2016-07-27
During the Civil War, American theologians made many efforts to interpret the religious meaning of the conflict. But it was Abraham Lincoln, who never joined a church in his life, who presented the most profound theological interpretation, articulated in his Second Inaugural speech of March 4, 1865.

The poignancy of this speech, as the martyr-president's last defining utterance on the nation's ultimate defining experience, no less than its magnanimity toward the South and the force of its religious meditation, has placed it among the small handful of semi sacred texts by which Americans conceive their place in the world. If, however, we set the address in its own times rather than consider its importance for the Meaning of America, we find it defines a major historical puzzle concerning the character of theology.

The puzzle is posed by the fact that none of America's respected religious leaders - as defined by contemporaries or later scholars - mustered the theological power so economically expressed in Lincoln's Second Inaugural. None probed so profoundly the ways of God or the response of humans to the divine constitution of the world. None penetrated as deeply into the nature of providence. And none described the fate of humanity before God with the humility or the sagacity of the president. The contrast has several dimensions.

First, Lincoln expressed remarkable charity to the foe. In hindsight it is clear that, when Lincoln delivered his address on 4 March, the South was tottering on the brink of defeat. But Lincoln himself did not believe that Lee would soon surrender, and the South was still filled with leaders promising to fight on as guerillas in the mountains or from new bases west of the Mississippi. In these circumstances, after four years of a war in which the South had extracted a terrible toll from the North and in which North and South had both promoted a degree of destructive violence hitherto unknown even in America's never genteel history, Lincoln's magnanimity was as striking as it was singular.

Second, almost alone among his contemporaries, Lincoln did not presumptuously assume that the moral high ground belonged to only his side. By questioning the righteousness of the North and by failing to denounce the South in absolute terms, he joined a very small minority in the spring and summer of 1865. If Lincoln's magnanimity and his moral even-handedness were generally religious, his view of providence was distinctly theological. More than any other feature of this address, Lincoln's conception of God's rule over the world set him apart from the recognized theologians of his day.

* * *


Views of providence provide the sharpest contrast between Lincoln and the professional theologians of his day. Almost alone among public figures, Lincoln's concept of providence combined the conventions of his age with a much more primordial vision.

To be sure, earlier in his presidency Lincoln used a much more common language. At his first inaugural, in 1861, he talked of divine realities as if their main purpose was a utilitarian one to serve the nation. At the time his trust in America had been nearly complete: "Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better, or equal, hope in the world?" He even spoke as if God existed as a kind of celestial umpire waiting only to dignify the decisions of U.S. citizens: "If the Almighty Ruler of nations, with his eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth, and that justice, will surely prevail, by the judgment of this great tribunal, the American people." In the dark hour Lincoln's solution was civil religion pure and simple: "Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him, who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty."

But before the war had progressed very far, Lincoln evidently began to rethink these conventional views. As early as 1862, another theme rose in Lincoln's consciousness. It was the idea that perhaps the will of God could not simply be identified with efforts to preserve the Union. Such thoughts he committed to paper in September 1862, at one of the darkest moments of the conflict. The North had suffered another defeat at Bull Run, and Lincoln had seriously begun to ponder the radical step of proclaiming the emancipation of Confederate slaves. In response, he penned a "Meditation on the Divine Will," which his secretaries later recalled was meant for Lincoln's eyes alone. It was the most remarkable theological commentary of the war:

The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God cannot be for, and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party - and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as the do, are of the best adaptation to affect His purpose. I am almost ready to say this is probably true - that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere quiet power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.

The reasoning that led to this private meditation evidently continued, for it was the reasoning that pervaded the Second Inaugural. That reasoning shared the traditional Christian opinion that God ruled over all events. But to this conventional belief Lincoln added two most unconventional convictions. First was the notion that the United States might not necessarily be a uniquely chosen nation, or at least that the moral constraints operating on American were the same as those for other nations, and that these universal standards of justice were of greater consequence than any supposed chosenness of the United States. Second was Lincoln's belief that the ways of providence might be obscure, difficult to fathom, hedged in by contingencies, or otherwise not open to immediate understanding and manipulation.

This combination of convictions - confidence in providence along with humble agnosticism about its purposes - transformed the central section of the Second Inaugural into a theological statement of rare insight. Lincoln began by stating a thesis: "The Almighty has His own purposes." He then quoted Matthew 18:7 to suggest the moral character of life under God: "Woe unto the world because of offences! For it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!" Then he looked foursquare into an abyss that few of his contemporaries could bear to contemplate: "If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope - fervently do we pray - that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away." The abyss was the suggestion that responsibility for the war must be shared.

Finally, Lincoln concluded by acknowledging that the progress of the United States was as nothing compared to the mysterious will of God: "Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said `judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether' [Psalm 19:9]"

more from beliefnet and our partners