What is the relationship between morality and religion? If we are innately moral creatures, then do we need religion at all? Jefferson asked himself such questions. A succinct answer occurs in the catalogue of his retirement library, which positions religion as a supplement to morality, a man-made invention designed to help people bolster their God-given moral sense. Jefferson realized the answers he sought were more complicated that what his scheme of knowledge in the library catalogue suggested. To pursue his quest, he needed more books. He withheld Law’s Second Thoughts from the collection he sold to Congress and had it bound up with some other pamphlets on ethics.2 And he started buying the works of Holbach to see if he could discern his system of morality.
The draft of an essay Jefferson kept in his copy of Holbach’s Système Social reveals how thoroughly he studied its author’s collected works. Jefferson’s essay, which has been ignored since its initial publication in an obscure agnostic weekly in 1830, attempts to synthesize Holbach’s diverse writings into a unified moral philosophy. “On the Writings of the Baron d’Holbach on the Morality of Nature and That of the Christian Religion,” as Jefferson titled his essay, discusses seven Holbach works. Instead of listing them in chronological order, he listed the titles in the order he thought people should read them. With each title, he provided a brief interpretive comment. Talking about Christianisme Dévoilé, sixth in the list, Jefferson wrote, “After a preliminary of the substance of what had before been suggested on natural morality, he gives a general view of the insufficiency of the christian substitute, and its actual destructiveness of the real morality accommodated to the social relations of men.”3
In the last paragraph of “On the Writings of Baron d’Holbach,” Jefferson added an extra comment about the fifth work in his list, Tableau des Saints. His previous remarks were largely objective, but in this final comment, he critiques Holbach’s depiction of Jesus. Holbach “adopted the views of those who consider Jesus as an impostor, and cavilled unworthily at his morals. While, had he examined the character and life of that sage of nature, with candor, making allowances for the circumstances under which he acted, he would have seen in him, the great reformer of the Jewish religion.”4
Jefferson’s study of Holbach confirmed his opinion that morality did not require religion but did not deter his respect for Christ. Before reading Holbach, he had already come to the conclusion that Jesus was the greatest moral philosopher in Western culture. This viewpoint marks a departure from an idea from Bolingbroke he had commonplaced in his youth. Bolingbroke contended that the morals of the Ancients exceeded Christian morality. The epithet Jefferson used to describe Christ in the last paragraph of his essay on Holbach—“sage of nature”—provides the key to understanding his attitude toward Christ and also toward the proper relationship between morality and religion. Much as law, which parallels religion in Jefferson’s scheme of knowledge, could be subdivided into natural law and positive law, religion could be divided into the natural and the man-made. Jefferson largely avoided the phrase “natural religion.” Man’s innate moral sense was his natural religion. The system of morality Jesus represented was superior because Christ himself was a “sage of nature.” In a way, Jefferson’s interpretation of Christ’s life resembles his interpretation of Patrick Henry’s life. Henry understood natural law because he was a child of nature; Jesus understood morality because he was a sage of nature.
The other epithet Jefferson used to describe Christ in this essay—“the great reformer of the Jewish religion”—suggests that Jefferson was still thinking about ideas from his 1803 “Syllabus of an Estimate of the Merit of the Doctrines of Jesus, Compared with Those of Others,” which depicts a similar relationship between Judaism and Christ’s teachings. “On the Writings of Baron d’Holbach” also confirms that Jefferson was still thinking deeply about Christianity. His thoughts about religion and moral philosophy form an important part of his literary life from his presidency through his retirement.
A year after writing his “Syllabus,” Jefferson assembled “The Philosophy of Jesus,” a preliminary compilation of Christ’s moral teachings clipped from the Holy Gospel. Describing the work to a correspondent, he explained that he had chosen only those nuggets of moral wisdom that were genuinely Christ’s own. It was a simple matter, really. Christ’s wisdom was embedded in the writings of the Evangelists like “diamonds in dunghills.”5 Jefferson used this simile time and again to ridicule the Holy Gospel in comparison to Christ’s teachings. The twelve apostles were objects of Jefferson’s ridicule, as well. A “band of dupes and impostors,” he called them. Paul was the “first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus.”6 Instead of remaining true to Christ’s teachings, the apostles twisted what Jesus said to suit their own selfish impulses.
The pressures of being president had stopped Jefferson from taking “The Philosophy of Jesus” any further, but he returned to the project in his retirement, encouraged by his old friend Charles Thomson. After Thomson sent his latest work, Synopsis of the Four Evangelists, Jefferson addressed a letter of thanks to him at Harriton House, describing his own attempt to reduce the Evangelists to their essence: “I too have made a wee little book, from the same materials, which I call the Philosophy of Jesus.” He mentioned his plans to turn this book into a polyglot text, displaying Greek, Latin, French, and English texts in parallel columns.7
Jefferson drafted this letter in January 1816. Somehow it miscarried and did not reach Harriton House until April. The eighty-six-year-old Thomson suffered a debilitating stroke that spring and spent much time in his physician’s care. Accidentally, he left Jefferson’s letter at his doctor’s home, where visitors read it and grossly misinterpreted what Jefferson had to say. Rumors of Jefferson’s miraculous religious conversion spread from Philadelphia to Washington. According to the rumors, Jefferson now admitted Christ’s divinity, accepted Jesus Christ as his one true personal savior, and had even written a book professing his faith in Christianity.
