Abstract
What follows is a narrative of John Locke’s theological reflections and judgments, expressed in pertinent writings beginning with ‘Adversaria theologica’ (1694), and ending with Of the conduct of the understanding (published posthumously in 1706). I hope to show that these reflections and judgments follow a continuous line of enquiry and discovery that has its own integrity and may, therefore, be considered on its own, notwithstanding that Locke might have been at the same time influenced by other motives, for example, political and economic ones, or concerns about reputation. Narration seems to me a more appropriate method of expounding on Locke’s theology than a systematic presentation of it, for Locke’s thoughts on theology were not all expressed as considered opinions, nor did he manifest a tendency to give assent where Scripture or reason did not require it. His thoughts on theological themes varied from suppositions to queries to preferences to clear and certain judgments. These differences in propositional attitude, to use current jargon, would be lost in a mere systematic account. As will be seen, Locke did conceive of theology as a system, but also, at the outset at least, as one whose markers described fields of enquiry rather than parts of a dogmatic scheme. During this period, the field of enquiry that most commanded his attention was Christianity as presented in the New Testament. As he progressed, Locke made two very important discoveries: one, that to be a Christian and a beneficiary of the covenant of grace, it is necessary to accept only one, albeit complex proposition, that Jesus is the Messiah; the other, that Christianity is essentially a moral religion.
This chapter was previously published in English Philosophy in the Age of Locke, ed. M. A. Stewart (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 183–215.
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Notes
- 1.
Conduct, 193.
- 2.
Conduct, 222–3.
- 3.
In my continuing studies of Locke, it has become increasingly clear to me how this discovery is joined with another: the mutuality of reason and revelation. Near the close of The Reasonableness of Christianity, Locke reviews the advantages to mankind of a Messiah and most prominent among them is that Messiah restored universal morality. What was supposed to be reason’s domain, was taken over, refined, and given back to it by revelation in a form that reason could recognize and confirm. An extended discussion of this mutuality is provided in my ‘Locke’s Hermeneutics of Existence and his Representation of Christianity’, see above, Chap. 1, fn. 3.
- 4.
Correspondence, v, 237; the translation is mine.
- 5.
MS Locke c. 43 (LL, 25). I shall normally omit ‘94’ in citing the title of this work. I interpret the number to signify the year when the notebook was set up for use, for want of any evidence to the contrary or a better explanation of its meaning, but I do so with proper caution; see J. R. Milton, ‘The date and significance of two of Locke’s early manuscripts’, Locke Newsletter 19 (1988), 47–89, at 50; idem, ‘John Locke’s medical notebooks’, Locke Newsletter 28 (1997), 135–56, at 137, 154. The full text of this notebook is printed with annotation in WR, 19–34.
- 6.
The life of John Locke,with Extracts from his Correspondence, Journals, and Common-place Books, new edn, 2 vols (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830), ii, 186–94. King included ‘Electio’, another entry from ‘Adversaria theologica’, among selections from ‘Adversaria 1661’ at pp. 98–9.
- 7.
See LL; also, A Summary Catalogue of the Lovelace Collection of the Papers of John Locke in the Bodleian Library, ed. P. Long (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the Bodleian Library, 1959).
- 8.
See, for example, J. Marshall, John Locke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 394–5; M. Wiles, Archetypal Heresy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 75.
- 9.
There is no mention of it in James Tyrrell’s 1691 catalogue of Locke’s books in his custody, in MS Locke, f. 17. However, the origin of the book as distinct from its use is of no concern here.
- 10.
I take this opportunity to withdraw a previous comment on this letter in my Introduction to the Thoemmes ‘Key Texts’ edition of Locke’s Reasonableness and its Vindications (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1997), vii. There I assumed that Locke was referring to preparations for the Reasonableness, an assumption which I now believe is mistaken.
- 11.
Compare MS Locke c. 43, pp. 40–41, ‘Lex operum. Rom III. 27’ and ‘Lex fidei Rom. III 7’, with The Reasonableness of Christianity, WR, 98–9.
