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The Declaration of Independence Integrates Enlightenment Philosophy and Religion For the study of the causes of the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, American historians are divided into different schools, including the Whigs, the Progressives, the Neoconservatives, the Imperial School, the New Left, and other schools.
John S. John C. Miller, in his book The Origins of the American Revolution, pointed out that the main cause of the revolution came from the British Empire's control of the colonial economy, and after 1764, various laws were passed one after another, and various taxes were levied on the colonies, which were strongly resisted by merchants who hoped to free themselves from the economic yoke of the British Empire (Miller, 1966, p. 7).
In fact, as early as 1671, Count Edward Montagu of England predicted in his report in the New England Review that New England's economic power would increasingly compete with Britain, rather than complement it.
From this, he concluded that a repressive imperial policy would only push the colonists towards independence, and "they would take desperate steps toward self-reliance and resist us."
Two Canadian scholars, Marc Rgnal and Joseph A. John A. Ernst (1972) argues in their book An Economic Interpretation of the American Revolution that in the first half century of American independence, British capital and decision-making increasingly dominated the economies of the colonies, limiting the freedom of development of wealthy colonists, merchants, and plantation owners in the colonies. And the ensuing short-term economic crisis, which caused great distress to the colonial elite.
This was only a superficial cause of the rebellion, but a deeper reason was the serious concern of the merchants of the colonies about business and economic sovereignty.
As the colonies grew fuller, the upper classes became more eager for economic freedom, and they did not want the British crown to interfere with their land expansion, currency issuance, and other economic practices.
Thomas Paine, in his book Common Sense on January 10, 1776, vigorously advocated separation and independence, and shattered illusions of reconciliation with England.
Paine pointed out that "independence" is the only way out, and shouted out the new slogan of "republic," and "common sense" was therefore regarded as the essence of the "Declaration of Independence."
From the perspective of Marx's historical materialism, the American Revolution was a bourgeois revolution, the main purpose of which was to establish a republic under the rule of law for the propertied people, "with the politics of the rich and the oligarchy as the use" (Hsu, 2020, p. 324)", and guarantee their commercial liberalism (commerial liberatarianism), political equality, and personal and property security.
The slogan "No tax without representation" shows their wariness of the British government's use of power to arbitrarily expropriate and tyranny.
Colonial officials, lawyers, merchants, and rich peasants, who were the organizers of the American Revolutionary War, had accumulated a great deal of wealth in the New World and needed practical guarantees.
The revolution "defended the interests of the group they represented, the economic interests that they felt concretely and genuinely through their personal experiences."
At the same time, in order to further increase wealth, they needed to clear institutional barriers, "the result of the American revolution was to put the country in the hands of the propertied class, the aristocracy, and the upper classes."
The new government was made up of respected and prominent people such as Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Hamilton."
The Declaration of Independence fuses creation theology with Enlightenment philosophy "The Monologue Declaration was not an official document of the Continental Congress voting on secession from Great Britain," but it was a programmatic document for the American Revolution and even nation-building.
At the same time, the issuance of the Declaration of Independence was an act of state to enable the United States of America to be recognized and accepted by the international community after successful independence. The Declaration of Independence was intended to state that the cause of the revolution was the British Crown's abuse of power over its subjects, making them slaves, and that the thirteen colonies of British North America had every reason to secede from Great Britain and provide a moral and legal basis for their independence. The Declaration of Independence needed to find a political-philosophical basis as a "fundamental premise" to prove to the world that the authority they were rebelling against was not a legitimate authority, so as to gain widespread support and even praise from the world.
The Declaration of Independence affirmed that the American Confederation was to become a free and independent sovereign state, in accordance with the standard norms of international law of the time—the Law of Nations of 1758.
Baker argues that "they found this rational basis in the very premises that shaped the thought of the time—the notions of natural law and natural rights," and that four invocations of the gods merely provided divine support for this new political philosophy.
The use of "Nature's Law and Nature's God" in the first sentence of the Declaration places the fundamental legitimacy of the new nation within the framework of higher law, which in turn is based on secular and Nature's God to overthrow the legitimacy of positive law and the Crown's edict passed by the British Parliament; The second paragraph refers to God by using the word Creator, "We consider these truths to be self-evident: all men are created equal, and the Creator has endowed them with certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
The last paragraph refers to "God" or divine will, which is divided into "the Supreme Judge of the World" and "Divine Providence."
The third calls "the highest judge of the world" to bear witness to the rectitude of our intentions, and the fourth "divine will" emphasizes that God will protect the life, wealth, and sacred honor of Americans.
"The world's highest judge" is not an orthodox Christian theological concept, but the term "Providence" has a strong Calvinist theological connotation.
The Proclamation is generic in terms of God, with nowhere does it mention words such as "Jehovah", "Father", "Christ Jesus" or "Father, Son and Holy Spirit" with overtly Protestant or Catholic overtones, giving the impression that "the God of the Proclamation is the God of nature, not the God revealed in Christianity... It was based on a scientific, optimistic and rationalist worldview of the Enlightenment, supported by the American Revolution."
