosophers believed the same thing. Here is a quote from John Scotus Eriugena, (890?) “Every authority which is not confirmed by true reason seems to weak, whereas true reason does not need to be supported by any authority.” True authority is, “the truth found by the power of reason and handed on in writings by the Fathers for the use of posterity.
Thomas Aquinas, “There is, therefore, no reason why another science (philosophy) should not treat of the same objects, as known by the light of divine revelation, which the philosophical sciences treat of according as they are knowable by the light of natural reason.” In medieval philosophy, ‘light’ is a reference to God. Thus natural reason is a gift of God to man. This was understood by Christians hundreds of years before Descarte was ever born.
Jon, “Also, Adams explicitly rejected the label “Calvinist” and bitterly ridiculed Calvin’s doctrines.”
I know Jon that you would like to put everything into nice little boxes clearly labeled this is Universalist this is not. This is Calvinist this is not. Reality doesn’t work that way. As I told you before, the only church Calvin ever established was the one in Geneva. Because of the Reformation only four state supported religions emerged. Now I said state supported. One was the Catholic Church, one was the Church of England, one was the Lutheran Church, and one was the Reformed Church (Scotland and the Netherlands). The Church of England was obviously the state church. However, Reformed congregations grew there and developed. Reformed congregations grew up in other countries as well: France, Germany, and elsewhere. Calvin’s teaching accounted for maybe up to half of the teachings in any of these Reformed churches. The only place where his teaching accounted for 100% was the church in Geneva. Therefore, all these different Reformed churches took only part of their teaching from Calvin. The rest came from the major Reformers responsible for the establishment of the Reformed religion in their own country.
In England, one Reformed group believed as Calvin did that it was the responsibility of the magistrates to insure that only the pure teachings of Christ were taught. The idea was to create a country pure to the ideal of Christianity. Needless to say, they came to be known as Puritans. Another Reformed church rejected this Calvinist idea. They taught that the purity of the faith could be sustained within the congregation of the church and not the whole state. Obviously these came to be known as Congregationalists. Jacob Arminius studied with Theodore Beza in Geneva (after the death of Calvin). He accepted some of the doctrines of Calvin but rejected Predestination.
And so it went, some Reformed churches accepted some of the teachings of Calvin and others rejected those same teaching. Thus each Reformed church had some tenets that were different from the other Reformed churches. However because they all had a substantial portion of the doctrines of Calvin, they were called Calvinists. But this was a nickname. Thus the Dutch Reformed Church had some doctrinal differences from the Puritans who had some doctrinal differences from the Congregationalists. Yet they were all called Calvinists because a significant portion of their doctrine came from Calvin. Thus one Calvinist could hold some doctrines very different from another Calvinist depending on the which Reformed church they attended.
By the time of the late 18th-century, the term ‘Calvinist’ came to denote the most ridged form of Reformed religion. So Adam could reject the most ridged aspect of Reformed religion and still consider himself a member in good standing within his Reformed church. As far as rejecting Calvinist teachings, Jacob Arminius did this also and he did it 200 years before Adams got around to it. This was just an aspect of the development of the Reformation and Reformed religions.
Jon, “Adams elevates Man’s Reason so far above Biblical Revelation that he states to Jefferson had God Himself revealed the doctrine of the Trinity to him on Mt. Sinai, he still wouldn’t believe it because one was not three and three was not one period.”
This is where you get trapped using an internal argument for an external purpose. John Adams knew that the Nicene trinity concept didn’t exist within Biblical revelation. Had it existed there would have been no need for the Nicene creed. Since the doctrine of the Trinity did not exist in Biblical revelation there was nothing to elevate reason over. What he is saying is that even if he had been with Moses and was told by God that three was one and one was three, he wouldn’t believe it. He said this knowing Moses saw only the one God.
If you want to know Adams thoughts about the Christian religion, here is a portion of an other letter from him to Jefferson. I too have read many of these letters.
Adams to Jefferson - Quincy Dec 25th 1813
“Philosophy looks with an impartial Eye on all terrestrial religions. I have examined all, as well as my narrow sphere, my straightened means and my busy life would allow me; and the result is, that the Bible is the best book in the world. It contains more of my little philosophy than all the libraries I have seen: and such parts of it as I cannot reconcile to my little philosophy I postpone for future investigation.”
Even those parts which don’t fit with Adams reasoning he doesn’t reject but simply postpones. This is not the statement of a man who places reason over Biblical revelation. He can rationally reject the Trinity because it is not part of Biblical revelation.
Jon, I think your knowledge of the medieval philosophy and the Reformation is a bit thin. Man as a rational animal had been accepted by the Church almost from the beginning of its creation. Augustine talked of faith and reason. Thomas Aquinas attempted to systemize the logic of Aristotle to the theology of the Church. Reason was known to be a gift of God to man through natural means. Let me recommend a small book by F. C. Copleston Medieval Philosophy. You can pick it up from Amazon for $2.95.
As for the Reformation, there is a segment of the Reformation called Evangelical Rationalists. Rationalism and religion was popular long before the Enlightenment. Everything you have brought up has antecedents in the Reformation or earlier. One does not need the Enlightenment to explain them. This is not strange since the Enlightenment movement of the 18th century had little if anything to do with religion.
Rich
Rich,
I don’t know how helpful it will be for me to proceed further with you. Needless to say, I don’t think your interpretation of Adams’s letter to Jefferson which begins “[t]he human understanding is a revelation from its
maker which can never be disputed or doubted” is sound, and I don’t see how any reasonable person — not committed to some unspoken premise — could give it the interpretation that you do.