JP2Iloveyou Posted October 27, 2003 Share Posted October 27, 2003 check it out. http://www.catholicexchange.com/vm/index.a...53&art_id=20829 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Good Friday Posted October 27, 2003 Share Posted October 27, 2003 That's interesting. I've always thought that many of the founding fathers were Deists, including Jefferson and Madison. But perhaps I was misinformed, we do live in the age of misinformation. Regardless of our roots, I think it's important for America to be close to God now. The religious opinions of the past don't matter all that much to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PedroX Posted October 27, 2003 Share Posted October 27, 2003 I still find it difficult to call Thomas Jefferson a Christian, when he cut all the verses he disagreed with out of the Bible. Obviously the author of this article does not have such a problem. peace... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kdewolf2 Posted October 27, 2003 Share Posted October 27, 2003 The article states that 52 out of the 55 signers of the Declaration of Independence were Christians. The article states that the other three "believed in the Bible as the divine truth, the God of Scripture, and His personal intervention." There were some Unitarians, Univeralists, and Deists back then. Thomas Jefferson, who drafted the Declaration, was a Deist. Deists believe that God created the universe but then left it to operate according to its own laws which He implanted in it and never intervenes, which makes revelation and miracles. Thomas Jefferson cut out the miracles and Jesus's claims to be the Son of God from the Gospels and left his ethical teachings intact. In general Deists favored the ethical teachings of Christianity over its theological teachings. But the Deists had a distinctly this-worldly approach to morality which would ultimately lead to the rejection of Christian ethics, because Christian ethics are ultimately grounded in an eschatological vision of the next world instead of an exclusive preoccupation with finding happiness in the here and now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PedroX Posted October 28, 2003 Share Posted October 28, 2003 Consider these words that Thomas Jefferson wrote on the front of his well-worn Bible: '"I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus. I have little doubt that our whole country will soon be rallied to the unity of our Creator. "' He was also the chairman of the American Bible Society, which he considered his highest and most important role. This is what the article states about TJ. While I have no doub that Jefferson was an ethical man, it seems to me to be a bit imprudent to hold him up as an example of a Christian. Thats all. peace... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kdewolf2 Posted October 28, 2003 Share Posted October 28, 2003 No doubt Thomas Jefferson considered himself a Christian. Everyone considered themselves Christians back then. It would have been highly imprudent to announce to the public that you were definitely not a Christian. I don't think Deism can sustain Christian values over the long run, though. Deism denies the possibility of revelation or miracles, which means that if a Deist accepts Jesus's ethical teachings, he does so because he personally finds them reasonable, and not because Jesus Christ, as the Incarnate Word of God, said so. Furthermore, Deists reject Christian eschatology and claim that we cannot know anything about what will happen to us after we die. A lot of Jesus's ethical teachings were clearly linked to eschatology and if eschatology goes, ethics goes with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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