Re: Thomas Jefferson, Christian or Deist?

[Txanne]

Were you aware of the following:
(1) Thomas Jefferson the author of the Declaration of Independence was not a christian.
(2) He did not believe that the Bible was the inspired word of God.
(3) He did not believe in "divine revelation".
(4) He did not believe that Jesus was God.
(5) He did not believe in miracles.
(6) He did not believe in the 7 day creation account in Genesis.
(7) He did not believe in the world-wide flood mentioned in Genesis.

Thomas Jefferson was a deist.


Since Allen Jayne didnt talk to Jefferson personally ---we can consider this heresy huh?

Txanne

[hillsidedigger]

(2) He did not believe that the Bible was the inspired word of God. I suspect much of it is not.
(6) He did not believe in the 7 day creation account in Genesis. Who would?
(7) He did not believe in the world-wide flood mentioned in Genesis. Certainly not, at least not literally and not a mere 4400 years ago.

[hillsidedigger]

Who's to say that that group of men a couple of hundred years after the life of Christ, I think they were called the Council of Nicea, correctly chose the books that should be compiled as the Holy Scriptures and those words infallible an inerrant really irk me for I think at least some and possibly most if not nearly all of the 66 books are merely the musings of men. I further suspect some of what may have been the true gospels were all gathered and destroyed. Its quite evident from history that a man called Jesus lived and his teachings affected thousands of lives and the legacy continues until today inspite of what is called the Holy Scripture. Why would the Lord need a person like Paul (Saul of Taurus) to explain his life and teachings, after the fact? Paul is widely regarded as having either been the or a forerunner of the Anti-Christ.

BTW, I am convinced of the Creation process, but I do not think it occurred in 7 literal solar days or a mere 6,000 to 12,000 years ago. I do not think that is the intent of the writer of Genesis but is a fallacy arrived at not long ago by a man named Usher, I think.

The Flood of Noah is at best allegorical with almost no part of it literally true, in my opinion.

[Txanne]

There are no facts for many beliefs----wherther it be--buddism--muslim or wiccan---.or atheitism--and why the term agonstic?

King James translated the scrols--he didnot invent them--to Kings english.

And to truely understand them one would have to speak read and write Greek and Hebrew .


Txanne

[bookwormom]

quote


Exactly, why was it necessary for Paul to explain the meaning of Jesus' life 20-35 years after his death? Who was Paul who apparently never knew Jesus as a human being to explain who he was? The Jesus movement and the early Christians were not the same group of people.


you think someone else should have written it? Or you think nothing should have been written about Jesus?
About Paul's experience on the road to Damascus. He is either lying or telling the truth that he spent 3 years in the desert and was taught by Jesus. The way he lived after this experience leads me to believe he was genuine.

I am sorry, I am not too impressed about the priests record as roman law abiding citizens. Just
think about the illegal execution of Stephen. Saul did not have letters to the towns magistrate but rather to the leaders of the synagoges.

Jesus lived in "interesting" times but he himself was not political, rather he stressed that his kingdom was of a different world, he came to show us the father, etc. When they tried to trip him up (so they could report him to the Romans) about taxes...well, you all know the story. He never made a claim anywhere that could be considered political or revolutionary in the sense of the zealots. He was revolutionary, but not in the politics of his day. However, he sure let the "organized" religion of his country have it.

what does this have to do with Thomas Jefferson?

the question was have you, read a book by Allan Payne. No I have not.
Was Jefferson Christian or Deist? Deist, from what I know.

[Txanne]

Annie,
By definition an atheist does not believe that "God" exists. An agnostic does not know if "God" exists.

Iing James I of England actually didn't translate the King James Bible he ordered it to be translated. By the way the historical facts concerning why he ordered the translation, etc. is quite an interesting story all by itself.

Unless you are willing to trust someone else's ability to correctly translate the ancient manuscripts it would obviously be better if you could read Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic yourself, but that's not really practical for the average person.



I am neither ignorant nor lacking in terms of what words mean.

I think really--would we be having this conversation--IF Jefferson had been say----into buddism--satan worshipper?

Does it really make any difference?

He helped give us our Constitution---

?

Txanne

[beekeeper]

Was Thomas Jefferson a Christian? I can not say. Only God can say.

It does appear that he was a deist.

Many Deists certainly do appear to have been Christians. The two are not self exclusive.

[Txanne]

What is the definition of deist? Deism?

Websters defines DEISM as: the belief that God exists and created the world but takes no part in its functioning.

Do Christians believe that God takes any part in the functioning of this world?

I personally donot believe he takes part.

At times He will intercede through our prayers.

Txanne

[BrentL]

He started as a deist, ended as Christian.

