One of my most favorite Founders is Thomas Jefferson. I suppose it may be because his expressed
political sentiments most closely reflect my own. While he is most often referred to as a “deist,”
which I believe is a misnomer, it is certainly true that he was not an orthodox
Christian by any serious standard. Take
for example Jefferson’s April 11, 1823 letter to John Adams; there is some I
can agree with wholeheartedly and some where he’s just flat wrong. Let’s take a look…
Dear Sir, — The
wishes expressed, in your last favor, that I may continue in life and health
until I become a Calvinist, at least in his exclamation of `mon Dieu!
jusque à quand'! would make me
immortal. I can never join Calvin in addressing his god. He was indeed
an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Dæmonism. If ever
man worshipped a false god, he did. The being described in his 5. points is not
the God whom you and I acknowledge and adore, the Creator and benevolent
governor of the world; but a dæmon of malignant spirit. It would be more
pardonable to believe in no god at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious
attributes of Calvin. Indeed I think that every Christian sect gives a great
handle to Atheism by their general dogma that, without a revelation, there
would not be sufficient proof of the being of a god. Now one sixth of mankind
only are supposed to be Christians: the other five sixths then, who do not
believe in the Jewish and Christian revelation, are without a knowledge of the
existence of a god!
Aside from his harsh criticism of John Calvin (with which I would
vehemently disagree), I think Jefferson makes an error in his supposition that
without revelation (I believe here he is referring to special revelation, i.e.
the Bible) there is insufficient proof of the being of God. The Christian church has never held such a
view; in fact, the Apostle Paul lays out exactly the contrary in his epistle to
the Roman church:
“For the wrath of God is revealed
from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress
the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of
God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible
attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are
made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without
excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not
glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their
thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise,
they became fools…” Rom. 1:18-22 (NKJV)
Notice Paul says
that mankind is “without excuse;” that is, no man can say that he has not been
given sufficient revelation to believe in God.
The problem is not that God has failed to reveal Himself. The problem is that man suppresses that
revelation because of the wickedness of his heart. The existence of the various religions and
cults is only a further demonstration of this truth: men know there is a God to Whom they must
give an account. While general
revelation can show us that there is a God, we need special revelation to show
us the full range of his dealings with men and what His will is, and the
ultimate expression of God’s revelation is in his Son Jesus Christ. What separates true religion from the false
is that false religions worship a god of their own making and the true
Christian religion worships the God Who made them. I believe Jefferson’s assertion of this “general
dogma” is patently false.
“This gives completely a gain de cause to the disciples of
Ocellus, Timaeus, Spinosa, Diderot and D'Holbach. The argument which they rest
on as triumphant and unanswerable is that, in every hypothesis of Cosmogony you
must admit an eternal pre-existence of something; and according to the rule of
sound philosophy, you are never to employ two principles to solve a difficulty
when one will suffice. They say then that it is more simple to believe at once
in the eternal pre-existence of the world, as it is now going on, and may for
ever go on by the principle of reproduction which we see and witness, than to
believe in the eternal pre-existence of an ulterior cause, or Creator of the
world, a being whom we see not, and know not, of whose form substance and mode
or place of existence, or of action no sense informs us, no power of the mind
enables us to delineate or comprehend. On the contrary I hold (without appeal
to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in it's parts general
or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a
conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of
it's composition. The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in
their course by the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces, the
structure of our earth itself, with it's distribution of lands, waters and
atmosphere, animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest
particles, insects mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organized as man or
mammoth, the mineral substances, their generation and uses, it is impossible, I
say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design,
cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from
matter and motion, their preserver and regulator while permitted to exist in
their present forms, and their regenerator into new and other forms. We see,
too, evident proofs of the necessity of a superintending power to maintain the
Universe in it's course and order. Stars, well known, have disappeared, new
ones have come into view, comets, in their incalculable courses, may run foul
of suns and planets and require renovation under other laws; certain races of
animals are become extinct; and, were there no restoring power, all existences
might extinguish successively, one by one, until all should be reduced to a
shapeless chaos. So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and
powerful Agent that, of the infinite numbers of men who have existed thro' all
time, they have believed, in the proportion of a million at least to Unit, in
the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a creator, rather than in that of
a self-existent Universe.”
Here I agree with
Jefferson because I agree with Paul.
Even without appealing to special revelation, there is still enough
revealed about God through His creation that we can understand the necessity of
His superintending of all things. “The heavens declare the glory of God; and
the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night
unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where
their voice is not heard.” (Ps. 19:1-3 NKJV)
Which truly translated means `in the beginning God existed, and reason (or mind) was with God, and that mind was God. This was in the beginning with God. All things were created by it, and without it was made not one thing which was made'. Yet this text, so plainly declaring the doctrine of Jesus that the world was created by the supreme, intelligent being, has been perverted by modern Christians to build up a second person of their tritheism by a mistranslation of the word logos. One of it's legitimate meanings indeed is `a word.' But, in that sense, it makes an unmeaning jargon: while the other meaning `reason', equally legitimate, explains rationally the eternal preexistence of God, and his creation of the world. Knowing how incomprehensible it was that `a word,' the mere action or articulation of the voice and organs of speech could create a world, they undertake to make of this articulation a second preexisting being, and ascribe to him, and not to God, the creation of the universe. The Atheist here plumes himself on the uselessness of such a God, and the simpler hypothesis of a self-existent universe. The truth is that the greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are those calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them for the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors.”
It is
shocking to me that a man as intelligent as Jefferson could miss what is so
obvious. I have to believe that Jefferson had access to
the full text of John’s gospel, and yet he failed to quote to whole text.
“In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with
God. All things were made through Him, and without Him
nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the
life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the
darkness did not comprehend it. There was a man sent from God,
whose name was John. This man came for a
witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might
believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to
bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light
which gives light to every man coming into the world. He was in the
world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own,
and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become
children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were
born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but
of God. And the Word
became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the
only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore
witness of Him and cried out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who
comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me.’” And
of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. For
the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through
Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time. The
only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has
declared Him.” John 1:1-18 (NKJV)
Now I’m not a
trained theologian, but I believe the text is plain enough to teach us a few
things. First, we see that John clearly differentiates
between the Word and God. The Word was
with God, the Word was in the beginning with God, the Word became flesh, etc. It is clear that John is referring to two,
distinct persons here. Secondly,
Jefferson’s assertion that “logos” means an impersonal “reason” just doesn’t
fit. Did impersonal “reason” become
flesh and dwell among the apostles? Of
course not. Thirdly, it is clear by a
simple reading of the context that John is defining “the Word” and “the Light”
as being one and the same person, that is, the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is here defined as being with
the Father from the beginning, making all things, being the source of life, the
giver of light, bearer of God’s glory, giver of grace and truth. What mere man could be said to be “in the
bosom of the Father?” Christians are not
“tritheists” but monotheists. We worship
1 God in 3 distinct Persons not 3 separate Gods. We do so because that is how God is revealed
in Holy Scripture, and especially by passages like John 1. Certainly Jefferson understood enough
Christian theology to understand that. Now,
we could take up Jefferson’s assertion that the virgin birth of Christ is a “fable”
but I think that is a topic for another day.
This is just another reason why we must take everything proposed by man
back to the Scriptures to see how it measures up.
Semper Reformata
Dale
No comments:
Post a Comment