Sunday, January 24, 2016

James Pitt on the Christian Deist view of Justification

Dr. Joseph Waligore's article convinced me that the English Christian-Deist James Pitt is the likely source of theological inspiration for Ben Franklin in his dealings with the Samuel Hemphill affair.

In those writings Franklin rejects among others, the orthodox Protestant doctrine of Sola Fide, that men are justified through faith alone. As Franklin wrote:
Faith is recommended as a Means of producing Morality: Our Saviour was a Teacher of Morality or Virtue, and they that were deficient and desired to be taught, ought first to believe in him as an able and faithful Teacher. Thus Faith would be a Means of producing Morality, and Morality of Salvation. But that from such Faith alone Salvation may be expected, appears to me to be neither a Christian Doctrine nor a reasonable one.
Other writings of Franklin indicate he didn't like perhaps Thomas Jefferson did, believe in a "works alone" scheme of justification. But rather, simply Franklin rejected "faith alone." The conclusion is Franklin believed in some mysterious combination of faith and works, or perhaps, faith, grace and works, for salvation.

James Pitt wrote something strikingly similar. From Dr. Waligore's paper:
Pitt agreed that many biblical passages emphasized faith, but he disagreed with the traditional Protestant doctrine that people were justified by faith alone. Instead, Pitt reinterpreted these passages to say that faith was always related to virtue. To Pitt, faith meant “Faith of a moral nature; not a Sett [sic] of speculative Opinions; not Faith absolutely considered in itself; but Faith as it relates to Virtue.” He explained that true faith was a belief that God had ordered the universe so that morally good people would be rewarded in the next life. Pitt thought Christ came to teach this belief, and so he wrote, “This Faith in Jesus Christ, as the Messiah, or Sent of God, is a supernatural Means of believing in God, or acknowledging the Truth of this practical Proposition, That God will finally make Good Men happy.”64
Everything about what Franklin wrote relating to the Hemphill affair saw not just "faith" but "faith in Jesus Christ" as a means as opposed to an end.  Though faith in Jesus was the best means out of all of them.

14 comments:

Tom Van Dyke said...

It's also "Protestant" to read the Bible for oneself and swallow no doctrine of man, be it a pope or a Reformer like Luther.

http://americanvision.org/1650/enlightened-before-enlightenment/


Almost every modern critic of America’s Christian heritage makes the claim that America was founded solely on Enlightenment principles as they get to define them. For evidence they refer to Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and add for good measure James Madison, John Adams, and Thomas Paine as if these men were the only founders of America.

Franklin was influenced by Cotton Mather’s Essays to do Good,

“which perhaps gave me a turn of thinking that had an influence on some of the principal future events of my life.”

[1] Franklin gives considerable attention to the issue of the moral life in his autobiography (not that he was always moral). He was particularly put off by a Presbyterian minister who preached on Philippians 4:8 but failed to plumb the depths of the passage:

"At length he took for his text that verse of the fourth chapter of Philippians,

'Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, or of good report, if there be any virtue, or any praise, think on these things.'


And I imagin’d, in a sermon on such a text, we could not miss of having some morality. But he confin’d himself to five points only, as meant by the apostle, viz.: 1. Keeping holy the Sabbath day. 2. Being diligent in reading the holy Scriptures. 3. Attending duly the publick worship. 4. Partaking of the Sacrament. 5. Paying a due respect to God’s ministers. These might be all good things; but, as they were not the kind of good things that I expected from that text, I despaired of ever meeting with them from any other, was disgusted, and attended his preaching no more."

Philippians 4:8 is a good passage to ask the question “what constitutes the good and how do we account for it?” Certainly not by reason alone and certainly not by a worldview that discounts God entirely...

jimmiraybob said...

I'll try this again in two parts in case the original was too long.

I was going to purchase a PDF of the article but the JSTOR deal was for something more so I put it off. In the meantime, the basic gist of the 2016 article can be found at a site that he maintains:

http://www.enlightenmentdeism.com/?page_id=281

As of now, I think that he makes too much of the Hemphill writings ("Franklin’s Christian Deist Beliefs in the 1735 Hemphill Writings")and my initial impression of his referring to "Franklin’s Christian Deist Beliefs" numerous times is that he is begging the question by assuming the conclusion of his argument.