[BrentL]

A more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen. It is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus—very different from the Platonists, who call me infidel and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its Author never said nor saw.
TJ to Charles Thomson (9 Jan. 1816), Bergh 14:385-86.

This is speaking of the Jeffersonian Bible you spoke of. He compiled it to be the actual utterances of Jesus Christ, and thus remove the troubling influence of man. TJ, for a time, agreed with your current stance on the bible as he did research similar to yours but more true to the original languages. His study originated in a study of Law.

His private letters include references to "our Savior" (June 1824, Bergh 16:55), hardly the view of a deist. (this is only two year prior to his death).




He also said:
"I hold the precepts of Jesus, as delivered by himself, to be the most pure, benevolent, and sublime which have ever been preached to man." [TJ to Jared Sparks (4 Nov. 1820), Bergh 15:288. "Had the doctrines of Jesus been preached always as pure as they came from his lips," Jefferson believed, "the whole civilized world would now have been Christian."

True, he recognized the need for reform in Christianity and looked forward to the Restoration:

"Happy in the prospect of a restoration of primitive Christianity," he said, "I must leave to younger athletes to encounter and lop off the false branches which have been engrafted into it by the mythologists of the middle and modern ages."[note 15: TJ to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse (19 July 1822), Bergh 15:391.]

He also knew he would not live to see this accomplished:

If the freedom of religion guaranteed to us by law in theory can ever rise in practice under the overbearing inquisition of public opinion, truth will prevail over fanaticism, and the genuine doctrines of Jesus, so long perverted by his pseudo-priests, will again be restored to their original purity. This reformation will advance with the other improvements of the human mind, but too late for me to witness it.
[note 16: TJ to Jared Sparks (4 Nov. 1820), Bergh 15:288.]


so, to answer your question


What are you basing your statement on?


well, his words and what they mean. not "Allen Jayne's" spew of crap on one of the most noble men the world has ever seen.

how would he have responded to Allen Jayne's book? perhaps we should again see what he had to say.

"My views of [the Christian religion] are the result of a life of inquiry and reflection, and very different from that anti-Christian system imputed to me by those who know nothing of my opinions. To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished anyone to be—sincerely attached to his doctrines in preference to all others."
TJ to Dr. Benjamin Rush (2l Apr. l803), Bergh 10:379-80.



you said:
Please read Allen Jayne's book to understand the absolute contempt Thomas Jefferson had for Christian ideology -- in Jefferson's own words!

Understand he had contempt for Christian ideology in the same way that Luther and Tinsdale did, ie google jefferson bible.


I also don't need someone else's interpretations of either the Declaration of Independence or Thomas Jefferson's own writings, because I have read them for myself.

[BrentL]

In review of my post it seems just about all the answers to your questions are already there.

I do not doubt in the least that Mr. Jefferson's Christianity was different that yours, or mine. In fact I am assured of it.

But I am not judging him based on your standards or mine, but on his alone.

He defined himself as Christian, and also defined his version of "Christian," and I am aware of the intricacies of his version. I find this sufficient for me.

All of the volumes of Bergh are available on the internet, and I have a sneaking suspicion you have access to this new-fangled resource (see constitution.org) But to be kind:

"If no action is to be deemed virtuous for which malice can imagine a sinister motive, then there never was a virtuous action; no, not even in the life of our Saviour Himself. But He has taught us to judge the tree by its fruit, and to leave motives to Him who can alone see into them."


ps, see that signature line, guess who said it?

[beekeeper]

Do not allow Thomas Payne's writings to force you to assume anything about the bulk of Deists.

I have read a great deal of writings from other deists from that era, though I admit that I have read very few of Jefferson's writings.

Many of the Deists were most definitely Christians. Simply because they had little regard for organized denominations, does not make them non-Christian.

It was their reservations about the churches that led to the feelings to keep churches out of government.

Some very devout men were Deists: God fearing, Bible reading, Jesus embracing, humble men.

[BrentL]

I have not read it in its entirety, and to be honest with you I agree with more of what I read that what I disagreed with. I found the research to be compelling and thorough. What I find to be the spew is the social relativism's lens used as a foundational approach to historical interpretation. I submit that it is impossible to keep relativism out of an interpretation but also state that to use it as a theoretical basis for research is inherently dishonest.

