John Adams' eccentric and nuanced opinions of the Bible/Christian religion are especially prone to "out of context," cherry picking for various sides in the historical political-theological culture wars, wishing to "score points."
For instance, he once wrote to Thomas Jefferson:I have examined all, as well as my narrow Sphere, my Streightened means and my busy Life would allow me; and the result is, that the Bible is the best book in the World.
Yet, he also believed that he was reading a canon of books whose contents had been corrupted. In Adams' world, the Roman Catholic Church was the chief "corrupter of Christianity," but that corruption also infected institutional Protestantism as well. For instance, Adams -- who considered himself a "liberal unitarian Christian" -- blamed Roman Catholicism for the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation which he bitterly rejected; he also rejected the King James Bible because it was too Catholic!
As he wrote to his son and namesake:
What do you call “The Bible”? The Translation by King James the first? More than half a Catholick.?
But it went beyond merely the KJV. In the same letter he continued:
“The Bible a Rule of Faith.”! What Bible? King James’s? The Hebrew? The Septuagint,? The Vulgate? The Bibles now translated or translating into Chinese, Indian, Negro and all the other Languages of Europe Asia and Affrica? Which of the thirty thousand Variantia are the Rule of Faith?
But he had especial disdain for the KJV. As he also wrote to Thomas Jefferson:
We have now, it seems a National Bible Society, to propagate King James's Bible, through all Nations. Would it not be better, to apply these pious subscriptions, to purify Christendom from the corruptions of Christianity, than to propagate these corruptions in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America!
In particular, John Adams didn't trust ANY of the texts of the Bible whose original manuscripts were written in Hebrew. He thought the original Hebrew manuscripts were ordered burnt by Pope Gregory the 9th such that essential truths contained therein were purposefully concealed.
In fact, Adams thought this included not just the Old Testament, but St. Paul's writings. Adams believed, contrary to most biblical scholars, that Paul's original writings were in Hebrew (and thus burnt as part of Pope Gregory's efforts) as opposed to Greek.
Ultimately, this quotation from Adams summarizes how he approached the extant texts of then available Bibles:
What suspicions of interpolation, and indeed fabrication, might not be confuted if we had the originals! In an age or in ages when fraud, forgery, and perjury were considered as lawful means of propagating truth by philosophers, legislators, and theologians, what may not be suspected?
Though, Adams was still a devout theist and believer in Jesus (as he Adams understood Him) and thought somewhere in there, the Bibles whose corrupted text he was reading contained profound truth.
10 comments:
Wacky! (From current lights.)
I am not interested in a quibble with his faith, for which I trust God can keep better track than I. But it is striking that he will adopt the sketchiest of textual "scholarship" with zero evidence, rather than just say "I disagree with the Bible". What is it about these supposedly lost texts that he must appeal to them? If the originals are truly infallible, then why has God permitted them to be so long lost? Clearly they are not needed, if that is so. But then, why appeal to them?
Why does Sola Scriptura have such a hold on people who have no truck with orthodoxy on any point?
In fact, what is it that he loved? It isn't any book he ever read. So what, exactly?
I'm not sure what you mean by this question:
"Why does Sola Scriptura have such a hold on people who have no truck with orthodoxy on any point?"
But keep in mind that Adams was a fervent unitarian and I would imagine any "proof text" that suggests the Nicene/Athanasian Trinity Adams would categorically reject as "corruption."
Why does he prefer to say "these are corrupted versions" with zero evidence, instead of the simpler and more parsimonious hypothesis "these are incorrect"?
Put other use: he believes that all extant texts of the Bible are incorrect. They could been so in the original texts, or they could be corrupted versions of presumably not incorrect originals. Since he has zero evidence for these "originals" and no external evidence of the supposed corruption, why does he talk about corruption at all?
My suspicion is that "the originals are correct" is something he holds as a matter of faith, so he has to give us the corruption hypothesis. But why does he bother with that article of faith? It's not like he cares about orthodoxy.
Why must he dismiss such a proof text as "corruption"? Why not just say that (for example) the Gospel of Matthew is incorrect?
The short answer would be that's just how Adams saw things.
In reading their correspondence, both Adams and Jefferson seem largely agreed on theological matters. But they also had their own unique eccentric way of approaching the matter. Jefferson was more likely to literally cut things out of the Bible, entire books, with which he disagreed. Adams was more likely to call various passages "interpolations."
Joseph Waligore's book has interesting categorization. He terms Jefferson, J. Adams and Franklin and many earlier English philosophers as "Jesus-Centered-Deists." They were the ones thought there was something divinely special about Jesus, but thought much of what was received in the biblical canon to be false, uninspired and should be disregarded.
The "Unitarians" -- many of them theologians -- like Joseph Priestley, Richard Price and others get put in a separate box. They were more likely to have accepted the 66 book Protestant canon, but would give parts of it radically different interpretations. They didn't believe all of the words were written by the hand of the Holy Spirit. Rather, they thought much of the canon was simply an accurate historical account of events that really occurred. But also that many of the tales were not meant to be taken as "literal" accounts, but something symbolic.
John Adams looked to Priestley as some kind of authority of got frustrated with him here. Both of them didn't believe in fallen angels as told in various parts of the Bible. But Priestley refused to say those parts of the Bible should be removed. I think Adams wanted the parts of the received canon that reference Enoch and fallen angels to be outright removed as "interpolations."
He thought it was a myth that came from India.
Thanks....I come at this with training in the history of philosophy, where we are counseled to get clear on what someone thought, but not to rest there, and to ask whether what they thought held to a good inner consistency. I am not troubled by the conclusion that for JQA it simply did not; he may have been i a bit of a muddle. But I don't want to arrive at that conclusion too hastily.
I am sensitive of course that we have the benefit of a much richer understanding of textual criticism than Adams of course had access it (since it hadn't really be seriously invented yet!). We have learned as perhaps he did not understand, that the argument from "this is wrong" to "this is corrupted" is on immensely shaky ground. (Among other things, it's too easy!) So to my modern lights, it feels almost lazy when I run across it, like he's shy about confronting the consequences of his intellectual commitments on the point.
Do keep in mind that we are talking about the elder John Adams here. JQA is another story. He was raised "Unitarian," but then converted to Calvinism, but seemed waffle in between the two systems in his adult life.
Regarding textual criticism, yes! First the Reformation happened and every individual could become a priest and a Pope. The Protestants of the magisterial reformation seemed to keep things in check. But the English Deists -- many of them who understood themselves to be "Christian" -- arguably invented "textual criticism." They got there before the Germans did.
Dr. Waligore's book is outstanding here. But it's really expensive.
https://www.amazon.com/Spirituality-English-American-Deists-Became/dp/1666920630
Sorry, a slip of the mind there!
Maybe we can think of Adams' moves here as those of a dilettante in the early days of a new subject. We only learn that this kind of reasoning is weak when we "try it on for size" and in the early days of a thing, a lot of experimentation happens that, from later lights, is super wacky.
This is perhaps what makes it so interesting...and so fertile for folks today to mine for "evidence" in favor of their own opinions. We tend to treat the Founders with capital F in the way medieval folks treated Aristotle or Augustine.
Could not agree more about Adams' dilettantism. I compare studying Adams' and Jefferson's largely irrelevant post-presidential writings to looking for your lost keys not where you dropped them, but over where the light's better.
We study their correspondence not because it's illuminating, but simply because we have it.
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