From the Sinai to Philadelphia

Jun 29

I. Is America a Judeo Christian Nation?

The answer to this question is a simple yes. Over the past 75 years, we have seen an assault on the very foundations of this republic by those who would strip prayer from schools, the Commandments from Courthouses and acknowledgements to our fundamental roots in every corner of America. This “freedom from religion” movement seeks to tear down the miraculous invention that is America. America is the embodiment of a nearly 5000 year journey from the Sinai to Independence Hall and our Declaration of Independence—followed by the Constitution—is the greatest exposition of the Principles necessary for a truly free republic.

In a earlier articles, we examined the concept of freedom and we later examined whether society could be based upon the modern notion of consent which has sought to replace true freedom as the basis of societal cohesion.

As a tribute to Independence Day, we will trace the history of Judeo-Christian Western Civilization and its Magnum Opus found here in the United States.

II. Mosaic Tradition and the Judeo-Christian Moral Law

The philosophical lineage of American principles begins in the ancient Near East with the Mosaic tradition recorded in the Book of Exodus. In that tradition, God reveals a moral law – epitomized by the Ten Commandments – establishing fundamental precepts of justice and righteousness. These commandments and the broader Mosaic Code introduced the radical idea that even rulers are subject to a law higher than themselves, given by a transcendent Creator . The Torah’s legal code was “a bold leap into the future”, pioneering notions of human dignity and equality before the law that would later become cornerstones of Western legal tradition . For example, ancient Israel’s law held that all individuals are entitled to fair treatment: the accused are presumed innocent until proven guilty, can confront accusers, and cannot be punished without due process . Such principles – trial by evidence, prohibition of false testimony, impartial justice – were virtually unprecedented in earlier law codes and foreshadowed the rule of law in modern republics.

Importantly, Mosaic law melded moral and civil dimensions. It governed “man’s relation to man,” “man’s relation to the state,” and “man’s relation to God,” thereby providing an integrated ethical foundation for society . It even delineated an early form of separation of powers: the priesthood was charged with keeping the civil authorities aligned with divine law, while an independent judiciary was established to apply justice – a model faintly echoed by America’s own balance between its constitutional courts and legislature . This Judeo-Christian framework taught that lawful authority exists to uphold God-given order and justice, not to indulge the whims of rulers. The Mosaic covenant thus planted the seed of the idea that legitimate government is bounded by law and morality rather than sheer power – a premise that undergirds the American political system. It is no coincidence that American courthouses and institutions later paid homage to Moses as a primordial lawgiver; for example, Moses holding the tablets of the Law is depicted in the frieze of the U.S. Supreme Court, symbolizing the republic’s indebtedness to these biblical foundations . The Judeo-Christian moral code, with its emphasis on the sanctity of life, moral responsibility, and justice, became a wellspring from which the American Founders drew inspiration in crafting a society of laws under God.

II. Classical Thought: Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero on Natural Law and Virtue

Parallel to the biblical heritage, the political philosophy of classical antiquity provided essential building blocks for American ideas of law and governance. The Founders were classically educated and steeped in the works of Ancient Greek and Roman thinkers, whose concepts of natural law, virtue, and republican order helped shape the emerging nation’s ethos . Plato and Aristotle, towering figures of Greek thought, taught that there are objective principles of justice and goodness that a well-ordered society must uphold. In The Republic, Plato advanced the notion that justice exists when each person fulfills their moral duties and society’s parts harmonize under wise guidance. He emphasized cardinal virtues – wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice – as the bedrock of a good polis. This Hellenic vision impressed upon the Founders the importance of virtue as the lifeblood of any free republic. Indeed, the American experiment would later be described as “the culmination of the Judeo-Christian/Greco-Roman tradition, an experiment of liberty under law.” In that synthesis, Platonic idealism – the quest for transcendent Good – joined hands with biblical faith in a righteous Creator, giving the new nation a sense of higher purpose and moral accountability.

