AC on Jonah Golberg of National Review

Over at American Creation blog, Jonathan Rowe wrote a post of a few ideas from Jonah Golberg. Here is a taste: “Because God says so” is the greatest appeal to authority, and the appeal to authority is a classic logical fallacy, effective only for those who are pre-committed to that authority."

Before I get to Rowe's response, most secular authors, who make serious mistakes about our founding, make statements of biblical doctrine that makes sense only to themselves, and these men are less authoritative or knowledgeable on this subject than the ones Greg Bahnsen used to teach and lecture  through debate.

The bible is not a fallacy at all, given its revelation proves itself accurate through: predictive prophecy, among many other factors. Along with no inherent contradictions, Christ and His inspired revelation, cannot be compared to the flawed inconsistencies, and immorality of other religions. Christianity is Christ, and Him Crucified; giving the exact date of Christ's Crucifixion in Daniel 9; the Virgin Birth in Isaiah 7, and David's vivid description of the Lord's death in Psalm 22. The other religions cannot compare.

To disbelieve the bible has nothing to do with it's inspiration or validity.

Then, Rowe writes, "Even though the Declaration of Independence is a theistic document, it is not a biblical one. The "unalienable rights" in the DOI are anchored to God to make them non-negotiable; but such are, as the doctrine goes, discovered by reason, not revealed directly by God and recorded in a holy book. A generic monotheistic God, though, seems to exist as a necessary given part of the equation."

The DOI is proven to be a Christian document and Nature's God as the Divine Person, Christ Jesus, by two prayers. One before the DOI and one after. The first one is 47 days before Hancock signed the Declaration before anyone else. Both prayers mention God through the mediator Christ; meaning Nature's God cannot be anyone else but Christ:

"The Congress...desirous...to have people of all ranks and degrees duly impressed with a solemn sense of God's superintending providence, and of their duty devoutly to rely.... on His aid and direction... do earnestly recommend...a day of humiliation, fasting, and prayer; that we may with united hearts confess and bewail our manifold sins and transgressions and, by a sincere repentance and amendment of life,...and through the Merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, obtain His pardon and forgiveness." (bold mine)
--Journals of Congress (1905), Vol. IV, pp. 208-209, May 17, 1776.

The founding fathers used the word "Merits" quite often, having its etymology in old Anglican and Catholic sources. It definitely refers to the Lord's crucifixion for sin. The second prayer by Congress is obviously after the DOI and again, God is referenced through Christ and His atoning work on the Cross.

"[W]ith their sincere acknowledgments and offerings, they may join the penitent confession of their manifold sins, whereby they had forfeited every favor, and their humble and earnest supplication that it may please God, through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of remembrance; that it may please him graciously to afford his blessings on the governments of these states respectively, and prosper the public council of the whole; to inspire our commanders both by land and sea, and all under them, with that wisdom and fortitude which may render them fit instruments, under the providence of Almighty God.
--Continental Congress, November 1, 1777. National Thanksgiving Day Proclamation; as printed in the Journals of Congress. 


Moreover, the Ratifiers of the Constitution and Bill of Rights had these prayers, and others, before them while they deliberated. The idea God changed is ridiculous and promulgated by people who know little of the founding. Rowe, again, "The "unalienable rights" in the DOI are anchored to God to make them non-negotiable; but such are, as the doctrine goes, discovered by reason, not revealed directly by God and recorded in a holy book.

However, Our unalienable rights are taken from the Bible:

II. The Rights of the Colonists as Christians..
These may be best understood by reading and carefully studying the institutes of the great Law Giver and Head of the Christian Church, which are to be found clearly written and promulgated in the New Testament.

--Samuel Adams, The Report of the Committee of Correspondence to the Boston Town Meeting. November 20, 1772.

It is the Christian religion that secures unalienable rights:

[T]he Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children under a free government ought to be instructed. No truth is more evident than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.

-Noah Webster, REVOLUTIONARY SOLDIER; JUDGE; LEGISLATOR; EDUCATOR; “SCHOOLMASTER TO AMERICA” A Collection of Papers on Political, Literary, and Moral Subjects (New York: Webster and Clark, 1843), p. 291, from his “Reply to a Letter of David McClure on the Subject of the Proper Course of Study in the Girard College, Philadelphia. New Haven, October 25, 1836.”



Here is another part of the prayer, but it references the Holy Ghost, proving the founders were Trinitarians. In 1776, the Unitarians were a very small minority, did not publicize themselves and were given an undue concession. In fact, unitarians did not mention the Holy Ghost due to the conflict of their beliefs and the orthodox:


"Forasmuch as it is the indispensable duty of all men to adore the superintending providence of Almighty God; to acknowledge with gratitude their obligation to Him for benefits received...[to offer] humble and earnest supplication that it may please God, through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot [our sins] out of remembrance...and to prosper the means of religion for the promotion and enlargement of that kingdom which consisteth "in righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost."
Journals of...Congress (1907), Vol. IX, 1777, pp 854-855, November 1, 1777.


