In my post called Free Association, I ended that critics of faith are always suggesting that we can lump everyone together based on whether they’ve called their brand of belief “Christian”. And in the last paragraph, I demonstrated how fringe Hitler’s Christian views were. I summed it up as being “’Christian’ simply because he suggested he was.”

I always meant to write a capper to that “series” about how the same rules aren’t followed in regards to the secular, or deist founders of the United States. And from the very same Wells, whose take I mentioned in Hitler Says, comes this page on Thomas Jefferson. Which says:

In spite of right-wing Christian attempts to rewrite history to make Jefferson into a Christian, little about his philosophy resembles that of Christianity.

Oh! So now we’re actually looking at how much something resembles Christianity?

Additionally, he says:

He rejected the superstitions and mysticism of Christianity and even went so far as to edit the gospels, removing the miracles and mysticism of Jesus leaving only what he deemed the correct moral philosophy of Jesus.

The NAZI Miracles

So here’s where I need to see what miracles of Christ Hitler talked about. What are they? The Blessed Spotting of the Jews for Who they Were? The Blessed Temple Purge ?

Okay. WHO can read it and believe that were Jesus a real man that he could have knotted temple chords together (?!?!?!) and chased unarmed bystanders out of the temple brandishing it like a whip! Why not add that aliens and Mother Goose helped him knot them!?!

Don’t get me started on having an opinion about his society that Hitler concurred with? I think we have to believe Hume that such a tale could only be a lie or delusion, and not the process of a rational witness to these events.

Where am I getting this from? You see, those are the “miracles” cited by Hitler in the first quote which exposes how “ faithful Christians have camouflaged the Christianity of Adolf Hitler”:

My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. …[T]he Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross.

He later quotes “ Adolf Hitler , in Munich, 28 July 1922” what must be the Miracle of Getting Lynched: “Just as the Jew could once incite the mob of Jerusalem against Christ…” Down the page, he finds that, ( gasp ) Hitler can quote Jesus (Munich, 10 April 1923 ).

The next one, Walker includes as evincing a true “Christian” sentiment, apparently, because he says “ God”: “Always before god and the world the stronger has the right to carry through what he wills.”

The rest of the post hinges on “ real Christianity” (similar to Jefferson’s ) “God” and what I sum under the term “Stuff about Religion”.

Walker apparently, does not realize that in make Jesus the “founder” of a doctrine, who spots the Jews’ “treachery” and—miracle of miracles—fights against them, only to end up crucified, did, in his own way “rewrite” the Gospel, without other than the miracles mentioned above—which, (“God’s Truth!”) are not really miracles.

Real, Positive Christianity

Walker passes over qualifiers like “ real Christianity” and sees Hitler’s claim as essentially being Christian . Meanwhile, Thomas Jefferson affirms that his Bible “i s a document in proof that I am a real Christian [italics mine], that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists” in his Letter to Charles Thomson 9 January 1816.

The paper trail that shows that Jefferson considered himself a follower of Jesus’ true teachings is not hidden. He casts Paul as the “first corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus”. So although, Paul’s teaching become known as “Christianity” as a “ corrupter” it cannot be “true” to the teachings of Jesus.

In a similar vein, Hitler—as well as the other NAZIs—talked not so much about “Christianity” as Positive Christianity. Which as Wikipedia acknowledges “replaces” “traditional Christianity,” emphasizing the “passive” aspects of “his sacrifice on the cross and other-worldly redemption”, with emphasis on Christ as a preacher , organizer , and fighter . Now, unless I missed the miracle where Jesus shot laser beams out of his eyes, it differs from Jefferson’s view mainly in the fighting .

Now true, feeding populations from a handful of loaves and fishes helps you as an organizer; and walking on water, calming storms helps in those logistics; turning water to wine could help in the reception for the preachin’ area… Healing up and resurrectin’ the troops, helps in a fight (as well as servers as a great morale booster!). Torching a fig tree? … just practice I guess …

Okay, sometimes I just get silly, trying to assemble what crumbs of accessions I can make for the other side into a meatloaf, and that just turns into flippant ridicule.

Let’s interject some rationale here. Jesus’ miracles aren’t useful in a positive sense. Only in a “passive” sense: dispelling one storm sets the apostles mind to wondering. Feeding one crowd gets the name out there. The miracles all testify as to who Jesus was in that flimsy side of the one-time atonement for the sins of all times, and part of traditional Christian theology.

That Jesus fed the masses with a handful of food doesn’t help you to preach, organize and fight. Neither does Jesus changing water to wine way back then . The Resurrection of one guy establishes that he has the power over death . But it doesn’t mean that you can organize on that basis.

Only Jesus’ example—in the ways that we can follow— can give us a more muscular basis for Christianity. Otherwise we’re back to that namby-pamby “first born from the dead” thing that they were replacing.

Wikipedia says this:

Positive Christianity grew out of the Higher Criticism of the nineteenth century, with its emphasis on the distinction between the historical Jesus, and the divine Jesus of theology. According to some schools of thought, the saviour-figure of orthodox Christianity was very different from the historical Galilean preacher.

Whose Jesus does this sound like?

When you purge him of all that Jewish-Messiah-come-to-the-Jews stuff, you get something that both Jefferson and the followers of “Positive Christianity” can identify with and can take practical application from: A wise sage or a fighter against Judaism.

Monticello vs.The Quote

Over in this corner, we have The Hitler Quote:

I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.

And over here, we have a quote that the official site for Monticello identifies as Jefferson’s (even correcting small liberties taken to transcribe it to the Jefferson Memorial.)

Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion . . .

We have Almighty God vs. Almighty Creator . That’s a molehill to work on. But in both we have statements about that being’s “will”. And although Hitler is more explicit about his compliance with that will, we need to reflect on Jefferson’s political philosophy in order to see that it was his intent to comply with this will.

There is similar coloring and similar words. Both are Deistic with no mention of Jesus in particular. Hitler is “more religious” in that he names him “the Lord”. And if that’s your argument, then you have an opening. However, I would need to see a quote of Jefferson thanking the“Fates” or any “Goddess”

The way it stands is that Jefferson wasn’t a Christian. I don’t care. Hitler was likely not a Christian, and while I’m decently happy for that, I don’t really care, either. Most likely they both were a mixture of deist and life-after-death theist. I have little doubt of that, but I don’t care.

There is probably more truth to this: Jesus had an effect on Jefferson’s life because Jefferson wrote a version of the Bible to distill Jesus’ teachings. And although “Positive Christianity” talks about Jesus as an organizer , Hitler probably spends more words evoking Prussian organization than evoking Jesus’ skills as an “organizer”. They waste few words on this “organizer” that made a big splash, got arrested, had his posse scramble for cover, while he got nailed to a cross. Only to make up stories about it later. Peter, James and Paul have more to offer as organizer’s. No, to Hitler, Jesus was a courageous whistle-blower.

Again, his response about the way he likes to think of Jesus answers a previously-mentioned accusation that the NAZIs aren’t really acting like Christians.

Regardless, like most webbists, Walker mines all the Jefferson odes to Reason . Skips over all that Hitler said about it—and Science— and Evolution, blithely on his way to scoop up another mention of “God” .

It’s the oblivious duplicity that’s irksome.