“If Men Were Angels”: The Augustinian Influence on the US Constitution

This essay is a lightly edited version of a speech Dr. Horton gave at the Nixon Library in 2018. Part political history and part historical theology, he traces the influence of Catholic and reformational convictions about the fallenness of human nature on the development of early modern political thinkers (especially James Madison) and forms of government (especially the US republic). Horton offers a fascinating and nuanced example of the truth that, in all areas of life, theology really does matter.

Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651) and Benedict Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670) were animated by different contexts and concerns. Shaken by civil war and the destabilizing religious sectarianism of the English interregnum, Hobbes’s great fear was political pluralism. His answer was an exclusive right of the sovereign over the public sphere. Since this included religion, the church must be an institutional expression of the sovereign’s will.

Excommunicated from the Amsterdam synagogue for infidelity, Spinoza belonged to a liberal pietist community that shared his disdain for the dominance of the Reformed church in particular and the authority of “the priesthood” embodied in creeds, confessions, liturgies, sacraments, and discipline. While Spinoza praised the Dutch Republic as the freest nation in Europe, the indefatigable clergy-led opposition to his pantheistic and fatalistic system represented the greatest threat to what he called “freedom to philosophize.”

Motivated in part by their own heterodox theological views, both Hobbes and Spinoza sought to subordinate the church to the state in the form of a civil religion. This could be realized in an absolute monarchy akin to Restoration Britain or in a democracy modeled on the Roman republic, but the outcome in either case was freedom from religion—at least religion as a sphere independent of the state. Apart from such assimilation, Hobbes and Spinoza insisted, the power of the priests would continue to exert inordinate influence over the public life of citizens.

Both thinkers argued that genuine religion (that is, one based entirely on buttressing the dictates of morality known by nature) should be not only tolerated but encouraged by the state. Their distinctive dogmas and rituals, however, do not belong to the realm of public reason and are of no use as an incentive to public virtue. It is when religious institutions range beyond their mandate of reinforcing civil morality (or, in Hobbes’s case, whatever the sovereign decrees) that they must be reined in by the state. If we hear echoes of Hobbes and Spinoza in the contemporary theories of John Rawls and Richard Rorty, then we should discern the stronger echoes of Martin Luther and John Calvin—and behind them, Augustine—in James Madison.

Like other American founders, Madison was indebted to John Locke and especially to the French historian and jurist Montesquieu. A key principle of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws (1748) is that “government should be set up so that no man need be afraid of another.” However, his close analysis of history, especially Rome’s transition from republic to empire, demonstrated that this state of mutual trust could not be taken for granted. It could never depend on the benevolence of the sovereign or of any administration but had to be secured by laws that clearly separated the powers. Unchecked, human ambition always leads to despotism, regardless of its particular form: absolute monarchy, oligarchy, or mob rule. If Augustinian-Reformation theology played a crucial role in forming Madison’s view of human nature, then Montesquieu offered practical advice on how to formulate the separation of powers constitutionally. It was Scottish clergyman John Knox Witherspoon’s lectures on moral philosophy, however, that seem to have had the most impact on Madison’s thinking.

Founded in 1746 to train Presbyterian ministers, the College of New Jersey (later Princeton) invited Witherspoon in 1768 to become the school’s president. A staunch evangelical in the Church of Scotland, Witherspoon was also indebted to Scottish common sense philosophy. As an ardent defender of the distinction between spiritual and temporal authority, Witherspoon believed that while only the gospel is a saving remedy, natural law and philosophy could encourage civic virtue. Under Witherspoon’s leadership, the college fulfilled its original mission of educating “ornaments of the State as well as the Church.” His students included a US president and vice president, nine cabinet officers, twenty-one senators, thirty-nine congressmen, three Supreme Court justices, and twelve governors. The lion’s share of the members on the drafting committee at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, including James Madison, were Witherspoon’s students.

Though a Virginian, Madison chose Princeton over William and Mary. Even after he finished his degree, he stayed on to study Hebrew and theology with Witherspoon independently and frequently expressed his debt in later years to Witherspoon’s instruction and personal relationship. “Man is everywhere considered as in a fallen and sinful state,” said Witherspoon. “Everything that is prescribed to him, and everything that is done for him, goes upon that supposition.” And yet, because of God’s providence and the fact that human beings are created in God’s image, there remains a civil virtue sufficient to curb the passions of self-love.

Federalist #51

Many of America’s founders were attracted to the French Revolution and its egalitarian ideals. However, the great anthropological premise of the US Constitution is not the goodness and perfectibility of human nature but the very opposite. At least outside of Britain, many Enlightenment thinkers were devotees of the French Revolution, with its utopian expectation of the imminent perfection of human nature and history. This included Immanuel Kant, John Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. Many of America’s founders were also attracted to the Unitarian and Deistic trends in Britain and especially France. In fact, led by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Unitarians in New England had already held an unceremonious funeral for Calvinism with its doctrine of original sin. While the Enlightenment had a large place in the thinking of America’s founders, it is difficult to imagine that a form of government built on such an assumption could have evolved from such sympathies. So what accounts for this lack of optimism?

The most important and abiding influence of Witherspoon on Madison—and therefore our constitution—is a very un-Enlightenment view of human nature. In Federalist Paper #51 (published from 1787 to 1788), Madison argues,

The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department, the necessary constitutional means, and personal motives, to resist encroachments of the others. . . . Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man, must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.

