Finding Locke's God

The Theological Basis of John Locke's Political Thought

Nathan Guy

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781350103535
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christliche Theologie

The portrait of John Locke as a secular advocate of Enlightenment rationality has been deconstructed by the recent 'religious turn' in Locke scholarship. This book takes an important next step: moving beyond the 'religious turn' and establishing a 'theological turn', Nathan Guy argues that John Locke ought to be viewed as a Christian political philosopher whose political theory was firmly rooted in the moderating Latitudinarian theology of the seventeenth-century. Nestled between the secular political philosopher and the Christian public theologian stands Locke, the Christian political philosopher, whose arguments not only self-consciously depend upon Christian assumptions, but also offer a decidedly Christian theory of government. Finding Locke's God identifies three theological pillars crucial to Locke's political theory: (1) a biblical depiction of God, (2) the law of nature rooted in a doctrine of creation and (3) acceptance of divine revelation in scripture. As a result, Locke's political philosophy brings forth theologically-rich aims, while seeking to counter or disarm threats such as atheism, hyper-Calvinism, and religious enthusiasm. Bringing these items together, Nathan Guy demonstrates how each pillar supports Locke's Latitudinarian political philosophy and provides a better understanding of how he grounds his notions of freedom, equality and religious toleration. Convincingly argued and meticulously researched, this book offers an exciting new direction for Locke studies.

Part One

In Defense of the Religious Turn

1

The New Perspective on Locke: The Religious (Re)Turn in Locke Scholarship

A tale of two portraits

In political theory classrooms around the globe, it is quite common to be introduced to a decidedly secular historical figure by the name of John Locke.¹ As begetter of the Enlightenment, it is argued, Locke championed a strong separation between church and state for the express purpose of distancing and disparaging the power and influence of religious figures and structures from the economic, social, and political life of the citizenry. Breaking with the Theo-political traditions before him, Locke sought to usher in a secular agenda for governance—one that removed concerns about the sacred, for the sake of peace and economic prosperity. By favoring freedom over virtue, the individual over the social, and rights over duties, Locke left the scholastic tradition to follow in the train of Machiavelli.² Though Locke’s personal religious commitments were sometimes acknowledged, these had little to no bearing on his political agenda. In short, theology had no place in his political theory—one that sought secular means for secular ends in contradistinction to the theological.

This portrayal can be linked to a similar approach to Locke’s moral philosophy. By rejecting the doctrine of innate ideas, and supporting the natural ends of hedonistic materialism, it is argued, Locke separates himself from any natural law foundation for his moral philosophy—despite some of his claims to the contrary. Locke’s incomplete moral philosophy is either disconnected from his political thought or, if connected, simply continues a nontheological bent concerned with the formation of personal autonomy in view of material prosperity. Subjecting all moral, political, and theological interests to the supreme test of unaided human reason, Locke ushers in the Enlightenment project bound to remove the tethers of private theology (and “matters of eternal interest”) from the concerns of public life.³

However, a new perspective on Locke has emerged—especially over the last two decades—which paints a decidedly different picture. A life-long Christian with a deep, sincere, and abiding—albeit heterodox—faith, Locke saw matters bearing on eternity as more weighty by far than to any that concern only this life and declared “believing and doing those things in this Life, which are necessary to the obtaining of Gods Favour, and are prescribed by God to that end” to be “the highest Obligation that lies upon Mankind … Because there is nothing in this World that is of any consideration in comparison with Eternity.”⁴ Believing in a law of nature—consistent with divine revelation in the Christian scriptures—which prescribes how humans are to see themselves in relation to one another, Locke develops his moral and political theory not only in concert with his religious beliefs but upon theological foundations. Humans, and the world they inhabit, are God’s property and are “sent into the world by his order and about his business.”⁵ A Christian conception of God and a doctrine of creation—both forged out of a close reading of “infallible” scripture—provide the lens through which Locke describes fundamental portions of the law of nature, without which Locke’s arguments concerning freedom, equality, toleration, moral distinction, and political power (both in terms of making and executing laws) would never get off the ground. Locke’s writings on Christianity near the end of his life serve as “a keystone” to interpreting his entire corpus of work, since theology “runs through his whole work like a scarlet thread.”⁶

A bourgeoning field of study suggests that Locke’s theological interests cannot be separated out from his moral and political philosophy, nor did he intend them to be. While urging toleration among different forms of belief, disparaging the use of force to compel faith, and separating categorically the power of clergy from that of the magistrate, Locke never intended to separate his theory of government from its theological moorings. Instead, Locke’s theology can be conceived of as “constitutive” with regard to essential components of his political and philosophical argumentation.⁷

On the secular trail—and why it is (mostly) wrong

How could two such radically different portraits emerge from the same set of works? Neither the religious nor the secular reading of Locke is a modern invention, and neither has a sole claim to antiquity. For example, one can find philosophers and political theorists traversing the “secular” trail throughout the three centuries separating Locke from the current scene. One can identify five moves, some of which cover the span between Locke’s lifetime and our own, that have tended to the reception of Locke as fundamentally a secularist.

