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“The Chief Characteristical Mark of the True Church”: John Locke's Theology of Toleration and His Case for Civil Religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2014

Aaron L. Herold
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Abstract

This essay argues that Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity provides a morally robust argument for religious pluralism—one which avoids the pitfalls of relativism and official neutrality by elucidating the need for a civil religion of toleration. The work thus contains Locke's friendly critique of his more radical Enlightenment contemporaries who had openly debunked the Bible. This critique is friendly, I argue, because Locke ultimately agrees with Spinoza and Hobbes about revelation, miracles, and religion's psychological causes. While Locke joined these thinkers in a common project to make Christianity less sacrificial and friendlier to enlightened selfishness, his analysis also reveals the need to retain some of its self-abnegating spirit in liberalism's service. But Locke has difficulty accounting for that spirit itself, and this problem in one of liberalism's original theorists may help explain the dissatisfactions and anxieties troubling tolerant societies today.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 76 , Issue 2 , Spring 2014 , pp. 195 - 221
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2014 

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References

1 Locke, John, The Works of John Locke (Darmstadt: Scientia Verlag Aalen, 1823), 7:188.Google Scholar

2 See Rabieh, Michael S., “The Reasonableness of Locke, or the Questionableness of Christianity,” Journal of Politics 53, no. 4 (1991): 939.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Locke, John, A Letter Concerning Toleration (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983)Google Scholar, 25; Second Treatise of Government, ed. Cox, Richard H. (Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1982)Google Scholar, sec. 25.

4 I cite The Reasonableness by paragraph number (provided in Locke, John, The Reasonableness of Christianity, As Delivered in the Scriptures, ed. Ewing, George W. [Chicago: Regnery, 1965]Google Scholar) followed in brackets by the corresponding page in Works, vol. 7. For this criticism, see Israel, Jonathan, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man, 1670–1752 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 135–63Google Scholar; “Spinoza, Locke and the Enlightenment Battle for Toleration,” in Toleration in Enlightenment Europe, ed. Grell, Ole Peter and Porter, Roy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).Google Scholar

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8 Locke, John, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, ed. Nidditch, Peter H. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979)Google Scholar, I.3.6.

9 Essay IV.10.12. See Ashcraft, Richard, “Faith and Knowledge in Locke's Philosophy,” in John Locke: Problems and Perspectives, ed. Yolton, John W. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 204–5Google Scholar; Dunn, John, The Political Thought of John Locke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 94–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Locke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 84Google Scholar; Marshall, John Locke, 384.

10 George W. Ewing, editor's introduction to Reasonableness of Christianity, xviii.

11 Ashcraft, “Faith and Knowledge,” 218ff.; Dunn, Political Thought, 187, 193–94; Locke, 66–67, 85; Higgins-Biddle, John C., introduction to The Reasonableness of Christianity: As Delivered in the Scriptures, ed. Higgins-Biddle, John C. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), xcix–ciGoogle Scholar; Marshall, John Locke, xii–xviii, 388, 449; Waldron, Jeremy, God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations of John Locke's Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)Google Scholar, 211; Wootton, David, editor's introduction to Political Writings, by Locke, John (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2003), 111–12.Google Scholar

12 See Forster, Greg, John Locke's Politics of Moral Consensus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Mitchell, Joshua, “John Locke and the Theological Foundation of Liberal Toleration: A Christian Dialectic of History,” Review of Politics 52, no. 1 (1990): 64–83Google Scholar; and (more tentatively) Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality ,13–15, 235ff.

13 Dunn, Political Thought, x–xi; Locke, 59. See also Schwartzman, Micah, “The Relevance of Locke's Religious Arguments for Toleration,” Political Theory 33, no. 5 (2005): 678–705.Google Scholar

14 See, e.g., Corbett, Ross J., “Locke's Biblical Critique,” Review of Politics 74, no. 1 (2012): 27–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Faulkner, Robert, “Preface to Liberalism: Locke's First Treatise and the Bible,” Review of Politics 67, no. 3 (2005): 451–72Google Scholar; Owen, J. Judd, “Locke's Case for Religious Toleration: Its Neglected Foundation in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding,” Journal of Politics 69, no. 1 (2007): 156–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pangle, Thomas L., The Spirit of Modern Republicanism: The Moral Vision of the American Founders and the Philosophy of Locke (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Rabieh, “Reasonableness”; Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953)Google Scholar, chap. 5; Zuckert, Michael P., Launching Liberalism: On Lockean Political Philosophy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002)Google Scholar, chap. 6.

15 Rabieh, “Reasonableness,” 935, 953; cf. Pangle, Modern Republicanism, 203–4.

16 See Rabieh's discussion of miracles at “Reasonableness,” 949–51.

17 Ibid., 939, 941, 947–48, 952–55.

18 Ibid., 933–34, 955.

19 Zuckert, Launching Liberalism, 165–66.

20 For this, it will be necessary to retrace some ground covered by Rabieh, as well as by Zuckert and Pangle. While I have sought to acknowledge specific instances of this retracing in the notes, it should be understood throughout that my overall reading of The Reasonableness is deeply indebted to their work.

