The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum "Theological Penumbra in the Constitution" by David W. Hall

This year, thankfully, is giving rise to many reviews of the Declaration of Independence. Toward that end, we a republishing are few resources to help this who wish to commemorate, leading up to the July 4th celebration. These posts are collected in a small volume, Declaring Independence: Revealing Dependence (2025) if you or friends wish to have the series as a package.

Theological Penumbra in the Constitution

We can gain enormous insights into the Constitution itself within that context, as a covenant blossoming from roots extending from Geneva and from antiquity as far back as the Old and New Testaments. Concepts cogently articulated in The Federalist Papers had a lasting influence on the population. In Federalist #55, Madison spoke of an innate human propensity to harm (a “degree of depravity”) that required an institutional distrust. Checks and balances were required to limit the “infirmities and depravities” of man. John Jay warned similarly against the “folly and wickedness of mankind.” Jefferson himself echoed this uniquely Calvinistic theme: “Free government is founded on jealousy, not in confidence; it is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind those we are obligated to trust with power. In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.”[1]

The early American suspicion of man’s perfectibility helped, according to Charles Dunn, “lead them to create a government in which the people directly elected only the members of the House of Representatives, with membership in the Senate, the Courts and the president being indirectly elected by the people.”[2] Religion in general, and the Protestantism flowing from the European Reformation in particular, was intertwined with the earliest acts and documents of America, from the colonial founding and also in the founding documents from 1776 to 1789.

The Constitution of the United States, proposed in 1787, is a document that on the surface is not religious. However, traces of its origins within a religious tradition are readily apparent. The preamble invokes the theological term, “ordain,” a term frequently reserved for an act by divine agency. While it would be odd for humans to “ordain” (they are fully entitled to “establish”), God had been depicted for two previous centuries as ordaining human government. It is likely that the very use of “ordain” is a vestige of a particular theological view.

The Constitution moves quickly to enunciate the separation of powers, which Hamilton had described as a custom of recent origin. Acknowledging that Congress has “legislative” power (again contrasted with “magisterial” [reserved for God] or “ministerial” power), a bicameral form was adopted to provide checks and balances against too much power accruing to a single agency of government. Even in the selection of senators and representatives, electors—buffering agents—were warranted (I: 2). Resembling the “ephors” (in Ponet and Althusius, for example), these electors formally select the executive (II:1). Originally and until the 1913 ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment, senators were chosen by the state legislatures, not by direct election (see original I: 3).

Checks and balances were further ensured by granting the Senate “sole power” to try impeachments (I: 3); reaffirming the Calvinist view that even the highest official was subject to removal. Although impeachment was limited to removal from and prohibition against holding office in the future, nonetheless, if convicted, a previously elected person was “liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment according to law” (I: 3), as any other citizen.

To further limit elected officials from consolidating multiple offices or from arrogating more power than they ought to themselves, they were prohibited from holding any other office while serving in Congress (I: 6). In turn, American congressmen and senators were granted freedom of speech and protection against prosecution for “any speech or debate in either House” (I: 6).

Section eight of the first article of the Constitution provided a defined scope for the federal government. Specifics were delineated, and the central government was well limited. Along with the clarifying language of the Tenth Amendment (“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”), it was clear that the national government was proscribed from involving itself in every area of life, no matter how well intentioned. Specifically, this section called for duties, imposts, and excises to be “uniform throughout the United States.” “Weights and measures”[3] (the term is frequently used in the Old Testament; see Prov. 20:10, Lev. 19:35, Dt. 25:14) were to be regulated fairly by Congress; armies were to be funded with appropriations no longer than two years; no titles of nobility were to be granted; and “No capitation or other direct tax shall be laid unless in proportion to the census.”

Not only was the federal government strictly confined in keeping with Reformation era thought, the states themselves were limited (I: 10). The executive power was circumscribed (II), and the constitution itself guarantees a republican form of government to every individual state of this union (IV: 4), so widespread was the acceptance of republican principles.

Most scholars believe that the Bill of Rights,[4] ratified December 15, 1791, elaborates the original intent of the United States Constitution. Several of those amendments are rooted in Reformation protocol.

The formal separation of church from state establishment, as existed in Great Britain and other European countries, was defined by the First Amendment. Religion itself was not prohibited; only the agency and authority to establish it. Neither could Congress prohibit the free exercise of religion. That the subject of religion is at the head of the Bill of Rights is of no small importance. It may be that the remaining First Amendment rights were viewed as flowing from the hearty and free exercise of religion. Freedoms of speech and the press, and rights to assemble and call the government to account, developed historically with the westward spread of the Reformed faith. The Calvinistic-republican nexus had come to support such rights, and British Puritans worked diligently to secure those same liberties.

