Posted on 07/25/2010 1:37:12 PM PDT by betty boop
He is referring to the Treaty of Tripoli of 1797, Article 11 of which reads in full: “ Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”
Did I mention Jefferson? You are all over the place! But since you mentioned him, wasn't it Jefferson who re-made the Bible by removing the supernatural aspects of it? Does it matter if he was a deist? He sure wasn't a Christian, was he? But based on some of his other writings, I wonder if he was even a deist.
or [my emphasis]
Congratulations! Excellent work.
With due respect, kosta, I think you find what you want to find and see what you want to see.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights” . . .
. . . . . Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, as originally written, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ME, Vol 1, pg 29
Check your etymology and you will find that “The word was not generally capitalized Creator until the appearance of the King James Bible (1611).” . . . The Barnhart Concise Dictionary Of Etymology, 1995 First Edition, Harper Collins. For the Founding Fathers a capitalized Creator meant just one thing; the Judeo-Christian God. I know you will find difficulty in accepting that The Declaration is a Christian document (the product of Christian belief). But, for you, there is worse to come. “The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.” . . . Thomas Jefferson, "A summary view of the rights of British America" Autobiography, Appendix [Note G.], The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol 1, pg 256).
“Was Jefferson a deist?,” betty asks.
If he was betty, he was a most unconventional Deist, and in blatant defiance of all the usual characteristics defining the term.
Jefferson discusses the ancient philosophers as a contrast to his most favored; “Jesus of Nazareth,” making it difficult to dismiss Jefferson as merely a Deist, in a letter to William Short, October 31, 1819, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson in 19 volumes, Memorial Edition, edited by Albert Ellery Burgh.
In another letter, Jefferson writes to his namesake, addressing to him several things that might have a favorable influence on the course of his life. Jefferson starts by naming the two great commandments of the Judeo-Christian belief, going on to mention some of the Ten Commandments, and closes by quoting the body of a Christian hymn Lord, who's the happy man, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson Smith, February 21, 1825, Ibid.
Jefferson again confirms his distaste for ‘Presbyterianism’ and equally his aversion to the teachings of Calvin. He then goes on to shatter the conventional understanding of his view of the ‘separation’ of church and state, by relating the sharing of a courthouse by various Christian sects, as a common temple of worship. What is surprising is not that different Christian sects proved to be willing to share in common worship, taking turns in leading the services, but that their place of common worship was the very seat of local government itself, the court-house, and that this event was reported, with equanimity, by none other than Thomas Jefferson, himself. He then goes on to confound us further by relating how he and his fellow Visitors (directors) of the University of Virginia provided space on the university grounds and the sharing of certain facilities for formal religious instruction by various Christian sects, all this in a letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, November 2, 1822, Ibid.
In yet another letter, Jefferson declares his faith only in Christ’s teachings of the early church, a letter to John Adams, October, 13 1813, Ibid. And, finally, in yet another letter he declares, “To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian (emphasis mine), in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; and believing he never claimed any other. (Thomas Jefferson, to Doctor Benjamin Rush, April 21, 1803, Ibid.
And, dear boop, the letters and other documents of Jefferson fixes exactly the problem critics face in attempting to deny a Christian influence on the making of America, including The Declaration itself. To tailor the charge of Deism to any of the Founding Fathers, the critics must redefine ‘deist’ to fit the changing characteristics of the different Founders. Franklin proclaimed “God governs in the affairs of men.” Not a belief usually attributable to Deists. Jefferson, on the other hand, swore fealty to Jesus Christ (“the pure gospel of Jesus Christ”). And critics will find no comfort in examining the Christian values of any of the other Founders charged with drafting The Declaration Of Independence.
Thanks for the beep to this interesting thread.
You mentioned the DoI and characterized it a Deist document. Jefferson is the principle author of the document. He and the others of the Congress are responsible for the values expressed by the document. The document didn't write itself.
Those who could read the Declaration of Independence would have known from their youth Who the Creator IS. From the New England Primer 1777 edition:
CHILDREN your great Creator fear,
To him your homage pay,
While vain employments fire your blood,
And lead your thoughts astray.
The due remembrance of his name
Your first regard requires:
Till your breast glows with sacred love,
Indulge no meaner fires.
Secure his favour, and be wise
Before these cheerless days,
When age comes on, when mirth's no more,
And health and strength decays.
A Wise son maketh a glad father, but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.
BEtter is a little with the fear of the Lord, than great treasure & trouble therewith.
COme unto Christ all ye that labor and are heavy laden and he will give you rest.
DO not the abominable thing which I hate saith the Lord.
EXcept a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
FOolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.
GODLINESS is profitable unto all things, having the promise of the life that now is, and that which is to come.
HOLINESS becomes GOD's house for ever.
IT is good for me to draw near unto GOD.
KEEP thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.
LIARS shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone.