I recommend the National Center for Constitutional Studies "The Real Thomas Jefferson"

A quick example: you quoted:
"But while this syllabus is meant to place the character of Jesus in its true and high light, as no impostor 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 . . ."

but this quote is misleading. one must understand what Jefferson was saying when he called himself a materialist, quite different from what we consider a materialist to be today. this is taken from a letter to john adams:

"I feel, therefore I 'exist'. I feel bodies which are not myself: there are other existences, then. I call them matter. I feel them changing places: this give me motion. Where there is an absence of matter, I call it void. or nothing, or immaterial space. On the basis of sensation, of matter and motion, we may erect the fabric of all the certainties we can have or need. I can conceive thought to be an action of a particular organization of matter, formed for that purpose by its creator, as well as that attraction is an action of matter, or magnetism of loadstone.

when he who denies to the Creator the power of endowing matter with the mode of action, called thinking, shall show how he could endow the sun with the mode of action called attraction, which reins the planets in the track of their orbits, or how an absence of matter can have a will and by that will put matter into motion, then the materialist may be lawfully required to explain the process by which matter exercise the faculty of thinking. When once we quit the basis of sensation, all is in the wid. To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothing. To say that the human soul, angels, God, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is not God, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by the Locks, the Tracys, and the Stewarts. At what age (Athanasius and the Council of Nice) of the Christian Church this heresy of immaterialism, or masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But a heresy it certainly is. Jesus taught nothing of it. He told us, indeed, that God is a spirit, but he has not defined what a spirit is, nor said that it is not matter. And the ancient fathers, generally of the three first centuries, held it to be matter, light and thin indeed, an etherial gas; but still matter.

to finish your quote:
" 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,"

so you are using a quote, where Jefferson is saying he believes in a literal god of matter that requires works as well as grace to receive repentance. (requires works, well, that would be an attentive god yes?)

then you post the question

Is it possible for one to hold a belief based on the definition above and believe in the 'Christian God' and his 'son, Jesus Christ' as mankind's 'saviour'?

to which I would answer no. now I do not think this in and of itself makes Jefferson a Christian or anything else, but I think we could quite easily put to rest the idea that he believed "in a God who created the universe and then abandoned it"

so now that you have established that he was not a Deist, what was he?


might I recommend again Jefferson's answer, not yours, not mine, but his.

"I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he (Jesus) wished anyone to be"

every quote you have posted where Jefferson speaks out against Christianity is where he is speaking out against the corruptions of men to the gospel, and I agree!

[BrentL]

I resolved any questions I had about God, religion 20 years ago and I have never been more at peace with myself. I don't need to know the 'meaning of life' or believe in the promise of 'salvation' or threat of 'damnation' in order to conduct myself as a decent human being.

I think that is great, as I am also a peace with myself. I truly believe you are a decent human being and hold you in high regard. I believe when you suffer for the cause of liberty you suffer for Christ, for I believe this is his greatest cause! That ought to be a thorn in your side, that I believe you to be a champion of Jesus, lol.

I would like to toss this idea at you though (this may belong on the philosophy thread), I think from your posts you have come to your conclusions based on the precepts of men.

If a person were to research "government" the same way they researched "religion" I would suspect that they would find that 95% of all "governments" throughout history were oppressive and what we might call "bad" or 'evil" if they never came upon the Constitution or the writings of Lock or the Federalist papers and such they may think that 100% of government was "bad". but we know better don't we, we know that total anarchy is just as bad as a dictatorship. In fact the term "outlaw" originally referred to someone who was expelled from the protection of LAW, or someone who was banished from a community. They literally were sent "outside" of the "law." This was a horrible curse and most likely a death sentence.

So Government is only "good" if it is not corrupt, but that does not mean no government is the answer. the answer is to continually seek after the best of government, to learn the correct principles by which we should govern ourselves, and to shun those principles we learn to be false. I believe there can be degrees of good and bad in any government.

I propose that this same principle applies to religion. religion is only "good" if it is pure, or uncorrupted. but that does not mean no religion is the answer. the answer is to continually seek after the best of religion, to learn the correct principles by which we should govern ourselves, and to shun those principles we learn to be false. I believe there can be degrees of good and bad in any religion.

because I subscribe to the above, I think you made a mistake in researching religion based on history, unless all you are doing is researching the history of religion. If you wanted to know if a religion has anything to do with god or not, there is only one definitive source, and that would of course be god.






Life is what it is, or perhaps it really is the 'Matrix' afterall!

(heavy sigh) life really is the matrix. it may suck to be awake, but is great to be free.

[beekeeper]

beekeeper,
Please post some of the information you have on deism.
...

During the second half of the 1700's and the first half of the 1800's; there was a great many individuals in America who were educated, prayerful, and God-fearing. Whether you wish to call them revolutionaries, or founding fathers; it seems that they tended to be very smart men.

They saw the evils of having a ruling class.

They thought of men being given rights by our creator as 'equals', and they wished to avoid tyranny. Both governmental tyranny and religious tyranny.

Many of them rejected church denominations. Even ministers and pastors. When you see how many congregational churches sprouted up, without any allegiance to a larger denomination. None of their money would go 'up' a denomination, and none of their loyalty.

They did not want a king, nor a pope.

