At the heart of the American Revolution is a simple principle, stated in many places. I will focus upon two of those places, the first of which is the Declaration of Independence, which defines the final cause of our nation. The second is in the Federalist Papers, which explains the meaning and purpose of the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution in turn defines the formal cause of the nation.
The Declaration of Independence states this principle as “all men are created equal.”
What does this mean? Human beings are so different from one another. There are short ones and tall ones. Color varies. Sex is divided into two. Some work harder than others; some are smarter. There are Christians and Jews and many others. We learn in the classics that the variety among human beings is greater than the variety found in other creatures.
Human beings do have one thing in common: they are human. Draw back from the individuals who make up humanity and look at them as a group in comparison to other beings. You will see the stark difference that divides us from all others and makes us what we are. You will also see the implication of God.
For example, human beings are superior to horses. Thomas Jefferson writes in his last important letter that “the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.”1 Horses may be ridden. Men may not.
The classics teach us that human beings are different from other creatures in their rationality. They teach us that this rationality is synonymous with the ability to speak. Aristotle writes,
That man is much more a political animal than any kind of bee or any herd animal is clear. For, as we assert, nature does nothing in vain; and man alone among the animals has speech. The voice indeed indicates the painful or pleasant, and hence is present in other animals as well; for their nature has come this far, that they have a perception of the painful and pleasant and signal these things to each other. But speech serves to reveal the advantageous and the harmful, and hence also the just and the unjust. For it is peculiar to man as compared to the other animals that he alone has a perception of good and bad and just and unjust and the other things of this sort; and community in these things is what makes a household and a city.2
This gift of rationality, which issues in speech, has two profound implications for us. The first is that speech draws us closer together. Whatever we can think, we can say, and vice versa. This means that we can share our innermost selves with others.
In the creation described in the Declaration of Independence, human equality places the human being above all other creatures and below God.
The second is that we can distinguish right and wrong. Because we know that things fit into kinds, we can compare each instance of a kind of thing with the others. If we did not know this, we could not use common nouns, which are the basis of speech.
Knowing that things are grouped into kinds of things, we can see that some are better than others. Take horses. Horses love to run, and they are obviously made for it. Some run faster than others and over a greater distance. Some horses are “better.” The better horses have a larger share of the “good” of the horse; there is more horse in them, so to speak. They have more of the “being” of the horse. Aquinas, referencing Aristotle, writes that “goodness and being are really the same, and differ only in idea.”3 Where you can use one word, you can use the other.
Aristotle writes that if we can tell what a good horse is, we ought to be able to tell what a good man is.4 He describes this good man in his wonderful book the Nicomachean Ethics. The good man is brave, moderate, just, and prudent. These are the cardinal virtues, and they describe the human being in action when the human being is “good.” The classics teach us something very similar to a lesson in the Gospels: our choices are formative of our characters and the development of virtue. In human beings, our intentions matter a lot.
How does this raise the implication of God? Well, we are aware of these gifts that raise us above other creatures. Also, we are aware that we have them imperfectly. In each of us, there are both higher and lower qualities, and even the higher ones we do not have completely. God is a better lover than the best husband or wife; he is completely love. God does not struggle to learn; he knows everything. God does not age or decline; he is eternal. God’s wishes are never frustrated; he is omnipotent. God is not tempted by evil things; he is goodness itself. We humans are aware of our limitations, which make us imperfect in love, in life, in strength, and in will. These limitations raise the question of, and give evidence for, a better thing, the Perfect Thing, the Complete Thing.
The Declaration of Independence makes this point. In the declaration, God is called a legislator, the maker of the “laws of nature.” He is called the judge; indeed, “the Supreme Judge of the world.” He is called the executive, “Divine Providence.” Finally, he is called the “Creator,” the Maker of all, the Founder. God, it seems, can properly hold all the powers of earthly government in his hands. As is proper, in him, the powers of government are not separated.
Among men, however, separation of powers is essential. The middle of the Declaration of Independence recites a list of evils King George III had committed. These evils are mostly things later forbidden by the Constitution of the United States. The king, the executive in the British government, had invaded the powers of the colonial legislatures and judges. Even as the Declaration of Independence condemns these practices in the king, it specifically attributes all of them to God. We are the equals of the king because neither of us is God.
In the creation described in the Declaration of Independence, human equality places the human being above all other creatures and below God.
The Constitution
This brings us to the formal cause of the American Union, the Constitution. Two things about it are immediately obvious: it is short, and it is orderly. It is divided into seven sections. The first three describe each of the branches of government, which are separated. The last four talk about such things as the transition from the old constitution to this new one, the manner of ratifying and amending this new one, and the powers of the states. This structure is not hard to understand, and it emphasizes the separation of powers.
In the Constitution, the powers of the branches are equal. This implies that the authority for the branches comes from outside all of them. If there were not some means to arbitrate disputes among them, it would be chaos. In fact, there is such a means. Directly or indirectly, all the branches are appointed by the people, specifically by the constitutional majority, which Lincoln called the “only true sovereign of a free people.”5 This is the principle of representation. The Declaration of Independence says that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” In America, that consent is given and regularly renewed, as prescribed by the Constitution.