No doubt Franklin and other Founders were influenced heavily by English deistic writers but the English deists had many influences including a heavy reliance on pre-Christian Classical sources, and Waligore does good work in pointing this out in this work and others at his site(s). One of the authors that Waligore cites is Wayne Hudson who gives a pretty good summary of the various strains (1):

jimmiraybob said...

Or maybe too many links in one comment.

p. 34-35
These structural tensions also reappeared during the Renaissance, when humanistic scholars became aware that many pagan philosophers had developed rational accounts of deity and also complex ethical systems without the benefit of revelation. The Deus of the pagan philosophers, however, was not the God of the Old or New Testaments. Instead, it seemed to be an exalted entity that maximally exemplified generic features of reality, and did not have emotion, or will; it also knew nothing of human beings. In the sixteenth century some ‘philosophers’ in the Italian academies24 concerned themselves with classical theistic naturalistic views.25 The classical legacy was plural and included, inter alia:

1. a Peripatetic-Aristotelian position for which the deity was a necessary First Cause or pure act, with no knowledge of individual things or human affairs;


2. an Epicurean position which acknowledged a distant abstract deity who did not intervene in the world or concern himself with the affairs of individuals;


3. two Stoic positions: 1. A religious-moralist Stoic position which acknowledged a perfect benevolent deity and identified ‘true religion’ with virtue, a life lived in accordance with right reason, and the imitation of the deity’s attributes; and 2. A naturalistic Stoic position which held that the world was governed by fate or fortune, and that human beings were mortal and should live within the limits of nature;


4. a Pythagorean position which held that the deity was ‘all in all’ and that human beings reincarnated; and


5. a Stoic-Platonist position which acknowledged both a transcendent and an immanent world soul.


Strangely, this pluralism has not been much related to deism in the existing literature, even though it undermines the myth of a monistic deism, and implies that philosophers who were deists might have different views, depending on whether the approximated to the Peripatetic, the religious Stoic, the non-religious Stoic, the Epicurean, the Pythagorean, or the Platonizing Stoic positions.

And, of course, there was integration of "Christian ideas."

Ultimately, I think that Waligore's work centers on the thesis that the Enlightenment wasn't as secular as folks generally believe but, instead, there was a wide ranging spiritual seeking and defining of Deity that transcended the contemporary paradigms - the distillation of a core deity not defined by ecclesiastical authority.

1) Hudson, W., 2008. The English Deists: Studies in Early Enlightenment. Pickering & Chatto, 224 pages. @

http://www.amazon.com/The-Enlightenment-World-1-10-English/dp/1851966196

Tom Van Dyke said...

Any Aquinas in sight? He is conspicuous by his absence.

jimmiraybob said...

I'm not aware that Aquinas was much in the mix among the English deists. Certainly would be among the remaining Scholastics at University.

Tom Van Dyke said...

Aquinas is there. They just don't acknowledge him. They ignore all the Catholics, at least publicly. All classical theism, the Aristotelian God of the philosophers, runs through Thomas, who, let's remember, comes 250 years before the Reformation.

["Unitarian" Samuel Clarke's classical theism is pretty close to Thomas's.]

Since deism eschews revelation [the Bible], what makes a deist "Christian?" I'm still not seeing the problem solved here, especially steering around Thomas.

http://americandeist.com/mtns_pages/14_Aquinas.html



joseph waligore said...

Tom, why do you think all classical theism, especially in the eighteenth century, runs through Aquinas rather than Cicero? When I read the deists I see Cicero all the time and Aquinas never. What do you see Aquinas having that Cicero does not?

jimmiraybob said...

Dr. Waligore, it’s good to see your input.

In one sense Tom is right, at least in part, in that “[much] classical theism [and philosophy], the Aristotelian God of the philosophers, runs through” Thomas’s writings, which were/are very influential in the Latin Catholic and Scholastic traditions and in certain circles today.

