The Fall and the American Founding

Christians interested in America’s founding have typically been preoccupied with one question above all others: Was the United States founded as a Christian country? Concerning the Constitution specifically, we’ve wanted to know whether the Framers of that document were men of genuine Christian faith who were determined to establish an explicitly Christian government. But let me suggest that we’d gain more insight by turning our attention from the Framers’ theology to their anthropology—from what they thought about God to what they thought about us. Doing so is not only key to comprehending the Framers’ handiwork in 1787 but can also help us in understanding American politics two and a half centuries later.

Almost without exception, the fifty-five men who took part in the Constitutional Convention held their religious views close to the vest. They produced a document that never refers to God, does not cite the Bible, and is silent concerning the religious questions that so divide Americans today. Throughout the four-month-long convention they abstained from making explicitly religious arguments, and they showed the same reticence during the state-level ratification debates that followed. In contrast, they were constantly proclaiming their views on human nature, and the reason that they did so was plain: they were convinced that no framework of government could long succeed that did not take human nature rightly into account. As George Washington observed to John Jay on the eve of the Constitutional Convention, “We must take human nature as we find it.”

The Founders were convinced that no framework of government could long succeed that did not take human nature rightly into account.

So let’s ask three simple but crucial questions: (1) What was the Framers’ view of human nature? (2) How did their view inform the Constitution? and (3) To what degree was their view compatible with the Bible? Note that this final question doesn’t ask whether the Framers’ understanding of human nature stemmed from their personal religious faith, whether they were self-consciously applying Christian insights as they crafted the Constitution, or whether the document they produced is evidence that they aspired to forge a Christian nation. As much as we might wish otherwise, we lack the evidence to answer any of those questions definitively. Instead, we’ll pose a question that is just as important and far easier to answer.

The Framers’ view of human nature

Like so much of their understanding of the world, the Framers’ assessment of human nature was complicated. On the one hand, they were consciously embarking on an experiment in self-government, and that presupposed a degree of optimism concerning the capacity of humans to govern themselves. They sought to enhance that capacity by promoting the inculcation of virtue, a character trait which they defined as the willingness to sacrifice personal interests for the good of the community.

On the other hand, the Framers discerned a basic selfishness in the human heart that consistently trumped virtue. In short, human nature mixed elements of “rectitude” and “venality,” as Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist no. 76. The former justified a measure of “confidence,” James Madison noted in Federalist no. 55. The latter necessitated a healthy dose of “distrust.”

The Framers devoted more attention to the latter. While they had no doubt that humans are capable of morally admirable acts of courage or compassion or sacrifice or generosity, they were equally certain that the “stern virtue” that places the common good above self-interest “is the growth of few soils,” as Hamilton observed in Federalist 73. George Washington, who chaired the Constitutional Convention, maintained that “the motives which predominate most in human affairs [are] self-love and self-interest.” Pennsylvania delegate James Wilson observed, “It is the nature of man to pursue his own interest, in preference to the public good.” New Jersey delegate William Livingston agreed that “it is extremely difficult, for the best of men, to divest themselves of self-interest.” James Madison, often remembered as “the Father of the Constitution” for the seminal role that he played, lamented that “self-love” is “sown in the nature of man.” Or as Madison put it privately in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, “Wherever there is an interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.”

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The Framers’ view and the U.S. Constitution

And so, even as they praised virtue and exhorted their fellow Americans to practice virtue, the men who gathered in Independence Hall in Philadelphia in 1787 did not craft the Constitution with a virtuous citizenry in mind. Following Washington’s advice to “take human nature as we find it,” they sought instead to structure the government in such a way as to compensate for “the defect of better motives,” as Madison explained in Federalist 51. To be blunt, they assumed that both government officials and common citizens would be prone to selfishness, and they designed the Constitutional system accordingly.

It was a monumental challenge. Human selfishness meant that the propensity to abuse power would always be present—in any form of government. This meant that power would always be a threat to liberty, whether that power was wielded by a king, a dictator, or a democratic majority. The Framers’ daunting task, then, was to find a way to give the government sufficient power to promote the general welfare without creating at the same time a Frankenstein’s monster that could devour citizens’ liberty. As Madison famously observed in Federalist 51, their goal was to “enable the government to control the governed” and at the same time “oblige it to control itself.”

To enable it to “control the governed,” the Framers granted the federal government a host of prerogatives that had been denied the government under the Articles of Confederation—most notably the power to tax and regulate commerce—while also distancing the Senate, the president, and the federal judiciary from undue popular pressure. (As originally conceived, members of the House of Representatives would be the only popularly elected federal officeholders.)

To oblige the government “to control itself,” the Framers devised the separation of powers and “checks and balances” that most of us were introduced to in junior high but have rarely thought deeply about since: the tripartite structure of the government, the division of the legislative branch into two houses, the executive’s power to veto acts of the legislature, the legislature’s role in approving executive treaties, and so forth. Nearly two and a half centuries later, these provisions fairly shout to us the Framers’ understanding of human nature, especially their keen awareness of the tendency of human beings to abuse power. It’s no exaggeration to say that the Framers’ awareness of human selfishness permeates the document that they created.

