- Feb 5, 2002
- 190,604
- 70,619
- Country
- United States
- Gender
- Female
- Faith
- Catholic
- Marital Status
- Married
- Politics
- US-Others
The justification for human equality given by the founders in the Declaration of Independence claims that all people are “created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” What kind of Creator is invoked here? This deity is invoked by different names in the Declaration’s 1,458 words: Nature’s God, Creator, Supreme Judge of the world, and Providence. Do these divine names point to a deistic god, a disinterested watchmaker who makes the world but lets it go without further care or intervention? Or does the text suggest a theistic conception of God, the biblical God who creates and governs as a loving Father?
In America Declares Independence, Alan Dershowitz argues for an “un-Christian Declaration of Independence.” He argues that language of “Nature’s God,” “Supreme Judge of the world,” and the “Creator” are deistic, unchristian references.
If by “un-Christian,” Dershowitz means that the divine in the Declaration is not specifically Christian, then he is certainly correct. The founders could have, but did not, speak of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The term “Nature’s God” has distinctly deistic origins, unlike all the other terms used for the divine, such as Providence, Creator, and the Supreme Judge, which originates in Hebrew belief.
Yet all the divine names used in the Declaration are perfectly compatible with both theistic and deistic belief. Christians as much as deists, affirm God as the origin of nature and nature’s laws (both scientific and moral). Christians confess God as a provident Creator of all that is seen and unseen (nature) who will judge the living and the dead. Why then claim that this language, which all Christians can accept, amounts to an “un-Christian Declaration of Independence”?
Michael Novak writes, “Scholars often mistakenly refer to the god of the Founders as a deist god. But the Founders talked about God in terms that are radically Jewish: Creator, Lawgiver, Governor, Judge, Providence.” Novak seems to envision a form of deism like that advocated by Henry St. John, First Viscount Bolingbroke, who conceived of a God who launches the created order but does not interact with it any longer. Like a mother who abandons her child, a deistic God does not intervene in creation in general nor in the lives of human beings in particular. But this kind of deity was not embraced even by those founders rightly considered the least traditionally Christian and the most deistic, such as Thomas Jefferson.
Continued below.
www.wordonfire.org
In America Declares Independence, Alan Dershowitz argues for an “un-Christian Declaration of Independence.” He argues that language of “Nature’s God,” “Supreme Judge of the world,” and the “Creator” are deistic, unchristian references.
If by “un-Christian,” Dershowitz means that the divine in the Declaration is not specifically Christian, then he is certainly correct. The founders could have, but did not, speak of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The term “Nature’s God” has distinctly deistic origins, unlike all the other terms used for the divine, such as Providence, Creator, and the Supreme Judge, which originates in Hebrew belief.
Yet all the divine names used in the Declaration are perfectly compatible with both theistic and deistic belief. Christians as much as deists, affirm God as the origin of nature and nature’s laws (both scientific and moral). Christians confess God as a provident Creator of all that is seen and unseen (nature) who will judge the living and the dead. Why then claim that this language, which all Christians can accept, amounts to an “un-Christian Declaration of Independence”?
Michael Novak writes, “Scholars often mistakenly refer to the god of the Founders as a deist god. But the Founders talked about God in terms that are radically Jewish: Creator, Lawgiver, Governor, Judge, Providence.” Novak seems to envision a form of deism like that advocated by Henry St. John, First Viscount Bolingbroke, who conceived of a God who launches the created order but does not interact with it any longer. Like a mother who abandons her child, a deistic God does not intervene in creation in general nor in the lives of human beings in particular. But this kind of deity was not embraced even by those founders rightly considered the least traditionally Christian and the most deistic, such as Thomas Jefferson.
Continued below.
Deism and the Declaration - Word on Fire
The writings of Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration points to a God that is more like a loving Father than a disinterested watchmaker.
www.wordonfire.org
