Allen Jayne. Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence: Origins, Philosophy, and Theology. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. 1998. Pp. xiii, 245. $39.95.
| This book is a clear, concise, and accurate account of the philosophical and religious views that inspired Thomas Jefferson to compose the United States’ formative document. Allen Jayne leaves no doubt that the “Nature’s God” found in the Declaration of Independence, the deity who provides the American colonists with their right to rebel against the British government, is the rationalist God of deism, not the personal God of Abraham. | 1 |
| However, several criticisms are in order. First, Jayne limits his discussion of Jefferson’s intellectual sources to a few modern authors. There is no mention of the Stoics, whom Jefferson read and copied at an early age. It was the Stoics who originated the complex theory of knowledge, involving both reason and intuition, which Jefferson adopted and which Jayne attributes exclusively to the Scottish commonsense philosophers. Jefferson was also heavily influenced by Epicureanism, as were the modern deists whom Jefferson read. Jayne also ignores the significant areas in which both Jefferson and the British authors he perused were indebted to Christianity. Jefferson believed in a Resurrection at the end of time, followed by divine judgment and an afterlife of rewards and punishments. His ethics were largely Christian; he considered Jesus the greatest ethical philosopher who ever lived. | . . . |
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