FREE ESSAY ON BEN FRANKLINS RELIGION

BEN FRANKLINS RELIGION

Although in his Autobiography Benjamin Franklin claims that at a young age he became a
thorough Deist (1359), Franklin saw God as much more than a blind watchmaker. Among his
frequent references to practicality, reason, and the value of experimental science,
Franklin's metaphysical beliefs [2] easily get lost, especially as he distances himself
theologically from colonial Christian doctrines. It becomes convenient but incorrect to
let Franklin's virtue stand apart from his religious beliefs. Franklin maintained a firm
belief, however, in a Being of infinite Wisdom, Goodness and Power (165) [3], a God who
by providence [4] acts frequently in the world, a power who could and would suspend
deterministic natural laws at will. Deism, tho' it might be true, was not very useful to
the young Franklin (1359). Specifically, a purely deterministic view of a God-created
universe was absurd and useless precisely because it would require God to blind himself
(On the Providence of God in the Government of the World, 166). Franklin's God is useful
first because he chooses to help and favour us via divine intervention (168). [5]
Franklin's God is useful, second, because he inspires us to perform our own good actions.
[6] Primarily these good actions arise out of thanksgiving to God. [7] While Franklin
believes that these good actions procure God's favor (168) in that God loves those of us
who do good to others (179), [8] Franklin recognizes that most of his countrymen would
not agree with this formulation of theology, a kind of streamlined, doctrine-free
Christianity in which the question of Christ's divinity makes no difference. [9] As a
result, in his writings Franklin tends to stress the usefulness of virtue and virtuous
deeds apart from any mention of theology. He elevates to the level of doctrine That
Virtuous Men ought to league together to strengthen the Interest of Virtue, in the World
(179), thus placing virtue in the context of a human community which both encourages it
and exercises it. [10]
Indeed Franklin's theology claims God's favor not for those with right beliefs, but for
those with right actions. He asserts that God prefers Doers of the Word to the meer
Hearers (476). [11] His proof-text is Matthew 7:16-27, especially verse 26: [12] But
everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a
foolish man who built his house on sand (NIV). In a letter to his parents, he paraphrases
that at the last Day, we shall not be examin'd [by] what we thought, but what we did;
[namely] GOOD to our Fellow Creatures (426). [13] In fact he goes so far as to suggest
that A virtuous Heretick shall be saved before a wicked Christian. [14]
Well done is better than well said.
How many observe Christ's Birth-day!
How few, his Precepts! [15]
Just as Franklin is able to incorporate Christ without colonial Christianity into his
religion, he is able to incorporate Scripture without commandment. Again, from the
perspective of his Autobiography, he notes that while he had not followed God's laws
merely because they were rules (and possibly arbitrary ones), he nevertheless found the
laws to accord with reason. Whether an act is forbidden or expected by God comes
naturally out of the act's inherent badness or goodness for man (1359-60). Franklin uses
this idea also in Poor Richard 1739 (1213), adding the terms sin and duty. Franklin's
religion is comfortable with both the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature, one
informing the other, and reason informing both.
It is to this concordance of faith and reason with which I conclude, [16] by focusing on
a self-described turning point in Franklin's religious and moral life: his adoption of
his own Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion in 1728 (a kind of liturgy, 83 ff.). In
his Autobiography, he writes of his disgust with the preaching of doctrine rather than
virtue, his abandonment of Presbyterianism, and the cessation of his church attendance
(1382, 1383). To replace these, Franklin simultaneously, or within a short span of
time—it is nearly a continuous thought in Part Two of the Autobiography, and
collapsed into one sentence in Part Three—adopted both the Articles of Belief and a
plan for moral Perfection (1383). Even in his book of virtues, he includes prayers to God
and verses on God's goodness (1388). Franklin seems to have used the same liturgy
throughout his life (e.g., he refers to it in a letter in 1743, p. 427); he remembers it
twice at age 78 (1383) and 82 (1396) in the Autobiography, at the very end of his life.
What we remember is the moral perfectionism, the book of virtues with its careful system,
but we wrongly neglect its twin, the new religion that Franklin carved out for himself.
Bibliography
NOTES
1. Benjamin Franklin, Writings, ed. J. A. Leo Lemay (New York: Library of America, 1987),
Poor Richard's Almanack 1740, p. 1218. Further references to Lemay's volume appear within
parentheses.
2 . For example, That Men's Minds do not die with their Bodies, but [persist] after this
Life, Doctrine to be Preached, 179.
3. He repeats this trio of attributes as late as 1771 in his Autobiography, not to
dispute them but to dispute his earlier conclusion that they showed that God had created
a perfect world (1359, where he claims that recognizing a human ability to choose virtue
over vice, had propelled him toward moral perfectionism).
4. Providence for Franklin means neither a supernatural provision of what goods man ought
to provide for himself (cf. the letter to John Franklin, pp. 428-29: if it comes to
sacking a town, better to depend on works than faith), nor that very human providence by
which we provide for ourselves (and to which Franklin very frequently exhorts us), but
simply any act of God in the world. God acts separately from the universal Chain of
Causes; this is providence (Poor Richard 1734, p. 1189). When an event seems like mere
fortune, Franklin pronounces it providence. See, tellingly, Franklin's changing of
Fortune to Providence at one point in his Autobiography (Lemay's note at p. 1558). At the
beginning of the Autobiography, however, Franklin also uses providence in the more
standard sense of God's giving of good things, for which he thanks God (1308).
