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Establishment Clause Round-Up

October 12, 2009 By: John Kindley Category: Uncategorized

Via Jonathan Turley (The Case Against the Separation of Church and State) and Christus Victor Ministries (Painted Idolatry: “One Nation Under God”) comes this newly discovered pictorial evidence that in fact the framers received the U.S. Constitution directly from Jesus Christ. (Scroll over the graven images for the full revelation.)

Some doubters, however, have offered their own interpretation of this evidence. (Scroll over the images.)

I have in the past thought that invocations of God by the government, whether construed as merely ceremonial or as sincere, do not run afoul of the original meaning of the Establishment Clause, which concerns not God but “religion.” Although among the framers there were a number of devout deists who were quite skeptical of all “revealed” religion, I am not aware of any who were professed athiests, agnostics or polytheists. I have in general been disposed to approve of the invocation of God by the government, seeing it as a “sign of contradiction” serving to remind citizens that all governmental “laws” are at bottom counterfeits of the naturally-discernible laws of our Creator.

While I still think this is a reasonable interpretation of the Establishment Clause, I have upon further reflection become much less comfortable with governmental invocations of God, seeing them as basically political attempts to clothe with the mantle of holiness things which are unholy. This discomfort has been dramatically increased by this even newlier discovered pictorial evidence of the State’s origins.

Just for fun, what follows is an account of my own “religious beliefs,” copied from something I wrote elsewhere:

I don’t think there is any special merit in “believing” per se. Belief has merit when it is based on something else we know. For example, it is right and good to believe something that a person we know (usually by experience) to be trustworthy tells us, particularly if we also know that person loves us and has our well-being at heart. There is merit in knowledge, and more merit in knowledge of the highest things, for knowledge of what is true is the basis of wisdom. More precisely and fundamentally, there is merit in the love of wisdom, for it is what leads to wisdom, to following (courageously if necessary) what wisdom commands, and to worship of the highest and Truest Truth. The love of wisdom proceeds from God and has God for its object.

I know that God exists and is Good. I know this by experience, and not by any rational demonstrations or “proofs” of the existence of God. The Thomist philosopher Jacques Maritain put it well:

“When St. Paul affirmed that ‘that which is known of God is manifest in them. For God hath manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of Him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; His eternal power also, and divinity . . .’, he was thinking not only of scientifically elaborated or specifically philosophical ways of establishing the existence of God. He had in mind also and above all the natural knowledge of the existence of God to which the vision of created things leads the reason of every man, philosopher or not. It is this doubly natural knowledge of God I wish to take up here. It is natural not only in the sense that it belongs to the rational order rather than to the supernatural order of faith, but also in the sense that it is prephilosophic and proceeds by the natural or, so to speak, instinctive manner proper to the first apperceptions of the intellect prior to every philosophical or scientifically rationalized elaboration. . . . Here everything depends on the natural intuition of being — on the intuition of that act of existing which is the act of every act and the perfection of every perfection, in which all the intelligible structures of reality have their definitive actuation, and which overflows in activity in every being and in the intercommunication of all beings. Let us rouse ourselves, let us stop living in dreams or in the magic of images and formulas, of words, of signs and practical symbols. Once a man has been awakened to the reality of existence and of his own existence, when he has really perceived that formidable, sometimes elating, sometimes sickening or maddening fact I exist, he is henceforth possessed by the intuition of being and the implications it bears with it.”

I think with St. Thomas Aquinas that the discursive reasoning and syllogizing faculty of man grows out of man’s experience and dealings with the multifarious sensible world of physical objects, that it is particularly adapted to that world, and that when it embarks on metaphysical or theological speculations, including attempts to prove or disprove God’s existence, it is out of its natural element so to speak. That’s not to say that we should or can refrain from moral reasoning, which partakes of the metaphysical, or that metaphysical thinking is useless or impossible. (St. Thomas certainly didn’t think so.) It’s just to say that such philosophizing is necessarily tenuous and uncertain, and reveals far less about God than is revealed by the “creation of the world.” God, even according to the best metaphysical speculations, is One and Simple, and to be true our knowledge of Him must likewise be One and Simple. Philosophical attempts to prove that God exists or that He has certain attributes, like other experiences of the God-created world, just might in certain individuals foster the intellect’s direct and instinctive apperception of God’s existence, but reasoning about God is far from knowing God, and can sometimes even be an obstacle to such knowledge.

Such considerations as these led me to become very circumspect about pretending to know things about God that I didn’t really know, including things like the Divinity of Christ, the Resurrection of Christ, and the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. To make a long story short, these considerations, as well as Quakers’ venerable history of resisting slavery, war and other injustices, were what led me to the Religious Society of Friends, a Christian community which eschews credal formulations of what its members are required to believe. I’m not simply a Deist, because I do in fact believe that Jesus rose from the dead and is the Son of God. I believe it because I am persuaded by a preponderance of the historical evidence, by the beauty and truth of Jesus’ life and teachings as depicted in the Gospels, and by the “answer” it provides to the mystery of why evil exists in a world created by a Good and Omnipotent God — that whyever evil exists, our Creator is with us and shares in our sufferings, and has shown us by His Incarnation in the world how to overcome evil and death. I just don’t know those beliefs to be true, and I resist the notion, which is essential to most mainstream Christian denominations, that salvation hangs upon both believing those things to be true and the truth of those beliefs. Instead, I put the emphasis where Jesus Himself seemed to put it, when He taught that the Greatest Commandment is to “Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” I know the Wisdom and the Truth of that Commandment, and so in God alone my soul finds its security.

6 Comments to “Establishment Clause Round-Up”


  1. Humble Truth says:

    So … you are a lawyer … practicing law … in courtrooms … and you believe there is a “preponderance of the historical evidence” for Jesus – including rising from the dead?

    Amazing.

    And we sometimes wonder what is wrong with our legal system, don’t we?

    HT

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  2. John Kindley says:

    As you may know, with the ascension of Sotomayor 6 out of the 9 U.S. Supreme Court Justices are Catholic, who profess believing not only that Jesus rose from the dead but a lot more. While you might think this is indicative of something wrong with our legal system, it’s disingenuous of you to feign “amazement” that a lowly lawyer might believe what a majority of the SCOTUS and probably a majority of the U.S. population believes.

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  3. Humble Truth says:

    Disingenuity, no. Amazement, yes.

    There is an profound difference between “faith” and “preponderance of evidence”.

    While you may have studied diligently to acquire your law degree, I would question what you have been taught as to what qualifies as evidence. My presupposition too, is that you have not invested even fractionally in religious studies.

    To have faith is fine. To say there is evidence for your faith is a slippery slope indeed.

    HT

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  4. John Kindley says:

    As I suggested in my original post, a “faith” or a “belief” not founded on reason or evidence is, in my estimation, not just “fine.” It’s ridiculous and wrong. (Granted, “faith” is defined by some in a way I think is slippery and irrational.) I suggest you follow the link in my post associated with the proposition you found so amazing, or look up any standard work of Christian apologetics. The difficulty you’re having understanding this proposition suggests that you yourself don’t really know what you’re talking about.

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  5. John Kindley says:

    Let me also add that a main point of the latter part of my post, in case you missed it, is that I don’t know whether Jesus rose from the dead and I don’t think believing he did is essential to “salvation” anyway. I “believe” he rose from the dead in the sense that I’m more persuaded that he did than I am that he didn’t, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m persuaded beyond a reasonable doubt.

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  6. Humble Truth says:

    Since no additional material has been provided in which to further our conversation, I will wish you well, sir, in your faith and your career.

    HT

    “The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.”
    — Benjamin Franklin

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