Witherspoon. No, not actress Reese Witherspoon (though she is a direct descendant). John Witherspoon. Scottish Presbyterian. Signer of the Declaration of Independence. Calvinist. Grandfather of the U.S. Constitution.
Why would I call him the "grandfather" of the constitution?
Well, as it turns out, Dr. Witherspoon was the mentor of another Calvinist, a Virginian by the name of James Madison. Madison is known as the "Father of the constitution" -- which, I suppose, makes Witherspoon the grandfather.
Witherspoon's influence on the founding of our nation can hardly be overstated. You can read a well written essay in the New Criterion by Roger Kimball called The Forgotten Founder: John Witherspoon.
Witherspoon served in the Continental Congress continuously from 1776 to 1782. He served on over one hundred committees (can you imagine?). He also served as the president of Princeton, taking it from running in the red to a veritable power house of an institution.
The founders of Princeton had hoped that it might produce men who would be "ornaments of the State as well as the Church," and Witherspoon realized this hope in full measure. His students included, in addition to a president and vice-president of the United States, nine cabinet officers, twenty-one senators, thirty-nine congressmen, three justices of the Supreme Court, and twelve state governors. Five of the nine Princeton graduates among the fifty-five members of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were students of Witherspoon.
A recent study of the academic background of the men who drafted the Constitution of the United States has revealed this amazing fact. In the membership of the Drafting Committee, there were as many graduates of Witherspoon's Presbyterian College at Princeton as there were graduates of the combined Colleges of Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Pennsylvania. One of the authors of the Constitution, James Madison, who with the passing of the years became President of the United States, was one of Witherspoon's favorite students.
Witherspoon was an orthodox Calvinist, and it showed in his political philosophy and that of his prize pupil, James Madison.
Indeed, Madison wrote in one of the Federalist's most famous passages,
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.
This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public. [Thus it is that] the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights.
As Kimball writes, "Man’s redeemable nature makes self-government possible, but lingering depravity makes checks and balances a prudent indemnity."
Regarding the religious influence of the founders, Kimball astutely writes,
"Theological skeptics and even atheists there were aplenty in late eighteenth-century America. But for every Jefferson who re-wrote the Bible excising every mention of miracles, there was a platoon of men like Madison who wrote commentaries on the Bible. Witherspoon believed that religion was “absolutely essential to the existence and welfare of every political combination of men in society.” Madison agreed."
Kimball then adds,
For many, perhaps most, of the Founders, Morrison [the author of a book on Witherspoon] observes, the chain of reasoning ran thus: “no republic without liberty, no liberty without virtue, and no virtue without religion.”
K a - b o o m .
Incidentally, Witherspoon is chiefly responsible for importing Thomas Reid's Scottish common sense realism into America and embedding it deep into the American psyche.
Common sense realism is a type of epistemology (i.e. study of knowledge) that asserts that some knowledge is "self-evident" - that is, it is forced upon us simply by the way human nature is constituted. As a result, no one really doubts or denies it. The core claim of Common Sense realism was that these undeniable or self-evident truths of experience provide a firm foundation upon which to build the entire edifice of knowledge - like the foundation of a house.
This type of epistemology is still "common" today even in evangelical circles. It is hotly contested, however, by those who understand that all facts are interpreted facts. Worldviews (i.e. presuppositions about reality) influence the way we see reality. Common sense realism, however, is built on the idea that we have a "God's eye" view of at least some ideas -- and those self-evident propositional truths are where we start in our quest for knowledge.
I commend Kimball's article to you for some good reading on a significant figure in America history, politics and education.
This is the first time I've heard of the term 'Common Sense Realism'. I like it a lot. I often have pointed out to would-be relativists of one stripe or another that both they and I have a deep and absolute knowledge that cannot be denied about certain things (e.g. buying and selling human beings is depraved, etc). Those who claim that such 'knowledge' is really some form of programming (leftover from when we were herd animals on the Serengeti, no doubt, and reinforced by the cumulative positive effect on the survival of communities that passed such 'knowledge' on in a more or less formal fashion) must then deal with the fact that making such a claim doesn't just explain the presence of the knowledge, it explains it...away. If evolution is true, morality is meaningless. If we abandon the Christian underpinnings of our society, we doom it. Actually, never mind the 'if'; it appears we have already done so.
