Adam Smith's Lost Legacy (Gavin Kennedy): On Adam Smith’s Alleged theism
I am working hard on my chapter for the forthcoming Handbook on Adam Smith (Oxford University Press), edited by Chris Berry of Glasgow University.
Among my notes of scholars who take an entirely different view to mine (roughly that Adam Smith deliberately hid his private and critical views on the religion throughout his adult life because of the existing dominance of the church on all aspects and all levels of life in Scotland and England which made its zealous members censorious and at times violent). I have read closely the views of Brendon Long (PhD from Cambridge in Theology), of which examples can be found at: ...
... In fact, throughout his life he remained familiar with the (moderate) Calvinist doctrine and its interpretation of the Bible that his mother expected from him (he is known to have had an excellent retentive memory) and he demonstrated exactly this in Moral Sentiments, his lectures (including those on rhetoric in Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1763) , and his Lectures On Jurisprudence (1762), and, most importantly, in his History of Astronomy (1744-c.48), which generations of readers – and modern scholars – have failed to recognise because, like Brendon Long, they read his Works already convinced that Smith was religious or are in denial about his scepticism.
But strip away that presumption and read his Works as a Calvinist zealot searching for heresy might, and you find more than a few signals that Adam Smith hid his scepticism almost too well for the less accomplished men he was up against. He knew his Bible and doctrine better than most and I attempt to show this in my chapter.
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