- 12.
See below, Appendix A, for Locke’s list of topics.
- 13.
MS Locke f. 15, p. 122.
- 14.
See Locke, Political Essays, ed. M. Goldie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), for a convenient listing with excerpts, esp. ‘Adversaria A’, 215; ‘Adversaria B’, 265; ‘Adversaria C’, 287. However, cf. also ‘Knowledge A’, 250. The titles are Goldie’s. It may be argued that the differences between ‘Adversaria theologica’ and these others are a function of circumstance. Since Locke was designing a theological adversaria, it is understandable that he would not represent theology as one science among others. However, the comprehensive nature of the list weighs against this explanation.
- 15.
Two hundred queries moderately propounded concerning the doctrine of the revolution of humane souls, and its conformity to the truths of Christianity (London: Robert Kettelwell, 1684), published anonymously. There is a copy of this book in Locke’s library, LL 2472. Locke’s theory of personal identity is not inconsistent with the theory of the revolution souls. His extensive account of personal identity, Essay, II. xxvii. 6–29, first appeared in the second edition of 1694, and was completed shortly before the period covered here. The reference in section 14 to ‘a Christian Platonist’ is more likely to Joseph Glanvill or Henry More than either to Van Helmont or Von Rosenroth. Perhaps it refers specifically to Glanvill’s Lux orientalis, published together with More’s notes in Two choice and useful treatises (London: James Collins and Samuel Lowndes, 1682), LL 2516. Text and notes are paginated separately. (See Lux orientalis, 15; More’s Annotations, 16.) Among other caballistic items in Locke’s library or among his manuscripts are the following. There is a set of notes in his handwriting on Christian Knorr von Rosenroth’s Kabbala denudata (1677). The notes are inscribed on a folded quarto sheet (endorsed ‘Cabbala 88’). The sheet has been glued on to the front flyleaf of one of two copies of this book preserved in Locke’s library (the two copies are LL 558 and 558a). On another sheet attached to this one is a set of notes, also in Locke’s hand, on Volkelius’s De vera religione (1642). Neither has been catalogued among Locke’s papers and no mention is made of them by Harrison and Laslett (LL 558). For another summary of cabbalistic doctrine, see ‘Dubia circa Philosophiam Orientalem’, MS Locke c. 27, fols. 76–7. This is a set of notes on Rosenroth’s Adumbratio Kabbalae Christianae (1684), and contains two initialed entries. The first, entitled ‘Spiritus’, is a comment on Col. I: 16. The second occurs under the heading ‘Animarum praeexistentia’. See also, Chap. 6, for a transcription of the text of Locke’s ‘Dubia’ with translation and introduction.
- 16.
Duties to bad spirits require special comment. One would not expect that such duties derive from the law of nature, but they do have some legitimacy in the light of the circumstances of sacred history. “Bad spirits” are the rulers of this world who have some worldly claim even on the redeemed. See Romans 13: 1; also Locke’s comment on it in Paraphrase and Notes, ii. 588. Ancestors also were connected with pagan civil authority and were assigned a special place in the cabbalistic hierarchy of spirits. See M. Goldish, ‘Newton on Kabbalah’, in The Books of Nature and Scripture, ed. J.E. Force and R.H. Popkin (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994), 89–103.
- 17.
See Appendix B. The titles of the entries are Locke’s; the numeration is mine.
- 18.
MS Film 77, p. 6.
- 19.
MS Locke c. 27, fol. 116.
- 20.
MS Locke c. 27, fol. 246.
- 21.
- 22.
Marshall, ‘Locke and Socinianism’, Locke Newsletter, 27 (1996), 147–8.
- 23.
