Alexander Hamilton

New York, NY  Visited October 2103

“How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a

Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten

Spot in the Caribbean by Providence, impoverished, in squalor

Grow up to be a hero and a scholar?”

This is the arresting beginning of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s remarkable hip hop musical drama ‘Hamilton’.  The play attempts to capture the life of perhaps the most controversial founding father in American history.  And what a life it was.  Here is Hamilton’s early story as told by the company of “Hamilton - An American Musical” in the the opening song, filmed on stage as a special to the 2016 Grammy's.

"Alexander Hamilton"

Rather than tell Alexander Hamilton’s compelling story in chronological fashion I’m going to sketch it out from some of the prominent themes that resonate throughout ‘Hamilton – An American Musical’

Washington On Your Side

This poor orphan sent to the New York colony by kind benefactors wandered his way into the American Revolution.  He made reputation for himself in the early days of the war as an artillery officer.  A number of commanders saw in the brilliant, energetic twenty year-old the makings of an ideal staff officer, and in 1777 Alexander Hamilton joined George Washington's  staff.  This would begin a lifelong relationship that would define trajectory of the young man’s life.  Under General Washington both chaffed under the strains of administration while also honing his political and administrative gifts.  

Washington gave him the chance to be a war hero at the Battle of Yorktown.  As president, Washington placed him over the new treasury department where Hamilton’s grand and farsighted vision established the economic system that allowed the United States to become the greatest economy in history.  George Washington’s adept handling of the mercurial and polarizing aspects of Alexander Hamilton’s personality allowed both men to forge an enduring friendship and profoundly shape the practical outworking of the new United States.   

Best of Wives and Best of Women

In 1780 Alexander Hamilton married Elizabeth Schuyler, whom he would at the end of his life memorably call, ‘the best of wives and the best of women’.  The woman whom he affectionately called ‘Eliza’ gave the orphaned Alexander a home and an extended family he had never known.  Eliza proved to be the steadying influence in Alexander’s hectic, controversial life.  She was the committed mother of their eight children, the manager of his constantly disrupted personal affairs, the steady companion in his defeats, the north star in his lost times.  Perhaps most compellingly, Eliza Hamilton was a woman of deep Christian faith who used her influential position for the good of others and the advance of the Gospel.  It was this deep faith that allowed her to survive the loss of her oldest son in a duel and decades of slanderous accusations against her husband.  But it is the remarkable grace that she extended in the years following the personal crisis and public humiliation of Alexander’s cruel infidelity, the courageous forgiveness that humbled her arrogant husband, that stands as perhaps her greatest spiritual legacy. That she lived the remaining fifty years of her life after the tragic death of Alexander active for good in the world and committed to the best ideals they shared is a testimony to a truly exceptional woman. 

Like You’re Running Out of Time

Perhaps the dominant aspect of Alexander Hamilton’s character was an inner drive that compelled him forward throughout his life. At times it produced astounding feats of human achievement – like creating an unprecedented national economic system to support a constitutional government of the likes that the world had never seen.  It led him to write volumes of papers, pamphlets and speeches, bringing brilliant and compelling arguments to bear on almost any topic that got his attention.  He has been called by one historian, ‘the nation’s first blogger’.  At times, however, the drive was fueled by a relentless campaign to protect and burnish his personal reputation, leading him to actions that were misguided at best and ultimately tragic for himself and others. Hamilton’s unconscionable adultery and the inexplicable attempt to defend his honor at the expense of his marriage in the Reynolds Pamphlet shows the deep character flaws that ran concurrent with his unquestioned talents.  It was obsessive drive to defend and promote his reputation that led Alexander Hamilton to the morning of July 11, 1804 and his fateful duel with Aaron Burr on the cliffs of Weehauken overlooking the Hudson River.  Hamilton’s deep-seated inability to let slights pass, to step back and consider his actions where his honor was challenged was his lifelong and ultimately life-defining flaw.  

Bitter ideological rivals - Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson and Hamilton Rap Battle

Perhaps no one captured these two sides of Alexander Hamilton’s ambition better than Benjamin Franklin.

