I spent a bit of time yesterday in the hopeless, thankless task of cleaning up after a barrage of quote mining by atheists. Yeah, it was Jefferson and the friggin' "Founders", as usual. I have yet to encounter an ideological "quotation" of Jefferson which is done honestly and completely. In one instance this is the "quote" that was used to prove Jefferson was an expert debunker of Christianity and religion, in general.
“[I]t is not to be understood that I am with him [Jesus] in all his doctrines. I am a materialist; he takes the side of spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance towards forgiveness of sin; I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it."
Which, if you look for the source, you will find is mined from a letter he wrote to William Short, April 13, 1820. In a wider context the meaning of it is clearer though far from clear and it wasn't the one the atheist made of it.
Dear Sir
Your favor of Mar. 27 is received and my grandaughter Ellen has undertaken to copy the Syllabus, which will therefore be inclosed. It was originally written to Dr. Rush on his death, fearing that the inquisition of the public might get hold of it, I asked the return to it from the family, which they kindly complied with. At the request of another friend, I had given him a copy. He lent it to his friend to read, who copied it, and in a few months it appeared in the theological magazine of London. Happily that repository is scarecly known in this country, and the Syllabus therefore is still a secret, and in your hands I am sure it will continue so.
But while this Syllabus is meant to place the character of Jesus in it's true and high light, as no imposter himself but a great Reformer of the Hebrew code of religion, it is not to be understood that I am with him in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist, he takes the side of spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin. I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it &c. &c. It is the innocence of his character, the purity & sublimity of his moral precepts, the eloquence of his inculcations, the beauty of the apologias in which he conveys them, that I so much admire; sometimes indeed needing indulgence to Eastern hyperbolism. My eulogies too may be founded on a postulate which all may not be ready to grant. Among the sayings & discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence: and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. I seperate therefore the gold from the dross; restore to him the former & leave the latter to the stupidity of some, and roguery of others of his disciples. Of this band of dupes and impostors, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and firm corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus. These palpable interpolations and falsifications of his doctrines led me to try to sift them apart. I found the work obvious and easy, and that his part composed the most beautiful morsel of morality which has been given to us by man. The Syllabus is therefore of his doctrines, not all of mine. I read them as I do those of other antient and modern moralists, with a mixture of approbation and disent.
I rejoice with you, to see an encouraging spirit of informal improvement prevailing in the states. The opinion I have ever expressed of the advantages of a Western communication through the James River, I still entertain and that the Cayuga is the most promising of the links of communication.
The history of our University you know, so far, 7 of the 10 pavilions destined for the Professors, and about 30 dormitories will be compleated this year, and 3 others, with 6 Hotels for boarding, & 70 other dormitories will be compleated the next year, and the whole be in readiness then to receive those who are to occupy them. But means to bring these into place, and to set the machine into motion, must come from the legislature. An opposition in the mean time has been got up. That of our alma mater William and Mary is not of much weight. She must descend into the secondary rank of academies of preparation for the University. The serious enemies are the priests of the different religious sects, to whose spells on the human mind it's improvement is ominous. Their pulpits are now resounding with denunciations against the appointment of Dr. Cooper whome they charge as a Monarchist in opposition to their tritheism. Hostile as these sects are in every other point, to one another, they unite in maintaining their mystical theology against those who believe there is one god only. The Presbyterian clergy are loudest. The most intolerant of all sects, the most tyrannical, and ambitious; ready at the word of the lawgiver, if such a word could be now obtained, to put the torch to the pile, and to rekindle in this virgin hemisphere, the flames in which their oracle Calvin consumed the poor Servetus, because he could not find in his Euclid the proposition which has demonstrated that three are one, and one is three, nor subscribe to that of Calvin that magistrates have a right to exterminate all heretics to Calvinistic creed. They pant to restablish by law that holy inquisition, which they can now only infuse into public opinion. We have most unwisely committed to the hierophant of our particular superstition, the direction of public opinion, that lord of the Universe. We have given them stated and privileged days to collect and catechise us, opportunities of delivering their oracles to the people in mass, and of moulding their minds as wax in the hollow of their hands. But, in despite of thier fulminations against endeavors to enlighten the general mind, to improve the reason of the people, and encourage them in the use of it, the liberality of this state will support this institution, and give fair play to the cultivation of reason. Can you ever find a more eligible occasion of visiting once more your native country, than that of accompanying Mr. Correa, and of seeing with him this beautiful and hopeful institution in ovo?
