By my count, there are four references to God in the Declaration of Independence.
In the initial paragraph, we find the phrase “...Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God....” The phrase 'Nature's God' rules out pantheism: God is distinct from Nature. In the second paragraph, there is the phrase, “...endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights....” Combining these two references, we may infer that the God being referred to is not merely a deistic initiator of the temporally first segment of the physical universe, but a being involved in the creation of the human race. For if God endowed human beings with rights, this endowment had to occur at the time of the creation of human beings, which of course occurred later than the beginning of the physical universe. In traditional jargon, God is a creator continuans rather than a mere creator originans. He is not a mere cosmic starter-upper, but a being who is continuously involved in maintaining the universe in existence.
So if by 'deism' is meant the doctrine that God is a mere metaphysical cause of the universe's beginning to exist who is thereafter uninvolved in its continuing to exist, then the God of the Declaration is non-deistic.
The other two references are in the final paragraph. There we find the phrase, “...Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions....” near the beginning of the paragraph, and near the end, “...a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence....” Now if God is the Supreme Judge, then he is more than a mere metaphysical cause responsible for the universe’s beginning to exist; he is also the supreme moral arbiter. And since he endows human beings with rights, as opposed to being merely a judge of rights antecedently possessed, then it seems we may infer that God is the source of moral distinctions (as opposed to a mere judge of them).
The reference to divine providence is further evidence that the conception of God in the Declaration is non-deistic. For if God provides and protects, then God has an ongoing involvement with the world and its inhabitants such as would be ruled out by a deistic view. It should also be obvious that talk of providence (from the Latin, pro-videre) implies divine foreknowledge which implies intelligence and perhaps omniscience on the part of the deity. The God of the Declaration is not a blind metaphysical cause posited to explain why the universe began to exist, but a being with such attributes as moral goodness and intelligence.
Showing that the God of the Declaration is not deistic, however, does not show that he is the God of Christianity. The God of Christianity is triune, but there is no hint of the doctrine of the Trinity in the Declaration, nor any hint of the specitfically Christian notion that God reveals himself to man in the person of Jesus Christ. Note also that God's ongoing involvement with the created world does not imply any miraculous intervention in its functioning, where 'miraculous' implies contravention of natural laws. 'Vertical' continuous creation does not imply 'horizontal' interference in the causal chains that make up nature's internal workings.
So although the concept of God in the Declaration is not deistic, it is not specifically Christian either.
If deism is the doctrine that God created the world in the beginning but nothing more, then I wonder if there have ever been any true deists. I have long understood deism to be the doctrine that God does not, after creation, alter the natural course of things (no "horizontal" influence, as you put it). But that doctrine is consistent with supposing that God continually conserves his creation. It's also consistent with a kind of providence, since God could bring about precisely the events he wants to bring about by determining them to occur from the beginning. God could even have determined from the beginning that humans would arrive on the scene at the appointed time, and that they would have a nature which affords them certain rights. In this case, God could be said to have endowed us with these rights, even though he in no way intervened to alter the course of events after creation. So whether the Declaration is anti-deistic or not depends on what we mean by deistic.
And welcome back from your hiatus, Spur.
I distinguish among the following views of the relation of God and creation running from minimal to maximal involvement of God in nature:
1. Deism. God as initiating but not sustaining cause.
2. Conservationism. God as initiating and sustaining cause. But no miraculous interference with the workings of nature. God is not directly involved in the causality of secondary or natural causes, but only indirectly inasmuch as he maintains the universe in existence.
3. Concurrentism. God initiates and sustains, but is also directly involved in the causality of natural causes.
4. Occasionalism. God alone is a genuine productive cause. All so-called 'secondary' causes are mere occasional causes.
Now is my use of 'deism' idiosyncratic? I think not. Jonathan Kvanvig writes:
Deistic accounts restrict God's activity to only the beginning of the cosmos, and any doctrine of conservation that is embraced must be of the most completely remote sort. One might, for example, appeal to some closure principle about causal power, claiming that if A causes B and B logically implies C, then A causes C. So if God causes the initial state of the cosmos and everything else that happens is a logical result of this initial creative act, then God also causes the existence of everything else that comes to be, and thus conserves the universe in a most remote way, since it is in virtue of the original creative act that the universe avoids falling into non-being.
You write:
God could even have determined from the beginning that humans would arrive on the scene at the appointed time, and that they would have a nature which affords them certain rights. In this case, God could be said to have endowed us with these rights, even though he in no way intervened to alter the course of events after creation.
Your point has merit, and my argument above is not very persuasive. I suppose it depends on what rights are, and what sorts of being can have rights. If rights can be thought of as emergent or supervenient given a sufficiently complex emergence/supervenience base, then God could have arranged the laws and intitial conditions in such a way that rights would emerge from a particular species of animal in the fullness of time. But if rights cannot emerge in this way, but require a special spiritual substance to inhere in, then my argument above would work.
You may be right that your use of 'deism' isn't idiosyncratic; I actually have almost no clue how that word is typically used. But my question is this: If that is what we mean by deism, then have there ever really been any thoughtful deists? More to the point, were any of the founders of our country deists in that sense? I suspect that few of them were, and so I'm not at all surprised that the Declaration isn't deistic in this sense.
Incidentally, here is a site worth visiting.
It might be worthwhile to point out one other significant religious reference in the DRAFT of the Declaration first presented to Congress.
Toward the end of the list of 'charges' against the King Jefferson originally wrote a strong charge blaming the King for the slave trade, including the following:
"he has waged cruel war against human nature itself. . . this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain."
Jefferson's use of "Christian" here is ironic -- mocking the King as not behaving Christian-ly, but rather mimicking the disgraceful behavior of the "infidel powers", viz., the Muslim Barbary states ("Barbary pirates")infamous for seizing white Europeans as slaves.
Though this section was later struck in the Congressional debate over the document it seems relevant to the debate about the "theological" perspective of the document. Interesting too that it came from the hand of JEFFERSON, one of those widely regarded as particularly UN-orthodox.
Since the accusation is aimed only at a particular action, it should not be read as specifically espousing some form of "Christian theology". But unless we stretch Jefferson's words into a totally cynical attack on Christianity (highly unlikely in this context), it does make appeal Christian views (at least Christian MORAL teaching, which Jefferson would have claimed to agree with) in alleging the King's FAILURE to act by them.
On another note, even though Jefferson and J. Adams obviously had no love for the Barbary states, indeed had serious problems/conflicts with them as Presidents, they didn't regard Islam as an "infidel" religion, but rather something like Christianity, teaching "truth" at heart, but corrupted by doctrine.
I've uncovered some interesting quotations by them on the matter, which I can reproduce at your request.
Yes, I would be interested in the quotations and in your understandings of 'deism' and 'thesim' as these terms were used by Jefferson, et al. Thanks for the comments.
Re some of the quotations. Here are a few. John Adams grouping Islam under the rubric of "religion" in general:
Here is Jefferson in his 1809 letter to James Fishback equating Islam with Christianity, and basically all religions together (shows how much he learned as President fighting the Barbary Pirates!):
For more see here.
And here is Franklin seeming to equate George Whitfield's evangelical Christianity with Islam, basically saying the meeting house he helped see built for Whitefield to preach was for "the people's" religion, be it evangelical Christianity or Islam:
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