Edward’s charges against Locke and his book are stated in the following books: Some Thoughts Concerning the Several Causes and Occasions of Atheism (London: J. Robinson and J. Wyat, 1695), 104–22, and Socinianism Unmask’d (London: J. Robinson and J. Wyat, 1696), these works now bound together and reprinted, New York 1984; The Socinian Creed (London: J. Robinson and J. Wyat, 1697); A Brief Vindication of the Fundamental Articles of the Christian Faith (London: J. Robinson and J. Wyat, 1697). A detailed account of Edwards’s charges against Locke and Locke’s responses to them is provided in my introduction to John Locke. Vindications of the Reasonableness of Christianity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, forthcoming, 2011).
- 24.
In composing these entries Locke drew from two of Biddle’s works: A confession of faith touching the holy Trinity, according to Scripture (London, 1648), and An answer to the grand objections of the adversarie, touching the supposed omnipotence of the holy spirit (London, 1648). See H.J. McLachlan, Socinianism in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951), Chap. 10.
- 25.
See Biddle, Confessions on Faith, 24. See also Locke’s interleaved Greek New Testament, LL 2862 (Locke 9.40), 142, for Locke’s comment on 1 Corinthians 14: 32, which cites Biddle on the spirit of the prophets.
- 26.
The argument for immateriality would proceed as follows: since the human soul thinks, it is inconceivable that it is a system of atoms or particles; hence, it must be immaterial.
- 27.
The inference here is that since the human soul moves, it must be extended, and, hence, material.
- 28.
Correspondence, v. 370. On the revelatory character of Locke’s experience, see my comments in ‘Locke’s Hermeneutics of existence and his representation of Christianity’, fn. 44.
- 29.
Crisp, a puritan divine who supported the Parliamentary side during the English Civil War, was born in London in 1600 and died there in 1643. For a brief account of his life and thought, see C. Hill, ‘Dr Tobias Crisp’, Collected Essays of Christopher Hill, 3 vols (Amherst: University of Massachusetts press, 1985–6), ii. 141–61. On the second antinomian crisis, see my John Locke and Christianity (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1997), 111–48. Antinomianism is a Calvinist heresy. Antinomians were strong advocates of the doctrine of free grace. Like most other Calvinists, they believed that divine grace, by which the elect receive forgiveness and eternal life and other spiritual blessings, is given freely and without condition and that the divine decrees, by which the elect are chosen, have been made in eternity. They concluded from this that faith and obedience can be neither conditions nor evidence of divine grace. The latter conclusion earned them the name ‘antinomian’, which, since they did not advocate lawlessness, is rather an odious label than a proper description of their doctrine or their mode of life.
- 30.
A Second Vindication of The Reasonableness of Christianity (London: A. & J. Churchill, and Edward Castle, 1697), A7r–8r.
- 31.
Essay, IV. xix; this is probably at least an overstatement, for further study has led me to the discovery of other motives behind this chapter, see my article, ‘Enthusiasm’, The Continuum Companion to Locke, ed. S.J. Savonius-Wroth, Paul Schuurman, and Jonathan Walmsley (London: Continuum, 2010), 142.
- 32.
On Blount (1654–93), see my article in The Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century British Philosophers, ed. J.W. Yolton and others (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1999), also John Locke and Christianity, xxxiii–xxxvi, 149–53, and my article ‘Deism’, The Continuum Companion to Locke, 135–7.
- 33.
Reasonableness, I55; WR, 199.
- 34.
A Vindication of The Reasonableness of Christianity (London, 1695), 9; WR, 214.
- 35.
At Essay, IV. xviii. 3, Locke distinguishes between original revelation, which he distinguishes here as ‘that first Impression, which is made immediately by GOD, on the Mind of any Man, to which we cannot set any Bounds’, and traditional revelation, ‘those Impressions delivered over to others in Words, and the ordinary ways of conveying our Conceptions one to another’. The distinction is problematic, for those to whom individuals who receive an original revelation must convey it include themselves, if they would understand it. A manuscript that belongs to this period, entitled ‘Revelation, Its several ways under the Old Testament’, dated 1696, offers a descriptive list of modes of original revelation drawn from the Old Testament. These include a variety of modes of communication: by voice, inspiration, apparition, dreams, signs, and suchlike. In these instances, the revelation itself would have involved an accommodation to human understanding. See MS Locke c. 27, fols. 138–41.
