We Hold These Truths

The Founders' Rejection of Postmodern Relativism

© Brian Tubbs

Jun 21, 2007

On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, making the fourth of July forever the nation’s official birthday.

The most famous lines of the Declaration of Independence read:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident: that all Men [meaning mankind] are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights: that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

There are many cultural, philosophical, and political dimensions and angles to the Declaration of Independence. This article will focus on one, namely the declaration of absolute truths and the rejection of relativism.

Philosophy professor and author Douglas Groothius explains that the Declaration’s author and signatories “argued their case by presupposing that truth was objective and knowable, that it rested on ‘the laws of Nature and Nature’s God,’ and that it supported their position against the British.”

This presumption of truth and the argument that objective truth underlined the American cause of independence and thus its claim to nationhood is one of the most important, and yet overlooked, facts of American history. The reason it is overlooked is because it opens the door to some rather uncomfortable questions – among them, the role of religion in public life.

One Nation Under God: America's Ultimate Truth Claim

According to the Declaration of Independence, God (referred to alternately as the “Creator,” “Nature’s God” and the “Supreme Judge”) created the universe and all life, intended all humanity to be equal, and endowed each human being with “unalienable rights” that include “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Let there be no misunderstanding. These are not mathematical or scientific laws, nor are they material hypotheses. These are religious statements. What’s more, these “self-evident truths” are laid out in an emphatic manner which leaves no room for dissent!

The Founding Fathers were driving a stake in the ground, declaring that the United States of America would be dedicated to these “self-evident truths” and the “unalienable rights” of its people.

The truth is that the Founding Fathers established the United States of America on religious truth claims – and they brooked no dissent!

But…But…isn’t Truth “Relative”?

It has become fashionable in the postmodern West to reject absolute truth claims in the areas of ethics, morality and religion. While we can know truth in mathematics, say postmodernists, there is too much uncertainty in the arenas of faith or philosophy for certitude to be possible.

A 2002 survey by the Barna Group showed that Americans, by a 3-1 margin (64% to 22%), held truth to be “relative to the person and his or her situation.”

This survey, as disturbing as it is, is an inevitable reflection of what postmodernism has done to western culture. Postmodernism, broadly defined, refers to the questioning and/or skepticism of modernist movements and assumptions. In a philosophical, epistemological context, postmodernism essentially throws the door open on truth as well as reality itself.

Postmodern relativists have, in fact, challenged the ability of humanity to discern, understand, or grasp truth or knowable facts in virtually every area of enterprise – from history to archaeology to science to religion and even to language itself.

This represents a dangerous slide into a hopeless chasm of chaos and despair. Douglas Groothius explains that, according to this postmodern view, “all human eyes are hopelessly prejudiced” and “truth dissolves into endless perspectives, which are accountable to nothing outside of themselves.”

The Wisdom of the Founders

In contrast to postmodern relativism, the Founding Fathers held a general worldview that was shaped by an Aristotelian concept of Truth. Aristotle was one of the most influential philosophers in the development of western thought and was a pioneer of deductive logic and what has come to be known as the “Correspondence Theory” of Truth.

The correspondence theory of truth, inspired by Aristotle’s writings on logic as well as his famous syllogism model, holds that truth is that which “corresponds to reality” and that it is recognized through objective means.

Postmodern culture has increasingly veered away from the correspondent theory of truth, preferring instead more open-ended worldviews that respect feelings, choices, and imagination. But this was not the way or wisdom of the Founders.

John Adams declared that “it is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand.”

And Thomas Jefferson, though not a Christian, drove the point home emphatically in an 1817 letter to a friend:

The evidence of [the] natural right [of expatriation], like that of our right to life, liberty, the use of our faculties, the pursuit of happiness, is not left to the feeble and sophistical investigations of reason, but is impressed on the sense of every man. We do not claim these under the charters of kings or legislators, but under the King of Kings.

The Founding Fathers didn’t rest the claims of America’s nationhood or the claims of unalienable rights on the feelings of people – be they legislators, kings, or common ordinary citizens. They rested them on Nature’s God – or, according to Jefferson’s 1817 letter, the “King of Kings.”

This is both a religious claim and an Absolute Truth claim. For the Founders, they saw no automatic or necessary conflict between Truth and Religion (certainly not the core tenets of Judaism and Christianity). It’s a shame that many people today do.

Print Article

View All Articles

How to subscribe to feeds