Aristotle, Plato’s illustrious student, further grounded the concept of natural law and virtue ethics. In his Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, Aristotle identified moral virtue as a mean between extremes, cultivated through habit and essential for citizens to govern themselves responsibly. He famously deemed “man is by nature a political animal,” implying that humans realize their purpose in communities governed by justice. Aristotle analyzed different forms of government (rule by one, few, or many) and concluded that a mixed republic – balancing elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy – best secures stability and virtue. The Founders absorbed these lessons, striving to create a balanced system that avoided the pitfalls of tyranny on one hand and mob rule on the other. In designing the U.S. Constitution, for example, James Madison in Federalist No. 51 echoes an Aristotelian insight: government must oblige itself to control the governed but also to control itself, harnessing ambition to counteract ambition – a very classical concern for internal checks against vice. The Founders’ reading of Greek thinkers taught them that liberty cannot endure without virtue, and that the structure of government should channel and encourage virtue among both leaders and citizens.

It was, however, Roman intellectual heritage – especially the works of Marcus Tullius Cicero – that most directly bridged the gap between antiquity and the American founding. Cicero, a statesman of the late Roman Republic, articulated a doctrine of natural law that would resound through the ages and find fertile ground in 18th-century America. In Cicero’s view, true law is nothing less than right reason in harmony with nature, universal and eternal in scope . He wrote that this natural law, established by the Divine Author of creation, “cannot be contradicted by any other law,” and applies to “all nations and all times,” unchanging and everlasting . Furthermore, Cicero insisted that “God himself is its author, its promulgator, its enforcer,” and that any human decree at odds with this higher law is void of legitimacy . Such ideas strongly affirmed what the Bible already taught: that there is a God-given moral order to which civil law must correspond. The American revolutionaries found in Cicero a kindred philosophy justifying resistance to unjust rulers – if a king violates the natural rights of the people, he violates the law of God and nature, and thus forfeits his authority. The influence of Cicero on the Founders was profound; John Adams, for instance, praised Cicero’s republican ideals and loved to recite his orations . Americans in the founding era often likened their cause to the Roman republicans’ defense of liberty against tyranny. They saw Cicero as a martyr for republicanism, a model of principled leadership and eloquence who gave his life to uphold the rule of law . From Cicero, the Founders drew the conviction that natural rights are sacrosanct and that the purpose of government is to protect those pre-existing rights in accordance with transcendent justice.

In summary, classical philosophy supplied the American Founders with critical intellectual content: Plato and Aristotle taught the necessity of virtue and a well-ordered polity, and Cicero furnished the language of natural law and inalienable rights. The Greco-Roman heritage thus blended seamlessly with the Judeo-Christian moral outlook. Modern scholars have noted that at its birth, America perceived itself as “the culmination of the Judeo-Christian/Greco-Roman tradition” – an heir to Moses and Cicero alike. This dual patrimony set the stage for the Enlightenment era, when these ancient ideas of law and virtue were reinterpreted and applied to contemporary government by the leading thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries.

III. Enlightenment Thinkers: Locke, Montesquieu, and Burke Fuse Reason and Faith

By the Enlightenment period, European philosophers were blending classical concepts of natural law with Judeo-Christian theology, producing a rich body of thought that directly informed the American founding. Three figures in particular – John Locke, Baron Montesquieu, and Edmund Burke – offered insights that the Founders drew upon as they designed a new nation. These thinkers varied in emphasis, but each one helped fuse rational political theory with biblical ethics in the American context.

