I am still reading through Mark Noll’s book America’s God, and my wife was kind enough to buy my own copy for my birthday! (I had been reading a library copy and dropping lots of hints–”I am loving this book!  It’s one of the best books that I have read in a long time!” etc…)  I got a few other good books for my birthday, but they will have to be the subject of another blog post for another day.

Noll devotes a chapter to “Theistic Common Sense,” a belief that came to the forefront of American theology in the 18th century.  The basic idea was that humans are capable of knowing the world directly, through their immediate senses.  Older philosophers had argued that ideas that stand between our minds and the data that come through our physical senses.

The upshot of such philosophy is a much lower margin of error.  If I can know the world directly, then no mere ideas can come between me and my understanding of the world to confuse me.  Moreover, philosophers who argue on the basis of Common Sense philosophy don’t have to spend as much time proving their theories because they “hold these truths to be self-evident.”  (Sound familiar?  This stuff is very deep in our national psyche.)

From a Christian perspective, Common Sense philosophy has major problems.  Christians have always argued that human beings are fallen, and thus that we have a distorted perspective on the world.  While some Christians are more generous in their estimation of human reason than others, I think that Augustine (along with many who followed him closely on such points, such as Martin Luther and John Calvin) was the closest when he absolutely denied our ability to think rightly about anything whatsoever–God, ourselves, the world, etc.–apart from God’s grace enabling us to think rightly.

We simply do not have common sense about the world because our sinful nature always distorts whatever we think we know toward sinful purposes.  Only the grace of God can renew our minds.

Noll’s argument, then, is that it was highly ironic that American theologians gobbled up Common Sense philosophy as they did.  At first, many did so to justify rebellion from England, and then to elevate republican political principles above all reproach.  The line in the Declaration of Independence that holds “these truths to be self-evident” does both with one stroke of (the Deist) Thomas Jefferson’s pen.

Later, Common Sense philosophy’s self-justifying logic made its way into theology in general.  To illustrate the extreme irony, Noll quotes John Trumbull who, writing in the 18th century, recognized the problem:

As he described the “New System of Logic [Common Sense philosophy],” it contained a fatal contradiction.  On the one hand was traditional Christian ethics: “First, That the common sense and reason of mankind is so weak and fallacious a guide, that its dictates ought never to be regarded.”  But on the other hand was the new moral philosophy: “Secondly…nothing is so great that it can surpass, or so perplexing that it can entangle, the understanding of a true metaphysician.  Trumbull understood the logic of the age and so was able to poke fun at the reasoning processes that were just beginning to exert their sway: “I can take these points to be so nearly self-evident that although I can say very little in proof of them, the reader ought for this very reason the more firmly to believe them.  For such is the nature of every self-evident proposition that no arguments can be brought to prove it.” (America’s God, p. 112)

American Christians need to recognize the legacy of Common Sense philosophy arises whenever we too strongly believe in our own abilities to think, reason, and hold “self-evident” opinions.  This issue, however, is worthy of another post which will come out later this week.

Related posts:

1. Should We Hold Any Truths to be Self-Evident?
2. Jonathan Edwards, Covenant Theology, and American Politics
3. Book Review: The Closing of the American Mind
4. How Democracy Fails
5. How Democracy Succeeds