Frazer Responds to Van Dyke
Jonathan Rowe on Dec 23rd 2008
Gregg Frazer emails me this response to Tom Van Dyke’s criticisms of his commentary:
Mr. Van Dyke: you continue to find my term idiosyncratic and unhelpful — I suppose I shall have to try to muddle on without your approval.
Re the “religious-political landscape” issue: if you read my dissertation, you’d see evidence that it was also the political theology of the patriotic preachers and other educated elites — not just the few key Founders.
It might also interest you to know that I did not conveniently select the eight key Founders — they were selected by my dissertation committee chair because they were primarily responsible for the two founding documents.
Once again, speaking of begging the question, the Founders themselves never spoke of the “imago Dei” — at least I point to what THEY claimed were their influences and sources.
Re your explanation of why they did not mention Christian sources: let me get this straight — they did not know that they lived in an atmosphere influenced by Christian concepts, so they cannot be expected to include them in a list of multiple influences/sources?
How convenient for you that counter evidence cannot dent your view. What is the point of this entire discussion if, when faced with counter evidence, you simply reply with circular logic? We’re spinning our wheels if you’re going to resort to self-evident truths which cannot be dislodged by facts.
As a point of fact, Jefferson’s original draft (which we have) DID include “their Creator” and “nature’s God.” What the Congress added was “supreme judge of the world” and “divine providence” — both “God-words” as well, with no specific Christian or biblical content.
The fact that the Congress added non-Christian, non-biblical “God-words” to the Declaration actually supports my contention that theistic rationalism was the prevailing political theology — and not Christianity. If they were trying to create a Christian nation, why didn’t they insert Christian language/terms? Furthermore, if Jefferson and Franklin were such outliers where religion was concerned, why were they chosen to write the philosophical document? Would James Dobson and David Barton ask Barry Lynn or Madalyn Murray O’Hair to write such a document?
Again, I do not claim that the prevailing political theology undergirding the Founding was that of only a few key Founders!! On the contrary, I claim that that PREVAILING political theology can be SEEN in the writings of a few key Founders — including the two founding documents. It would hardly be a “prevailing” political theology if it only existed in the minds of eight men.
I accept your apology, of course. I was not personally offended; I just wanted clarity.
Filed in The Belfry, The Bureau
Jon, I would prefer that Dr. Frazer’s responses be put alongside mine in the appropriate comments section. This format puts us on an unequal footing.
His “theistic rationalist” meme is often used by Jon at our groupblog American Creation, which is dedicated to religion and founding. Dr. Frazer is of course free to “muddle through” with his idiosyncratic term and method of devising it; I reject it as far too narrow for our uses over on my homecourt. It’s an interesting idea and deserves a place at the table, I suppose, but once employed closes the discussion.
And yes, it quite so that Christian concepts were “in the air” at the time of the Founding, and my sense of Christian also includes Christian theology/political philosophy from source like Aquinas and the Reformers. I’m not of the sola scriptura persuasion, especially when it comes to the history of ideas.
As a case in point, Algernon Sidney, a contemporary of John Locke, is cited by many Founders as one of their sources. In this section of his Discourses on Government, Sidney specifically credits the successors of Thomas Aquinas ["the "Schoolmen"] with a definitive refutation of the Divine Right of Kings. Further, Dr. Frazer continues to elide or ignore the question of natural law, specifically the Christian understanding of it that was acknowledged by the Founders.
I admit an unfamiliarity with Dr. Frazer’s entire canon; what I know of it is from Jon Rowe’s excerpts. However, Dr. Frazer is unfamiliar with my far lesser and credentialed musings: I do not assert that the United States was founded or created as a Christian Nation. But neither do I believe the ratification of the constitution changed America’s essential qualities. What those qualities were will always be open to debate, and I continue to find Dr. Frazer’s approach of little utility.
My apologies Tom. I don’t mean for this to degenerate into anything less than civil.
My thinking for posting these on the front page is simply this is an important dialog to have and relatively speaking the blogs aren’t that widely well read (and even on a blog like Positive Liberty, I’m sure lots of our regular readers just skip over everything I write because they are utterly uninterested by this debate). I’m just trying to get these ideas “out there.”
No problem, Jon. Should Dr. Frazer and I cross swords again, I hope it’s on level ground, and we’ll leave the personal stuff out of it. I’ve already apologized for questioning his objectivity as a scholar as he’s an evangelical. But in my view this has led to his definition of Christianity to be too weighted toward theological orthodoxy [the Trinity, Jesus died for our sins, etc.] and not enough toward its philosophical, sociological and cultural implications, which I believe are more useful for historical purposes.