21 Letter, 23, 25.

22 Here I have in mind the troubles encountered by the later John Rawls, who understands liberalism as openness to all viewpoints, including “nonliberal” ones, and who therefore expresses “regret” that liberal societies must require a minimal civic education (Rawls, John, Political Liberalism [New York: Columbia University Press, 2005]Google Scholar, xlv, 37, 143, 200).

23 This also constitutes a new piece of evidence against the conventional view of Locke, which takes his statements that the Gospel provides a sufficient teaching about morality at face value (see, e.g. Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, 101; cf. Kateb, “Locke,” 1032 [n. 94 below]). If Locke's analysis of the New Testament's moral teaching is actually a subtle criticism of it—and an attempt to change it—then he cannot simply have turned to the Bible in his old age hoping to find support for the ethic of his earlier works.

24 Israel, Radical Enlightenment; Enlightenment Contested.

25 Cf. Spinoza: “it is equally impossible to take away superstition from the vulgar as to take away dread”; and yet the aim of a liberal republic is “to free each from dread” (Theologico-Political Treatise, ed. and trans. Yaffe, Martin D. [Newburyport, MA: Focus, 2004]Google Scholar, pref., chap. 20 [xiii, 230]).

26 See n. 4 above.

27 For a more comprehensive account, see Wolfson, Adam, “Toleration and Relativism: The Locke-Proast Exchange,” Review of Politics 59, no. 2 (1997): 213–31.Google Scholar

28 Letter, 23.

29 For an articulation of this potential Lockean critique of Rawlsian public reason, see Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, 233, 237ff.

30 Letter, 51.

31 Ibid., 23–24.

32 Ibid., 24, 26, 36; Myers, Peter C., Our Only Star and Compass: Locke and the Struggle for Political Rationality (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), 184–85.Google Scholar

33 Letter, 36.

34 Ibid., 50–51.

35 See Tarcov, Nathan, “John Locke and the Foundations of Toleration,” in Early Modern Skepticism and the Origins of Toleration, ed. Levine, Alan (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 1999), 179–80.Google Scholar

36 Letter, 34.

37 Thus, Beiner's suggestion that the Letter's teaching on separation constitutes a break from the tradition of civil religion (Beiner, Ronald, Civil Religion: A Dialogue in the History of Political Philosophy [New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011]Google Scholar, chaps. 12 and 13) overlooks the way in which Locke quietly continues this tradition in the absence of an officially established church. See Kraynak, Robert P., “John Locke: From Absolutism to Toleration,” American Political Science Review 74, no. 1 (1980): 53–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nadon, Christopher, “Absolutism and the Separation of Church and State in Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration,” Perspectives on Political Science 35, no. 2 (2006): 94–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Letter, 51; Essay I.3.6; Forde, Steven, “Natural Law, Theology, and Morality in Locke,” American Journal of Political Science 45, no. 2 (2001): 396–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As Pangle notes, Locke's contrary assertion in the Essay (I.3.5) that a Hobbesian has as much reason for keeping his promises as a Christian “does not … speak to the problem of secret crimes” (Modern Republicanism, 191).

39 Letter, 55, emphasis added.

40 Second Treatise, sec. 168, 176, 241–42; Kessler, Sanford, “John Locke's Legacy of Religious Freedom,” Polity 17, no. 3 (1985)Google Scholar: 503.

41 See esp. sec. 11.

42 Essay I.3.21, 26, emphasis original.

43 Essay II.28.10–12. See also Pangle, Modern Republicanism, 176–97.

44 Baltes, John, “Locke's Inverted Quarantine: Discipline, Panopticism, and the Making of the Liberal Subject,” Review of Politics 75, no. 2 (2013): 173–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Grant, Ruth W., “John Locke on Custom's Power and Reason's Authority,” Review of Politics 74, no. 4 (2012): 607–29.Google Scholar

45 Essay II.28.12; Grant, “Custom's Power,” 610.

46 Essay II.21.41–42.

47 Essay II.21.55.

48 Essay I.3.9–10.

49 Essay I.3.22. As Baltes notes, the place of education is doubly important if the fear of hell is not always as persuasive as the Letter and The Reasonableness suggest (cf. Essay II.28.12 with Baltes, “Inverted Quarantine,” 188–89).

50 Grant, “Custom's Power,” 625.

51 Letter, 23.

52 I say “may” because the “meer” of William Popple's 1693 translation of the Letter is absent from the Latin (Locke, John, A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. Montuori, Mario [The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1963]CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 90), though Montuori provides evidence that Locke supervised Popple's work (xxx–xlvi). While “mere” did not mean “insignificant” in the seventeenth century, in addition to “pure, unmixed,” or “unalloyed,” it could signify the quality of having no greater power or importance than a designation implies (Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “mere”). In context, this meaning of “mere religion” as “religion alone” makes the most sense, and, insofar as it implies that piety must be supplemented by other factors, it entails a denigration of its importance.