- 36.
The following are the texts cited (numbers in parentheses refer to pages in Locke’s interleaved Bentley bible, LL 309 (Locke 16.25); it should be noted that Locke’s pagination was somewhat irregular): Gen. I: 2 (18); John I: 15, 18 (736). 3: 13 (738), 6: 62 (742), 9: 58 (746); I Cor. 15: 47 (804); Titus 2: 11 (833); 2 Peter I: 4 (851); I John 5: 11 (854); Rev. 4: 14 (859): 7: 3 (859). For an explanation of the method used to date the notes in Locke’s interleaved bible, see below.
From Locke’s practice in citing sources, I infer that ‘G’ refers to a person and not to the title of a work. No date or pagination is given. It is not impossible that Locke received the references in conversation, but the number of the citations makes it more likely that he was commonplacing from a written source—a letter or a manuscript. There is no trace of either among his papers. As to G’s identity, from the theology of the sources, G appears to have been an Origenist. (See Origen, On First Principles (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 108–9, 319–20.) This points to Joseph Glanvill, but I have so far not found anything in Glanvill’s writings that fits these notations, nor am I aware of any evidence connecting Locke and Glanvill. Postscript: the referent of G turns out to be a work by Nicholas Gibbons. For a complete transcription of Locke ‘G’ citations, see Chap. 4, Appendix, and passim.
- 37.
Reasonableness, 93; WR, 155. A fuller discussion of Locke’s Christology is given in Chap. 4.
- 38.
For a listing of the works of these authors in Locke’s library, see LL. Lightfoot is by far the most frequently cited commentator in Locke’s bibles and testaments.
- 39.
‘Evangelia 79’, MS Locke c. 42, fols. 32–3.
- 40.
Evangeliorum harmonia Graeco-Latina. Although not published until 1707, sheets of this work were printed in 1678.This chronology should be compared with another, inscribed in Locke’s hand in the cover of a French New Testament, LL 2863 (Locke 7.327). It is a chronology that runs from the birth of Jesus until AD 66. Here Locke follows Lightfoot and locates the prologue to John at the beginning of the sequence, just after Luke I: 1–4. No date is given; it must be later than 1682, which is the date of publication of the testament.
- 41.
Locke supposed that Jesus foretold a first and second coming after his ascension. The first was imminent, the second not until the end of the world. The great accomplishment of this first coming would be the destruction of Jerusalem, an act of vengeance. See Reasonableness, 66; WR, 134.
- 42.
Rev. 20: 3.
- 43.
‘Chronologica Sacra 92’, MS Locke c. 27, fol. 90; ‘Chronologia Sacra 95’, ibid., fol. 91; ‘Chronologia Sacra’ (n.d.), ibid., fols. 258–63. The first two manuscripts are not in Locke’s hand. For a possible clue to the year of composition of the third of these, see fol. 263, where specific mention is made of the year 1701. Wainwright writes that the futuristic predictions follow calculations done by Francis Mercury van Helmont in his Seder olam, sive Ordo saeculorum (Leyden?, 1693). See Paraphrase, i. 56, n. 2. My own comparison of the chronologies with the English edition of Van Helmont’s book (London, 1694) confirm this, although Locke must have been using other sources as well.
- 44.
Essay, IV. xvi. 14 (667).
- 45.
- 46.
Reasonableness, 40–108; WR, 115–66.
- 47.
LL 2864 (Locke 9.103–7).
- 48.
Tyrrell’s description fits it exactly. See MS Locke f. 17. fol. 3. Locke received it back from Tyrrell in 1691. See MS Locke b. 2, fol. 124, ‘Libri Rec’d from Mr. Tyrrell. 91’.
- 49.
