Thomas Jefferson: All American Heretic?

Thomas Jefferson was an American Founding Father who was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence (1776) and the third and fourth President of the United States (1801–1809).

A leader in The Enlightenment, Jefferson was a polymath who spoke five languages and was deeply interested in science, religion and philosophy. His interests led him to assist in founding the University of Virginia in his post-presidency years. While not an orator, he was an indefatigable letter writer and corresponded with many influential people in America and Europe. His views on slavery were complex, and changed over the course of his life. He was a leading American opponent of the international slave trade, and presided over its abolition in 1807. In the past, Jefferson has often been rated in scholarly surveys as one of the greatest U.S. presidents, though since the mid-twentieth century, historians have increasingly criticized him, particularly on the issue of slavery.

Thomas Jefferson rejected the orthodox Christianity of his day and was especially hostile to the Catholic Church as he saw it operate in France. Throughout his life Thomas Jefferson was intensely interested in theology, biblical study, and morality. As a landowner he played a role in governing his local Episcopal Church; in terms of belief he was inclined toward Deism and the moral philosophy of Christianity.

In a private letter to Benjamin Rush, Thomas Jefferson refers to himself as “Christian” (1803): “To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence.”


Thomas Jefferson praised the morality of Jesus Christ and edited a compilation of his teachings leaving out the miracles. Thomas Jefferson was firmly anticlerical saying that, “In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot. They have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes.”

Jefferson rejected the idea of immaterial beings and considered the idea of an immaterial Creator a heresy introduced into Christianity. In a letter to John Adams, Jefferson wrote, “To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But a heresy it certainly is. Jesus taught nothing of it. He told us indeed that ‘God is a spirit,’ but he has not defined what a spirit is, nor said that it is not matter. And the ancient fathers generally, if not universally, held it to be matter: light and thin indeed, an etherial gas; but still matter.”

Clearly, in spite of many attempts to rewrite history to make Thomas Jefferson appear to be a Bible believeing Christian, little about his philosophy resembles that of orthadox Christianity either then or now.

The Jefferson Bible, or “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth” as it is formally titled, was Thomas Jefferson’s effort to extract the doctrine of Jesus by removing sections of the New Testament containing supernatural aspects as well as perceived misinterpretations he believed had been added by the Four Evangelists.

In an 1803 letter to Joseph Priestley, Thomas Jefferson states that he conceived the idea of writing his view of the “Christian System” in a conversation with Dr. Benjamin Rush during 1798–99. He proposes beginning with a review of the morals of the ancient philosophers, moving on to the “deism and ethics of the Jews,” and concluding with the “principles of a pure deism” taught by Jesus, “omitting the question of his deity.” Thomas Jefferson explains that he does not have the time, and urges the task on Priestley as the person best equipped to accomplish the task.


In another letter to John Adams on January 24, 1814, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “The whole history of these books(the four Gospels) is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.”

Using a razor, Thomas Jefferson cut and pasted his arrangement of selected verses from the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in chronological order, mingling excerpts from one text to those of another in order to create a single narrative. Thus he begins with Luke 2 and Luke 3, then follows with Mark 1 and Matthew 3. He provides a record of which verses he selected and of the order in which he arranged them in his “Table of the Texts from the Evangelists employed in this Narrative and of the order of their arrangement.”

The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth begins with an account of Jesus’s birth without references to angels, genealogy, or prophecy. Miracles, references to the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus, and Jesus’ resurrection are also absent from The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. It does, however, include references to Noah’s Ark, the Great Flood, the Tribulation, and the Second Coming, as well as Heaven, Hell, and the Devil. The work ends with the words: “Now, in the place where He was crucified, there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they Jesus. And rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.” These words correspond to the ending of John 19 in the Bible.

After completion of the Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, in about 1820, Thomas Jefferson shared it with a number of friends, but he never allowed it to be published during his lifetime.

