Thomas Jefferson Thought Jesus Was a Deist

Over the years, I have paid very close attention to the different terms that have been used to describe the personal faith of various American founders. We see terms like "Christian," "deist," "unitarian," "theistic rationalist" and others bandied about with various adjectives and qualifies like "orthodox Christian," etc. 

What I've found is that many curious and interested people, of various degrees of intellect and education, get "tripped up" by the use of these terms because the terms mean different things to different people. In fact, there are multiple competing definitions for each of these terms. So it helps to understand exactly what these terms mean in a definitional sense. That's where I think my research has value. 

The title of this post, to some folks interested in the conversation, might be jarring. "Huh? Thomas Jefferson thought Jesus was a deist?" Well yes, he did. But what did he mean by that? Jefferson was operating under a different definition of the term "deism" that is conventionally held. 

In fact, depending how we define the label, Jefferson himself could be understood as a Christian, a deist, a unitarian, and a theistic rationalist. But more to the point, see this very informative article by Dr. Thomas Kidd, who is one of the few scholars who really understands these nuances. 

From the article:

To cite one important instance, Jefferson wrote in 1803 to the scientist and Unitarian minister Joseph Priestley, who was helping Jefferson to affirm his own idiosyncratic version of Unitarian Christianity. He told Priestley that he was thinking of composing an outline of the “Christian system” and the reasons for the superiority (though not perfection) of Jesus’s ethical teachings. After reviewing the moral codes of the great philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome, he said, “I should then take a view of the deism, and ethics of the Jews, and shew in what a degraded state they were, and the necessity they presented of a reformation. I should proceed to a view of the life, character, & doctrines of Jesus, who sensible of the incorrectness of their ideas of the deity, and of morality, endeavored to bring them to the principles of a pure deism, and juster notions of the attributes of god.”

For Jefferson, deism in this case simply meant belief in a monotheistic creator God. He knew the term had widely known skeptical connotations, too. Perhaps he took pleasure in describing Jesus as a deist, knowing this would irritate Christian critics who called Jefferson a deist. Once Jefferson reconciled himself to believing in Unitarian, naturalistic Christianity, he was eager to present himself as a true follower of Jesus, as opposed to critics like Linn. To Jefferson, traditional Christians clung to the churches’ accretions of “Platonic,” mystical, and ostensibly incomprehensible beliefs, such as the doctrine of the Trinity. Jefferson touted his devotion to the true deism of Jesus alone.