The notes from Lightfoot on I Corinthians are in iv. 56–105, passim (Locke 9.106).
- 50.
I am grateful to J. R. Milton for introducing me to the methods of dating Locke’s notes and for his generosity in sharing his considerable knowledge of Locke’s manuscripts. The method outlined here is incomplete. Other facts also contribute to dating: e.g. handwriting, the position of the entry on the page. I hope to present a more detailed and definite account of a method in Locke’s Theological Manuscripts, a volume of the Clarendon Edition of the Works of John Locke in preparation. This volume will also include critical texts of ‘Adversaria theologica’ and other documents discussed here.
- 51.
The other early entry counts are as follows: Romans 6; 2 Corinthians I; Galatians I; Phillipians I; I Thessalonians o; 2 Thessalonians o; I Timothy 6; Hebrews 2.
- 52.
Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae impensae in epistolam primam S. Pauli ad Corinthios (Paris, 1677). There is a copy of this book in Locke’s library, LL 1747 (Locke 12.16). However, this may not be the copy that he used to make his notes, for some of the pages of this particular volume are uncut, and some of the uncut pages are cited by Locke in his interleaved New Testament.
- 53.
Paraphrase, ii. 616, 621.
- 54.
Ibid., ii. 616, 806.
- 55.
Reasonableness, 120; WR, 175.
- 56.
Hebrews is cited in five places in the Reasonableness (see Appendix II, 226), but nowhere is mention made of Christ’s priestly role.
- 57.
The note appears in Locke’s interleaved Bentley bible. It has been transcribed by Wainwright, Paraphrase, i. 433.
- 58.
Posthumous Works of John Locke (London: A. and J. Churchill, 1706).
- 59.
Locke to Peter King, 4 October 1704: Correspondence, viii. 413. Locke died on 28 October 1704. On the manuscript sources of the Conduct, see Of The Conduct of the Understanding, ed. Paul Schuurman, (n.p. 2000), 97–126; the preceding is Schuurman’s dissertation (Keele); it contains a critical edition of the text, the first ever. A critical edition of the Conduct is now in preparation by Schuurman for the Clarendon Locke as volume 3 of John Locke. Drafts for the Essay concerning Human Understanding (Oxford: Clarendon Press, in preparation).
- 60.
Locke first mention of the Conduct, is in a letter to Molyneaux, dated 10 April 1697 (Correspondence vi. 87); he writes that he planned it as a chapter of the Essay and that he expected that it would be the longest of all. He worked on the text intermittently until his death, leaving it unfinished. See Schuurman, op. cit., 109.
- 61.
William Fleetwood, An Essay on Miracles (London: Charles Harper, 1701); the respondent was Benjamin Hoadly, who responded in A Letter to Mr. Fleetwood, occasion’d by his late Essay on Miracles (London: John Nutt, 1702).
- 62.
Essay IV. xvi. 13 (667).
- 63.
For what follows, see Essay IV. xvi. 6 (661), and compare with Discourse, WR, 45.
- 64.
Discourse, WR, 44.
- 65.
‘I crave leave to say, that he who comes with a Message from God to be deliver’d to the World, cannot be refus’d belief if he vouches his Mission by a Miracle, because his credentials [i.e. the miracles he performs] have a right to it. For every rational thinking Man must conclude as Nicodemus did, we know that thou art a teacher come from God, for no Man can do these signs which thou dost, except God be with him.’ WR, 46.
- 66.
The example of this that Locke cites is the contest between Moses and the Egyptian magicians, see Discourse, WR, 46–9.
- 67.
‘He that is present at the fact, is a spectator: He that believes the History of the fact [recorded in Scripture], put himself in the place of a Spectator.’ WR, 44.
- 68.
This, in outline, anticipates the account of Locke’s proof of the authenticity of Scripture, see Chap. 3.
- 69.
Discourse, WR, 44.
- 70.
