Well they finally published it. My name is "Jon" not "John" and I no longer teach at Philadelphia University. But I can't complain because they did publish it and I did get paid. And they gave me complimentary copies. For these things I will forever be grateful.
On the subject of the article, you are just going to have to read it. What's interesting is to see how my views have changed in years since. I agree with the thrust of what I wrote. However, I no longer think the God of the Declaration was as strictly deistic as Walter Berns (whom I cite) asserts. I still believe the DOI's God is not necessarily the God of the Bible. It could be. But the DOI's God is more Providential or theistic than Berns intimates. The DOI's God, I have come to believe, is the God of generic monotheism, the one that, as much as possible, is all things to all people. It could be the Triniarian God, a non-Trinitarian biblical God (if that's not a contradiction in terms) the Jehovah of the Jewish people who inspired the Old but not the New Testament, a Providential Deist God, Allah, the Mormon God, the Native Americans' Great Spirit, etc.
On the other hand this is what I cited from Walter Berns:
"The God invoked there is 'nature's God,' not, or arguably not, the God of the Bible, not the God whom, today, 43 percent of Americans . . . claim regularly to worship on the Sabbath. Nature's God issues no commands. No one can fall from his grace, and, therefore, no one has reason to pray to him asking for his forgiveness. He makes no promises. On the contrary, he endowed us with 'certain inalienable rights,' then left us alone, and with the knowledge, or at least the confidence, that he will never interfere in our affairs. Moreover, he is not a jealous God; he allows us—in fact, he endows us with the right—to worship other gods or even no god at all."
I think the DOI's God could be Berns' God. His description does have the barest degree of Providentialism to it. However, it's not necessarily or arguably this God.
22 comments:
Good article (that was finally published)...I'll try to get around to reading the others, too!
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Using the reasoning you apply in the published article, it seems that the God of the DOI is whatever God any individual has in his or her own thoughts.
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That's one of the points of the First Amendment, is it not?
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The providential, monotheistic God is the Abrahamic one. No other god fits. The deists thought they were coming up with something new, but they were still imprisoned by Aquinas' adaptation of the "god of the philosophers" to the Abrahamic one.
The only difference is the deists' rejection of divine revelation [although not all rejected it in toto], a separate question.
The "God of nature" is still the God of Thomistic [Aquinas'] metaphysics, via natural law.
[The "Great Spirit" is rather shoe-horned into the Abrahamic one in the Founding era; a closer inspection shows the Native American conception of deity all over the map, incl polytheism to pantheism. You will not get to a Thomistic metaphysics or a natural law from "The Great Spirit," if only because the Native Americans didn't do metaphysics and philosophy in the Western sense.]
Tom: That's a fair point.
Do you think Walter Berns' description of Nature's God is compatible with the Providential monotheistic God = God of Abraham?
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Giving credit to Ludwig Feuerbach, any God is a projection of man's values. As we're off to pure supposition here, it is as valid an opinion as any other.
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Do you think Walter Berns' description of Nature's God is compatible with the Providential monotheistic God = God of Abraham?
All roads go through Aquinas. Natural law is channeled through his monotheistic [Abrahamic, Judeo-Christian] God.
Providence isn't necessary to the equation, although as we see, God's justice might be seen as providential:
“Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice can not sleep forever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference!”
The above Jefferson quote isn't a necessary part of my argument, but we see that even the very deist Thomas Jefferson squeezes providence into his theology.
Re: "All roads go through Aquinas. Natural law is channeled through his monotheistic [Abrahamic, Judeo-Christian] God."
Is there a reason Natural law must go through Aquinas's God ?
Didn't Aquinas embrace theological doctrines that some founders rejected (Trinity, divinity of Jesus, etc) ?
If I understand Tom right, he would argue (?) Aquinas found a way to incorporate the natural law of Aristotle and Cicero into monotheism in general, and more particularly orthodox Christianity. Jefferson's monotheistic God may not be the Triune God of the Bible, but he is closer to it than the source of Aristotle or Cicero's metaphysical anchor for the natural law. (?)
