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Rowe on the Founders and Religion Again

By stcynic on September 10, 2005.

Over the last year or so, Jon Rowe has written a series of posts about the founding fathers and religion, a subject which has always fascinated me and that I've written on a lot as well. In the course of that series of posts, Jon has evoked the notion of "theistic rationalism", an excellent description of the beliefs of the leading lights among the founders (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Franklin). The key distinction, the absolute touchstone of the distinction between orthodox Christianity on the one hand and deistic or unitarian ways of thinking, is the notion that what we can know of God may be ascertained solely through reason alone, thus rejecting the role of revelation. That is what Rowe calls "theistic rationalism" and it's a terrific description. Anyway, the latest of his posts on this subject is up at Positive Liberty and it may be the best of the series.

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Thanks much as always. One quibble:

-- is the notion that what we can know of God may be ascertained solely through reason alone, thus rejecting the role of revelation. --

Some scholars from whom I learned (for instance, the guy who wrote the Claremont article using the term "theistic rationalist") might say that while yes, these founders did believe that we can know of God through reason alone, they nonetheless didn't entirely reject revelation but rather elevated reason over revelation. Reason became the ultimate arbiter of Truth; but revelation could be true if it was confirmed by reason.

Our Founders -- the theistic rationalists -- learned this from Locke. Locke wrote "The Reasonableness of Christianity" arguing that indeed Christianity was confirmed by Reason. And there is a whole debate among scholars on whether Locke was affirming traditional Christianity or rather transgressing Revealed Christianity by holding reason out as the ultimate standard.

But one thing is for sure, Locke's Enlightenment followers like Jefferson did indeed use "Reason" to cut out entire passages of Revelation that were not "Reasonable."

You make a good point, Jon, I could have worded that more accurately.

Just to remind you, there is a difference between rationalism and reality. Regarding rationalism, one posits a few propositions, and deduces from there. That is rationalism. The propositions may not have any evidence to support them. If they did, that might suggest that the conclusions have something to do with "reality."