I was reflecting on the phrase “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” recently. Most people reading that famous phrase have no idea what those words mean.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you probably know that “the Laws of Nature” refers to a set of semi-formal principles about how people and states relate to each other.  The Laws of Nature are also called the Laws of Nations, or at least they were in 1776.  They were sort of a predecessor to political science.  They were also a kind of code for how relations should relate to each other.  Like the Geneva Conventions are a set of principles that nations should follow during times of war.  The Laws of Nature were principles that were derived by observing human behavior.  They were not a set of laws in the same sense that a State has formal laws.  Rather, they were intended as a set of natural principles, such as we see in mathematics or physics.  

The second part of the famous phrase is “and of Nature’s God,” which is a shortened form of “and [the Laws] of Nature’s God.”  I read somewhere that this refers to revealed laws, that these are the laws of the church.  After having had some time to digest this, I’m not so sure that understanding is correct.  This idea that the Founders believed that revealed faith or religious law was a primary principle in governing the relationships between nations never sat well with me.  

 The words were originally written by Thomas Jefferson.  Jefferson was chosen to write the original draft, perhaps in part because he was a Deist.  He did not have personal attachments to a Christian church, which would have made it easier for him to deny the authority of the Christian King.  His soul was not at stake.  With a Deist as author it could not be claimed that the wording of the Declaration meant one Christian sect was attacking another.  Perhaps.

But what did Jefferson mean by “[the Laws] of Nature’s God?”  I would suggest that may not have been a reference to revealed faith.  Rather, it may have been a reference to natural philosophy.  Where “the Laws of Nature” refers to a semi-formal code of discovered principles, “[the Laws] of Nature’s God” would be natural principles themselves.   Jefferson was not inclined to accept religious revealed law as a proper control over society.  To the contrary, he was very much a rationalist.  He read history.  He knew that when religion held too much sway over a society, tyranny would always be the result. 

Jefferson and the other Founders did believe that government depended on virtue, and that healthy religion was a primary source of virtue.  They knew from reading history that unhealthy religion was a source of corruption.   But I find it hard to believe that the same people who understood the necessity of creating a wall of separation between church and state when creating the Constitution would say that revealed faith was a key part of the relationships between nations.  That just doesn’t make sense.

So I’m inclined to believe that “[the Laws] of Nature’s God” means natural, or rational, truths, and not revealed truths.

I would love to find some documentation about the meaning of this phrase.

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