Friends were surprised to hear these rumors, pleasantly surprised. Several of them wrote Jefferson directly to see if the rumors were true. Margaret Bayard Smith, for one, asked him if he had undergone a change in his attitude toward religion.
“A change from what?” Jefferson replied. “I have ever judged of the religion of others by their lives: and by this test, my dear Madam, I have been satisfied yours must be an excellent one, to have produced a life of such exemplary virtue and correctness. For it is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read.”8 Jefferson’s reply to Mrs. Smith was polite, but essentially he was saying the same thing to her that he had said to others more bluntly: a person did not need religion to live a virtuous life.
Matthew Carey, the prominent Philadelphia bookseller and publisher, also heard the rumors. They made good sense to him. He had recently received a large order of books from Jefferson, several of which pertained specifically to religion: the Venerable Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum; James Duport’s Metaphrasis Libri Psalmorum Graecis Versibus Contexta, a parallel text edition of the psalms in Greek and Latin, which Jefferson had recommended to John Adams; Joseph Priestley’s Harmony of the Evangelists; and The Lord’s Prayer in above a Hundred Languages.9 Eager to capitalize on Jefferson’s religious experience, Carey offered to publish the book he told Thomson he had written.
“I write nothing for publication, and last of all things should it be on the subject of religion,” Jefferson replied. Continuing his explanation, he offered Carey a keen insight into the futility of religious controversy: “On the dogmas of religion as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarrelling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind.”10
His refusal to publish anything he had written on the subject of religion is consistent with his refusal to publish other writings of his, but hi
s message to Carey is disingenuous: he had already granted someone else permission to publish his “Syllabus.” Furthermore, he was planning to rework “The Philosophy of Jesus” for publication. These strange and uncharacteristic developments resulted from Jefferson’s contact with Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, a Dutch clergyman and scholar now living in upstate New York.
Van der Kemp was a good friend of John Adams. In fact, he had visited Adams at Quincy three years earlier. Coincidentally, Van der Kemp had arrived at the Adams home around the same time they had received Jefferson’s “Syllabus.” Jefferson had told Adams not to show the “Syllabus” to anyone else besides his wife, but Adams did let Van der Kemp read it. Impressed with the document, Van der Kemp asked if he could copy it, but Adams refused. Van der Kemp thought little more about Jefferson’s “Syllabus” until 1816, when he happened to read Thomas Belsham’s Memoirs of the Late Reverend Theophilus Lindsey. Reading Jefferson’s letter to Priestley in Belsham’s appendix, the letter that sketched out the ideas that would become the “Syllabus,” Van der Kemp remembered the “Syllabus” and grew anxious to obtain a copy of it. He wrote Jefferson, not only asking for a copy of the “Syllabus,” but also requesting permission to publish it in the British periodical press.11
Jefferson’s first impulse was to refuse this request, too, but Van der Kemp did not stop there. He continued by telling Jefferson about his plans to write a life of Christ along the same lines as Jefferson had suggested in his letter to Priestley. It was almost as if Van der Kemp had spoken the magic words to unlock Jefferson’s heart. Always happy for others to take his ideas and run with them, Jefferson decided to do whatever he could to encourage Van der Kemp—even if that meant going against his rule about publishing his ideas on religion. He still did not want to publish either the “Syllabus” or “The Philosophy of Jesus” under his own name, being “unwilling to draw on myself a swarm of insects, whose buz is more disquieting than their bite,” but he did grant Van der Kemp permission to publish the “Syllabus” in a British periodical and to publish both works with his life of Christ.12
Thrilled to have another scholar follow through on his ideas, Jefferson made his offer before he checked too carefully into Van der Kemp’s background. All Jefferson really knew was that he was a friend and correspondent of John Adams. He decided to write Adams to see what he was getting himself into. Adams gave Van der Kemp a good recommendation: “His head is deeply learned and his heart is pure,” Adams said. “A Gentleman here asked my Opinion of him. My Answer was, he is a Mountain of Salt of the Earth.”13 What Adams did not tell Jefferson, what Adams perhaps did not know himself, was that Van der Kemp was one of those people who could conceive grandiose projects yet who could not always see them through to completion.
Van der Kemp did manage to get the “Syllabus” published. It appeared in the Monthly Repository of Theology and General Literature before the year’s end. As promised, he published it anonymously, but he gave the editor of this journal enough information that it was not hard for readers to guess its author. The editor composed a headnote for the “Syllabus” identifying the author as “an eminent American Statesman,” one of the “leading men in the American revolution.” John Quincy Adams, currently serving as ambassador to the Court of St. James, read the journal and easily recognized Jefferson’s authorship.14
Though Van der Kemp never did write his life of Christ, Jefferson’s correspondence with him was not a total waste of time. Jefferson spoke more frankly to him than to some of his other correspondents, and Van der Kemp had managed to coax from Jefferson several memorable quotations on the subject of religion. On the uselessness of critiquing religious arguments, Jefferson stated, “Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.” The idea of the Holy Trinity Jefferson called “the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.”15 Most important, it was Van der Kemp’s failure to write his life of Christ that helped Jefferson realize how to reshape “The Philosophy of Jesus.” He would not make this realization right away. The project lay dormant a few more years until a letter from another old friend got Jefferson thinking again.
