Is it true that there is no coherent philosophical defense of moderation as moderation? Not all philosophers are Platonists or Nietzscheans. In fact, there is a substantial liberal subtradition within the history of political philosophy whose purpose is precisely to demonstrate that not all philosophy is immoderate. Clearly, John Locke is one of the founders of this tradition of liberal political philosophy, and taking liberalism seriously as a philosophy of moderation entails taking Locke seriously.

Hobbes, as quoted in the epigraph to Chapter 5, asked, How can we have peace while Christianity is our religion? Locke believed that he had an answer to this question (namely mutual toleration between Christian sects). It is apparent, then, that Hobbes is the representative of the civil-religion tradition with whom Locke is most immediately in dialogue (whether by intention or not). If liberalism as a theoretical tradition is partly defined by its rejection of (or uneasiness about) the civil-religion project, then Locke's debate with Hobbes will clearly constitute an important chapter in the dialogue about civil religion within the history of political philosophy. So let us start with a restatement of Hobbes. As with so much else in their political philosophies, Hobbes addresses the same fundamental problem that Locke addresses, though their ultimate solutions may be radically different. This is certainly the case with respect to their distinctive approaches to the problem of politics and religion. As always, we can take our cue from Rousseau's encapsulation of Hobbes's view:

Rousseau, like Hobbes, was preoccupied with the problem of sovereignty, that is, the need for a robust unity within the political community to sustain political order. Rousseau and Hobbes had radically different ideas about how to secure political sovereignty (or the “one-ness” of political authority), but they were agreed in seeing that religion, with its implication of a “two-ness,” a duality, of ultimate authority, posed a radical threat to the idea of sovereignty, of undivided authority. As Rousseau says, the Hobbesian solution is a “reuniting [of] the two heads of the eagle”: the clear subordination of religious authority to civil (i.e., political) authority. Hobbes puts it this way in Leviathan, chapter 31:

As Hobbes forcefully expresses here, there is an intrinsic problem of religious authority in relation to civil authority. All religions assert an authority of their own said to be sanctioned by divine authority. The obligations asserted by a civil magistrate, enshrined in the laws of the commonwealth, are bound to look quite paltry in relation to claims to authority asserting divine sanction. As Hobbes sees clearly, there is no easy way to separate these implicitly opposing claims to authority. What is at stake, fundamentally, is a clash of sovereignty: “[T]hey are…two Kingdomes, and every Subject is subject to two Masters.” It follows from the very idea of sovereignty, as Hobbes understands it (and again, Rousseau agrees), that this is an intolerable situation. Hobbes's ultimate theoretical response is to propose a kind of “theocracy” in which theological–ecclesiastical authority is appropriated by the civil sovereign himself, to ensure that no competing claims to authority are asserted by churches or by priests. If our most urgent need as citizens is to inhabit a single community of civic authority, then the intrinsic threat to this singularity of political sovereignty emanating from religions must be neutralized through the (political) imposition of a single shared civic religion. Rousseau is right that Hobbes anticipates his civil-religion idea, for reasons that are basically the same as those that motivate Rousseau's own formulation of the civil-religion notion. A political community that is not joined together under the same laws and the same ultimate authority is not really a political community at all, but merely a confederation of sects waiting to resume war against rival sects.