A Letter from a Father to His Son in 1994
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As we saw, though, Jefferson also assured us of this:
Nor was the unity of the Supreme Being ousted from the Christian creed by the force of reason, but by the sword of civil government, wielded at the will of the fanatic Athanasius. The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs.
Here, Jefferson is making two statements: (1) The idea of three persons in one God did not even see the light of day until some fanatics gained control of a strong central government willing to force such an idea down people’s throats with the point of a sword; and (2) whatever influence and acceptance it has enjoyed was due to nothing but the ability of its advocates to slaughter those who dared to think differently.
Despite the fact each of his assertions is pure rubbish on its very face (After all, it takes little effort to look about you and see it is trinitarianism and NOT anti-trinitarianism which is currently thriving on its own.), they have some plausibility for a very simple reason: From shortly before the Council of Nicæa in 325 A.D. to about the time of the Council of Constantinople in 381 A.D. (also known as the Second Ecumenical Council), Christian history was characterized by numerous conflicts (bloody and otherwise) between the trinitarians and the anti-trinitarians. In those day, the latter were known as "Arians" after a priest from Alexandria, Egypt (Remember! Mohammed wasn’t born until about 570 A.D.; and so, Egypt was then by no means the Muslim nation it is today.), who was, by far, the most famous advocate of the notion Jesus Christ was not "true God from true God" and not "the same substance as the Father." They were also known as "Eusebians" after Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia (a city near Nicæa) and later of Constantinople. He was Arius’s chief supporter.
Only those familiar with none of the details of that conflict could characterize those years as a time in which "the sword of civil government, wielded at the will of the fanatic Athanasius," went about ousting "the unity of the Supreme Being from the Christian creed." Contrary to what Jefferson alleges, St. Athanasius was mostly the target of "the sword of civil government" rather than its manipulator. Why do I say that? To ease the burden of following my answer, the next page presents a chart showing the chain of emperors who headed the Roman Empire during the years in which the Arian controversy raged [This chart is not given here in this sample.].
With a list at hand of the emperors involved, it’s merely a question of determining which side of the conflict which emperor favored. Perhaps more to the point, it’s a question of learning which emperor did what to St. Athanasius. The logical starting point is, of course, Constantine.
Could the emperor Constantine be characterized as a puppet of St. Athanasius?! Hardly! He was, rather, one of St. Athanasius’s tormentors. First, he ordered St. Athanasius to receive his arch-enemy, Arius, back into communion. In 335 A. D., he then removed St. Athanasius from his position as bishop of Alexandria, Egypt, and sent him into exile for two and a half years at the capitol of Gaul--a place we would today call Trier, Germany, near the border with Luxembourg.
When Constantine died, he was succeeded, in the Western Empire, by his son Constantine II and, in the Eastern Empire, by his son Constantius. Despite the fact Constantius was an Arian, his older brother Constantine II apparently had enough influence with him to have St. Athanasius restored to Alexandria in 340. Shortly after Constantine II died that same year, St. Athanasius was again tossed out in 341, and he took refuge in Rome for three years. In 345, Constantius, without ceasing to be a staunch ally of the Arians, apparently had a change of heart in St. Athanasius’s regard, and he was allowed to return for 10 whole years. Then, in 356, despite a vow he would never again listen to St. Athanasius’s accusers, the emperor Constantius had yet another change of heart and again went after him. This time they sought to arrest him. He, however, escaped and hid for 6 years among the hermits of "Upper Egypt"--a name given to those regions of Egypt much further to the south along the Nile river.
When Constantius died in November of 361, Julian the apostate ascended the throne. Intent on restoring paganism, he was indifferent to the Arian conflict, and St. Athanasius returned again as bishop of Alexandria. Unfortunately, for all his vaunted indifference to the theological battles among the Christians (He was supposedly concerned only with the purification of paganism’s principles.), Julian, too, decided St. Athanasius was one Christian that definitely needed to be removed from the picture. So, shortly after his return from six years of hiding, St. Athanasius was again removed by an imperial mandate. Julian, though, didn’t live long. When he died in 363 A.D., St. Athanasius returned to his bishop’s chair in Alexandria. The new emperor, Jovian, supported him; but, he too quickly died and was succeeded by the Arian emperor Valens.
Within about 12 months of becoming emperor, Valens, too, ordered the exile of St. Athanasius in 365 A. D., but allowed him to return after only four months. The remarkable bishop then enjoyed about 8 years of peace before he died May 2, 373 A. D..
In sum, of his 45 years as bishop, 17 & ½ were spent in exile--having been driven there five different times by that "sword of civil government" which, according to Jefferson, the emperors "wielded at the will of the fanatic Athanasius." His is an assertion more ludicrously contrary to historical fact than the human tongue can describe.
To be sure, after Valens perished in battle against the Goths in 378, his successor, Theodosius the Great, turned against Arianism. Since, at that time, St. Athanasius had already been in his grave for five years, Theodosius could hardly be said to have wielded the sword of civil government at the will of "the fanatic Athanasius". Here again, Jefferson’s knowledge of ecclesiastical history is atrociously defective to say the very least.
To support the historical accuracy of what I’ve said in the last two paragraphs above, I’ve enclosed three sets of papers: (1) TAB J: an article from vol. 2 of the 1901 edition of The Encyclopedia Britannica; (2) TAB K: 2 articles from vol. 1 of the 1992 edition of The Encyclopedia Britannica; and (3) TAB L: 2 articles from vol. 2 of the 1993 edition of The Encyclopedia Americana. I’ve highlighted the most pertinent passages in various colors. It would be nice to think you will read every word; but, it’s by no means necessary for you to do so, and I don’t really expect you to. For that reason, I will here bother to draw your attention to a very few of the more telling passages [These passages are not here described in this sample.].