The first four moves: Heresy hunting, neglect, misrepresentation, and amalgamation

The first move occurred within Locke’s own lifetime, near the end of the seventeenth century. In a number of important cases, Locke’s writings met opposition from clergy on religious grounds, while those with more secular interests paraded (or misapplied) Locke’s writings in defense of their own causes. It is well known that some of Locke’s religious contemporaries raised serious concerns about Locke’s orthodoxy, questioning his religious credentials.⁸ And when Locke’s LCT was first published in English, his translator provided a “Preface to the Reader,” which introduced the work as one advocating “Absolute Liberty”—a position at odds with the actual stated purpose of the LCT as well as the sentiments of the author.⁹ In 1696, when John Toland wrote a scathing rebuke against those clinging to the need for divine revelation, he relied on key facets of Locke’s epistemology to root his claims.¹⁰

Failing to appreciate the context in which Locke’s works were produced, a “mirror reading” of Locke’s detractors—as well as those employing Lockean arguments to suit their own ends—might suggest that Locke’s works must either be irreligious or at least a significant threat to any religious basis for moral and political philosophy. But Locke’s vehement defense of his writings on theological grounds suggests that his own intention was not to subvert theological bases for political ends but to clarify them. Just as contemporary readers of Locke’s LCT may easily forget that the work concerns toleration of disagreements within Christianity, readers of Locke’s early antagonists ought to remain aware of the sense of threat from within, which was often conceived of as far greater than that from without. Locke was considered by some within his own generation as offering heterodox theology; nevertheless, the chief arguments concerned theological positions present rather than absent. And, given that Locke was greeted with such a hostile reception in some ecclesiastical quarters, those outside or on the fringes of religion had little reason to separate their own ends from Locke’s Christian commitments in their selective use of his works. These actions helped shape a jaundiced approach to Locke, which would survive for centuries to come.

The second move seems to have emerged in the eighteenth century. Given the nearly half-century between Locke’s writings and the employment of his works toward new desired ends, it is apparent that the political fruit of toleration, liberty, and equality was advanced (by intent or neglect) without the same level of regard for the theological roots, which connect Locke’s moral philosophy to his political ends. The one considered “the most influential philosopher of modern times”¹¹ was virtually unread in most places of influence for the first quarter of the eighteenth century. According to Jonathan Israel, there was a “remarkable disinclination of leading intellectual figures early in the century to engage seriously with Locke’s work,” a conclusion he finds “striking.”¹² For example, it was not until the 1730s that Locke garnered much influence in France, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and Italy, and that in the realm of epistemology.¹³ Though the Lochisti were a potent force in the 1740s, Locke’s Essay was only placed on the papal Index in 1734, suggesting a lack of any notable influence until that time.¹⁴ A similar story may be told concerning Locke’s influence in the Americas. Although Locke is considered the father of the American Revolution, claiming the Two Treatises was “causally responsible” for the American political scene of the 1700s is “largely false.”¹⁵ As Dunn has ably shown, Locke’s Two Treatises was not greatly read in the American colonies before 1750, and any significant influences on American revolutionary sympathies “was largely confined to the post-1760 constitutional writings of the highly educated.”¹⁶ Interestingly, the book was not nearly as popular in eighteenth-century France or even England as is customarily thought.¹⁷ In fact, what stands out when conducting a historical survey of the Two Treatises’ reception history is its glaring ambiguity, being used for differing (and sometimes, cross) purposes.

Recognizing the shelf wear on Locke’s moral and political works offers a clue to tracing historically the deviation from Locke’s original aims through appropriation for new desired ends. Spellman points out that in the mid-1750s, Jean Le Rond d’Alembert’s Encyclopaedia spoke of Locke as the founder of “scientific philosophy,” following in the footsteps of Newton, credited as the father of “scientific physics.”¹⁸ Voltaire considered Locke to be “the Hercules of metaphysics,” abandoning the methodology and overturning the conclusions of the scholastics and divine right theorists. Conceiving of Locke’s works (for nearly eighty years) passing only through the hands of a few educated persons with their own moral and political agenda leads one to conclude with Spellman that, whatever Locke’s intentions, his work was shaped for new purposes by “a less devout eighteenth century” that misunderstood Locke’s central aims and intentions.¹⁹

In the nineteenth century, one sees a third “move” take shape. A particular (re)reading of the philosophy of history created an ill-informed sense of key Enlightenment thinkers, read in the light of new concerns. The industrial revolution, a grand story of societal evolution, and analysis of the many uses of religion for social and economic purposes provided a new paradigm within which any positive appreciation for the permeating influences of religion struggled to survive. This move to gain a critical foothold over what was considered to be the evil influences of religion led to the loss of a historical perspective concerning the God-intoxicated seventeenth-century Western culture.²⁰ In Spellman’s words, the seventeenth was a century “where Augustine’s ‘City of God’ continued to take precedence over the evanescent city of man.”²¹ Yet given a new paradigm, Christian philosophers of the past were recast as secular champions for a new era.²² In this, political historians lost sight of the true fulcrum of seventeenth-century social life. Standing above economics, political structure, and personal ethics was the real issue of the age: religion and religious authority.²³ Thus a “secular” mindset was not (and ought not be) the default assumption for how to interpret Enlightenment thinkers, including Locke.

A fourth movement that begins in the nineteenth century but carries over into the twentieth involves a recasting of natural law theory and, to some extent, a forgetfulness of the theological foundations that went before. According to this model, Locke is simply lumped together with certain other thinkers as a chief contributor to an anthropologically (and thus, not theologically) centered natural law theory concerned with individual rights rather than societal obligations in the shared context of a larger created order. The result, still visible in the present day among the most ardent of religious natural law theorists, is an amalgamation of Locke’s natural law theory with the claims of his contemporaries, which mask Locke’s distinct contributions and hide Locke’s own defense of a previous religious tradition.²⁴

The fifth move: Radical skepticism

The fifth move in Locke scholarship occurred in the middle of the twentieth century. It is both the most radical and the least plausible and can be summarized as Straussian-inspired skepticism.²⁵ In a series of works publi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents 
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part 1: In Defense of the Religious Turn
• Part 2: From a “Religious” to a “Theological” Turn: Tracing Locke’s Theological Argumentation
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• People Index
• Subject Index
• Locke’s Works Index
• Imprint