It has been suggested to me that the argument from the nature of the thing that Locke uses is a species of the argument to the best explanation. Put in this way, Locke’s argument is that the best explanation of an extraordinary event that accompanies the communication of a purportedly divine messenger and is claimed by him to attest to the truth of his mission and message, is that it is indeed a miracle. I believe that this is what Locke thought. Its credibility, however, presupposes the truth of natural religion. I am grateful to my colleague Kareem Khalifa for this suggestion.
- 71.
Conduct, §§II, 33, 34 [i.e. II, 34, 351; Posthumous Works, 42–3, 101–7.
- 72.
H. R. Trevor-Roper, ‘The Great Tew circle’, in Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans: Seventeenth-Century Essays (London: Secker & Warburg, 1987). See especially sections 3–4.
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Appendices
Appendix A
MS Locke c. 43: ‘AdversariaTheologica’, pp. 1–7 (WR, 21–4)
Deus |
Unus |
Trinus |
Omnipotens |
Ornnisciens |
Benignus |
Spiritus |
Quando creati |
Natura |
Species |
Facultates |
Lapsus |
Crimen |
Supplicium |
Potestas |
Anima humana |
Praeexistentia |
Revolutio |
Creatio |
Traductio |
Anima brutorum |
Materia |
creata |
Qualis |
Quanta |
Mundus aspectabilis |
Antiquitas |
Systema nostrum |
Sol |
Planetae |
Terra |
Homo |
Innocens |
Lapsus |
Intellectus |
Voluntas |
Libertas |
Sensus |
Peccatum Adami |
quid |
quomodo affecit Adamum |
posteros eius reatu |
imputatione |
infectione |
post mortem |
pseuchopannuchia |
Resurrectio |
Paradisus |
Gehenna |
Annihilatio |
Christus |
Deus |
Primus creaturarum |
Homo |
Redimit |
a quo |
[quos] |
quomodo |
pretio |
gratia |
spiritu |
quos |
credentes |
quae credenda ad salutem |
sanctos |
quae agenda ad salutem |
Spiritus Sanctus |
quis |
quomodo operatur |
in quos |
Revelatio |
Necessaria |
Theopneusta |
Modi |
Certitudo |
Miracula |
Biblia |
Lex Mosaica |
Evangelium |
Ethica sive Hominis officium |
Erga Deurn |
Spiritus bonos |
malos |
Rempublicam |
Magistratus |
Parentes |
Conjuges |
Liberos |
Affines |
Dominos |
Servos |
Herum |
Famulos |
Vicinos |
Homines |
Seipsum |
Appendix B
‘Adversaria Theologica’: titles of entries (WR, 23–33)
-
1.
Trinitas/Non Trinitas (pp. 12–13)
-
2.
Cultus (p. 14)
-
3.
Propitio Placamen (p. 16)
(After pp. 16–17, four double pages, paginated but blank)
-
4.
Christus Deus Supremus/Christus non Deus supremus (pp. 26–7)
-
5.
Christus merus homo/Christus non merus homo (pp. 28–9)
-
6.
Spiritus Sanctus. Deus/Spiritus Sanctus Non Deus (pp. 30–31)
-
7.
Anima humana Immaterialis/Anima humana Materialis (pp. 32–3)
-
8.
Credenda necessario ad Salutem (p. 34)
-
9.
Homo lapsus Liber/Homo lapsus non liber (pp. 36–7)
-
10.
Adami Status ante Lapsum (p. 38)
(Hominis later added above Adami, perhaps as an alternative)
-
11.
Lex operum. Rom III. 27/Lex fidei Rom III. 27. (pp. 40–41)
-
12.
Satisfactio Christi. Aff:/Satisfactio Christi Neg: (pp. 42–3)
-
13.
Electio (p. 44)
-
14.
Redemtio & Ransom (p. 46)
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Nuovo, V. (2011). Locke’s Theology, 1694–1704. In: Christianity, Antiquity, and Enlightenment. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 203. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0274-5_2
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