“He means well for his country, is always an honest man, often a wise one, but sometimes, and in some things, absolutely out of his senses.”

Forgiveness.  Can you Imagine?

Alexander Hamilton was a man of towering intellect, unwavering patriotism, and deeply entrenched personal pride.  But what was the state of his soul?  The philosophical grounding of the American Revolution was fueled as much by Enlightenment humanism as anything else.  Yet our founding Fathers wrestled with the question of where God fit in it all.  Some, like Thomas Jefferson, seemed to revel in the man-centered rationalism that was sweeping through Europe at the time.  Others, like George Washington, seemed to straddle both worlds, consciously honoring the God of Christianity without clear statements of trust in Jesus Christ.  Where was Alexander Hamilton in all this?  We know that in his youth he ascribed to the Reformed tradition of protestant Christian belief.  It seems that his public life and published words seemed to offer little evidence of what would be considered an evangelical belief in the Gospel.  But we also know that in his later years he was returning to the faith of his youth.  The tragedies in his life and his hard experience in the world had pressed on his heart in his last few years.  He witnessed the robust evangelicalism of his wife and longed to see what happened to her happen to himself.

If it is true that the best place to look for the state of one’s soul before God is in the final conscious moments before death, then we have a pretty good idea of where Alexander Hamilton placed his trust.  In the hours after the duel with Aaron Burr that left him mortally wounded, Hamilton wanted more than anything to receive the Lord’s Supper.  Unable to obtain it from his Episcopal priest he asked for his Presbyterian minister-friend John Mason to give him communion. Mason wisely engaged the dying but coherent man as to the reason he fixed on this one desire.  As biographer Ron Chernow lays it out from eyewitness accounts, Mason sought to ascertain the state of Alexander Hamilton’s faith. Here’s some of that account.

“Aside from his strongly protective feelings toward his family, Hamilton was preoccupied with spiritual matters in a way that eliminates all doubt about the sincerity of his late-flowering religious interests...  Mason tried to console Hamilton by saying that all men had sinned and were equal in the Lord’s sight. “I perceive it to be so,” Hamilton said. “I am a sinner. I look to His mercy.” Hamilton also stressed his hatred of dueling: “I used every expedient to avoid the interview, but I have found for some time past that my life must be exposed to that man. I went to the field determined not to take his life.” As Mason told how Christ’s blood would wash away his sins, Hamilton grasped his hand, rolled his eyes heavenward, and exclaimed with fervor, “I have a tender reliance on the mercy of the Almighty, through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ.””

  

In drawing on his own late blooming faith Alexander Hamilton was able to also bring spiritual care to his wife in his dying moments.  To comfort her, Hamilton kept intoning the one refrain he knew would soothe her troubled spirit above all others: “Remember, my Eliza, you are a Christian”

THE DUEL

Alexander Hamilton did not live to repudiate dueling.  He died as a casualty of the ritual on July 11, 1804.  He was 49 years old; the only prominent founding father not to make it into his elderly years.  He is buried in the churchyard of Trinity Church, in the heart of the Wall Street district that owes its existence to the far-sighted economic ideas of the first Secretary of the Treasury of the United States.  

For years Trinity Church was a tourism curiosity due to its fictional role in the movie National Treasure.  But with the Miranda’s musical, Trinity Church has a whole new status as a pilgrimage destination.  I visited Hamilton’s grave on a trip to a conference in New York. 

Trinity Church - Unfortunately when I visited the Hamilton grave area
was under renovation

Alexander Hamilton with Eliza's crypt in
the foreground

Note that the tombstone indicates Alexander Hamilton died when he was 47,
most modern historians place it at 49, due to recent research
into his early life.

Benjamin B. Warfield

Princeton, New Jersey Visited August 2012

Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield was one of the titans of the Reformed faith at the turn of the 20th Century. In an age where the very essence of Biblical Christianity was being undermined by theological liberalism, "The Lion of Princeton" stood for the historic orthodox doctrine of the Faith with a towering intellect and prodigious commitment to written theological argument.

