Self Evident Truths

Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

“We,” were the fifty-six delegates who represented the thirteen colonies in the Continental Congress. They were all agreed that there are self-evident truths, that is, things that are so natural and obviously known that no one disputes them. The first obvious self-evident truth is that they all believed they were created by an intelligent Creator with a purpose to give them certain rights.

The second obvious self-evident truth is that the author, Jefferson, believed in the same Creator and the same rights. The proof is in the fact that he wrote the document. A third obvious truth is that a deist would never have written such a statement because deism believes in an eternal source that started it all, but not a personal God who cares to give anything to His creation.

Still, liberal educators with the help of anti-American publishing companies, the ACLU, and other historically blind revisionists, insist that Jefferson could not have been a Christian. They cite his edited “version“ of the Bible saying he cut out all the parts he didn’t like leaving only a fraction of the Scriptures intact.

Once again, without studying the history of the “Jefferson Bible” it is easy to misunderstand or slander his intent. In 1803, the United States government had made a treaty with the Kaskaskia Indians. Jefferson, wanting to open the door for missionaries to take the Gospel to the Indians, edited the Bible to include only the words of Jesus in order to make translation easier and quicker so the Word of God could be read and understood by the various Indian tribes.

What Jefferson did was no different than a Bible society publishing just the New Testament, or just a Gospel of John or a Book of Romans. In this case it was just the words of Christ for the purpose of enhancing evangelistic efforts. It is also significant that in every annual budget during Jefferson’s presidency there were funds designated for the evangelization of Indians with the Christian religion. You wouldn’t really expect a non-Christian to do something like that.

Jefferson’s theology was more ecumenical in nature than orthodox, but he was a strong proponent of religious liberty. He didn’t believe in the ascendency of any particular sect over another, yet his writings show a clear aversion to the Catholic Church. In a letter to Mrs. M. Harrison Smith in 1816, he wrote, “I have ever thought religion a concern purely between our God and our consciences, for which we were accountable to Him, and not to the priests.”

To a Mr. Samuel Kercheval he wrote in 1810, “But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State.”

The Great Reformer of the Jewish religion is an obvious reference to Christ, and the special servants enslaving mankind by use of Church and State the papacy. These thoughts would have been consistent with colonial and early American theology in general as the early Pilgrims and settlers came to America to escape Romanism or its English equivalent, Anglicanism. There were very few Catholics in America until after the Civil War.

Again, the self-evident truth about any religious discussion by our Founding Fathers is that it is the Christian religion they are talking about. In 1801, Jefferson wrote to Moses Robinson, “The Christian religion . . . brought to the original purity and simplicity of it’s benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the human mind.”

The problem in trying to pinpoint Jefferson’s Christianity is that he left no clear testimony of faith in Jesus Christ. He was an adherent of no particular denomination but was in favor of religious liberty for faiths of all kinds, including Hinduism and Islam. However, his writings about God in general are all focused on Christ and the Christian religion.

In his Notes on the State of Virginia, 1794, he wrote, ““And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure if we have lost the only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath?”

A deist god does not give gifts, neither is it just. A deist god could care less about slavery or gratitude for favors. A deist god would not endow its creation with unalienable rights. Whether or not Jefferson was a true believer in Christ might be questionable, but there is no doubt that his religious beliefs, his character, and his insistence on the Bill of Rights to include religious freedom were influenced by Christianity and the Gospels, not by any other philosophy.