53 Locke, Works, 7:186, 189.

54 Zuckert, Launching Liberalism, 147ff.

55 Works, 7:165.

56 Ibid., 7:164.

57 Ibid., 7:166, 168.

58 Ibid., 7:187.

59 Ibid.

60 Ibid., 7:188.

61 Ibid.

62 Although Hobbes and Spinoza have civil religion teachings of their own, both claim this could be a natural religion (Spinoza, Treatise, chap. 14; Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. xxx).

63 Spinoza, Treatise, preface, chaps. 1–2, 6; Hobbes Leviathan, chaps. xi–xii, xxxvii.

64 Spinoza, Treatise, chaps. 8–10. For Hobbes's steps in this direction, see Leviathan, chap. xxxiii.

65 Cf. Pangle, Modern Republicanism, 155–56.

66 Second Treatise, sec. 6.

67 Cf. Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. xliii.

68 Rabieh, “Reasonableness,” 941.

69 Works, 7:235; Rabieh, “Reasonableness,” 953–35.

70 Sec. 72; Pangle, Modern Republicanism, 238; Strauss, Natural Right and History, 218–19.

71 Rabieh, “Reasonableness,” 954.

72 Cf., e.g., Matt. 6:20, 13:44ff.; Heb. 12:2.

73 Matt. 5:8, 48; cf. Matt. 19:21; Mark 10:21; Luke 18:22.

74 Matt. 6:25–28.

75 Matt. 5:29, 39; Luke 6:29.

76 Matt. 5:29, 32. Cf. Second Treatise, sec. 77–82; Pangle, Modern Republicanism, 155.

77 The New Testament's Jesus prohibits “vain repetitions” in prayer, but he does so in the name of sincere, inward piety (Matt. 6:5–8). Locke's draws no such contrast.

78 Perhaps to highlight this connection, after his discussion of the Sermon Locke devotes several pages to quoting without comment some of the biblical Jesus's most emphatic statements in praise of fanatical self-abnegation—for example, “be not fearful, or apprehensive of want” (196 [118]; Luke 12:15, 22, 32–48); “whosoever … is not ready to forego all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple” (199 [119]; Luke 14:33). Locke's attempt to moderate such sentiments, however, seems evident from the one time he offers an interpretation: according to Locke, Christ's injunction to “sell all that thou hast, and give it to the poor” (203 [119]) was only a test of faith for his interlocutor (Luke 18:22; Strauss, Natural Right and History, 216n73). For us, such selflessness is hardly necessary for salvation, and simple obedience to the moral law is sufficient.

79 This condition also makes salvation available to non-Christians with access to the Gospel. Later Locke will subsume Islam (and by implication, Judaism) under the heading of Christianity (239 [137]).

80 Essay I.4.25.

81 John Locke, “A Discourse of Miracles,” in Works, 9:259; but cf. Rabieh, “Reasonableness,” 950–51, on Locke's treatment of the problem of false prophecy.

82 Forde, “Natural Law,” 406; Rabieh, “Reasonableness,” 950; Owen, “Locke's Case,” 163–65; Pangle, Modern Republicanism, 201; Zuckert, Launching Liberalism, 161.

83 Zuckert, Launching Liberalism, 161.

84 As Windstrup notes, the Third Letter explicitly states that the veracity of Christ's resurrection cannot be known by reason. The effect of this is baldly to “deny the reasonableness of Christianity” (Windstrup, George, “Freedom and Authority: The Ancient Faith of Locke's Letter on Toleration,” Review of Politics 44, no. 2 [1982]Google Scholar: 248). See Locke, Works, 6:144.

85 Cf. Pangle, Modern Republicanism, 215.

86 Essay I.3.6, emphasis added.

87 Pangle, Modern Republicanism, 190–91.

88 Reading with Locke, Reasonableness, ed. Higgins-Biddle, 154; Rabieh, “Reasonableness,” 943n9.

89 Works, 7:358.

90 Letter, 46.

91 Cf., in addition to the sections of the Letter discussed above, Locke's discussion of “enthusiasm” in Essay IV.19.

92 Macpherson, C. B., The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford: Clarendon, 1962).Google Scholar

93 de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America, ed. and trans. Mansfield, Harvey C. and Winthrop, Delba (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 604.

94 “Locke bleaches out the distinctiveness of Jesus's teachings about the conduct of life, even while he makes the Sermon on the Mount … his main moral text. It is incredible that he replaces agape by divine law and clear-cut duties. This move should offend religious and nonreligious people equally. … The sermon teaches magnanimity, forgiveness, and self-giving; it teaches self-denial to the point of self-loss. Locke foregoes almost all moral and supramoral radiance” (Kateb, “Locke,” 1032).