The Framers’ view and the Bible

This brings us to our third question: was the Framers’ view of human nature compatible with the Bible’s understanding of it? The answer, without a doubt, is an emphatic “Yes!” Historically, Christians have grounded their understanding of human nature on two doctrinal pillars: the concepts of imago Dei and original sin. The doctrine of imago Dei teaches that we bear the image of God and thus occupy a unique place in God’s created order.

The Framers never spoke explicitly of imago Dei, but they took for granted two of the key attributes that theologians associate with the divine imprint on human beings, namely the faculty of reason and a capacity for moral discernment. Had they doubted that humans possessed such traits, their commitment to a form of government grounded in the consent of the governed would have made no sense.

A second relevant doctrine, the doctrine of original sin, instructs us that our rejection of God’s rule has defaced the divine image we each bear, marring though not obliterating it entirely. Since “the Fall,” each of us enters the world as a natural rebel against our rightful ruler. Our hearts are characterized by “recalcitrance” and “concupiscence,” as Augustine put it in The City of God, driven above all to rule ourselves and please ourselves.

Whether the Framers believed in this doctrine in its fullest theological sense is questionable. They rarely spoke of “sin” at all, much less “original sin,” and yet their view of human selfishness at the very least overlapped with that doctrine extensively. When the Framers insisted that none of us is naturally inclined to virtue—that the act of denying ourselves to promote the good of others is contrary to our nature—Christians around the country could have cheerfully responded, “Amen!”

The importance for democracy

In sum, although the Framers didn’t use religious language in articulating their understanding of human nature, nor did they appeal explicitly to Scripture or Church teaching to justify their assessment, on the whole, their view—whatever its origins or foundation—was broadly compatible with orthodox Christian understandings of the earthly implications of imago Dei and original sin.

I would add that, for Christians who want to think Christianly about the underpinnings of the Framers’ constitutional vision, the Bible’s teaching on the imago Dei and original sin are invaluable. The two concepts in tandem capture the tension at the heart of the Framers’ philosophy of government. If the traits associated with imago Dei make self-government possible, the corroding effects of original sin make self-government problematic. It was a brilliant accomplishment to fashion a form of government that would make allowance for both.

Sadly, Americans today generally don’t understand this underlying foundation of the Constitution.

Sadly, Americans today generally don’t understand this underlying foundation of the Constitution, nor do we, on the whole, subscribe to the understanding of human nature that guided the Framers. Especially is this true regarding the concept of original sin. Numerous opinion polls reveal that a large majority of Americans—typically two-thirds to three-fourths of respondents—believe that most humans are naturally good. This is not a new development. Whatever was being taught from America’s pulpits in the early decades after independence, in the realm of political rhetoric, at least, the presupposition of essential human goodness had replaced the Framers’ beliefs within two generations.

A shift in beliefs

By the 1830s, politicians were routinely proclaiming what I call “the democratic gospel,” namely, the good news that humans are not naturally selfish, but rather virtuous by nature. Here it’s instructive to compare the farewell addresses of the country’s first and seventh presidents. In 1796, George Washington used his final message to the nation to warn Americans of “that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart.” Four decades later, Andrew Jackson praised his countrymen for their “high tone of moral character,” rhapsodized that they were “uncorrupted and incorruptible,” and reassured them that “the cause of freedom will continue to triumph” as long as they remain “true to themselves.”

If Jackson’s rhetoric sounds familiar, it’s because his presidency marked the inception of the political world we now inhabit and take for granted. In democracy as Americans have lived it for nearly two centuries, vote-seekers routinely pay tribute to the wisdom of the people and impute an intrinsic moral authority to their preferences. If this strikes us as utterly unexceptional, as little more than white noise, that’s partly because it’s so ubiquitous, and partly because it gives voice to what the culture now accepts as a truism.

One of the great benefits of history is that, when we pay attention to the past, it enables us to see aspects of our present that have become invisible to us.

One of the great benefits of history is that, when we pay attention to the past, it enables us to see aspects of our present that have become invisible to us. Even a brief review of the Framers’ understanding of human nature underscores the chasm that separates their view from the dominant view among contemporary Americans.

The Framers did not craft our Constitution for a people who were “uncorrupted and incorruptible,” but for citizens who would always be prone to “self-love and self-interest.” In Christian terminology, they fashioned a form of government for a “fallen” people. In forgetting that fact—and in rejecting belief in original sin itself—Americans today miss one of the Framers’ greatest insights, and arguably the message from our past that we most need to hear: Given humankind’s fallen state—what the Framers would have called our lack of virtue—a free and just society is as fragile and unnatural as it is precious.