Selfevident After Faith

One of the gems of discussion which I picked up in my Honors 240 class is the strength of the founders when they declared revolution and pulled a nation into existence all in an act of faith. They did it all with the outcome uncertain, and the future menacing. When Washington, Adams, Madison, Jefferson, and Franklin all signed their names to the Declaration of Independence the future was far from self evident and would only become so through their victory. Only upon triumphant conclusion would people even consider looking back. No one looks back to the causes and claims of failed revolutions and uprisings and says "Oh yeah, of course. That makes sense" because we view history in the eyes of the victors (regardless if the defeated were right)

I find that what they did was in ever sense an act of faith. They were led to step into the dark, into the unknown outcome of a war against the world's superpower without any witness that they would succeed. That lack of knowledge in the future is the definition of an act of faith, we "receive no witness until after a trial of [our] faith" .The founders did not received evidence of their future victory, which then prompted the war and the Declaration, but instead faith is better understood in its true nature when looking back. Then after our witness can we can say "oh yeah, well of course..."