This information also proves the Articles of Confederation was ratified under the name of Christ, written during the same Second Continental Congress. Moreover, I can prove Christ is the God of the Constitution due to the fact the Congress after the Second Continental Congress; the Congress of the Confederation, lasted from 1781 to 1789, which in the time frame the Congress wrote the Constitution:

The goodness of the Supreme Being to all his rational creatures, demands their acknowledgments of gratitude and love; his absolute government of this world dictates, that it is the interest of every nation and people ardently to supplicate his mercy favor and implore his protection. When the lust of dominion or lawless ambition excites arbitrary power to invade the rights, or endeavor to wrench wrest from a people their sacred and unalienable invaluable privileges, and compels them, in defence of the same, to encounter all the horrors and calamities of a bloody and vindictive war; then is that people loudly called upon to fly unto that God for protection..that He would incline the hearts of all men to peace, and fill them with universal charity and benevolence, and that the religion of our Divine Redeemer, with all its benign influences, may cover the earth as the waters cover the seas. (bold mine)

-Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789 TUESDAY, MARCH 19, 1782



Notice, the "Supreme Being" and the Redeemer, being Divine. This is the first time I know of, anyone has tied the Constitution with the Congress that drafted it. Unitarians would not have written this.

Was Benjamin Rush Arminian?

According to Jon Rowe's post on American Creation website he is. But what does Rush have to say about it? Considering the plentiful writings from the Doctors pen, which are filled with theological musings, you would think Rush would show his hand throughout, and those particular quotes would be posted for everyone to see, with Rush explaining his views on the basics of Calvinism: Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace and Perseverance of the Saints. Or maybe those writings don't exist. Be that as it may, none of these essential truths of the Bible are given as evidence. In light of this understanding, Rowe writes "Rush was influenced by the lens of God's benevolence when he rejected Calvin's God and in turn to Rush's conversion to Arminianism terminated."


The question is, what is Arminianism and how does it differ from Calvinism? Without getting into the theology of Jonathan Edwards, which Rowe refers to in his piece, there is no connection presented between the two. The only clue the article gives about Rush's Arminianism is the biblical concept of freewill; something the bible explicitly denies man has; either in soteriology or in anything else because man is born in sin (Psalm 51), and sin is involved in every decision man makes, including the good works he thinks he does, since his motives are always toward darkness (John 3). Even our love is tainted.


On the contrary, it appears Rush was a pseudo calvinist his entire adult life. His belief in the salvation of all people is bizarre, considering Christ's very words that hell is eternal, "The worm never dies" in Mark 9:44.


In A Sense of Deity (Chicago, 1991), 84, 88, John M. Kloos Jr. emphatically claims Rush was a Calvinist. He writes that while Jonathan Edwards "professed natural ability, but moral inability," Rush "posited a natural and collective inability." Kloos Jr. goes on to explain Rush's goal to bring Christian morality to the republic, with the highest form of ethics.


Not to mention, Henry F. May's seminal work The Enlightenment in America, written in 1976, opened the eyes of scholars to just how prevalent Calvinism was in the forming of the United States. So much so that Calvinists thought Thomas Paine was a Christian. Yet, May believed Rush's Calvinism so influential, he wrote Rush "disliked even more than Hume's teaching, the compromising, watered-down Calvinism of most of the Common Sense philosophers...a believer in Original Sin and Divine Grace" and that he only modified his Calvinism "in one respect only" becoming a universalist.


May writes, "Rush could sound as determinist as Edwards." Rush believed the "Being that created our world never takes his hand, nor his eye, for a single moment, from any part of it." (D. J. d'Elia, Pennsylvania Magazine, XXXIII, 1966, 187-203).


May sources Rush's work The Influence of Physical Causes Upon the Moral Faculty, which shows Rush's reliance on second causes for all of man's problems; disease, memory loss, etc.


Moreover, In The Universalist Movement in America 1770-1880, Ann Lee Bressler also claims Rush was an evangelical Calvinist and remained a believer in original sin and divine grace (p. 19). I will admit Rush thought knowledge was progressing and would make man better and less evil and in that sense he was a child of the enlightenment. Rush probably believed in Original Sin, but I'm not convinced he believed in total depravity in the biblical sense of Romans chapter 3. It is also obvious if Rush was a Universalist, which he became from his belief in Calvinism, then he rejected unconditional election. Rush rejected every point of biblical TULIP, in exchange for a pseudo Calvinist TULIP, while even his belief in divine grace and original sin wasn't biblical.


Rush claimed his universalism was from the bible, not from reason or human knowledge, or rather Rush was influenced by heretical writers and twisted the scriptures to fit the human reason he had read. This is why the founding clergy spoke out against heretical authors. It leads to heresy, as well as corrupting of the church. In the end Rowe is incorrect in his conclusion given it wasn't Arminianism that led Rush to universalism; it was his perusal of the five points, especially limited atonement, Irresistible grace and Perseverance of the Saints. In fact, earlier colonial Calvinists had become universalists before him. Rush mistakenly took John 3:16 out of context as well as some other verses, to neglect the larger revelation. Then he twisted grace to apply to everyone and he already adhered to perseverance and combined it all together. Such was the path of Benjamin Rush who wrote in The Road to Fulfillment, The Law of Truth:

And truth indeed is infinite, for there is a truth about everything. But if in our search for truth we fater and fear to go forward because we fear to go astray, here are a few directions to help us. First, we must state clearly to ourselves the problem that puzzles us. If this does not bring the answer, search the Scriptures, especially the New Testament, to see if we can find the answer. But we must be sure that the answer is in accord with the whole body of our Saviour's teaching. If we are still in doubt, pray for guidance by the Holy Spirit, quieting the mind in readiness to receive the answer..The ultimate truth is embodied in Jesus Christ, in His life, His example, and His Teachings.