First, is it just me or doesn't that sound like the rantings of someone who imbibed too much fine wine from the Monticello cellars before he wrote the thing? And, as could be expected of the slave-holder who also wrote the Declaration of Independence, that he is talking out of both sides of his mouth, making words mean things that they don't mean? His use of "Materialist" and "spiritualism" are bizarre, in that his "materialism" would seem to include the belief in quite metaphysical entities, such as sin and repentance - in other letters he expressed a belief in God and an afterlife - perhaps we should just accept that Jefferson was in the habit of either meaning words to mean what we don't or that his duplicity, on full and shameful display in the disparity between the Declaration and his slave holding, extended to many other matters.
But there's a good reason for us to not try to claim Jefferson for one side or another in this brawl, in an earlier, far more lucid, coherent and, likely, sober letter he wrote on January 11, 1817, to John Adams, he said:
The result of your fifty or sixty years of religious reading, in the four words, “Be just and good,” is that in which all our inquiries must end; as the riddles of all the priesthoods end in four more, “ubi panis, ibi deus.” What all agree in, is probably right. What no two agree in, most probably wrong. One of our fan-coloring biographers, who paints small men as very great, inquired of me lately with real affection too, whether he might consider as authentic, the change of my religion much spoken of in some circles. Now this supposed that they knew what had been my religion before, taking for it the word of their priests, whom I certainly never made the confidants of my creed. My answer was “say nothing of my religion. It is known to my God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life; if that has been honest and dutiful to society, the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.” Affectionately adieu.
Why anyone would think that Thomas Jefferson, a slave holding, slave raping guy who lived in luxury off the labor of those slaves was worth having on your side in the modern struggle over God, I don't get. His fame and reputation would seem to be mostly "fan-coloring" done by would be biographers, to me.
A first year seminary student already wondering if he's an atheist (seminary is tough) would shred Jefferson's "arguments."
ReplyDeleteThe idea that Jesus "reformed" Hebraism is not only historically ignorant, it's theologically ignorant, too. I could write a book on that subject, alone. Some scholars have devoted their lives to the subject.
The separation of the "dross" from the "gold" is a subject of modern Biblical scholarship for the past 150 years. They've made advances Jefferson couldn't imagine, or rather cogent scholarly arguments he couldn't begin to make.
And whenever I read Jefferson denouncing "priests" I hear, not wisdom, but Puritans. The anti-Papist stream in America, brought to us by Protestantism, not the Enlightenment (which was brought to us by Protestantism, too), is strong and rears its ugly, bigoted head far more often than we realize. Not to say Catholic priests are due all reverence, but the arguments against "priests" too often resound with anti-RC ugliness, even if just below the surface.
His anti-Pauline rantings are equally embarrassing and, frankly, ignorant.
Jefferson, IOW, had opinions, which are just like a bodily orifice: everyone has one. His aren't even particularly well-reasoned, so to quote him is simply to appeal to authority (there's no other reason to reach for Jefferson on this topic), which is a logical fallacy as, again, the Enlightenment taught us
Which is why I'm tired of arguing with on-line atheists. They're idiots, and their stupid.
And you can't fix stupid.
I have come to think that a lot of, especially the later, Jefferson is a pile of nonsense. This one, in particular, reminds me of the transcript of a drunken phone call that Truman Capote made as his disease entered its terminal phase. It is incoherent and, in so many ways, contradicts things in other letters, not to mention internally, that if it hadn't been in his hand with his signature, it would be universally seen as such.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I can say with confidence, I have never seen a use of Jefferson by an online or off line atheist which wasn't, on its face, dishonest when seen in the larger context of what it was taken from.
I should clarify (besides my insistent misuse of "their" when I mean "they're." Preview is my friend....) that Jefferson's ideas on Jesus as Hebrew reformer and his animosity toward Paul are status quo for his time period; but then, that's the point.
ReplyDeleteAs you pointed out earlier, so much critique rests on class, not "objective" critique (I really thought post-modernism had done us the great service of obliterating "objective" as a standard of reference; but that's another rant about widespread ignorance....). Jefferson speaks in part as an inheritor of the Puritan animosity toward Rome and toward power (the Puritans were driven out of England, too, and not because England was in thrall to Rome). It's a stance that has its virtues, but has its vices, too.
But for his day, he's not entirely wrong; the problem is, he's wrong now. Biblical scholarship, like all other human intellectual endeavors, has "advanced." Or at least shifted perspectives (I prefer Kuhn over Darwinism). Much of what Jefferson says in his rant, the parts that aren't just silly on their face, are embarrassing to even an atheist Biblical scholar (and there are many of those).
Pretty poor stuff, IOW, to be dragging into an argument about Xianity in the 21st century.