However, as most people realize, in the larger world the works of Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Cicero, the Stoics, Epicurus, Pythagoras, Euclid, et. al., do an end-run around Aquinas. Especially starting in the 15th century when scholars and early humanists, such as Poggio Bracciolini and Petrarch, were scouring Europe for “lost” and forgotten classical works and releasing them for wider scholarly (and lay) dissemination. Not to mention the inflow into the Western world from Islamic/Jewish writers such as Averroes and Maimonides. The ascendancy of European Humanism throughout the centuries, and the rise of Biblical criticism in the 15th and 16th centuries, certainly gave rise to the cultural environment in which the deists could explore deity outside the strict bounds of mainstream ecclesiastical/conservative-scholastic norms, whether Protestant or Catholic, and still maintain considerable levels of civil respectability.

But, it seems with Tom that the larger world did/does not exist as he’s been making the “all classical philosophy/theology runs through the Aquinas funnel" argument for some time.

Tom Van Dyke said...

Anonymous joseph waligore said...
Tom, why do you think all classical theism, especially in the eighteenth century, runs through Aquinas rather than Cicero? When I read the deists I see Cicero all the time and Aquinas never. What do you see Aquinas having that Cicero does not?


The point being that in the Protestant milieu, it would undercut one's credibility to directly reference the Catholics. Aquinas is 250 years before the Reformation, and had great responsibility for returning Aristotle to the Western world. Thus, the claim that classical philosophy "flows through him." Samuel Clarke's is pretty much Aquinas's [and Aristotle's] "First Mover."

Yes, Cicero and the Stoics are present, of course. Again, what makes your deists "Christian?"

Tom Van Dyke said...

Or, if you will, what makes your Christians "deist?" ;-)

http://americancreation.blogspot.com/2010/02/who-were-unitarians.html

joseph waligore said...

Tom, I understand your point about English writers not wanting to reference a Catholic like Aquinas. I also understand your point about Aristotle flowing through Aquinas. My point is that concern for natural law and reason is extremely prominent in the Stoics and that Stoic concern flows to the English deists through Cicero, and lesser Epictetus and Seneca.

joseph waligore said...

Jimmiraybob, I like your point about the classical influence on the English deists. When I started reading English deism, I saw some classical influence, but over time I have come to the conclusion there is much more Christian influence on the deists.

joseph waligore said...

Tom, as I understand your questions about what makes my " deists" Christian, you are asking a very difficult question as to how do we tell who is Christian. It may help you to understand my concerns if you realize that I am interested in the history of deism and getting that right, and not much interested in the question of what makes someone a christian. So I am sidestepping that very difficult question, partially because I have seen discussions on this blog that I think do not lead anywhere. As I understand your other question about what makes your Christian deists, you are wondering how they are different from Unitarians. I have done much research on this question and am currently writing something for publication on the significant differences between Christian deists and Unitarians, particularly on how this difference shows both Jefferson and John Adams to be much different from Priestley and the Unitarians and very much in sync with the Chrisitan deists.

Tom Van Dyke said...

So I am sidestepping that very difficult question, partially because I have seen discussions on this blog that I think do not lead anywhere.

Oh, I've think they've been very productive--illustrating how we must accept the orthodox theology of certain "Christian" historians to accept their history--IOW that to not regard Jesus as divine is a disqualification from "Christian." However, who gets to judge?


"The founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels, and that of the presidents who had thus far been elected [Washington; Adams; Jefferson; Madison; Monroe; Adams; Jackson] not a one had professed a belief in Christianity....

"Among all our presidents from Washington downward, not one was a professor of religion, at least not of more than Unitarianism."
-- The Reverend Doctor Bird Wilson, an Episcopal minister in Albany, New York, in a sermon preached in October, 1831.

http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/adams.htm


As I understand your other question about what makes your Christian deists, you are wondering how they are different from Unitarians. I have done much research on this question and am currently writing something for publication on the significant differences between Christian deists and Unitarians, particularly on how this difference shows both Jefferson and John Adams to be much different from Priestley and the Unitarians and very much in sync with the Chrisitan deists.

Then my question is apt and straight to the problem here. I look forward to reading how you propose to resolve it.

Nice to hear from you. I enjoy your work.