I have heard some here on AC argue that the DOI valued all humans under natural rights.
Now, what is being argued is whether natural rights is based on monotheism?! NO ONE can prove that one, as the Founders all differed as had to be the case as they supported the DOI. And religious liberty does not define which religion qualifies for protections under our Constitution, as to citizen rights of conscience, does it?
The DOI dealt with "human rights", while our Constitution dealt with religious liberty for American citizens, which includes all religious traditions, not just the historic Abrahamic religions, although historically, the ones who came to America were mostly Christian, whether Roman Catholic or a sect of Protestant Christianity.
So isn't the argument really about getting a rational argument to support humn rights activism? and affirm the philosopher that supported medieval Christianity?
Others might argue that natural law was "the state of nature" via science and scientific laws, not religious tradition or religous belief!!!!
Humans define, create and project their ideas onto others, and onto "God". These are internalized struggles, or meaning for/to life. The reality is that the politcal realm, not the transcentdental one is where all humans have to live and move and have their being. The religious are unaware or resistant to this, as they can spiritualize almost everything. But, then, naturalists lood for a natural explaination to describe all that is....
So I agree with Phil. We are weaving a "web" that cannot and will not be big enough to cover all the bases, in our pluralistic and liberal society....this is what has made for conflicts, because individuals have understood their "realities" in different ways.
Yah, that's pretty much it, Jon. Also, I missed adding that the monotheistic God being the creator is also germane to natural law, esp as seen by the Founders [nature and nature's God]. It is the Creator who endows us with our unalienable rights, and he who established the natural law in the very fabric of our existence and human natures.
[By contrast, Zeus/Jupiter is not the creator, and has nothing to do with natural law or human nature. Zeus is not "nature's God."]
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Ben, I think you'll find Aquinas is very fastidious in not mixing religious doctrine with philosophy, especially his metaphysics.
It's been said he argues philosophy like a theologian and theology like a philosopher, but since/if God is a reality, this monotheistic creator-God, He can be argued--- "proved"---by reason, not revelation, and Thomas attempts just that.
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/04/one-god-further-objection.html
What makes me uncomfortable is the implication that Natural law is rooted in the monotheistic God of the Abrahamic / Judeo-Christian revealed religions.
One specific example; I don't see how to reconcile such things as Genesis, Adam and Eve, etc with nature.
Am I inferring what was not implied ?
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Old Ludwig would have a lot of fun here.
Evolution does not support a personal god, but it coule support a Diestic one, where "order" is "top dogs" (or supermen) and "dumb herd type animals"....evolution could support a "god of the philosophers", which is "natural philosophy" or metaphysics!
Aristotle's philosophy was useful during medieval history, and doesn't align itself well with the new understandings of science, as God is the FIRST CAUSE.. The Catholic Church had to change its stance on the earth being the center of the universe, etc.....God, as FIRST CAUSE is the beginning and end of EVERYTHING according to creationist, or Aristotle! Which leaves no room for diversity under GOD, it is ALLAH's WILL (predetermination) that MUST be obeyed, not man's rationality.
Ben, I'm not denying that Aquinas hijacked Greco-Roman natural law theory [esp the Stoics'] for the Abrahamic God.
By the time natural law theory is "channeled" through that God, we get concepts like "endowed by their creator" and "the laws of nature and nature's God."
Again, Hamilton's The Farmer Refuted:
Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar theory. They have supposed, that the deity, from the relations, we stand in, to himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is, indispensibly, obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever.
This is what is called the law of nature, "which, being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is, of course, superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times. No human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid, derive all their authority, mediately, or immediately, from this original." Blackstone.