It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

Progressives love to quote the first half of Madison’s argument: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary,” while conservatives highlight the second half: “If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” Madison, however, affirms both equally, grounding them in a sober view of human nature: Neither individuals nor governments are angelic. Calvin made the same point in a sermon based on Galatians 3:19–20, “The Many Functions of God’s Law” (1558). “If we were like angels, blameless and freely able to exercise perfect self-control, we would not need rules or regulations.”

Unlike Aristotle and many today, Madison did not believe any more than Luther or Calvin that good laws make good people. On the contrary, because of humanity’s inveterate self-love, the state is authorized to restrain its civil effects and the state itself needs to be restrained. In Federalist #10, Madison states, “Since the causes of factions cannot be removed, . . . relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its effects.” In #51, he writes:

This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public. We see it particularly displayed in all the subordinate distributions of power, where the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other—that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights. These inventions of prudence cannot be less requisite in the distribution of the supreme powers of the State.

Not to be left to the realm of general theory, the rest of Federalist #51 offers detailed prescriptions for the practical checks and balances on government. We do not have a great constitution because Madison thought the American people were great, but because he was convinced they share in the common corruption of the human race.

“No Angels”: Augustinian-Reformation Anthropology

In a number of important respects, the Reformation constituted another source of early American thought in ways that more closely parallel England’s experiment with republicanism. None of the Protestant Reformers could have foreseen the dawn of political and economic liberalism; in fact, their opposition to the radical Anabaptists reinforced their generally conservative approach to revolutionary systems. Driven by a concern to recover the gospel from its “Babylonian captivity,” Luther found himself and his cause opposed on every hand by an absolute papal monarchy. Calvin, the second-generation Reformer, sought greater independence for the church from its domination by Geneva’s magistrates. Like Luther, Calvin was shaped by Augustine’s distinction between the “two cities”: the City of God, which is spiritual and eternal, and the City of Man, which upholds (with varying degrees of modest success) important but penultimate justice, freedom, and security in temporal affairs. These two kingdoms “must not be mingled,” Calvin insists. In fact, he says, the laws that governed the theocracy of Israel under Moses are no longer in force. So long as the general principles of natural law engraved in human nature are upheld, a modern constitution is valid.

Like Luther, Calvin emphasized the dignity of all human beings as God’s image-bearers and the dignity of worldly callings, including civic participation and service. Both Reformers were convinced that humanity is fallen. Though still capable of civic righteousness (i.e., virtuous acts in the public sphere), the children of Adam are not capable of attaining justification before God or renewal of their fallen nature by their own efforts. Furthermore, since justification comes through faith alone, and faith is a gift of God through the gospel, both Reformers insisted it could not be coerced. They assumed there would still be cooperation between church and state. There is no anticipation here of the First Amendment to the US Constitution. And yet many of the elements are present that would make such a move plausible theologically to conservative Protestants as well as Unitarians and Deists.

Calvin was also trained in classical jurisprudence. His first work was a commentary on Seneca’s On Clemency (c. AD 55), widely used in law faculties in France. This background made the Genevan Reformer a keen student of political systems; nevertheless, given his theological commitments, he exercised restraint in pronouncing on their relative merits. His brief remarks in the Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559) insist that the gospel is not dependent on any political system and that the church has found itself in a variety of societies with diverse constitutions. If allowed, he adds tentatively, he would prefer a combination of aristocracy and democracy. “It is an invaluable gift if God allows a people to elect its own government and magistrates.” In addition, there should be several political institutions or branches, with checks on any one gaining inordinate power over the other. As Lee Ward explains,

Calvin’s republican sympathies derived from his view of human nature as deeply flawed. Compound or mixed governments reflect the reality that human frailty justifies and necessitates institutional checks and balances to the magistrate’s presumed propensity to abuse power. It was this commitment to checks and balances that became the basis of Calvin’s resistance theory, according to which inferior magistrates have a duty to resist or restrain a tyrannical sovereign.

Conclusion

Madison’s influences can hardly be reduced to Christian, much less Reformation-oriented, sources. Nevertheless, the US Constitution is similar to the Constitution of the United Provinces (Netherlands), a fact Madison himself observed in Federalist #20. In contrast, there are few if any influences from Hobbes, Spinoza, or Rousseau. In a 2009 Harper’s article, historian Scott Horton observes, “A number of historians, pointing to the overlap between pockets of Calvinism and democracy, convincingly argue that Calvinist thought propelled Enlightenment values including respect for the dignity of humankind and democracy.”

While Thomas Jefferson might justify the separation of church and state with more Spinoza-sounding arguments (freedom from the “Athanasian and Calvinistick [sic] divines”), Madison’s reasoning favors freedom of religion more than freedom from it. For example, he challenged Patrick Henry’s call for a tax to support Christian teachers—not on secularist grounds but because the state is incompetent and unauthorized to intrude upon the more important matters of eternal salvation. Who will grant to the state the privilege of determining which is a true church and which is the true doctrine and worship? A citizen pays taxes to support common welfare and defense but participates in the church “with a saving allegiance to his Universal Sovereign.” Therefore, “Religion is wholly exempt” from the authority of “Civil Society.” Such a tax for instruction in Christian doctrine would make teachers of doctrine employees of a lesser kingdom, Madison adds, referring directly to the Reformation doctrine of the “two kingdoms.”

Madison’s personal faith is ambiguous. Although a member of the Presbyterian Church, he seems gradually to have moved in a more nominal direction. Yet he remained a product of his education, much of which he apparently still found intellectually persuasive.