John Locke (1632–1704), the English political philosopher, exerted perhaps the single greatest influence on colonial American political thought. Locke’s writings – especially his Two Treatises of Government (1689) – taught the colonists about natural rights, the social contract, and government by consent of the governed. Locke began from a theological premise: all humans are created by God and thus equal in dignity and rights . In the Lockean view, rights such as life, liberty, and property are endowed by the Creator as part of the natural order. Governments do not manufacture these rights but are established to secure and protect them. Indeed, Locke wrote that the law of nature – discoverable by reason and originating in God’s will – teaches that “being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.” This philosophy meshed perfectly with biblical teachings that murder, theft, and oppression are wrong because human beings bear God’s image. Far from being a secular skeptic, Locke was a devout thinker who saw God as the “binding force” of natural law . He argued that our duties to one another are ultimately “derived from the right which the Creator has over His Creation.” In other words, because God made each person, no king or parliament can ever rightly annul the inherent rights bestowed by God. This Lockean doctrine gave the American revolutionaries a moral framework to reject tyrannical authority: if a government tramples the divinely ordained rights of the people, the people are justified in altering or abolishing that government. Americans widely read Locke during the Revolutionary period – so much so that historians note “outside of the Bible, no writings were more widely read or cited in the revolutionary period than Locke’s.” The American experiment in self-government was, in significant measure, “Lockean in its political and religious outlook”, and “saturated with Christian beliefs about human freedom and human responsibility.” . Thus, Locke provided intellectual reinforcement to the Judeo-Christian idea that legitimate government must recognize God-given human rights and operate only with the consent of the governed.

Another Enlightenment sage, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689–1755), contributed foundational ideas about the structure of government and the virtue of the citizenry. Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws (1748) was avidly studied in America; it was the second-most cited source in political writings of the founding era (after the Bible itself) . Montesquieu, drawing from classical republican theory, famously asserted that different forms of government are animated by different guiding principles. “The republic,” he wrote, rests on virtue – a love of country and of law – whereas a monarchy rests on honor and a despotism on fear . This analysis deeply impressed the Founders. It confirmed for them that a free republic like the United States could only survive if its people cultivated moral virtue and patriotism. American revolutionaries often warned that only a virtuous people can remain free; this was a Montesquieuan idea filtered through their own biblical understanding that private morality undergirds public liberty. Montesquieu’s other great contribution was his championing of separation of powers. He observed the English constitutional system and concluded that liberty is best preserved when the legislative, executive, and judicial powers are held by distinct bodies, able to check and balance one another . This concept directly inspired the architects of the U.S. Constitution – James Madison and his peers enshrined Montesquieu’s principle in our federal government (three branches: Congress, President, and Supreme Court) to prevent the concentration of power. While Montesquieu wrote mainly as a secular analyst of political systems, his ideas harmonized with biblical anthropology: given the reality of human fallenness, it is wise to limit power and oblige government to control itself. The Founders saw the fusion of Enlightenment reason and biblical realism in Montesquieu’s advice. They instituted checks and balances not only because it was politically prudent, but because it resonated with a Judeo-Christian understanding of human nature’s capacity for both virtue and vice. In short, Montesquieu helped Americans design a constitutional order that channeled virtue and restrained sin, reflecting the best insights of both classical theory and biblical wisdom.

A third influential figure, Edmund Burke (1729–1797), was a British statesman and philosopher whose reflections on society and morality echoed powerfully in the American context. Though Burke was a contemporary of the American Revolution (and sympathetic to the colonists’ grievances in Parliament), his most famous work, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), articulated principles relevant to all free societies. Burke insisted on the importance of religion and traditional moral values as the foundation of social order. In a memorable exhortation, he declared: “Religion is… one of the great bonds of human society; and its object [is] the supreme good, the ultimate end and object of man himself.” . This belief—that a shared Judeo-Christian moral fabric holds society together—resonated deeply in America, where most of the population was Christian and viewed civic virtue as inseparable from faith.

Burke argued that liberty must be tempered by duty and that uncontrolled passions lead to ruin. In an oft-quoted maxim, he observed that “men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites… It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” .