Representation makes this separation of powers possible. Congress makes the laws, the president enforces them, and judges decide cases that arise between parties. These separate powers are sharply distinct, yet they also overlap. To keep the powers and the bodies that exercise them separate, the founders gave each the power to defend itself by having a share in the power of the other branches. The president may veto a law passed by Congress. Congress must confirm certain actions of the president and certain of his subordinates. A court may declare for or against the party brought before it on the grounds that the law in question violates the Constitution, the higher law (though not the highest), the only law made by the people.
Madison writes in Federalist 51 that the purpose of all this is for “ambition . . . to counteract ambition,” such that “the interest of the man” is connected to “the constitutional rights of the place.”6 Do you see how differently human beings are considered in the Constitution compared to the way God is presented in the Declaration of Independence?
Limited Government
The Constitution describes a government that is limited. Its powers are enumerated, and it is expressly forbidden to do other things. More things are left to the state governments than to the federal, and most are reserved to the people. This is necessary if human beings are not to be governed like horses.
A prime reason for this necessity is stated in the First Amendment. The first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, were ratified shortly after the Constitution went into effect. They were not included originally because the framers thought the whole purpose of the document was to protect these rights and naming them would be redundant.7 Others disagreed, and so they were added.
Today, the idea of human equality is challenged and distorted by the notion that we can make of ourselves whatever we please.
The First Amendment concerns those things nearest to man’s soul: talking, writing, gathering, and praying. These things are most important to protect, even if the other things are also vital. The body is the bulwark of the soul, but the soul defines the body.
Government must be limited to the protection of these things, especially because of the character of Christianity. Christianity is unique in decisive ways, including a way that establishes something in politics. Jesus claimed to be the utter Sovereign, the Lord and Creator of all and for all, in every time. And then he said the astonishing thing: “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). Jesus does not set up a government.
In other words, there will still be countries, and people in each and every one of them will depend for their salvation upon Jesus Christ. They must be free to worship him. They must “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” but they must also render “to God the things that are God’s” (Matt. 22:21). Caesar is respected in that statement, but at the same time he is demoted. He does not get to decide what is his any longer. That is now ordained from above. One sees the origin of one of the mottos of the American Revolution: “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.”
Today
The combination of final and formal causes that comprises America is deeply controversial today. This is dangerous. Today, the idea of human equality is challenged and distorted by the notion that we can make of ourselves whatever we please. In this understanding, the powers of God now belong to man. Science is no longer thought of chiefly as a way of knowing or beholding. Now, it is a tool, a technology to remake the world.8 Indeed, it does wonders. The question is whether it will obliterate us. If you wish to see how it might, read The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis.9 Already it has extensively remade our government. In relation to the size of the society it oversees, the government has grown by leaps. Directly and indirectly, it manages about half the economy. Its method of lawmaking does not follow any more the old division between legislative, executive, and judicial. Most laws are made in administrative agencies staffed by permanent officials in great numbers, and their ordinances fall like snowflakes. Everything is regulated, down to the family and the individual.
This revolution began with the promise of a brave new world, amounting to the claim that we should take sovereignty over everything in nature, including man. Today, one must make up his mind whether he thinks that promise is still promising.
The reason to be cautious about these utopian claims is stated beautifully in the second passage that I want to emphasize. It is found in Federalist 51 by James Madison:
But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.10
This means the Constitution, as much as the declaration, was written in mindfulness of God, respect for his perfection, and awareness of our imperfection.
To invest human beings with the powers that only God properly exercises is dangerous. That is the message America was founded to heed and to carry. We forget it at our peril. We can recover it by the simple act of studying. There is beauty in those old principles. Let us remember them. They point us back toward freedom and God.
. . .
1 Thomas Jefferson, “To Roger C. Weightman,” in Thomas Jefferson: Writings (New York: Library of America, 1984), 1517.
2 Aristotle, Politics 1.2.1253a10, trans. Carnes Lord (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 4.
3 Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas, Second and Revised Edition 1-1.5.1, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1920), newadvent.org. For Aristotle’s initial discussion of goodness and being as it relates to virtue, see Nicomachean Ethics 1.6–1.7, trans. Joe Sachs (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2002), 5–12.
4 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 7, 10–12.
5 Abraham Lincoln, “First Inaugural Address,” in Abraham Lincoln, Speeches and Writings: 1859-1865 (New York: Library of America, 1989), 220.
6 James Madison, “Federalist No.51,” in Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, The Federalist: The Gideon Edition, ed. George W. Carey and James McClellan (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2001), p. 268.
7 Alexander Hamilton, “Federalist No.84,” in The Federalist, 442–451.
8 Science comes from a Latin word that means “to know.” Technology comes from two Greek words meaning “art” and “knowing.” Technology is not knowing for its own sake, but knowing how to make. In the Bible and in classic philosophy, making and doing are necessary to human beings, but knowing things that do not change is higher. We have lost sight of that today.
9 C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Harper One, 2015).
10 James Madison, “Federalist No.51.”
This article first appeared in Issue XXI: “Democracy” of the Word on Fire Institute’s quarterly journal, Evangelization & Culture.