John Adams' Supposed Heterodox Theology

     I can't remember I've seen many other secularists trod out this letter except for Jon Rowe on the American Creation blog, so I thought I would give my interpretation of John Adams' 1813 letter to Thomas Jefferson, if only because the context appears so clear. The fact this letter was written when John Adams was retired and not representative of the people makes it irrelevant to the founding, but I'll play along. Here is the entire part of the letter and contains the context.

I have examined all, as well as my narrow sphere, my straitened means, and my busy life would allow me ; and the result is, that the Bible is the best book in the world. It contains more of my little philosophy than all the libraries I have seen; and such parts of it as I cannot reconcile to my little philosophy, I postpone for future investigation. Priestley ought to have given us a sketch of the religion and morals of Zoroaster, of Sanchoniathon, of Confucius, and all the founders of religions before Christ, whose superiority would, from such a comparison, have appeared the more transcendent. Priestley ought to have told us that Pythagoras passed twenty years in his travels in India, in Egypt, in Chaldea, perhaps in Sodom and Gomorrah, Tyre and Sidon. He ought to have told us, that in India he conversed with the Brahmins, and read the Shasta, five thousand years old, written in the language of the sacred Sanscrit, with the elegance and sentiments of Plato. Where is to be found theology more orthodox, or philosophy more profound, than in the introduction to the Shasta? "God is one, creator of all, universal sphere, without beginning, without end. God governs all the creation by a general providence, resulting from his eternal designs. Search not the essence and the nature of the Eternal, who is one; your research will be vain and presumptuous. It is enough, that, day by day and night by night, you adore his power, his wisdom, and his goodness, in his works. The Eternal willed, in the fulness of time, to communicate of his essence and of his splendor, to beings capable of perceiving it. They as yet existed not. The Eternal willed, and they were. He created Birma, Vitsnow, and Sib." These doctrines, sublime, if ever there were any sublime, Pythagoras learned in India, and taught them to Zaleucus and his other disciples. He there learned also his metempsychosis; but this never was popular, never made much progress in Greece or Italy, or any other country besides India and Tartary, the region of the grand immortal Lama. And how does this differ from the possessions of demons in Greece and Rome, from the demon of Socrates, from the worship of cows and crocodiles in Egypt and elsewhere? After migrating through various animals, from elephants to serpents, according to their behavior, souls that, at last, behaved well, became men and women, and then, if they were good, they went to Heaven. All ended in Heaven, if they became virtuous. Who can wonder at the widow of Malabar ? Where is the lady who, if her faith were without doubt that she should go to Heaven with her husband on the one hand, or migrate into a toad or a wasp on the other, would not lie down on the pile, and set fire to the fuel ? Modifications and disguises of the metempsychosis had crept into Egypt, and Greece, and Rome, and other countries. Have you read Farmer on the demons and possessions of the New Testament? [bold face mine]

As anyone can see, this quote throws a wrench into Jon's narrative about the founding and a generic god as God of the DOI. Adams says the religion of Christ is superior to all the others. Moving to the other part in bold, Adams quotes the intro to the Shasta? I've never read it, but it's clear Adams is saying this part is just as orthodox as the Bible, which it is, especially if you are a unitarian like Adams. This quote by itself doesn't have anything to do with the equality of Christianity, as he's already said Christ is superior.

As Bill Fortenberry says, "Now, you said that Adams does the "SAME THING" with the Hymn to Zeus that he did to the Hindu Shastra, and I agree. Adams recognized in the Hymn to Zeus a certain agreement with Christian doctrine, and in the Hindu Shastra, he also found certain agreements with Christianity. In the former he discovered an agreement in regards to the devotion that man owes to God, and in the latter he saw agreement in the concept that God is both one and three at the same time." All is well until that last part.

Bill gives the correct context for the below quote:

It has pleased the Providence of the first Cause, the Universal Cause, that Abraham should give religion not only to Hebrews but to Christians and Mahomitans, the greatest part of the modern civilized world.

– John Adams to M.M. Noah, July 31, 1818.

In regards to Adams' letter to M. M. Noah, the comment which you quoted is nothing more than a statement of fact. All three of those religions trace their origin to Abraham. The Christians trace their religion through Christ, the Jewish through Isaac and the Muslims through Ishmael. There is much in the Bible about God's blessing on the nations that are now predominantly Muslim beginning with God's promise to bless Ishmael at Abraham's request in Genesis 17:20. Of course, this does not mean that the Muslim religion is correct, but it does show that the statement made by Adams is accurate.

The Christian nation thesis is again, above reproach to any secular darts thrown its way.