The "general principles of Christianity" on July 4

[John Human]

John Adams famously wrote, in an 1813 letter to Thomas Jefferson, that the American Founders achieved independence on the foundation of the "general principles of Christianity" and "the general principles of English liberty." See https://founders.archives.gov/documents ... 06-02-0208

This implies that the "general principles of Christianity" are present in a correct reading of the Declaration of Independence. Is that the case? What were these "general principles of Christianity" in the mind of John Adams, and how closely do they approximate what is commonly understood as Christianity today? (In other words, to what extent can the Declaration of Independence be properly considered a "Christian" document?)

[John Human]

[Replying to post 9 by showme]

@showme, I couldn't help noticing your negative references to Peter and Paul. You may take an interest in my question about Matthew 16:18 ("...and upon this Rock...") at viewtopic.php?t=35263

Regarding Paul, my provisional understanding is that the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls condemned Paul as the "splutterer of lies" and that their "Teacher of Righteousness" was none other than "James the Righteous," brother of Jesus Christ. In other words (according to Robert Eisenman), the Dead Sea Scrolls show what Christianity actually was in 1st-century Palestine.

As for Eisenman's pegging of Paul as the Lying Spouter who repudiated the Law and betrayed the new covenant, the enemy of the Righteous Teacher of Qumran, a motif that runs throughout the book, I will observe only that the coincidences between Qumran rhetoric and the New Testament vestiges of anti-Paulinism are at least as convincing as those conventionally accepted as proof for Matthew's targeting Paul at several points in his gospel.

https://depts.drew.edu/jhc/rpeisman.html
As for Eisenman's pegging of Paul as the Lying Spouter who repudiated the Law and betrayed the new covenant, the enemy of the Righteous Teacher of Qumran, a motif that runs throughout the book, I will observe only that the coincidences between Qumran rhetoric and the New Testament vestiges of anti-Paulinism are at least as convincing as those conventionally accepted as proof for Matthew's targeting Paul at several points in his gospel.

[John Human]

Regarding Benjamin Franklin and the general principles of Christianity, Franklin summarized his beliefs, just a month before his death, in a letter to the Rev. Ezra Stiles:

Here is my Creed: I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable Service we can render to him, is doing Good to his other Children…. https://www.beliefnet.com/resourcelib/d ... les_1.html

Here we have piety and benevolence (the two commandments of Jesus Christ) in the thought of Benjamin Franklin.

As for John Adams, in his letter to Thomas Jefferson he stated that the "general principles of Christianity" were “as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God,� making what Jefferson would instantly recognize as a reference to Cicero's famous summary of natural law:

By its commands, it calls men to their duty: by its prohibitions, it deters them from vice....It is the same eternal and immutable law, given at all times and to all nations: for God, who is its author and promulgator, is always the sole master and sovereign of mankind.

Regarding our "duty," the Rev. John Witherspoon (a signer of the Declaration of Independence) instructed the students in his moral philosophy classes at Princeton that "love of others, sincere and active, is the sum of our duty."

John Adams' conflation of natural law with Christian moral principles is more explicit in a passage from his diary. In August 1796 Adams was re-reading Cicero's "De officiis" ("Of Moral Duties"), which is second only to the Bible as the most widely-read book of western civilization. The day after mentioning his re-reading of "De officiis," Adams wrote in his diary:

One great advantage of the Christian Religion is that it brings the great Principle of the Law of Nature and Nations, Love your Neighbour as yourself, and do to others as you would that others should do to you, to the Knowledge, Belief and Veneration of the whole People. . . . Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude, are thus taught to be the means and Conditions of future as well as present Happiness.

Here Adams associates the second of Jesus Christ's two great commandments with the four cardinal virtues of antiquity, as the pathway to HAPPINESS. As Adams wrote to his fellow congressional delegates in his influential "Thoughts on Government" (April 1776): "All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.�[/quote]

I'll discuss what Adams (and Congress) meant by "happiness" in a later post.

[John Human]

Before discussing the 1776 congressional definition of happiness, it is important to understand the Ciceronian phrase “safety and happiness� (as it appears in the Declaration of Independence) which was popularized by the Rev. Francis Hutcheson in the same places where he discusses “unalienable rights� (which also appears in the Declaration of Independence).

Hutcheson’s work was controversial in New England in the mid-18th century, with followers of the Rev. Jonathan Edwards insisting that God’s saving grace, not just following the individual's “moral sense� (or conscience) was a necessary prerequisite for men to achieve habitual virtue (or “perfection�), which was the source of happiness. (They all agreed on habitual virtue as the source of happiness.) It would seem that the Declaration of Independence, written with borrowed phrases inspired by the “harmonizing sentiments� of Thomas Jefferson, was able to accommodate adherents of both views.

Going back to Cicero (shortly before Jesus Christ), the purpose of government was summed up as the “safety and happiness� of the people. Cicero wrote (in De legibus, 2:11) that “laws were invented for the safety of citizens, the preservation of States, and the tranquility and happiness of human life.�
Perhaps it is a good idea to remember that every well-educated minister in colonial America studied Cicero’s De officiis (a requirement to pass the college entrance examinations of the time) and then studied Ciceronian moral philosophy in college, with its basic proposition that habitual virtue (the “perfection� of human nature) was the source of happiness, with “love of our fellow-men� or benevolence at the foundation of the preeminent virtue of justice.