The young Warfield circa 1864

Benjamin Warfield was born in 1851 in Lexington, Kentucky into the aristocratic Breckenridge clan. Warfield’s maternal grandfather was a professor of theology who was a staunch supporter of the Union cause in the Civil War. His uncle, John Breckenridge was Vice President in the Buchanan administration and became a well regarded general in the Confederate army. Warfield himself was a Unionist committed to the civil rights of African Americans throughout his life. Benjamin was raised in a thoroughly Reformed home and professed saving faith in Christ at sixteen, but did not appear to have much interest in the ministry or theological pursuits early in life.

Warfield attended Princeton College where he excelled in the sciences. Upon graduation he sought to continue study in Europe. It was in Europe that B. B. Warfield "realized the paramount claims of God and religion upon him", and accepted God’s call to preach the Gospel – to the utter surprise of all who knew him. He came back to the United States and enrolled at Princeton Seminary, graduating in 1876.  He was ordained to the ministry in the Presbyterian Church.

The year 1876 was pivotal in Warfield’s life beyond his ordination. In August of that year he married Anne Kinkead. They traveled in Europe for their honeymoon. Hiking in the mountains, they encountered a severe thunderstorm. A lighting strike nearby physically and emotionally traumatized Anne. The effect of this event was to have a lifelong impact on the Warfields. Anne returned to the U.S. in an invalid state and became a virtual recluse for the rest of her life. This tragedy at the beginning of his marriage became the defining reality for B. B. Warfield. For the rest of his life the care of his wife was his highest priority. He left pulpit ministry early for seminary professorship where he could arrange his schedule around her care. From this point on he never traveled or spent more than a couple of hours away from Anne. With the death of the legendary A. A. Hodge, B. B. Warfield returned to his alma mater in 1886 where he took up a life-long professorship in systematic theology.

Providentially, it was a combination of Warfield’s energetic intellectual gifts and his devotion to his wife which led to a ministry of singular significance in the cause of the Gospel. Not noted for his preaching skills, B. B. Warfield devoted himself to writing and publishing theological works that rival Luther and Calvin in scope and volume. It was the self imposed limits on travel and extra-curricular activity that allowed him to give his time to the study and composition of this work. Warfield’s theological output was devoted to articulating classic Reformed theology in an age of modernist thought and liberal attacks on the inerrancy and authority of Scripture. His writings remain remarkably accessible and compelling today. With contemporaries Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck, B. B. Warfield carried the Reformed theology of Calvin, Edwards and Hodge through the modernist movement and sent it into the 20th Century era with compelling intellectual force.

Warfield in his study

Recent Warfield biographer Fred Zaspel was inteviewed by Justin Taylor from the Gospel Coalition on what he learned about Warfield the man.    

This is one of things that attracted me to Warfield—more than most any other I’d read he understands Christianity “whole” and finds Christ crucified at the very center. He sees both the forest and the trees and understands all as pointing to this redemptive center. And for Warfield personally this was no merely academic discovery, but he is himself marked by a keen sense of utter dependence upon Christ, and his own heart beat hot for his glorious Redeemer.

Anne Warfield died in 1915, and B. B. Warfield continued on in his ministry for six more years. They never had any children. Warfield worked hard till the very end. He suffered a minor stroke Christmas Eve, 1920.  Then on a walk across campus in February 1921 he suffered a heart attack from which he would not recover. Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield died on February 16, 1921 ending a 33 year career of scholarship at Princeton Seminary. In a sad irony, Warfield, Bavinck and Kuyper all passed into glory within nine months of each other.

Your blogger with Warfield

Map of Old Princeton Cemetery

Benjamin B. Warfield is buried in Old Princeton Cemetery. It’s actually a bit challenging to find his grave since it is not in the Edwards/Hodge section. I've been there several times, most recently with a group of pastors, theology students and missionaries on a one day tour of Great Awakening sites.  We ended our tour at Princeton Cemetery. 

Tour dudes with the Warfields - Anne Warfield to the left

Here’s a wonderful quote from Warfield that captures the clear Gospel centeredness of all his work.

