The Revelatory Source for the Constitutional Separation of Powers

Thoughts on Jeremiah 17:9 

The separation of powers and reciprocal checks and balances incorporated throughout the Constitution has been heralded as one of the most important features of American government, enabling it not only to survive but to thrive for over two centuries. History is filled with examples showing that when government power was centralized in one body or leader, that government always became a danger to the rights of individuals and brought that nation to ruin. The Founding Fathers not only had these examples of history to guide them, but they had the revelation found in the teachings of the Bible.
The love of power, and our propensity to abuse it, at the root, finds its source in the human heart. Jeremiah 17:9 declares: “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” This well-known verse encapsulated what Calvinistic ministers and theologians termed the “depravity of man” (that the natural heart of man easily embraced moral and civil degradation), and it was a frequent topic for sermons in the Founding Era. The Founding Fathers understood the significance of this verse and openly cited it, as when John Adams reminded Americans:

Let me conclude by advising all men to look into their own hearts, which they will find to be “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked” [Jeremiah 17:9].¹

Those ignorant of the Bible often believe in the innate goodness of man—that man will naturally do what is right. However, experience regularly affirms the opposite: without a heart regenerated by the power of God, man will routinely do what is wrong. Adams specifically rejected any notion of the innate goodness of man, especially when it came to government:

To expect self-denial from men when they have a majority in their favor, and consequently power to gratify themselves, is to disbelieve all history and universal experience – it is to disbelieve revelation and the Word of God, which informs us “the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked” [Jeremiah 17:9]. . . . There is no man so blind as not to see that to talk of founding a government upon a supposition that nations and great bodies of men left to themselves will practice a course of self-denial is either to babble like a newborn infant or to deceive like an unprincipled impostor.²

And even those who had experienced a regenerated heart through the power of God in Christ and who did not embrace Calvinism nevertheless knew enough about the truth of this verse and the tendencies of the heart to not even fully trust themselves to be above its corrupting influence. As John Quincy Adams explained:

I believe myself sincere; but the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked [Jeremiah 17:9]. I do not believe the total depravity of man, but I am deeply conscious of the frailty of my own nature.³

Understanding this principle from Jeremiah 17—a principle that was accepted by all sides of the theological spectrum—the Founders knew that government would be much safer if all power did not repose in the same authority. Making practical application of this Biblical truth, they therefore divided and checked power between branches so that if one leader or branch went wicked, the other two might still check and stop it. As George Washington explained:

A just estimate of that love of power and proneness to abuse it which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power by dividing and distributing it into different depositories . . . has been evinced [demonstrated] by experiments ancient and modern, some of them in our country and under our own eyes.⁴

This remarkable feature of American government—the separation of powers and reciprocal checks and balances—can be attributed to the Founders’ understanding of Jeremiah 17:9.

Endnotes

¹ John Adams, “On Private Revenge III,” published in the Boston Gazette, September 5, 1763, The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851), III:443.

² John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (London: John Stockdale, 1794), III:289, “Letter VI. The Right Constitution of a Commonwealth, examined.”

³ John Quincy Adams, diary entry of November 16, 1842, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co, 1876), XI:270.

⁴ George Washington, Address of George Washington, President of the United States, and Late Commander in Chief of the American Army, to the People of the United States, Preparatory to His Declination (Baltimore: Christopher Jackson, 1796), 13.