LIBERTY UNIVERSITY
HELMS SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT
The Declaration of Independence v. The Constitution: The Christian Conception of the State
Submitted to Dr. Michael Robinson,
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the completion of
PLCY 702 – B03
Founding Era and the Constitution
by
Robert H. Carey, Jr.
June 27, 2022
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Thesis
In justifying their rebellion and in arguing for the ratification of the Constitution, the
American Whigs made several claims regarding their positions being aligned both with a
Christian concept of justice and with a universal concept of Natural Law. The American Whigs
enlisted or heralded the support of Christian faith leaders who made arguments for the Christian
justification of the rebellion, and many of the supporters of the proposed U.S. Constitution relied
on Western theological philosophies of Natural Law to argue the proposed Constitution was in
alignment with those philosophies. But in the final analysis, the new American political leaders
both missed answering the biblical requirements they claimed in the Constitution and did not
bring forward a constitution fully based on Natural Law.
The Declaration’s Claim the Rebellion Was Justified by God’s Word
Throughout the run up to the Revolutionary War, the American Whigs repeatedly and
forcefully called upon God’s providence and referenced the Natural Rights they believed God
granted them, as justification for rebellion. In 1775, the Continental Congress draped its
declaration on The Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms with devout assertions they had
exhausted all avenues of redress with Great Britain, were making their “last appeal from reason
to arms”, but still proclaiming it was done in “reverance [sic] for our Creator, principles of
humanity, and the dictates of common sense” (Continental Congress 1775). And because that
Continental Congress believed it had the means possibly to rebel successfully against the Crown,
they took that “as signal instances of the Divine favour towards us… and possessed of the means
of defending ourselves” (Ibid.). From that point to 1776, with the Declaration of Independence,
McClellan points out how the Americans are quick to claim Godly entitlement to “the separate
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and equal station” to Great Britain as their own country, and that the Americans, like all men,
“are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty
and the pursuit of Happiness” (Continental Congress 1776). But McClellan also points out how
such divine inspiration and faithful submission to God’s will are absent from the operative
sections of the Declaration, instead relying on concepts of English common law and the terms of
their colonial charters from the Crown, until at the end of the document, as they declare their
independence, they once again appeal “to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our
intentions” conveniently relying “on the protection of divine Providence” to redress their
decidedly secular grievances (McClellan, 90).
The American clergy also weighed in on God’s divine approval of the American
rebellion. Much has been written, including by this author, of the famous pro-rebellion sermon
delivered by Jonathan Mayhew in his Discourse, Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-
Resistance to the Higher Powers, and his Lockian argument for an American version of the
concept of “Lesser Magistrates” leading the rebellion as government rulers themselves against
the higher rulers who, as “oppressors, are not entitled to obedience from their subjects” (Mayhew
[1750] 1818, 28), but thereby avoiding any violation of Paul’s warnings in Romans 13:1-7 for
“every soul be subject unto the higher powers” (Ibid., 7), which Mayhew himself references at
the beginning of his sermon. But Mayhew was by no means alone in his calls to “Praise the
Lord and Pass the Ammunition” (Loesser and Terry 1942). Byrd dedicates his entire book of
Sacred Scripture, Sacred War: The Bible and the American Revolution to how Americans rallied
around the Cross to justify the rebellion. With such salacious chapter titles, drawn from the
sermons in question, as “The Lord is a Man of War”, “Teacheth my Hands to War, and My
Fingers to Fight”, and “Cursed Be He that Keepeth Back his Sword from Blood”, Byrd details
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how most of America’s preachers would join Mayhew in his calls to “Praise the Lord and Pass
the Ammunition” (Loesser and Terry 1942). For example, Samuel Davies’ 1759 sermon, “The
Curse of Cowardice”, preaches “even the God of Peace proclaims by his Providence, ‘To Arms!’
