Who Said That?
Monday, March 26, 2007 at 02:13PM 
Who Said That?
"The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man.
1. That there is one only God, and he all perfect.
2. That there is a future state of rewards and punishments.
3. That to love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself, is the sum of religion.
These are the great points on which he endeavored to reform the religion of the Jews. But compare with these the demoralizing dogmas of Calvin.
1. That there are three Gods.
2. That good works, or the love of our neighbor, are nothing.
3. That faith is every thing, and the more incomprehensible the proposition, the more merit in its faith.
4. That reason in religion is of unlawful use.
5. That God, from the beginning, elected certain individuals to be saved, and certain others to be damned; and that no crimes of the former can damn them; no virtues of the latter save.
Now, which of these is the true and charitable Christian? He who believes and acts on the simple doctrines of Jesus? Or the impious dogmatists, as Athanasius and Calvin?"
OK--leave your guesses in the comments section below. Please no google searches or cheating. You need to guess!
Kim Riddlebarger
These comments come from Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Benjamin Waterhouse (July 18, 1822). So, Athanasius and Calvin are both false shepherds (as Jefferson goes on to state)? Dr. Kennedy--you might want to rethink that Christian America business . . .
Reader Comments (29)
He is clearly a moralist, who believes his works are enough; he is a good guy in his own eyes, and pure grace is quite offensive to him. He also flatly denies the claims of Christ to be God in the flesh.
According to the Epistles of John this man was of the theology that is "antiChrist".
Now, that surely narrows it down quite a bit doesn't it?
Servetus, Tom Paine and Joseph Priestley would have agreed with him.