5. Hence Franklin writes as doctrine that God may reward us in this very world (Doctrine
to be Preached, 179).
6. This is the more familiar aspect of Franklin's God, on which the value of the virtues
rests. Cf. John 15:9-17.
7. The connection is made clear in Franklin's book of virtues (quoted in the
Autobiography, p. 1388): O Powerful Goodness! . . . Accept my kind Offices to thy other
Children, as the only Return in my Power for thy continual Favours to me. (To the
establishment of this little book I return below.) It is again made clear much later, in
a letter to Joseph Huey in 1753: in response to numberless Mercies from God . . . I can
only show my Gratitude . . . by a Readiness to help his other Children (475). Cf. also
Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania, p. 342, n. 3: Doing Good to
Men is the only Service of God in our Power; and to imitate his Beneficence is to glorify
him, and Poor Richard 1747, What is Serving God? 'Tis doing Good to Man, p. 1241.
Elsewhere, Franklin further counsels adoration and prayer in addition to thanksgiving, as
other acts of worship (Doctrine to be Preached, 179).
8. At the same time, in Franklin's theology these actions cannot merit Heaven itself (he
describes Heaven as an infinite, eternal happiness), which is infinitely beyond our
ability to merit (letter to Joseph Huey in 1753, p. 475; he makes the same point in a
letter to his sister in 1743, p. 427).
9. Franklin goes so far as to claim salvation (i.e., Heaven; see above) for those who
have followed Christ's example tho' they never heard of his Name (476; my emphasis).
Further, Franklin downplays doctrine and all metaphysical Reasonings, including his own,
as subject to error via a host of human weaknesses, including youth, custom, and
education. Thus great humility in one's theological opinions, which counsels very wide
religious toleration, is eminently reasonable and practical (Autobiography 1359; a letter
in 1738, p. 425; a letter to Thomas Hopkinson(?) in 1746, p. 435; Poor Richard 1757, p.
1291). For an example of the kind of theologizing that Franklin is discrediting, see his
own Letter from Theophilus, Relating to the Divine Prescience, pp. 290-91. Many a long
dispute among Divines may be thus abridg'd, It is so: It is not so. It is so; It is not
so, Poor Richard 1743 (1230).
10. A third usefulness of Franklin's God is that he is outlined broadly enough, in a
theology general enough, that Franklin can claim him as the basis for all true religion,
one which always puts a premium on virtue (e.g., Autobiography, p. 1382).
11. In this same letter to Huey, Franklin goes on to give examples from Scripture of
Christ's actions and parables in this regard. Franklin comes out here as a proponent of
faith, though he laments that its exercise does not often enough result in good works: I
mean real good Works, Works of Kindness, Charity, Mercy, and Publick Spirit; not
Holiday-keeping, Sermon-Reading or Hearing, performing Church Ceremonies, or making long
Prayers, fill'd with Flatteries and Compliments, [and not so] capable of pleasing the
Deity. The Worship of God is a Duty, the hearing and reading of Sermons may be useful;
but if Men [do also no good deeds], it is as if a Tree should value itself on being
water'd and putting forth Leaves, tho' it never produc'd any Fruit. He says just about
the same in a letter to his sister, p. 427, in which he again quotes Mt. 7:16, etc., that
one judges someone's goodness by his good fruits; again in Dialogue Between Two
Presbyterians pp. 256-57 and likewise on p. 258; and in Compassion and Regard for the
Sick, pp. 169-70, where charity is proposed to be the true spirit of Christianity.
12. Not Matthew 26, as Franklin incorrectly writes to his parents (426; Lemay does not
note the error). See also Luke 6:43-49. The letter also quotes a couple of words from
Matthew 7:22.
13. See footnote 9. Cf. Matthew 7:16-23; Luke 6:43-46; John 15:9-17: those who live
fruitfully will be saved, while those who merely use God's name in vain and do no good
works, will be rejected.
14. This is suggested by S, the more Socratic Presbyterian who seems to speak Franklin's
mind, in Dialogue Between Two Presbyterians, p. 261. Suggested as proof is a verse such
as Matthew 9:13, that some people are righteous and in no need of Christ (though this is
contrary to the usual Christian exegesis of the verse, in which Christ's coming is
precisely to counter Franklin's and S's kind of pride!). Franklin uses the same verse
with the same purpose in his letter to Joseph Huey, p. 476.
15. Poor Richard 1737, p. 1205; Poor Richard 1743, p. 1230.
16. Several important aspects of or nuances about Franklin's religion to 1757 have been
left out due to space constraints: Silence Dogood on hypocrites and putting the Law above
the Gospel, p. 27 (cf. acting in fear of the law rather than for the love of God, Timothy
Wagstaff, p. 54); Franklin's struggles with pride (cf. his visit to the old woman who
confessed her vain thoughts every day, p. 1350); argument by design; the necessity of a
public religion and a religious character among citizens—especially
Christianity—but apart from superstition, and its relation to education, pp. 336-37
(and cf. also Poor Richard 1757 p. 1294 and his remark on Boyle, p. 1250); and religious
toleration in the Junto, p. 207 (cf. Franklin's support of all manner of religious
construction projects, and his support for Whitefield).