The American Founders understood this well. They knew that freedom requires self-restraint – a people lacking moral self-control would eventually succumb to anarchy or tyranny, trading their liberty for the false promises of an all-powerful state. This insight, championed by Burke, actually mirrored biblical teaching: sinful human nature left unchecked leads to bondage, whereas virtue and godliness bring liberty (cf. Proverbs 14:34: “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin condemns any people.”). Consequently, early American leaders from George Washington onward stressed public morality, religion, and education as essential supports for republican government. Burke’s influence thus reinforced the American conviction that moral and religious foundations are not ancillary, but essential, to the survival of free institutions. As Burke saw in the French Revolution, a society that casts off moral restraints and venerable traditions risks descending into violence and despotism. The American experiment deliberately avoided that path by wedding Enlightenment concepts of rights and government to an inherited Judeo-Christian moral framework.

Together, Locke, Montesquieu, and Burke represent an Enlightenment current that did not tear down religion but rather built upon it. Their ideas gave philosophical heft to the colonists’ biblical worldview. Americans in the late 18th century read Enlightenment authors alongside their Bibles and saw no conflict – instead, they saw confirmation. They agreed with Locke that natural rights are God-given, with Montesquieu that good government requires virtue and balanced powers, and with Burke that moral order and religion are the bedrock of liberty. This synthesis of reason and revelation distinguished the American founding. As one historian observed, the population of the early United States was overwhelmingly Christian, and “the Bible was cited more frequently [by the founding generation] than any European writer or even any school of thought, such as Enlightenment liberalism” . In fact, in American political literature of the time, Deuteronomy (one of the books of Mosaic Law) was the single most cited work, appearing nearly twice as often as John Locke’s writings . This statistical fact illustrates vividly how biblical influences permeated the political ethos, even as Enlightenment ideas were being interwoven. The American Founders did not see themselves as inventing a new morality or philosophy from scratch; they saw their work as applying long-established truths of Western civilization to a new constitutional order. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence contained no original new principles but was instead “an expression of the American mind” drawn from “the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, [and] Sidney, etc.” . Jefferson’s summary is telling: he explicitly named Aristotle and Cicero (classical antiquity) alongside Locke and Sidney (Enlightenment), indicating that the American creed was the product of a fusion of Judeo-Christian and classical insights, refined by Enlightenment reasoning. Modern commentators have echoed this view. W. Cleon Skousen, in The 5000 Year Leap, argues that the United States prospered precisely because its founders built upon “universal natural law principles” inherited from common law and Judeo-Christian morality, combined with the best of Enlightenment thought . In Skousen’s words, the Framers fashioned a uniquely free and moral republic by marrying biblical principles with classical wisdom – a political leap forward that drew on 5,000 years of accumulated insight.

The Declaration of Independence: A Judeo-Christian Statement of Natural Rights

The culmination of this rich philosophical and theological lineage is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence (1776). In that seminal document, the American Founders crystallized their convictions about God, human nature, and government’s purpose in a mere few potent lines. The Declaration’s preamble famously affirms: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men 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.” In this single sentence, we hear the clear echo of Judeo-Christian theology joined with natural law doctrine. The assertion that all humans are created equal and endowed with rights by their Creator is a direct reflection of the biblical teaching that God made man in His own image (Genesis 1:27) – an idea which confers inherent dignity and equality on every person. It also reflects Cicero’s and Locke’s contention that rights come not from kings or parliaments but from the Creator’s ordinance in nature . By grounding human rights in divine endowment, the Declaration aligns itself with the long Judeo-Christian tradition of moral absolutes: murder and enslavement are wrong not because a legislature says so, but because they violate the higher law of God who gave man a right to life and liberty. The Declaration’s phrasing of “self-evident truths” also resonates with Enlightenment rationalism – it implies that right reason (accessible to all, much as Cicero described ) confirms what revelation has long declared about human worth.

