Frazer Responds to Van Dyke
Jonathan Rowe on Sep 18th 2007 08:47 pm |
Dr. Gregg Frazer emails the following response to Tom Van Dyke, who is commenting on this post where we continue to discuss the proper terminology for the key founders’ religious beliefs and the political theology of America’s founding.
Kudos to Mr. Van Dyke for being open to the evidence. That is an all-too-rare quality today. Allow me to present more evidence in response to some of Mr. Van Dyke’s comments. Again, I do not have the time or the inclination to retype my dissertation, so my comments will be brief (as possible) and, consequently, not comprehensive.
As for the number of Founders who were theistic rationalists, my study centered on eight men. They were the three most responsible for the Declaration (Jefferson, Adams, & Franklin), the four most responsible for the Constitution and its ratification/explanation (Madison, Hamilton, James Wilson, and Gouverneur Morris) and George Washington. All of these were theistic rationalists. Obviously, there may have been many others — I don’t know.
I suggest that their importance and influence goes well beyond their number because they wrote the founding documents. I also argue that theistic rationalism became the basis for American civil religion.
Ben Franklin was briefly a deist as a young man, but specifically rejected deism shortly after. Read, for example, his essay “On the Providence of God in the Government of the World” (1730). As for his being open to the deity of Christ, when he told Ezra Stiles (minister who asked him) that he had “some doubts as to his divinity,” that was the polite eighteenth-century way of saying that he didn’t believe it.
Mr. Van Dyke is quite correct that several of the theistic rationalists were careful to keep their more unorthodox beliefs secret. Some of the many ways in which those beliefs mattered nonetheless are: they successfully resisted efforts to acknowledge “Jesus Christ” in significant public documents; they were able to write the Declaration in such a way that it appeals (or is comfortable to) persons of all belief systems (and secularists, for that matter); they were able to make religious pronouncements and to acknowledge God’s hand publicly; and they were more easily able to guarantee religious freedom because they essentially had no dog in the race (no particular dogma/doctrines to protect/promote). They essentially “established” their own religion by prohibiting establishment!
As for Adams identifying the principles of the Founding as “Christian,” the key to that is to understand what Adams meant by the term in that context. In that statement [June 28, 1813 letter to Jefferson], he included “Deists and Atheists, and Protestants ‘qui ne croyent rien’ (who believe nothing!)” among those educated in “the general principles of Christianity” — which he equated with “the general principles of English and American liberty.” He went on to argue that the general principles were “the general principles of Christianity, in which all those sects were united.” So, for Adams, the general principles of Christianity were something to which deists, atheists, and those who believe nothing at all subscribed. He then claimed that he could “fill sheets of quotations” in favor of these principles with statements from a number of well-known sources, including two notorious atheists: Hume and Voltaire. This is clearly not Christianity — whatever term Adams may use for it.
A great danger (or intellectual dishonesty, if the one doing it knows the difference) in the Christian America camp is their propensity to quote Founders using terms which meant something very different to those Founders than they mean to the average person today. This is a significant source of confusion. When Jefferson said, “I am a Christian” — what did HE mean by that? When Adams referred to “Christian” principles at the heart of the Founding — what did HE mean by that? If one takes the terms at face value (out of context), one becomes deceived or one deceives.
Mr. Van Dyke is correct: the principles could not have been derived in a milieu of theistic rationalism absent Christianity, because, as I’ve said, Christianity is one of the elements of theistic rationalism. By definition, there can be no theistic rationalism absent Christianity.
Finally, I don’t understand your contention, Mr. Van Dyke, that Jefferson’s claim to be a Christian was “philosophically accurate.” What does that mean? I appreciate the exchange — I only wish I had more time!
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My thanks again for Dr. Frazer’s kind attention. This is a fine place for whatever colloquy his time permits.
Perhaps a few epistles of mine were missed, where I acknowledge Jefferson’s self-identification as a Christian idiosyncratic, and John Adams as reliable for almost nothing in his theological studies, which appear to have largely taken place after he’d left public life. As for Franklin’s openness to Christ’s divinity, I cite his 1790 letter to Ezra Stiles, where Franklin said he didn’t fuss on it much, as he’d find out soon enough. (And he did, dying soon after.)