Our faith itself, though it be the bond of our union with Christ through which we receive all His blessings, is not our saviour. We have but one Saviour; and that one Saviour is Jesus Christ our Lord. Nothing that we are and nothing that we can do enters in the slightest measure into the ground of our acceptance with God. Jesus did it all.

Jean Jacques Rousseau

Paris, France - Visited June 2009

Jean Jacques Rousseau was born June 1712 in Geneva, Switzerland.  His mother died shortly after his birth, and his father left home to avoid legal problems when he was 10. He was raised by his maternal uncle. After doing some biographical research I've decided to do this post along the theme of 'Calvinist/Not a Calvinist'.  Feel free to play along at home.

This picture has little to do with Rousseau, but its a great
shot of my beautiful wife at the Jet D'eau in Geneva

Calvinist.  Rousseau was born in Geneva, and to be in Geneva in the 18th Century meant you were a defacto Calvinist.  He spent two years boarding with a Calvinist and for a time considered whether he was called to the ministry. But he apparently had problems with doctrine of total depravity and found himself proselytized toward Catholicism. A relationship with an older woman who became his mistress complicated his late teens and early twenties, but it also introduced him to a world of ideas beyond his religious upbringing.   Hence, Not a Calvinist.





Rousseau worked a series of administrative posts through his twenties and early thirties which culminated with his arrival in Paris in 1744. During these years Rousseau fathered five children by a mistress, but had them all given up to a foundling hospital. There is no record of any of the children surviving to adulthood.  Therefore apparently Not a Calvinist (or a Catholic for that matter).

Early printing of Rousseau's
'Social Contract"

Rousseau began to engage in philosophical thinking and writing, initially focusing on music theory. He also worked on his own musical compositions, which were received well by the Paris musical establishment. But his ideas and his personality created controversy in Paris and in 1754 Rousseau returned to Geneva, requiring a reconversion (of sorts) to Calvinism to be allowed entrance to the city.  Once again A Calvinist.  However, his subsequent writing and lifestyle make it clear that his Calvinism was of his own peculiar orientation. Not being a reader of Rousseau, as near as I can tell his religious philosophy seemed to create opposition from Catholics, Protestants and Humanists. It was oppositional to Catholicism because it was anti-institutional. It was rejected by the Humanists because it avowed a view of God who was much more active and knowable than the prevailing deism of the time. Yet his rejection of original sin and other Gospel doctrines separated him from orthodox protestant Christianity.  Therefore, Not a Calvinist. 

Finding himself out of favor (and religiously condemned) Rousseau eventually found a patron in British philosopher David Hume, and from 1765-67 he lived in England. His mental health began to deteriorate; according to Hume, “He is plainly mad, after having long been maddish”. By 1770 Rousseau had returned to Paris, though for the remaining years of his life he was largely a recluse. His health deteriorating, Rousseau died while on a walk in July 1778. He was 66 years old. His autobiographical Confessions were published eight years after his death.  Based on them, clearly Not a Calvinist.

Jean Jacques in his furry cap stage

Final score:  Calvinist - 2; Not a Calvinist - 4. 

Historically speaking, Rousseau’s philosophy heavily influenced the leaders of the French Revolution and later, the moral/political philosophy of Immanuel Kant. I wish I could give a nice, tidy description of Rousseau’s philosophy, but I couldn’t wrap my brain around it without doing far more study than is worth it to write this blog.  An odd but short and low budget animated explanation of Rousseau's philosophy can be viewed here.  For a bit more on Rousseau's impact on philosophy, government and ethics check out this five minute overview.




Historian Kingsley Martin summarized Rousseau's influence in this way,

"In truth," Rousseau was a genius whose real influence cannot be traced with precision because it pervaded all the thought that followed him....Men will always be sharply divided about Rousseau: for he released imagination as well as sentimentalism;; he increased men’s desire for justice as well as confusing their minds , and he gave the poor hope even though the rich could make use of his arguments. In one direction at least Rousseau’s influence was a steady one: he discredited force as a basis for the State, convinced men that authority was legitimate only when founded in rational consent and that no arguments from passing expediency could justify a government in disregarding individual freedom or in failing to promote social equality




Statue of Rousseau in his birthplace of Geneva

The following brief quote seems to be a decent summary of the understanding of human nature that Rousseau built his life and philosophy upon.

“Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.”

Rousseau's tomb in the crypt below the Pantheon in Paris

Your blogger at the Pantheon

Jean Jacques Rousseau was eventually buried with hero honors in the Pantheon in Paris. His tomb is in the underground crypt along with Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Voltaire and other French notables. I visited the Pantheon during my 25th wedding anniversary.  Jill was very kind to let me check it out and enjoyed the beautiful sunny day while watching a protest march from the steps of the Pantheon. It’s an incredible building – the French equivalent to Westminster Abbey. Well worth a stop if you’re in the City of Lights.

Galileo Galilei

Florence Italy – July 2010

Galileo Galilei embodies the wrenching philosophical and theological collision that occurred as a result of the Renaissance. He’s called by Albert Einstein ‘the father of modern science’, yet his life and ideas were shaped profoundly by his experience with the medieval Catholic Church. I had the chance to see Galileo’s tomb at Santa Croce during a trip to Florence, Italy with my brother and daughter Kelsey and her friend Sarah a couple of years ago. There will be more entries from this amazing historic site in the future.

Galileo's telescope

Galileo was born in Pisa, Italy in 1564, the day of Michelangelo’s death, in the same year as William Shakespeare's birth. Early in his life Galileo considered entering the priesthood, but eventually chose to study mathematics at the University of Pisa. Upon completion of his degree the gifted young scholar took a position at the Accademia in Florence, where his family had moved when he was a youth. But it was as a professor at the University of Padua where Galileo’s greatest scientific theories and the controversies surrounding them emerged.

Galileo distinguished himself in a number of fields, particularly making significant advances in the development of the telescope. But it was his embrace of Copernican astronomy that brought him both fame and clerical opposition. Copernicus’ (1473-1543) theory that the earth was not the center of the universe had been condemned by the church. Through his own scientific inquiry Galileo came to adopt heliocentrism – the position that the sun was the center of the universe.

Galileo's recantation

In 1615 his advocacy of this position brought rebuke from the Roman Inquisition. Responding to this rebuke Galileo agreed to no longer teach on the view. But in 1632 Galileo published his “Dialogue Between Two World Systems” where he sought to present the worldview controversy as a reasoned discussion (which ultimately favored heliocentrism). The Vatican was not impressed, and subsequently convicted Galileo of heresy, banning the publication of any of his works extant or to be written in the future. He was also sentenced to house arrest for the remainder of his life. Galileo lived another ten years after this controversy, dying at the relatively advanced age of 77 in 1642.  In 1992 Pope John Paul II rescinded the condemnation of Galileo by the church.

For a contemporary take on Galileo check out this video of Irish singer Declan O'Rourke doing his song "Galileo - Someone Like You".  




Painting of Galileo's Inquisition

Galileo is buried in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, immediately across the main sanctuary area from Michelangelo. 


My daughter Kelsey - the Vanna White of Santa Croce - in front of
of Galileo's tomb - Galileo's image is carved looking to the stars

What I find interesting about Galileo is that he is not the anti-religious rationalist of the Scientific Revolution that he is so often characterized to be. While he was a man with moral shortcomings (bearing two illegitimate daughters with a mistress), he was a scholar who approached the scientific endeavor with a deeply theological bent. Galileo did not see himself as a man caught between scripture and science but between the church and science. His views were actually not inconsistent with those of the Reformer John Calvin. He had a high view of the inerrancy and authority of scripture, and considered the erroneous doctrine of an earth-centered universe as an issue of poor interpretation and reading into texts by the church. Galileo believed that scripture, as rightly understood, would not contradict valid scientific evidence. The words Galileo desired to be carved as his epitaph at the end of his life speaks to his deeply God-centered view of his life and scientific pursuits.

“To the Lord; whom I worship and thank;

That governs the heavens with His eyelid

To Him I return tired, but full of living.”

    




Statue of Galileo at the Uffizi Plaza
in Florence


Other blog subjects buried at Santa Croce:

Michelangelo