Crucially, the Declaration goes on to state that “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Here the American creed unmistakably reflects the influence of Locke and the social contract theory, but even more, it encodes a biblical insight about the limited role of government. Government’s role is not to grant rights – rights are antecedent, coming from God – but to guard them. As one commentary explains, the Founders believed “the government’s job is not to give rights to people but to protect the rights they already have.” This principle directly opposes any notion of government as the source of entitlements or the engineer of utopian redistribution. The Declaration makes no mention of the state providing welfare or equalizing property; instead, it posits that when government faithfully secures life, liberty, and the opportunity to pursue happiness (including the ownership of property and the fruits of one’s labor), it has fulfilled its high purpose. Any government that invades or destroys those God-given rights has illegitimately exceeded its mandate. In such cases, says the Declaration, the people may rightfully “alter or abolish” that government – an idea drawn from Locke’s doctrine of the right of resistance against tyranny , and ultimately reminiscent of the biblical precedent of the Hebrews resisting Pharaoh’s oppressive rule in Exodus.

The worldview expressed in the Declaration is, therefore, one of ordered liberty under God. It assumes a moral universe governed by divine Providence, where rights and duties are real and government is morally accountable. Notably, the document refers to God in multiple ways: “Nature’s God,” “Creator,” “Supreme Judge of the world,” and “Divine Providence.” These references correspond to philosophical aspects of God familiar to the founders: God as the author of natural law (Nature’s God, in Enlightenment parlance), God as the giver of rights and existence (Creator, as in Genesis), God as the ultimate moral adjudicator (Judge), and God as the loving guider of history (Providence). Such language was no mere formality; it underscored the Founders’ belief that the legitimacy of their revolution and the new nation’s institutions rested on a transcendent moral order. In a sense, the Declaration of Independence baptized the political theories of Locke, Montesquieu, and others with explicitly theological meaning. Equality, inalienable rights, consent of the governed, and the right to resist tyranny – these were presented not just as clever political concepts but as truths anchored in the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” This gives the American founding its distinctive Judeo-Christian republican character. Unlike the French Revolution, which tried to remake society on a purely secular model, the American Revolution blended Enlightenment ideals with a biblical ethos, yielding a stable republic “with liberty and justice for all.”

In the United States, then, political freedom was established on a consciously religious and classical foundation. The Founders did not create a theocracy – indeed, they guaranteed freedom of religion and prohibited any national church – but they built a political order compatible with and indeed predicated on the moral truths of the Judeo-Christian tradition. As President Calvin Coolidge later observed on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration, “The principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence are absolutely final… [We] cannot continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.” Those principles were the cause that produced the American republic: a belief in God-given rights, in the rule of law, in the virtue of the people, and in government as a protector of liberties rather than a grantor of favors. Generations of Americans have recognized this inheritance. In 1981, the historian W. Cleon Skousen encapsulated it by noting that the Constitution and American liberty “were established upon … traditional Judeo-Christian morality” and natural law, implemented by a wise structure of governance . The United States, in this sense, can truly be called a Judeo-Christian nation – not in that it imposes one sectarian faith, but in that its very conception of rights, law, and justice is rooted in the biblical-classical worldview.

Conclusion

The idea of America as a Judeo-Christian nation refers to this profound philosophical and theological lineage that gave birth to its institutions. From the moral laws of Moses on Mount Sinai to the forums of Athens and Rome, from the treatises of Enlightenment philosophers to the deliberations in Philadelphia in 1776, a continuous thread of principle runs through history: the conviction that true liberty is a gift of God, that justice must accord with His moral law, and that government exists to uphold, not suppress, the rights and duties inscribed by God in human nature. The American Founders, acting as heirs of this tradition, wove together biblical covenantalism, classical republicanism, and Enlightenment liberalism into a new political fabric. The resulting republic was one “built upon Judeo-Christian and classical ideas to form a uniquely free and moral” society , as evidenced by its founding documents and early laws. This heritage does not deny the nation’s diversity or the Enlightenment’s contributions; rather, it illuminates how the light of antiquity and revelation guided the Founders’ hands. In declaring that all men are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”, the United States of America set itself on a course firmly anchored in the Judeo-Christian vision of human dignity and moral order. And by charging government to merely secure those rights under the watchful eye of Divine Providence, the Founders ensured that the American experiment in liberty would ever remind itself of its higher accountability – to Nature’s God and the timeless standards of righteousness and justice