Posted by: Doc | June 03, 2006 at 23:47
Interestingly, Madison was a VERY strong supporter of the separation of church and state:
"An alliance or coalition between Government and religion cannot be too carefully guarded against......Every new and successful example therefore of a PERFECT SEPARATION between ecclesiastical and civil matters is of importance........religion and government will exist in greater purity, without (rather) than with the aid of government."
[James Madison in a letter to Livingston, 1822, from Leonard W. Levy- The Establishment Clause, Religion and the First Amendment,pg 124]
For Madison, religion was personal, not public. He largely distrusted ecclesiastical establishments.
Posted by: Rob Ryan | June 04, 2006 at 10:23
Doc:
Common sense realism is still quite popular. The effect of it was felt quite profoundly by the founders of our nation as evidenced even by Jefferson in penning the words, "we find these truths to be self-evident" ... in other words, common sense. Jefferson was no Christian, but even he had to admit that there were truths that we all know ... in fact, we could not *not* know them.
Where people like to shift the debate, of course, is debating what constitutes the truths we can't not know. But that is a red herring. It makes a tacit admission to the fact that objective truths do exist -- and not just empirical truths, but moral truths.
The debate gets very very interesting when you consider the arguments of Dutch Calvinist thinkers like Kuyper, Dooyeward and Van Til ... who make a cogent case that God is the starting point of knowledge, rather than undeniable foundational truths. For without God, there exists no rational foundation for knowledge at all. When I present this to non-Christians, they simply attempt to wave their hands and say rationality and knowledge needs no foundation or justification -- logic simply makes intuitive sense so we can start there -- we don't need God. Besides, presupposing God is circular, they say.
To which I reply, presupposing rationality is circular ... you are using logic and reason to prove logic and reason.
To which they reply, yes, but it works -- and all knowledge would be non-sensical if we didn't presuppose rationality.
To which I reply, I understand that we are rational creatures and rely on rationality because that is the way God made us.
To which they reply, but you cannot start with God, because that is cheating ...
To which I reply, explain how the term cheating is even coherent in a world without God where life is nothing more than matter and motion.
To which, they usually have no coherent response.
Because, a moral standard requires a moral standard giver, right? :)
In short, God must be presupposed no matter how you slice it. This is God's universe and you cannot operate in it as if it were not.
Posted by: Mr. Dawntreader | June 04, 2006 at 14:47
Rob,
First, the Kimball articel was more about Witherspoon than about Madison. It does touch upon Madison because of Witherspoon's influence on Madison -- but the article is more of a discussion of the impact of Witherspoon.
That said, Witherspoon was a big proponent of religious freedom -- and so am I ... and so are most Calvinists.
I cannot speak for Madison, but if he truly was an orthodox Calvinist, as history records him to be, then he (like me) recognizes that men are inherently sinful ... redeemable, but sinful. Hence, the need for checks and balances. The doctrine of depravity is central in Calvninistic thought -- back to my earlier comment in a different thread, men sin because they are sinners, not sinners because they sin. The fact that men are dead in their sin requires that God must move first in order for them to receive and trust in Christ.
Anyway, back to separation of church and state ... because of the depravity of man, any institution that is man-centered will ultimately fail -- including religious institutions that abandon Biblical truth. I distrust man centered things too.
But leaping from there to "faith must be personal" is a stretch. I return to Kimball and Morrison's depiction of the chain of reasoning most common in our founders :
the chain of reasoning ran thus: “no republic without liberty, no liberty without virtue, and no virtue without religion.”
The bedrock of the republic is libery made possible by virtue informed by knowledge of God's moral law.
Madison, if he indeed was an orthodox Calvinist, would never have believed that there was no objective moral truth and that everyone's opinions about right and wrong were equal. No way.
Posted by: Mr. Dawntreader | June 04, 2006 at 15:07