The most complete form Thomas Jefferson produced was inherited by his grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, and was published in 1895 by the National Museum in Washington. The book was later published as a lithographic reproduction by an act of the United States Congress in 1904. For many years copies were given to new members of Congress.

Thomas Jefferson was obviously a Deist. Deism in religious philosophy is the belief that reason and observation of the natural world, without the need for organized religion, can determine that the universe is the product of an all-powerful Creator. According to deists, the Creator does not intervene in human affairs or suspend the natural laws of the universe. Deists typically reject supernatural events such as prophecy and miracles, tending instead to assert that a god (or “the Supreme Architect”) does not alter the universe by intervening in it. This idea is also known as the Clockwork Universe Theory, in which a god designs and builds the universe, but steps aside to let it run on its own.

Deism became more prominent in the 17th and 18th centuries during the Age of Enlightenment — especially in Britain, France, Germany and America among intellectuals raised as Christians who found they could not believe in supernatural miracles, the inerrancy of scriptures, or the Trinity, but who did believe in one God. Deistic ideas also influenced several leaders of the American and French revolutions.

In the United States, Enlightenment philosophy (which itself was heavily inspired by deist ideals) played a major role in creating the principle of religious freedom, expressed in Thomas Jefferson’s letters, and the principle of religious freedom expressed in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. American Founding Fathers, or Framers of the Constitution, who were especially noted for being influenced by such philosophy include Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Cornelius Harnett, Gouverneur Morris, and Hugh Williamson. Their political speeches show distinct deistic influence.



Benjamin Franklin wrote in his autobiography, “Some books against Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the substance of sermons preached at Boyle’s lectures. It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist. My arguments perverted some others, particularly Collins and Ralph; but each of them having afterwards wrong’d me greatly without the least compunction, and recollecting Keith’s conduct towards me (who was another freethinker) and my own towards Vernon and Miss Read, which at times gave me great trouble, I began to suspect that this doctrine, though it might be true, was not very useful.” Benjamin Franklin also wrote that, “The Deity sometimes interferes by his particular Providence, and sets aside the Events which would otherwise have been produced in the Course of Nature, or by the Free Agency of Man.” He later stated, in the Constitutional Convention, that “The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men.”

For his part, Thomas Jefferson is perhaps one of the Founding Fathers with the most outspoken of Deist tendencies, though he is not known to have called himself a deist, generally referring to himself as a Unitarian. However, one unpublished Ph.D. dissertation has described Thomas Jefferson as not a Deist but a “theistic rationalist”, because Thomas Jefferson believed in God’s continuing activity in human affairs. The first-found usage of the term “theistic rationalist” is in the year 1856. In his Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson stated that he “trembled” at the thought that “God is just,” warning of eventual “supernatural influence” to abolish the scourge of slavery.


Obviously, only God Almighty can judge the heart of a man. I pass no judgement on Thomas Jefferson or any of the Founding Fathers. Whether they were truly Christians or not is a matter between God and them. We know, however, that the Bible warns us from subtracting or adding to the Scriptures. Thomas Jefferson has some serious explaining to do on Judgement Day for his creation commonly known as The Jefferson Bible.

(Deuteronomy 4:2 ESV)

(Deuteronomy 12:32 ESV)

(Revelation 22:18-19 ESV)

Thomas Jefferson’s entire work, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, otherwise known as The Jefferson Bible can be read in its entirety at the following link: The Jefferson Bible.

As Christians, we should have the attitude that there are no parts of the Bible that we don’t believe, don’t like, or won’t teach, preach or obey. We cannot be like Thomas Jefferson, who brazenly sat down in the White House with a razor in one hand and a Bible in the other and cut out the portions he rejected, asserting his authority over the authority of God. We cannot be like those who are more subtle than Thomas Jefferson and simply ignore parts of the Bible as primitive, dismiss them as outdated, or explain them away with human reasoning.


2 comments on “Thomas Jefferson: All American Heretic?

  1. Time and time again I like to think about this issue. As a matter of fact it wasn’t even a month ago that I thought about this very situation. Frankly, what is the answer though?

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