By the words "creator" and "patronage of divine will," orthodox Christians will think that this is the god they worship.
Opponents of "sectarianism," however, read them with an implicit, cross-denominational theological view.
This shows the clever wording of this declaration, first of all taking into account that the representatives of the Continental Congress included people of different denominations, and at the same time could call on Americans of different religious beliefs to support revolution and independence.
The "natural law" mentioned in the first place can be understood as classical secular natural law, but in the context of the 18th century, people may more naturally associate with God's law, because nature here does not refer to the physical laws of nature or the laws of nature as opposed to man, "natural law and the god of nature are higher than human law and can judge human law."
In the 16th or 17th centuries, the Protestant Reformation established a direct connection with God, and by the 18th century, many in the intellectual community believed that God's will remained only in His inspired Bible or His creation, and that they could perceive God's will through these means. God reveals His universal moral law in the natural order. Thus, nature in the 18th century was deified nature, the new "God", the source of all justice and wisdom.
In the 18th century, people sought guidance from nature, expecting golden rules from nature.
Baker points out that "after the deification of nature in the 18th century, the Bible and the concept of 'eternal law' can be easily banished."
Therefore, the reference to "natural law" here can be understood to mean that secession from Great Britain is in line with God's will and arrangement, which is God's will that can be glimpsed from the natural order, and can also be understood to mean that according to classical natural law, the people of the North American colonies naturally have the right to exercise self-government according to their own will.
"God is superior to man, just as natural law is superior to and precedence over the laws of political society" (Bellah, 1980, p. 30), although Bella is inclined to think that this God is the God of the Bible, not the God of nature, and that only "within such a natural, divine hierarchy, including human values such as equality, can be established." Bella's mistake lies in not knowing the ideological nature of values such as equality.
"God of nature" or "God of nature" or "God of nature", that is, the God that all people can know through nature.
This term was coined by Jefferson in the original manuscript, and was not changed by the Manifesto creation team and later members of the Continental Council when it was revised and approved. This term is taken together with the Creator and Providence that follow the Declaration, and devout believers can understand it as "the (Trinitarian) Christian God."
That said, if we consider that Jefferson was a deist, we can conclude that Jefferson intended to emphasize the "natural God" rather than the Triune God of Christianity.
In the event of a crisis, Jefferson, Paine, John Adams, Washington, Franklin, Madison, and many other minor figures would be seen as either a godist or a deist.
The authors of the Declaration of Independence appealed not to Cotton Mather's God, but to 'the God of Nature'" (Charles Beard & Mary Beard, 2009, p. 472-73).
However, this "natural God" does not seem to be a "watchmaker-like God," but actively cares about and participates in the historical process, and especially cares for the "one god" of the United States.
Bella, on the other hand, insists that the God here is the only God of the Bible (Bellah, 1980, p. 11), and can only be a family word, which may be difficult to convince.
Jefferson emphasized the existence of a "self-evident" moral order, and the so-called "self-evident" means that everyone can know through reason, acknowledging that every rational person has the ability to examine divine will, with a distinct Enlightenment democratic color, that is, universal reason, which is the new legitimacy foundation established by the French Enlightenment thinkers to replace the source of legitimacy of the Calvinist Republic, God, and is the new legitimacy foundation established for modern liberal democracy in the West.
Jefferson's original phrase was not "self-explanatory" but "sacred and undeniable," but Franklin believed that to describe these truths as "God-given and divine" became religious.
The self-evident truth is the law of nature, the human experience, and the observable, the thing of science.)
The deified nature is a nature that can be glimpsed by rational creatures, that is, a god that all people can know by using reason and examining nature, and it is only separated from the atheistic view of nature by a sacred curtain that is non-existent, and it is a bourgeois handy "atheism", but it precisely conceals the truth that the bourgeoisie is only pursuing political equality in the name of God.
In short, this phrase was by no means arbitrarily modified by Franklin, implicitly expressing the need to obey reason, which is clearly different from the Christian theological idea that "no authority is not from God."
The title "Creator" does not appear in Jefferson's original manuscript, but was added in the revised version.
The "inalienable rights bestowed by the Creator" emphasizes the sanctity of these rights, the government has no right to interfere or deprive them, and the government's only task is to ensure the happiness of society. The concept of rights here differs from the rights of British subjects guaranteed by the British Constitution and is replaced by the common rights of all people under the world. Because these rights come from the Creator, transcend races, borders, and social classes, and are His consistent will from the very beginning of creation. Obviously, the people here should also include the black slaves of the colonies and the North American Indians.
The first draft of the Declaration of Independence condemned the protection of slavery by the British monarch, and the "people" in the Constitution adopted in 1789 was a white European who excluded black slaves and North American Indians.
However, it is necessary to point out that in the myths of many peoples of the world, there are gods who created all things in the world and mankind, and the term "creator" here should be a general reference.
But in these creation myths, the Creator created people not equal, but distinguished by superiority and inferiority.
The theory of "natural human rights" is only an ideology created by the bourgeoisie to thoroughly oppose the privileges of the feudal aristocracy.
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