I would bet that most of the Founders were like the rest of us today, not giving a terrible amount of thought to every this and that.
As for James Madison, there are entirely too few clues, Madison being a clever and apparently ambitious man, having befriended both George Washington [writing his first inaugural] and Jefferson, co-founding their party against Washington and Adams’ Federalists. (The first and third presidents were not exactly friends.)
Which brings us to the first 4 presidents, as well as the additional handful of Founders cited. The greatest fear of the Founders as a whole (50? 100?) was the triumph of any one sect over the others. The “theistic rationalists” were the honest brokers, and as support for that proposition, Jonathan Rowe reminds us here that John Adams, in a letter to Benjamin Rush in 1812, is convinced he lost the hair-splitting election of 1800 to Jefferson because the former issued a Thanksgiving Day proclamation that was seen as too closely allied with the Presbyterians.
It may be fairly said that the US Constitution is a consciously nonsectarian document, even to the point of excluding Jesus Christ. (Yeah, it opens with “in the year of Our Lord,” but that’s not enough to hang one’s hat on.) Unlike the early charters of the several states, the constitution is not a covenant with God, but between men. But neither can we allow that the Framers (there were 55 at the Constitutional Convention of 1787) would have signed on to a document in conflict with their core beliefs [although a strained exception was made for slavery].
So, is Jefferson “philosophically” Christian? He is not as clever as his esteemed Mr Locke, I think, and has less of an idea where his prejudices come from. I submit so because contra John Adams’ blatherings, the concept of the individual and his human dignity, leading to Jefferson’s “inalienable rights,” is scarce to be found outside the Christian milieu, although, we hope, in man’s heart. By contrast, the ancient Greeks give virtue a “natural right”—which an individual may or may not have—as opposed to what he is, and a look at Islam shows a claim for natural right on behalf of Islam itself, which would not have passed constitutional muster in 1787.
All philosophies are not equal.
And so, Dr. Frazer and I are in thorough agreement against the Christian Nation crowd—there is and never has been a “natural right” asserted on behalf of Christianity in our nation’s history, a claim which I believe is at the heart of the Christian Nation argument. To account for what I believe was the impossibilty for incorporating any anti-Christian [or anti-Biblical] principles into the Founding, I offer the near-universal trashing of Tom Paine’s deism, and what is a neologism, if not retronym (as in “acoustic guitar”—at one time all guitars were acoustic)—”Judeo-Christian.” [No divine Jesus, no Eucharist, no Virgin Birth, no Jesus died for your sins, etc.]
Dr. Frazer writes:
…the [Founding] principles could not have been derived in a milieu of theistic rationalism absent Christianity, because, as I’ve said, Christianity is one of the elements of theistic rationalism. By definition, there can be no theistic rationalism absent Christianity.
which I can accept at face value, and especially as a term against the Christian Nation types. Perhaps it’s me who’s being academic, attempting to confess the origins of this here nation to the Martians. Or the Buddhists or the Mohammedeans or the atheists or whoever else is on John Adams’ laundry list.
The American experiment wasn’t created ex nihilo, by reason alone. I argue “Christian,” and please forgive the clunky and artificial term, “Judeo-Christian,” in its view of not just God but man—and the nature of both—has to figure in there someplace, although it disrupts the easy grace of “theistic rationalism.”
With sentiments of sincere esteem & friendship I am, my dear Sir, Yr most Obedt & Affecte Hble Servant,—Thos. Van Dyke
[...] Likewise Gregg Frazer discusses the very same quotation and noted: Adams, the general principles of Christianity were something to which deists, atheists, and those who believe nothing at all subscribed. He then claimed that he could “fill sheets of quotations” in favor of these principles with statements from a number of well-known sources, including two notorious atheists: Hume and Voltaire. This is clearly not Christianity — whatever term Adams may use for it. [...]