MANY are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivereth them out of them all.
NOW is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation.
OUT of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.
PRAY to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which sees in secret shall reward thee openly.
QUIT you like men, be strong, stand fast in the faith.
REMEMBER thy Creator in the days of thy youth.
SEest thou a man wise in his own conceit, there is more hope of a fool than of him.
TRUST in God at all times, ye people, pour out your hearts before him.
UPON the wicked, God shall rain an horrible tempest.
WO to the wicked, it shall be ill with him, for the reward of his hands shall be given him.
EXHORT one another daily while it is called to day, lest any of you be hardened thro' the deceitfulness of sin.
YOUNG men ye have overcome the wicked one.
ZEal hath consumed me, because thy enemies have forgotten the word of God.
You sure use that word a lot in a subtly caustic way. Such as (#27) in reference to T. jefferson "But you seem pretty sure about his "credentials." It must be nice to have such certainly so cheaply...."
To remind you, this was in your reply to my #24, and neither in #24, nor in my only other post (#21) did I even mention Thomas Jefferson! But you did!
Do you relaize how silly it is to mock me for being "pretty sure of [jefferson's] crednetials" and that "it must be nice to have such certainy so cheaply" without me even mentioning Jefferson?!? That's pathetic.
Nevertheless they all signed it and therefore gave their consent to the wording, which has no Christ, no triune God or even the word God in it. It's a deist document. It's not a Christian document. Period.
Regardless of what they believed, the country was not founded on any specific God.
Nevertheless all those who gave their consent to the wording understood the capitalized Creator to mean the Judeo-Christian God. It is not a Deist document. It is a document expressing the Christian philosophies of the Founding Fathers. Period.
Anyone who thinks that Jefferson was a Christian is a fool who probably thinks that Tim LaHay is a prophet.
It’s always interesting to encounter elements who seek to revise the nature of our founding documents and the Founders themselves. It’s not just those openly hostile to Christianity who do it, however. Some Christians seek to belittle our founding due to the Protestant nature of that founding on the one hand, and yet spuriously seek to claim credit for influencing those Founders on the other.
It’s a trend I’ve noted for over a year, and a very disturbing one. Even some putative conservatives on Free Republic have fallen prey. You’ll see it most prominently on display in the Religion Forum, and you’ve even seen the usual opening sortie on this thread.
Thank you ever so much, Wallop the Cat! You remind me of the CONTEXT in which these lines of John Adams — already familiar to me from past readings, but I couldn't recall the details — were spoken.
I recall around that time, John Adams was deeply engaged in "diplomacy" with the Barbary States of North Africa — Algiers, Tripoli, Tunis, and Morocco — whose letter-of-marque pirates were seizing American shipping in the Mediterranean, commandeering their cargoes, and selling the captured American seamen into slavery.
Mainly Europe was willing to pay the exorbitant bribes it took for the Barbary pirates to leave their shipping alone. But America was not then rich. She tried instead to engage in diplomacy with the Barbary States.
It seems to me the best way to understand kosta50's out-of-context quotation from John Adams is to simply put it back into its historical setting.
Adams was not speaking of the foundation of American principles. He was trying to get as far as diplomacy could take him to successfully address Ali Baba and His Forty Thieves.
IIRC, diplomacy failed. The United States of America sent in the Marines instead.
To put it mildly, the Marines succeeded where diplomacy failed.
And that took care of that. :^)
Well jeepers, kosta, if all you care about is wording, then how do you plan to successfully communicate with people who take their cues and clues directly from real experience, and from historical knowledge?
Experience is primary. Words can only be descriptive of that primary. And we hope their use corresponds directly with that primary, so as to fully convey its meaning, its truth.
Otherwise, what is the point of human language?
It was founded on God the Creator. Which, when you think of it, is a pretty generic term for the creative/sustaining Divinity of universal human history and culture, of philosophy and myth of all times — up to the "post-modern."
ping
And that took care of that. :^) "
~~~~~~~~~
LOL!
...and the expedition was memorialized in their "Marine Hymn"... '-)
Empty repetition doesn't become truth. The truth is that if they wanted to make a Christian document they would have written a Christian document, by calling on God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, instead of an anonymous and impersonal "Creator".
They knew what they were doing and the document reads exactly as they saw fit. It is written as a deist document.
Besides, capitalizing the word "Creator" means nothing. In those days they capitalized every noun (as Germans do to this day).
I don't know/ What's the meaning of life? Nice diversionary move, betty boop.
Sure, even Hindus believe that. They are not Christians. Obviously the Founding Fathers did not want to identify the Creator with any specific God. They didn't want this country to be founded on Christianity or any other specific (organized) religion, and John Adams makes that very clear in his opening statement of his letter from 1797.
They were not against God; they just didn't want any specific God to be identified with the country they were proclaiming or the government they were about to form.
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