Then the Sword is…consecrated to God; and the Art of War becomes a Part of our Religion”
(Byrd 2013, 1), while a Congregationalist Pastor from Hartford, Nathan Perkins, believes like
“the worth of a Christian in a time of trouble, so the valor of a soldier is best seen in a day of
battle” (Ibid., 2). Byrd believes this “Preaching supported patriotism, therefore, in part because
virtue was a critical wartime asset. No authentic republic could be conceived without virtue,
which was the safeguard of liberty. Virtue, however, was always contested, and the only assured
test of it was struggle.” (Ibid., 4). Even John Adams got into the divine mix, writing to his wife
Abigail about a sermon that drew “a Parallel between the Case of Israel and that of America, and
between the Conduct of Pharaoh and that of [King] George…[The preacher] concluded that the
Course of Events, indicated strongly the Design of Providence that We [American] should be
separated from G. Britain” (Adams and Adams 2002, 129).
Political and Government Requirements of Christian Natural Law
While Christian political philosophers like Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and
Locke wax poetic on how they interpret the Bible’s guidance on politics, law, justice, and
government, in the end the concept of Scriptura Scripturae interpres (“Scripture interprets
Scripture”) requires this author to first turn to the original source documents, the books of the
Bible. The Old Testament books of Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Judges do provide some
specific guidelines for conduct of society and governments, but the focus is overwhelmingly on
the conduct of individuals and interpersonal relationships and not on the structure or behavior of
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government. The one time the Israelites do come together as a People to form a government, it
was not to seek a more perfect system of justice, but to be “like all the nations” (1 Sam. 8:5).
Generously, God responded he would heed their wishes, but condemned their demands because
it showed the People “have rejected Me from being King over them…they have abandoned Me
and served other gods…you shall warn them strongly and tell them of the practice of the king
who will reign over them” (1 Sam. 8:7-9). And Samuel’s warning is one of a temperamental,
tyrannical, and fickle king who will drive the Israelites to cry out, and that God will not hear
them or respond (Samuel 8:10-22). The Bible’s New Testament steers even further away from
defining the good State, instead simply telling the individual to obey the government and its
officials, no matter how badly they rule, as Mayhew referenced above. But on the mechanics of
the government, and the rights of the individual within that structure, much less is said. And in
the Christian concept of the progressive revelation of the Bible culminating in the revelation of
Jesus Christ, because “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many
portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son” (Heb. 1:1-3[NASB]).
For example, the phrase “exact representation of His nature” to describe Christ’s relationship to
God is only used in the New Testament, and is another example of such progressive revelation in
the Bible (MacArthur 2006, 1863, note 1:3).
What is the crucial element in all this biblical guidance of God’s promises for the
afflicted and the oppressed is that it is not the individual’s role to rebel against an unjust
government; Man is simply to stay faithful to God and believe in God’s ultimate providence and
design. Beyond the ubiquitous requirements of Romans 13:1-2 that “every person is to be
subject to the governing authorities” Solomon advises in the Book of Proverbs to not take
matters into their own hands, for “one who trusts in the Lord will be protected. Many seek the
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ruler’s favor [Lit. face, as in an audience], But justice for mankind comes from the Lord” (Prov.
29:25-26), while Christ gives Man his teaching “so that in Me you may have peace. In the world
you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). It does not call
on the Israelites to take up arms, declare their independence, and fight the Assyrians,
Babylonians, Egyptians, or Romans in a bloody war of attrition.
American Views of Natural Law and the Constitution
The Bible does not tell Man to rebel. Disobey? Often, and to gladly accept the
punishment for it as did both Peter and Paul. But rebel? No. But do the Christian Natural Law
philosophers the Americans studied make the Christian and Natural Law case for rebellion and
the constitution they proposed to the States? While Natural Law theory started with Plato and
Aristotle, for the Americans of the mid-1700s, it started with Cicero. As the eighteenth century
American educational system was based upon the Western European tradition of the “’trivium
(rhetoric, logic, and Latin grammar” and ‘quadrivium’ (arithmetic, music, geometry, and
astronomy)…[sharing] a common emphasis on the study of Latin literature, especially the works
of Cicero, Virgil, and Horace” (Richard 2015, 124), a tradition that only intensified the focus on
Cicero in the colleges and universities of the day. Richard details the idolization of Cicero –
both of his philosophy and of his character – by the American founders, ranging from Samuel
Adams Masters Thesis on Cicero written in “flawless Latin”, Alexander Hamilton’s use of
Cicero in denouncing the Whiskey Rebellion, John Marshall patterning his portrayal of George
Washington after Cicero, and how John Adams “derived a lifelong sense of identity and purpose
from his emulation of Cicero” (Ibid., 129f).
