Is America A Christian Nation, Part X, What George Washington Tells Us Today

From the last installment in our series, Is America A Christian Nation, we understand Lincoln's opinion that all rights of secession for the individual states that comprise the United States of America were relinquished under the Articles of Confederation, the supreme law of the land at the time, which was ratified in 1781.  With Lincoln's help, we understand the validity of the proposition that those rights could not be restored under the Constitution unless the conditions under which they were relinquished in the Articles were satisfied, namely, that all states comprising the union must agree for a state to secede.

The main principle that we bring forward here is that, according to Lincoln, and according to the reasoning we have employed in the previous installments, the Constitution is not a standalone document.  The Constitution is a document subject to certain preexisting conditions laid out in the state documents which preceded it. The point of that argument is that, since the authority of the Constitution is subject to the conditions set forth in its precursors, and since operating under its immediate precursor, the Congress of the United States of America ratified a treaty subjecting itself to the authority of the Holy Trinity, that fact would place any sovereign authority conveyed from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution, under that same source of authority, namely, the authority of God of the Bible, including the new Testament.

But why should we take Lincoln's word for it?  And why should we believe ourselves in any of this.  We are mere laymen, not Constitutional scholars, right?  Perhaps our own reasoning is faulty in a manner that we cannot yet see.  And no man is without error.  Lincoln was mortal. We are mortal.  So to really conclude that Lincoln was right, and that we are reading these documents as they ought to be read, it does seem proper that we should seek other authoritative opinions on the matter, from individuals whose authority springs from first hand knowledge of these circumstances and events, and whose reputation is considered impeccable by virtually anyone with whom we may confer.  So to fill that authoritative role in our discussion here, one such individual we might consider would be George Washington, the individual universally admired as the father of our country, and investigate what he might have left for us to consider today.

Fortunately for these purposes, in Washington's Farewell Address, an address offered as he was leaving office as the first president under the United States Constitution, George Washington stated plainly his understanding of the meaning of the United States of America.  In that address, this individual who understood like few others what the American Revolution was all about, a man who, knowing the meaning of the revolution, and also signed the Constitution, offers us the following:

It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great Nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt, that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages, which might be lost by a steady adherence to it ? Can it be, that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a Nation with its Virtue? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature.

So according to George Washington, as he was leaving office after two terms as the first president under the Constitution, America in his mind is an “experiment” designed to test whether Providence  has connected the “permanent felicity” of a nation with that nation’s “virtue.”  That statement says volumes.  George Washington contends that the United States is more than just a nation among nations.  Washington tells us today that America is truly an experiment designed to determine whether a virtuous nation, in God's eyes, could elicit God's protection, protection by the divine Providence.  Washington tells us that this experiment is underway; it is not concluded by any measure, but that the "experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature."

Of course, this aspect of the divine Providence, Washington understood, is a direct reference to the terms of Declaration of Independence.  In future installments in this series we will look at that document, the Declaration of Independence, and explore its true meaning.  But for our purposes here, it is sufficient that in his farewell address, after serving two terms under the Constitution, George Washington understood that God held a vital role in the founding of America.  And by his statement, Washington demonstrates his understanding that God's role was not simply to authorize America going forward and then sit back and watch.  No, Washington understood that God's role was one practically identical to the role of God in Old Testament, God Who led the Israel out of Egypt and Who provided protection for Israel, that is, as long as Israel obeyed His commands and respected His authority.  Washington therefore offers for us to consider that only a nation who obeys the commands of a just and benevolent God, can be a nation "guided by an exalted justice and benevolence."

Now an exhaustive reading of the terms of the Constitution cannot yield support George Washington's conclusion.  There is nothing within the terms of the Constitution that even remotely refers to the divine Providence, nor any source of guidance such as "exalted justice and benevolence."  The Constitution is self-proclaimed a product of men.  Men are fallible.  Men make mistakes in conferring justice.  Men are questionably benevolent.  And the Constitution offers no particular source of guidance that might incline the hearts of men to understand and utilize exalted justice or benevolence in their decisions, only their own opinions and personal preferences.  Because this is true, in making such a statement in his farewell address, Washington could only have been referring to standards of human behavior that are set in place outside of the Constitution, prior to the Constitution, but which standards serve as necessary conditions that authorize the Constitution. 

And so, without even yet considering the profound meaning behind the excerpt of George Washington's farewell address we bring forward, as is the case in Lincoln's special address to congress of July 4, 1861, it is unavoidable to conclude that both of these men understood the same thing, and that is that the Constitution is not a standalone document.  Both of these men understood that the Supreme Law of the Land in the United States of America truly consists of three documents, the Declaration of Independence, which among other principles invokes the concept of the divine Providence, the Articles of Confederation which established the first formal government and made the union perpetual, and the terms of which authorize the Constitution, and the Constitution itself, a document that relies on certain authority having been conveyed from each of the first two. 

In our next installment in the series, Is America A Christian Nation, we will travel from the sublime to the ridiculous, from the principles of "exalted justice and benevolence" to the principles of men whose intentions are to bastardize those very principles, changing their meaning, attempting to establish new meanings for their own transient purposes.  But in doing so, we will discover that the truth cannot be hidden; that placing a veil of falsehood over the truth only more convincingly contrasts the truth from all else, and that the truths established under the Declaration of Independence unavoidably serve as authority for our Constitution today.  In our next installment, we will consider the Dred Scott Decision and how that affront to justice and benevolence, shines the light of truth on the Constitution today.

I'll be back soon..

Hank