The recognition that citizens had a right to regulate militias and keep arms (which was “necessary to the security of a free State”) was designed to prevent tyranny and keep the executive in his place. Likewise, the Third Amendment prohibited the federal government from housing its troops in private homes as European monarchs had often done. Neither could governors, under Reformation and American principles, intervene in citizens’ private “houses, papers, and effects”; these were protected against unlawful searches and seizures. No government prior to this had granted its citizens such extensive protections. Other judicial provisions appointed juries for trials, ordered indictment by peers (not monarchs), and gave protection from “excessive bail,” clearly protecting Americans from many of the abuses earlier experienced by the Puritans in England.[5]

On the eve of the Revolution, Americans were united in a theo-political tradition. Edmund Burke, in his effort to effect parliamentary conciliation in 1775, attributed that unity to religion, saying: “Religion, always a principle of energy, in this new people, is no way worn out or impaired; and their mode of professing it is also one main cause of this free spirit. The people are protestants; and of that kind, which is most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion.”[6] This virile Protestantism had continued for a century and a half and was thriving amongst the great mass of Americans on the brink of the Revolution, even if not all of the elite intelligentsia preserved the old religion. The Genevan connection, in other words, was still robust.

Instead of construing America’s founding in isolation from its historical and theological paternity, some scholars who appreciate the religious influence of the Reformation view the American Revolution as the completion of previous movements like the Genevan Reformation, the Dutch 1581 Declaration of Independence, and the Glorious Revolution of 1688.[7] Each of these early mini-Revolutions is like a rising tide moving against the shoreline of history. Each successive wave carries further up the beach, but with high tide all marks of these earlier waves are erased. When the revolution is complete, only the final water line remains visible.[8]

A comprehensive historical assessment recognizes that America was founded not merely in 1607, 1776 or 1789, but as part of “intermittent social conflict and insurrection over many decades.”[9] It makes historical sense to view the 1776-1789 period as the climax of an international movement rather than as the beginning of a new tradition. Such a view also allows one to understand and assess the dominant religious forces in those precursor revolutions—Calvinism in Switzerland, Calvinism in Holland, Calvinism in England, and Calvinism in Scotland and Ireland. Americans, built on foundations established by a long line of predecessors, naturally associating Calvinistic republicanism with their worldview, which they thought to be founded on biblical truth.

The right to rebellion, justified within a system of religious beliefs, first flourished between the time of Calvin and Rutherford. Americans with their deep religiosity would not dare undertake a revolt against the crown without strong and reputable religious justification. The intellectual base of such justification was found originally in the thought of Calvin, Beza, Martyr, Hotman, and Knox’s disciples.

Colonists in America saw themselves as heirs of a tradition with both theological and political components. They believed that they were spiritually justified, if not compelled, to resist bad government and institute moral government based on biblical standards. They saw themselves as the progeny of previous revolutions, and they assumed that the “principles of the Glorious Revolution had been upheld in the colonies also.”[10] The Americans looked to many of the heroes later enshrined on Geneva’s Reformation wall, Calvinists like William of Nassau, William III, Admiral Coligny, John Knox, and George Buchanan.

Burke and others would no doubt have agreed with a modern biographer of one of Calvin’s disciples who wrote about Calvin’s ideas as contained in his Institutes: “[W]hatever its author’s intentions and whatever our intellectual tastes,” it was “the most revolutionary publication of that century.”[11] Calvin’s contribution may have been the most revolutionary of the millennium.

Anniversary celebrations of our nation’s independence can be richly appreciated first as celebrations of dependence on ‘Nature’s God.’
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[1] Cited in Charles W. Dunn, ed., American Political Theology (New York: Prager, 1984), 12. Note the similarity of phrase to Rutherford’s admonition to chain the ruler.

[2] Charles W. Dunn, ed., American Political Theology (New York: Prager, 1984), 12.

[3] Besides alluding to the Judeo-Christian view of the Sabbath (I: 7 does not allow Sunday to count as a business day), the Constitution also upholds the Mosaic standard, requiring at least “the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt Act” (see Dt. 19:15) for conviction of treason (III: 3).

[4] The Northwest Ordinance (1787), which was reconfirmed in 1789 (with the agreement of Madison, Washington, and other founders) stipulated, similar to Adams’ proposals for Massachusetts’ Constitution, that each township perpetually set aside a parcel “for the purposes of religion,” and that “the fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty [were] the basis of all laws, constitutions, and governments.” See Thomas G. West, “Religious Liberty: The View from the Founding,” in Daniel Palm, ed., On Faith and Free Government (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 19.

[5] Samuel Rutherford, author of Lex Rex, e. g., was imprisoned for his writings (without such juridical protections), and his subversive books were burned.

[6] Cited in Jonathan C. D. Clark, The Language of Liberty, 1660-1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 11

[7] Jonathan C. D. Clark, The Language of Liberty, 1660-1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 219. Clark, 226-230, also traces other smaller and lesser-known British uprisings that referenced similar Reformation principles.

[8] Jonathan Clark, 295-296, even suggests that the American wars of 1776-1783 are better viewed as a civil war than as a revolution.

[9] Jonathan C. D. Clark, The Language of Liberty, 1660-1832, 220.

[10] Jonathan C. D. Clark, The Language of Liberty, 1660-1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 249. Earlier E. Doumergue, among others, referred to the Glorious Revolution as a “triumph of Calvinist ideas.” Robert M. Kingdon, Calvin and Calvinism: Sources of Democracy (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Company, 1970), 3.

[11] Donald R. Kelley, Francois Hotman: A Revolutionary’s Ordeal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 18.

Excellent. So few know this or even think about this today.