Proper Names for God, and more on Mormons & the Founding
Jonathan Rowe on Aug 18th 2007 05:07 pm |
I agree with my co-blogger Jason that Allah arguably is a proper name for the scriptural God. This is for two reasons: 1) “Allah” is simply the Arabic translation for the word “God.” And 2) The Muslims’ Allah claims to be the God of Abraham. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Though the strongest argument they don’t is that the Christians’ God is Triune in nature, the Muslim’s isn’t. But neither is the Jews’. It’s therefore possible reasonably to argue that Jews, Christians and Muslims either all worship the same God — the God of Abraham — or all worship different gods. Some may attempt to do so, but it is not possible to convincingly argue that Jews and Christians worship the same God, Muslims a different one; they rise and fall together.
On a related note, I’ve pointed out the irony that many proponents of the Christian America thesis insist that Allah is not the God of the Bible and also insist America’s Founders invoked the Biblical God, not Allah. Washington, Jefferson and Madison repeatedly called God “The Great Spirit” when speaking to unconverted Native Americans. To the Christian Nation perspective, that should be viewed as even worse than calling God Allah because Allah at least claims to be the God of Abraham but “The Great Spirit” makes no such claim.
However, to tie this to my last post on Mormonism and the American Founding, because Mormons believe that Indians are the lost tribes of Israel, they do believe that the Native Americans’ “The Great Spirit” is the God of the Bible. Indeed, the only way to reconcile referring to “The Great Spirit” as God with Christianity is to incorporate the teaching that Native Americans are, in reality, a lost Israeli tribe. And just as I’ve discovered Ben Franklin flirted with the proto-Mormon belief that some larger God created the cosmos, and each solar system had its own lesser, more “knowable” God, the lost tribes of Israel thesis likewise traces to a Founding Father — Elias Boudinat. Boudinat, unlike Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Franklin, was, or appeared to be a genuine orthodox Trinitarian Christian. And I’ve seen no evidence whatsoever that those five key Founders believed Indians were the lost tribe of Israel. However, Boudinat did. He even wrote a book on the matter. And Boudinat argued that Indians’ God was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
This is further evidence that Mormon theology, odd as it may seem to some, is closer to what the Founding Fathers believed than is orthodox Trinitarian Christianity. But again, that’s only because, in my opinion, Joseph Smith looked to the Founding Fathers and some of their eccentric theological beliefs for inspiration when creating the Mormon religion.
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Jonathan, as a Mormon, I must say that your reasoned approach is a refreshing change from the status quo. It is evident that you do your homework before committing to print. I applaud you for this. And it appears that you use primary source documents in your research. Thanks, I will continue to read what you have to say and will let you know when and if I disagree :).
My pleasure!
BTW, Jon, I can’t lay my hands on it, but there’s a letter from Jefferson that approvingly adduces to Locke the notion that God is a material being in this universe, which I believe is also the Mormon conception.
Interesting ideas, Jonathan. It’s fun to see you get some mileage out of Mormonism in your posts. FYI, there’s no real basis for tying the “Great Spirit” notion to modern LDS belief about God. There is one “Great Spirit” reference I’m aware of in LDS sources, but it appears to reflect the same usage you attribute to Washington, Jefferson, and Madison.
If there is a Founding Father that has some parallels with the early Mormon view, I think it’s Jefferson, not Boudinat. Like early Mormons, Jefferson was interested in Native Americans, going so far as to study their languages and do stratigraphic analysis of a burial mound (his digging, recorded in Notes on Virginia, showed that’s what at least some of the mounds were). Jefferson theorized that the ancestors of Native Americans arrived here by boat, following the coast from either Asia or Europe (also recorded in Notes), an idea that appears in slightly different form in the Book of Mormon. And Jefferson felt free to rewrite the New Testament to suit his religious views, the very crime Mormons both early and late are regularly accused of by other Christians.
Tom, as you know Locke very much influenced our founding fathers in the formation of this country’s constitution. And you are quite correct in Mormon’s belief in a God of Flesh and Bone, as was Locke’s view.
The notion the God and “the Great Spirit” are the same does not require a direct connection between the Jews and the Native Americans. Christian theology, from the time of Paul, teaches that God reveals himself (to some extent) to all people. The Indians would be aware that there is a God without knowledge of the contours of that God.
The major Founders seemed to believe that reason revealed the existence and (to some extent) nature of God. The Indians understood that there was such a God, but, no doubt, had some of the details wrong. Orthodox Christianity also had some of the details wrong.
Daniel: “The Indians understood that there was such a God, but, no doubt, had some of the details wrong. Orthodox Christianity also had some of the details wrong.”
How might one determine whether or not either of them had certain details “wrong”?
Jonathan:
I’d like to note what is implicit in the argument, but not yet stated: that Jews and Muslims worship the same God, but the Trinitarian Christians do not (some Pentecosts are properly unitarian, I believe, as are the Unitarian Christians — but not necessarily the mainstream Unitarians)
Don: “How might one determine whether or not either of them had certain details “wrong”?”
I should be more clear. That was the belief of the major founders I was referring to. Of course, you are correct that making that determination, if possible, is a bit more complex than mere assertion. Jefferson, of course, asserted that his keen insight was able to separate the true from the false in the Gospels. I must confess that my insight is not as discerning.
Hi Jonathan, just thought I would drop in and say hi. Hope life is going well for you. It turns out it was good I dropped by. I know you wouldn’t want to put out erroneous information. With that in mind, Mormons do not believe the American indians are the lost tribes of Israel. Mormons do believe that a small group left Israel and were directed by God to American. The Book of Mormon is the account of these people and their descendents while in America. Mormons also believe that these people were not the only people led to America. So the statement that American indians were the descendents of this group is also incorrect.
Just thought you would like to know.
Rich
Thanks for dropping by with the correction, which as I take it, is that only some of the American Indians are the lost tribe of Israel.
Not exactly. After the death of Solomon the 12 tribes split politically. Two kingdoms were formed There was the kingdom of Israel headed by the tribe of Ephraim. The second kingdom was that of Judah headed by the tribe of Judah. The kingdom of Israel was made up of 10 of the tribes of Israel. The Kingdom of Judah was composed of primarily of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. It also contained portions of the tribe of Levi because the Levites held no land as the other tribes did but dwelled in the major cities of all the tribes. They functioned as the priest for both kingdoms.
In 721, the Assyrians swept down, defeated the kingdom of Israel and forcibly removed these 10 tribes. This is the last historical record we have of these people. We have no idea what happened to them ergo they are “lost.”
While two kingdoms were formed by the split after Solomon, individual families within these tribes could have lived anywhere within these two kingdoms. With regards to Lehi, the prophet who led a group to the new world, he was of the tribe of Manasseh. This was one of the tribes of Israel which had been taken away by the Assyrians. However, Lehi’s family lived in Jerusalem and was spared from being forcibly removed. So his family was a remnant of the tribe of Manasseh living in Jerusalem. He led his family, around 600 BC, and another family to the new world. Thus we are not talking about a lost tribe but rather a remnant of the tribe of Manasseh which had been forcibly removed from their land around 721.
Eventually the descendents of Lehi split into two factions with one faction destroying the other and this is the end of the record. We do not know what happened to the winning faction. We do know the winning faction had a tendency to fight among themselves. After 1,600 years, I doubt there is a tribe in the Americas that could trace a direct lineage back to these people.
Rich