And yet right around 1876 historians wrote books in preparation of the centennial, and in their revisions, most of those devout men were labeled 'Deists'. For whatever reason Thomas Payne's writings were used [a century later] to define the entire movement.

So today all of those great men can be written-off as lunatic deists.

When you read Geo. Washington's letters and prayers, he prayed to God, he believed that Jesus is the Christ, and he prayed for God's grace and forgiveness, and he asked for God's intervention.

By all means there may have been lunatics as well, among them. Since those great men did not attend any one church, they rejected the established thought, and studied their hearts out. So obviously some of them ended in places rather remote. Thus Jefferson and Payne, were out in left field.

Many of those men were also Masons. So they were either Jew or Christian. They each proclaimed a singular Deity. And they were encouraged to devout in their faith.

[hardrock]

What??? That's it?

Jefferson's exposure to the French Enlightenment has been established, Saul's embellished intrepretation of the gospel had been exposed, Emporer Constitine's creation of distorted Christianity (Catholicism) has been eluded to, and Jefferson, in his own words refers to "primitive Christianity" and his disdain for the perversion that followed.

beekeeper mentions "Mason" and by extension Mystic Judisim and Gnostic Christianity, and the subject changes...
everybody dissappears..........

I gottsa axe.......Was Thomas Jefferson a Mason, and was the "primitive Christianity" he refered to Gnostic Christanity?

Assuming we accept the notion that Christian gospel has indeed been mis-translated, either intentionally or by fluke,
what exactly was the original "primitive Christian gospel?

Forgive me for being nosey, but this subject really interests me.

[hardrock]

Hi Freeman,

Was following along, taking it all in, trying to piece it all together.
So much of this I'm trying to recall, the rest I've tried real hard to forget.
I know some subjects are taboo in society today, and that makes the truth harder to aquire.
Interesting to learn about the Jefferson Bible.
I did not know that.
I do recall that there were competing forms of Christianity early on, (what else is new ;D) and Gnostics were a segement of that. Alegedly driven "underground" into secret society.
Jefferson, having been exposed to the French Enlightenment through his role as Ambassador, his
colleagues at the time, (other founding fathers were reported to be Masons) and his sorted references to "logic" and "reason", beg the question......"What "primitive Christian" writings did he get a glimpse of?"

[beekeeper]

I gottsa axe.......Was Thomas Jefferson a Mason, and was the "primitive Christianity" he refered to Gnostic Christanity?

No surviving lodge record exists in America to show that he was ever initiated, he never held any office, nor attended any meetings.

However he most certainly was surrounded by masons through-out his life. And he attended many functions where the majority of attendees were masons.



... Assuming we accept the notion that Christian gospel has indeed been mis-translated, either intentionally or by fluke, what exactly was the original "primitive Christian gospel?

Forgive me for being nosey, but this subject really interests me.

There are huge gaping examples of the differences between modern Christianity and that Christian movement of the first two centuries.

[beekeeper]

Hi Freeman,

Was following along, taking it all in, trying to piece it all together. So much of this I'm trying to recall, the rest I've tried real hard to forget. I know some subjects are taboo in society today, and that makes the truth harder to aquire. Interesting to learn about the Jefferson Bible.
I did not know that. I do recall that there were competing forms of Christianity early on, (what else is new ;D) and Gnostics were a segement of that. Alegedly driven "underground" into secret society.
Jefferson, having been exposed to the French Enlightenment through his role as Ambassador, his
colleagues at the time, (other founding fathers were reported to be Masons) and his sorted references to "logic" and "reason", beg the question ...... "What "primitive Christian" writings did he get a glimpse of?"


As far as I am aware all of the 'reported' masons among our nation's founding fathers their home lodges maintain all records of their initiations, what meetings they attended and what offices they held.

The French lodges were / are very popular [which is why there underground resistance movement during WWII operated so well]. If Jefferson did join masonry while he lived in France, we do not know. The American Grand Lodge does not enjoy full communication with the French Grand Lodge. So if he did join there, if he attended regular meetings, or if he held any offices, the French are not saying anything.

If he had joined a French lodge, then after he returned to the colonies, he would not have been able to attend any 'regular' lodges on this continent anyway. He would have only been allowed to attend the traveling military lodges, as all of the French officers did. Military lodges were very popular among military officers and allowed parlay between nations forces.

[333]

Peace,

A good read thankyou very much.

333

[beekeeper]

I am a member of a lodge in Italia, as well as an American lodge. The Grand lodge of Italia and the Grand lodge of North America enjoy full communication, so I have no problems with duel membership. And I have attended military lodges.

The history of military lodges in the colonies has held a fascination for me whenever I have read about the military lodges of our revolutionary war, the civil war, and WWI.