The sum of it all is this: The reference works are agreed that, from about 334 A.D. (when Constantine fell under the influence of Eusebius of Nicomedia) to about 378 A.D. (when Valens died), the sword of civil government was mostly turned against the trinitarians and was wielded at the will of the Arians. For 44 years, the state soug
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About the Book
Kenneth was born on July 21, in the year of Our Lord 1962. That was the same year in which, on Nov. 9, I commenced 13 years of living as a kind of wandering hermit. My hope was to have as much spare time as possible to spend talking to God and studying the great writings of the Catholic Church. That rapturous, 13 year search ended in Aug., 1975, when my father lost his mind, and I had to care for him and my mother for the remainder of their lives. Kenneth came into my life, on Aug. 12, 1982. That was less than a month past his 20th birthday and almost a year to the day from my father’s death on Aug. 27, 1981. After 11 years of such things as father’s day cards, hearing him refer to me as his dad, and having him come to me for advice more times than I can count, I formally adopted him in December of 1993, as is duly recorded in the official court records of the Parish of St. Tammany, State of Louisiana, as Instrument #889499. In the course of one of his many attempts to tap my mind for whatever information he could extract from it, Kenneth asked me if I knew anything about Unitarianism. If I remember correctly, his knowledge of it was limited to a dictionary entry which made a connection between Unitarianism and Jefferson--a connection with which I was somewhat familiar, because I had read some of Jefferson’s writings, and his opinions on theological topics were among the many notes I extracted from his writings in the course of reading them. When Kenneth presented me with what his dictionary said, I took issue with it. That promptly precipitated from Kenneth a request that I explain the reasons behind my refusal to go along with his dictionary. Since, at the time, I was visiting with him in Spartanburg, SC, I could not access my notes and, consequently, promised I would, as soon as I returned home, send him a letter containing the requested information. The promised letter--here reproduced in the pages to follow--was commenced on Jan. 3, 1994, and not completed until Feb. 19, 1995. What caused this letter to turn into something that lengthy? As one might expect, Jefferson’s praise of Unitarianism (i.e.: belief in a "god" who is one person) was accompanied by an attempt to sling a hefty amount of mud upon Trinitarianism (i.e.: belief in The God Who is Three Persons) and its most famous defender in antiquity--namely: St. Athanasius. The mud consisted mainly of the hackneyed nonsense of accusing all Trinitarianism’s supporters of being bloody butchers who slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands all who dared merely to think differently from themselves. In the process of hurling his charges, Jefferson distorted well-known historical facts in a manner so outrageous, I decided I should present my son with a fully detailed exposure of that distortion’s outrageousness. At the same time, I judged it necessary to go into an analysis of the psychological factors which could propel either Jefferson or any one else into the arms of intellectual perversity as pronounced as Jefferson exhibited. That, of course, meant presenting my own personal view of how human motivation works at its most fundamental levels. At the same time, I knew that--in presenting that unpleasant view--I had to make it quite clear that I was not thereby attributing to myself a fundamental motivation truly superior to that of Jefferson and company. That, then, is how this letter started out to describe (1) Unitarianism and (2) Jefferson’s thoughts on it and other religious themes, but quickly moved on to (3) evidences of early Christian belief in The Blessed Trinity, (4) the true history of St. Athanasius, (5) the issue which was actually central to Christian violence, (6) American disregard for the denunciation hurled by the Declaration Of Independence at "that rule of warfare which is the undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions", (7) Jefferson’s way of twisting history compared to Edward Gibbon’s way, (8) Jefferson’s duplicity on the issue of slavery and the implication of that duplicity, (9) my versus Jefferson’s personal merit, and (10) genuine morality and its connection with salvation. That, of course, is by no means an exhaustive list of the topics covered; but, it will give you some idea of how wide is the net cast by this letter. May God grant the net is not so wide and heavy as to drown you before the journey’s end.
About the Author
Born April 13, 1936, in New Orleans, Louisiana, the author graduated from Jesuit high school, in New Orleans, in 1953. A single fruitless semester studying music at Loyola University of the South in New Orleans was followed by almost two years of floundering in a sea of confusion, and the author then joined the U. S. Air Force on Dec. 7, 1955. Honorably discharged in April of 1960, the author underwent another two and a half years of floundering so severe, he came extremely close to a mental breakdown. In desperation, he gave away everything he owned and, for thirteen years, took to the life of a wandering hermit. In search of as much time and energy as possible for inner reflection upon self, God, and the nature and purpose of reality, he criss-crossed the United States on foot four times. At first, he lived off of whatever food and clothing he could beg; but, after learning how to live on a dollar a day or less, he turned to working at various monasteries in the winter time in exchange for the two to three hundred dollars required to feed and to clothe himself during the next spring, summer, and fall of walking. The monasteries also provided access to libraries in which he could read, and extract notes from, the great writings of the Catholic Church. In the course of that thirteen-year odyssey, there was a four year period during which he refused to speak to anyone (except on very rare occasions) and communicated only by means of written notes. In August of 1975, the author’s father lost his mind, and the author’s siblings insisted he was the only one in the family with the time and ability to tend to their father in his hour of need. Thus, after thirteen years, the author’s preferred lifestyle came to an end. Dire poverty then gave way to economic independence, and total seclusion gave way to what little privacy can be enjoyed by bachelors who prefer to avoid partying and to stay home and--as much as possible--to bury themselves in as much reading and writing as the world around them will allow. After his father’s death in 1981, the author took care of his mother until her death in 1996. In this book, the self-educated author of a dozen self-published books (No one else would publish them.) seeks to share with others the avenues of thought down which his mind was lead by thirteen years of heroically intense inner concentration followed by twenty-two years of moderately intense inner concentration.