tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564473.post115169488070773140..comments2024-01-15T05:32:24.873-05:00Comments on The Jon Rowe Archives: Jonathan Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04079637406589278386noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564473.post-1154653298251425012006-08-03T21:01:00.000-04:002006-08-03T21:01:00.000-04:00Brian:And Abigail also said "There is not any reas...Brian:<BR/><BR/>And Abigail also said "There is not any reasoning which can convince me, contrary to my senses, that three is one and one three."<BR/><BR/>Yes, she also said: "The first commandment forbids the worship of but one God." Which, I take it, she would think that you, by worshipping Jesus Christ as a false God, break the Ten Commandments every time you go to Church or simply by believing what you believe.<BR/><BR/>Regarding the Jefferson quotation, it's funny, I have a comprehensive review of Novak's book coming out in a publication available at most Barnes & Nobles and Borders in the nation, where I use that very quotation to demonstrate that there really is little in the historical record to distinguish Washington's public supplications to God from Jefferson's.<BR/><BR/>As I wrote in an earlier post: If you want to say that the Founders' "Nature's God" is the God in the Bible, the best you could argue is yes, He is with one serious caveat: He is the Biblical God except for everything written in the Bible about Him which didn't comport with their understanding of Man's Reason, like His irrational wrath and jealously. These Founders believed the Bible was errant; it contained in Adams's words "errors and amendments" (or in Jefferson's, its history was "defective and doubtful") and Man's Reason was the penultimate tool for determining which parts of the Bible were legitimately revealed by God (as Jefferson put it, Man's Reason could find the "Diamonds" of Truth among the "Dunghill" of error contained in the Bible) and which were not. Everything that didn't passed the "Reason" smell test was thus properly edited from the Bible. <BR/><BR/>Jefferson, Washington, and Madison (and probably Adams too; I haven't been able to dig up his quotations), likewise referred to God as "The Great Spirit," just as they do, when addressing the Indians.<BR/><BR/>Question: Is "The Great Spirit" whom the Native Americans worshipped, the God of the Bible?<BR/><BR/>The point I'm getting at is that they believed most if not all religions, even those outside of the so called Judeo-Christian tradition, were valid ways to God. And that therefore "the one true God" could be worshipped under many different names, whether it be Jehovah, The Great Spirit, Allah, or even by the names of the gods from the Hindu and Greeco-Roman pantheons. Sure they would have had problems with some of the dogmas of all of these religions. Indeed, they, like orthodox Christianity, had "corruptions." But once you excised the "corruptions" from all world religions, you are left with the same thing, or so they, our key Founders, believed.Jonathan Rowehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04079637406589278386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564473.post-1154643877512696522006-08-03T18:24:00.000-04:002006-08-03T18:24:00.000-04:00Jon writes: "...the God to whom the Founders made ...Jon writes: "...the God to whom the Founders made their public supplications, was a vague, generic and undefined God."<BR/><BR/>Hmmmm....<BR/><BR/>"From the Scriptures I learn that there is but one God to whom worship is due. That he is the Creator Preserver and Governor of universal nature. Thou shalt have no other Gods before me is the first command after that of loving God." --Abigail Adams<BR/><BR/><I>**Note how she associates "the Governor of universal nature" (a phrase associated by people such as Jon w/ Deism) - note how she associates that same God with that of the Ten Commandments and Hebrew Scripture.</I><BR/><BR/>Time will only permit one more - but there are many...<BR/><BR/>"I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life....." and so on.<BR/>-Thomas Jefferson<BR/><BR/>*Note how Jefferson clearly associates the God who led the Pilgrim fathers to American shores with the God who led "Israel of old" - a very specific reference to the God portrayed in the Scriptures. <BR/><BR/>I rest my case.<BR/><BR/>-Brian Tubbs<BR/>http://americanfounding.blogspot.comBrian Tubbshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15412421076480479001noreply@blogger.com