The justification for human equality given by the Founders in the Declaration of Independence claims all people are “created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” What kind of Creator is invoked here? This deity is invoked by different names in the Declaration’s 1,458 words: Nature’s God, Creator, Supreme Judge of the world, and Providence. Do these divine names point to a deistic god, a disinterested watchmaker who makes the world but lets it go without further care or intervention? Or does the text suggest a theistic conception of God, the Biblical God who creates and governs as a loving Father?
In America Declares Independence, Alan Dershowitz argues for an “un-Christian Declaration of Independence.” He argues that language of “Nature’s God,” “Supreme Judge of the World,” and the “Creator” are deistic, un-Christian references.
If by “un-Christian,” Dershowitz means the Divine in the Declaration is not specifically Christian, then he is certainly correct. The Founders could have, but did not, speak of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The term “Nature’s God” has distinctly deistic origins, unlike all the other terms used for the Divine such as Providence, Creator, the Supreme Judge which originates in Hebrew belief.
Yet all the divine names used in the Declaration are perfectly compatible with both theistic belief and deistic belief. Christians as much as Deists affirmed God as the origin of nature and nature’s laws (both scientific and moral). Christians confess God as a provident Creator of all that is seen and unseen (nature) who will judge living and dead. Why then claim that this language, which all Christians can accept, amounts to an “un-Christian Declaration of Independence”?
Michael Novak writes, “Scholars often mistakenly refer to the god of the Founders as a deist god. But the Founders talked about God in terms that are radically Jewish: Creator, Lawgiver, Governor, Judge, Providence.” Novak seems to envision a form of deism like that advocated by Henry St. John Bolingbroke, who conceived of a God who launches the created order, but does not interact with it any longer. Like a mother who abandons her child, a deistic God does not intervene in creation in general nor in the lives of human beings in particular. But this kind of deity was not embraced even by those founders rightly considered the least traditionally Christian and the most deistic, such as Thomas Jefferson.
Does the text suggest a theistic conception of God, the Biblical God who creates and governs as a loving Father?
Indeed, the Declaration’s final sentence implies a rejection of the watchmaker God when it invokes a “firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.” A Creator may or may not be deistic, but a Supreme Judge capable of providing the protection of divine Providence in this life is theistic. This final passage was added by Congress to Jefferson’s original text. Did this addition perhaps contradict Jefferson’s view?
As Cardinal Avery Dulles notes, the addition does not contradict Jefferson’s views, “American deists such as Jefferson and Franklin did not rule out all divine intervention. They were convinced that God punished evil and rewarded virtue both in this life and in the next. They also encouraged prayer in ways that seemed inconsistent with deism in its pure form.” If this is true of even the most “deistic” of the founders, how much more is it true of the others?
But according to some scholars, the third president did not believe in supernatural interference in human affairs. As Alan Dershowitz puts it, “Jefferson’s ‘watchmaker’ God did not answer human prayers.” Did Jefferson fully adopt such a strongly deistic view?
A strong deism in which God does not (or cannot) intervene in human events is hard to square with what President Jefferson wrote in his second Inaugural Address. The third president said:
I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, 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 in supplications with me 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.
God, as understood in this passage, seems quite attentive to human affairs, active in guiding individuals and countries, and responsive to human prayer.
But perhaps this passage doesn’t really reflect Jefferson’s own view. He may have spoken in this way because it was called for by the customs of his day. An atheistic politician might conclude a speech with “God bless America” simply as a matter of custom rather than an expression of personal belief.
But Jefferson writes of a God capable of influencing human affairs also in his Notes on the State of Virginia. Since he originally published this text anonymously, Jefferson presumably felt free to express his personal views without reservation:
Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.
This passage points to a God who can and, it seems that Jefferson thinks, will intervene in human events, rather than a purely deistic god incapable of supernatural interference. The Almighty Creator, in Jefferson’s view, was not merely a watchmaker God uninterested in human affairs and unable to intervene in the course of human events.
Indeed, some forms of deism in the seventeenth century understood God as more than simply an Unmoved Mover or Uncaused Cause. Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1583-1648) for example put forward a version of deism which included “the existence of God, divine worship, the practice of virtue, repentance for sin, and personal immortality.” Deism is not monolithic. By contrast to the strongest forms of deism, theists hold that God oversees, loves, and guides creation in general and human affairs in particular with providential care. A theistic God can act in time, changing the course of human events.
Considered in isolation, the phrases of the Declaration such as, “Nature’s God,” “endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights,” and “Supreme Judge of the World” are open to a deistic or a theistic interpretation. According to both interpretations, God is Creator, Legislator of morals, and Supreme Judge of the world, intervening to render a judgment establishing justice. Deism takes this judgment to be only established after death, but theism leaves open the possibility of judgment even during life. Yet the writings of even one of the most unorthodox of the Founders—Thomas Jefferson—points to a God that is more like a loving Father than a disinterested watchmaker.
This article is part of a series in which Dr. Kaczor will provide more insights leading up to the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.