William Short wrote Jefferson in October 1819. Though Short had learned much from Jefferson, he had never really learned to be concise. His letters always said more than they should have, and this one was no exception. Short boasted that he was now following the principles of Epicurus. The boast sounded jejune to Jefferson, who took the opportunity to give his former protégé a lesson on moral philosophy. Jefferson discussed the teaching of Epicurus and then summarized the moral philosophy of Cicero, Epictetus, Plato, Seneca, and Socrates. After discussing the Ancients, Jefferson reached Jesus of Nazareth, whom he called “the greatest of all the Reformers of the depraved religion of his own country.” Extracted from the Gospel, Christ’s teachings would form “a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man.” Like Epictetus and Epicurus, Jesus gave us laws for governing ourselves, but he went much further than the Ancients: he also gave us “the duties and charities we owe to others.”16
Jefferson mentioned “The Philosophy of Jesus” and told Short that he was considering another literary project pertaining to the subject of moral philosophy, an English translation of Epictetus. By the end of this letter, Jefferson concluded that he would do neither: “With one foot in the grave, these are now idle projects for me. My business is to beguile the wearisomness of declining life, as I endeavour to do, by the delights of classical reading and of Mathematical truths, and by the consolations of a sound philosophy, equally indifferent to hope and fear.”17
Short was unused to hearing such defeatist language from his mentor. He wrote back to encourage Jefferson to keep working on “The Philosophy of Jesus.” Short made a convincing argument: the genuine moral teachings of Jesus may seem evident to Jefferson, but they did not seem so to others. In the history of biblical scholarship, no one had been able to separate Christ’s true teachings from the surrounding biblical text. Short argued that Jefferson should take advantage of his personal insight and perform the task for the benefit of mankind.18
He needed no more convincing. Jefferson soon assembled all the Bibles he would need for the project—he would destroy eight Bibles to prepare his polyglot text. He took out his scissors and a pot of paste and got to work. He stopped talking about it as an expansion of “The Philosophy of Jesus” and formed a much greater plan for the work. Now that Van der Kemp’s plans for writing a life of Christ had fallen through, Jefferson realized if he wanted a life of Christ, he had to compose it himself. With neither the desire nor the inclination to write a narrative biography, he devised an innovative way to write the life of Christ: he would compose his biography from extracts clipped from the Gospel. It was a brilliant stroke—not only would The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth Extracted Textually from the Gospels, in Greek, Latin, French and English, as he decided to call the work, contain Christ’s moral teachings; it would also tell the story of the man whose life exemplified that philosophy. It would be a biography of Christ devoid of Christian miracles.
The precise date Jefferson began The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth is uncertain. So, too, is the date he completed it. The best guess is that he finished the work in the summer of 1820. Jefferson wrote Short two letters on the subject that year, one in April and another in August. Neither letter mentions the work specifically, but both discuss the subject of Jesus’ life. The second letter implies that Jefferson had brought the biography to completion.19
The biggest cliché about Jefferson’s literary life is that he wrote only one book, Notes on the State of Virginia. Those who make this assertionignore A Manual of Parliamentary Practice, the Proceedings concerning the batture at New Orleans, The Autobiography, and the numerous other near book-length official reports he compiled as secretary of state and as president, but they also ignore The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. Though Jefferson used scissors and pa
ste instead of pen and ink to create this work, his composition is as careful as that of any piece of writing.
Jefferson’s decision to compose this biography from biblical extracts enhances its complexity as a literary work. His compositional process reflects an approach characteristic of the Romantic era. Like the catalogue of his retirement library, Jefferson’s Life of Jesus reveals his affinity to the Romantics, who were currently experimenting with fragmenting texts as they rebelled against traditional narrative forms and explored the limits of knowledge. Jefferson’s technique of using clippings anticipated experimental literary methods of the twentieth century and let him view the meaning of Christianity in a bold new way.20
He gave his work all the trappings of a proper book. He wrote out a title page and drafted a detailed table of contents. He even included some maps, inclusions that help to situate Jesus in a historical time and place and thus demythologize him.21 And Jefferson had the whole thing handsomely bound in morocco.
A revision he made to his table of contents shows his emerging sense of purpose. He first called it “A Table of the Texts of this Extract from the Evangelists and of the order of their Arrangement.” He later deleted the prepositional phrase “of this Extract” and, after the word “Evangelists,” added the phrase, “employed in this Narrative.” This seemingly minor revision effectively changes the genre of the book. Jefferson clearly realized that the work he was creating was more than “The Philosophy of Jesus,” more than a series of extracts. It was a full-fledged narrative, a retelling of the story of Jesus stripped of superstition. The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth may be the finest biography of Christ ever written.
The Road to Monticello Page 76