Hutcheson paraphrased Cicero in his “Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy,� writing (in language paraphrased by the Declaration of Independence) that “since the safety and happiness of the whole body is the sole end of all civil power; any power not naturally conducive to this end is unjust.� (2007 Liberty Fund edition, p. 254)

References to “safety and happiness� also found their way into Burlamaqui’s “Principles of Natural and Politic Law� (the leading treatise on natural law for the American founders) and Vattel’s “The Law of Nations� (the leading treatise on international law for the American founders – Vattel was Burlamaqui’s student at the University of Geneva.)

Hutcheson’s doctrine received colonial endorsement in the 1761 Massachusetts Election Sermon, where the Rev. Benjamin Stevens identified Hutcheson and Bulamaqui (and nobody else) as “approved writers� and paraphrased Hutcheson (and Cicero) with his statement that the “safety and happiness of the people� was the standard for governmental legitimacy. (Every year, at the election of the Council to the Governor, the Massachusetts Assembly invited an established minister to give a sermon, which was printed at government expense, with a copy sent to every town in the colony.) This was the doctrine that was repeated and reiterated by revolutionary leaders from Massachusetts to Georgia in the years leading up to 1776, when this phrase made it into the Declaration of Independence, after being DEFINED (by John Adams) in the earlier Congressional independence resolution of May 10 and 15, 1776.

[John Human]

Turning to the meaning of "happiness": In May 1776 the Continental Congress approved a resolution recommending to the thirteen colonies that any form of governmental authority under the crown of England (think of the legal system, for example, administering justice in the name of the King) be "totally suppressed.

This was "independence itself," as John Adams observed at the time, "although we must have it with more formality yet." This May 1776 independence resolution presented "safety and happiness" (or rather, "happiness and safety") as the objectives of legitimate government, and provided definitions of both safety and happiness. The definition of happiness was "internal peace, virtue and good order." These three elements of the definition of happiness appear in Richard Cumberland's "Treatise of Natural Law" (the only full-length treatment of natural law ever published by an Englishman). Variant expressions of these three elements also appear in Cicero's "Tusculan Disputations," and in Burlamaqui's "Principles of Natural and Politic Law" (the standard reference on natural law in the latter half of the 18th century, and republished over and over in the USA through the 19th century). See "The May Resolution and the Declaration of Independence" at http://startingpointsjournal.com/may-re ... ependence/

Cicero's variant of "internal peace" meant not being afraid of death. For Cumberland and Burlamaqui, it meant having a clean conscience. (And for John Adams, writing his autobiography for his children, "innocence" or avoiding attempts at fornication was essential to happiness.)

Virtue, for Cicero (as followed by Cumberland) included the four cardinal virtues (wisdom, justice, courage and temperance), with benevolence at the root of the preeminent virtue of justice. Burlamaqui, in the first paragraph of his treatise where he proclaimed the "noble pursuit" of "true and solid happiness," identified wisdom as the "perfection" of our "understanding" (capacity to reason), with "virtue" as the perfection of our wills (encompassing the cardinal virtues of justice, courage and temperance).

Good order, in this Ciceronian trinity, refers to freedom of the "four disorders of the soul" (distress, fear, lust and ecstasy), treated in Cicero's "Tusculan Disputations."

[John Human]

John Adams wrote the definition of happiness ("internal peace, virtue and good order") that appears in the Continental Congress's original independence resolution of May 10 and 15, 1776, calling for the individual colonies to "totally suppress" royal government (which included shutting down all the courts).

In this document, Congress defined happiness as "internal peace, virtue and good order." (At the same time, Congress defined SAFETY -- not happiness -- as "defence of lives, liberties and properties.")

Adams (and Congress) used terms that appeared in Richard Cumberland's "Treatise on the Laws of Nature," with similar elements of happiness appearing in Cicero's Tusculan Disputations and also in Burlamaqui's "Principles of Natural and Politic Law" -- the leading treatise on natural law in the 18th century.

"Internal peace," for Cicero, meant not being afraid of death. For Cumberland and Burlamaqui, it meant having a clean conscience.

"Virtue" refers to the four cardinal virtues: Wisdom, Justice, Courage and Temperance. (And of course, for those devoutly Christian signers of the Declaration of Independence -- about a third of the whole group -- there were the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity, which is a synonym for benevolence.) For Cicero, a fundamental element of Justice ("the mistress and queen of all the virtues") was benevolence, or "love of our fellow-men," corresponding to the second of Jesus Christ's two great commandments.
Cicero's 18th-century follower Rev. Francis Hutcheson, the most widely-read moral philosopher in the pre-Revolutionary American colonies, emphasized habitual benevolence (the essential virtue) as a prerequisite for happiness.

"Good order" refers, as young Thomas Jefferson copied into his notebook from Cicero's Tusculan Disputations, to absence of the "four disorders of the soul": distress, fear, lust and ecstasy.