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It is from Cicero which springs many of the concepts the American founders used in their
Constitutional deliberations and immediate analyses of the law under their new Constitution,
especially on the concepts of Natural Law, and by extension, the previously discussed, and
misaligned consociation with Natural Rights. Cicero proclaims Natural Law (which he calls
True Law) is
… right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application,
unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts
from wrongdoing by its prohibitions…It is a sin to try to alter this law, nor is it
allowable to attempt to repeal any part of it, and it is impossible to abolish it
entirely. We cannot be freed from its obligations by senate or people, and we need
not look outside ourselves for an expounder or interpreter of it. And there will not
be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future,
but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times,
and there will be one master and ruler, that is, God, over us all, for he is the
author of this law, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge. (Cicero De Re
Publica, 211)
And it was Cicero who seized on the Platonic and Aristotelian ideas of “mixed government”
systems that then led to the American Whigs’ concepts of division of powers between the general
government and the States, and the separation of powers between the three branches of the
general government, Indeed, John Adams looks to the history of the Roman Republic and
declares it “one continued struggle of the noble families for the first place, and another
unanswerable proof of the necessity of having three orders, and each order independent, in order
to form an effectual equilibrium” (Adams 1787, 221). Because of that, Adams believes “all the
ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher united in the same
character…His decided opinion in favour of three branches is founded on a reason that is
unchangeable; the laws, which are the only possible rule, measure, and security of justice, can be
sure of protection, for any course of time, in no other form of government” (Ibid., xxii), much as
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the Constitutional Convention Adams had missed proposed, but which Adams now fully
endorsed.
The U.S. Constitution Falls Short of Natural Law Principles
McClellan describes the history of the Natural Law tradition from Aristotle through
Aquinas and to the American founders, defining Natural Law as, “those principles which are
inherent in man’s nature as a rational, moral, and social being, and which cannot be casually
ignored” (McClellan 2000, 126). From that, McClellan ascribes the American founders’
adoption of the political concept of “Constitutionalism…[which] is a product of this natural law
idea that there are certain unalterable truths, and that kings, parliaments, and judges as well as
the citizens are and should be governed by them” (Ibid.). While McClelland points out the
predominant Natural Law philosophy of the “modern world” in which the American founders
lived forgot the Christian concepts of Natural Responsibilities, because “Modern natural rights
philosophy, as represented in the writings of Locke, is a rejection of…the traditional natural law
philosophy…[and] is contrary to Locke’s Second Treatise” (Ibid., 125), Locke’s focus on Natural
Rights meant most Americans of the revolutionary period, including Jefferson, “failed to grasp
the inherent contradictions between natural law and natural rights doctrines, and he therefore saw
no inconsistency between Aristotle and Locke” (Ibid., 129).
This then leads, as McClellan points out, that some political philosophers and even
judges call the higher Natural Law as superior to the Constitution, and that the American political
psyche is indeed “governed by a higher, unwritten natural law, emanating from God; that certain
rights are by nature indelibly impressed upon the hearts and minds of all mankind; and that the
spirit of ’76 is incorporated into our fundamental law” (Ibid., 478). But, that is irrelevant, as
McClellan continues, because such concepts “are not provided for in the Constitution, and there
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is no evidence that the Framers ever intended them to be” (Ibid.). What is provided for in the
Constitution is the Supremacy Clause:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in
Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the
Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the
Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or
Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. (US Constitution, art. 6, cl. 2)
Period. No reference to the “unalienable Rights” of men, no self-evident truths, no appeals to the
“Supreme Judge”, no reliance on “divine Providence”, as were placed in the Declaration of
Independence. Only the text of the Constitution, and no other. In the end, this fundamentally
secular constitution does not make the same references to Natural Law, Natural Rights, or God’s
will as did the Declaration of Independence and the rebellious documents surrounding that time.
It simply divides powers between the general government and the States, and enumerates
separate, somewhat enumerated, and contesting powers between the three branches of the
General government.
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