Now, there's another argument from Suarez and Grotius that the natural law would be in force even if there were no God. Locke sez something similar to Paul in Romans 2 [the scriptural basis for there being a natural law, Paul also being well-steeped in Greco-Roman philosophy],
http://acts18910.blogspot.com/2007/01/romans-214-15-and-natural-law.html
that even those who don't recognize this God sometimes do the right thing and obey the natural law [Locke]:
I think it must be allowed that several moral rules may receive from mankind a general approbation, without either knowing or admitting the true ground of morality; which can only be the will and law of God, who sees men in the dark, has in his hands rewards and punishments, and power enough to call to account the proudest offender. For, God having, by an inseparable connection, joined virtue and public happiness together, and made the practice thereof necessary to the preservation of society, and visibly beneficial to all with whom the virtuous man has to do; it is no wonder that everyone should not only allow, but recommend and magnify those rules to others, from whose observance of them he is sure to reap advantage to himself." (Locke, Essay, 28).
For the argument for natural law isn't one of ritual do's and don'ts; it's that following the natural law is the path to happiness, both private and, as Locke argues here, public happiness as well.
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It's easy to see the projection of their values when individuals claim to know the truth about their God.
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Re: "For the argument for natural law isn't one of ritual do's and don'ts; it's that following the natural law is the path to happiness, both private and, as Locke argues here, public happiness as well."
Very good!
Is there a qualification for God that doesn't imply the doctrines of revealed religion, but avoids excluding it as well ?
Meaning what is a reasonable qualifier for the common denominator for nominal Christianity and nominal Deism ?
I'm really like to find a term that doesn't lend itself to misrepresentation or misunderstanding.
Ben, as you see above, Hamilton isn't arguing revelation [the Bible], only a creator-God-based natural law.
I find Founder James Wilson, typical of the Founding attitude [if we assume that most in the Founding era were recognizably Christian]:
"[H]ow shall we, in particular instances, learn the dictates of our duty, and make, with accuracy, the proper distinction between right and wrong; in other words, how shall we, in particular cases, discover the will of God? We discover it by our conscience, by our reason, and by the Holy Scriptures.
The law of nature and the law of revelation are both divine: they flow, though in different channels, from the same adorable source."
James Wilson, Of the Law of Nature, 1804
Note, again "Law of Nature," i.e., "natural law. IOW, natural law and revelation lead to the same place. And so, I argue that the Founding's Biblical character goes this far: that its laws and First Principles are never in conflict with the Bible.
They didn't use the Bible as a source for law, but neither did they pass laws that were in conflict with it either. Neither did they find much conflict, as they were in harmony in the moral/cultural sensibilities of those times.
Still, Locke says
"the true ground of morality; which can only be the will and law of God"
God's will. The strange thing is that while in the 1500s and 1600s Suarez and Grotius took Aquinas' natural law and started to separate it from God's will, it was the Enlightenment types who put God back in!
But as you see, and I can find more examples, it was possible to argue natural law without invoking the Bible, as Hamilton did.
I'll pop in my old post excerpting [the atheist] Murray Rothbard on natural law here:
http://americancreation.blogspot.com/2009/04/primer-on-natural-law.html
"The Thomist tradition, on the contrary, was precisely the opposite: vindicating the independence of philosophy from theology and proclaiming the ability of man's reason to understand and arrive at the laws, physical and ethical, of the natural order. If belief in a systematic order of natural laws open to discovery by man's reason is per se anti-religious, then anti-religious also were St. Thomas and the later Scholastics, as well as the devout Protestant jurist Hugo Grotius."
I think this is getting to the nature of your question, Ben, how to do natural law without religion. Rothbard does, or attempts to.
Again, the funny thing is that while the theologians [Aquinas, Suarez, Grotius] were trying to make natural law independent of God, the philosophers and men of the Enlightenment were putting Him back!
Re: "Hamilton isn't arguing revelation [the Bible], only a creator-God-based natural law."
Ok. So what I'm driving at is what is a proper description of the founder's God ? ... a description that doesn't take sides in the Deism vs Revealed-Religion debate ?
I wish I had a good suggestion.
I think you got it, Ben.
a description that doesn't take sides in the Deism vs Revealed-Religion debate.
The monotheistic, providential creator-God works with or without revelation, as long as there's a natural law. Which even God is bound by---God cannot be unjust.
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Quick definitions from Macmillan (snobbery)
noun
▸the attitudes or behavior of someone who thinks they are better than other people...
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Snobbery? Give me a break!
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Check this one out!
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