During this 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we’re hearing many conflicting interpretations of our founding document. Some call it a radical humanist manifesto that announces the overthrow of monarchy and of the Christian religion; others see it as a reactionary document to preserve the property and privileges of the ruling classes, especially slaveholders. Another group sees it as an eloquent statement of a political philosophy based on the principles of government found in the Word of God: a high view of God and His law, and a low view of man and his nature.
Who’s right? And what does the Declaration really mean? Perhaps we should ask its primary author, Thomas Jefferson.
Everyone knows Jefferson was a Deist, so the Declaration can’t be a biblical document, right?
Often, what “everyone knows” turns out to be nothing more than the opinion of a few college professors. So if we want to know whether the Declaration is based on biblical principles, we must ask not what Jefferson may have believed in the 1800s, but what he believed in 1776.
As Mark Beliles and Jerry Newcombe explain in their book “Doubting Thomas,” 1777 is the year Jefferson took a leading role in establishing an evangelical, orthodox Anglican church and was chosen to serve as one of its vestrymen. To be a vestryman, Jefferson had to swear that he accepted the basic doctrines of the church: the inspiration and authority of Scripture, the Trinity, the divine and human natures of Christ, substitutionary atonement, and justification by grace through faith. Jefferson continued to support this church financially for many years, writing that he and his fellow subscribers were “desirous of encouraging and supporting the Calvinistical Reformed church, and of deriving to ourselves, through the ministry of its teachers, the benefits of Gospel knowledge and religious improvement … by regular education for explaining the holy scriptures.” The pastor, Rev. Charles Clay, whose 50 surviving sermons are thoroughly orthodox and evangelical, maintained correspondence with Jefferson throughout their lives.
So far as we know, the first time Jefferson expressed doubts about Christian orthodoxy was in 1788 while was serving as U.S. counsel to France. Asked by a friend to serve as godfather to his child, Jefferson responded that he could not do so because he could not consider himself in good standing with the church, because, he said, he did not understand the doctrine of the Trinity and therefore could not affirm it.
In the 1800s, Jefferson veered further away from orthodoxy and toward Unitarianism, denying the doctrine of the Trinity and probably denying the divinity of Jesus Christ, although he respected Jesus as a great teacher. But even then, he was never a Deist, for he clearly believed God was active in human history. As he said in his Second Inaugural Address (1805):
I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our forefathers, as Israel of old, from their native land, and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life; who has covered our infancy with his providence, and our riper years with his wisdom and power; and to whose goodness I ask you to join with me in supplications, that he will so enlighten the minds of your servants, guide their councils, and prosper their measures, that whatsoever they do, shall result in your good, and shall secure to you the peace, friendship, and approbation of all nations.
But in 1776 his beliefs appear to have been orthodox, and in the Declaration he invoked God in the following five ways: “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”; “all men are created equal”; “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”; “appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions”; and “with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence.”
Whatever Jefferson became later in life, in 1776, he spoke as a Christian, wrote as a Christian, and apparently thought as a Christian. The Declaration must be understood as the work of the Jefferson of 1776, not the Jefferson of 1820.
Colonel Eidsmoe serves as Professor of Constitutional Law for the Oak Brook College of Law & Government Policy (obcl.edu), as Senior Counsel for the Foundation for Moral Law (morallaw.org), and as Chairman of the Board of the Plymouth Rock Foundation (plymrock.org).He lives in rural Pike Road, Ala., and may be contacted for speaking engagements at [email protected].
