Abstract
I begin with some remarks about the title of this chapter, and note that Locke’s Christology is billed only as a key, one among many, that unlocks one of several doors to his mind. Or, I might have said, a light that illuminates the several pathways of his mind. Various keys, or lights, might be employed for this purpose: his doctrine of ideas, substance scepticism, his nominalism, his epistemology as preparation for the new science, personal identity, toleration or political individualism. These several themes, to which others might be added, represent Locke’s characteristic concerns and achievements. To label them ‘keys’ is to express the belief that they are not only interesting in themselves, but that they can also be used to gain access to other parts of Locke’s mind, even to the whole of it. Each theme offers a different mode of access to his philosophical thought and, hence, a different prospect. I propose to show, or, more modestly put, to explore the ways in which Locke’s beliefs concerning Christ are integral to his thinking about the central issues that concerned him. What I am undertaking is not without precedent. It is especially appropriate to acknowledge that I am merely moving along a pathway opened up by John Dunn, and that I am proceeding according to his directive to consider how Locke’s Christianity may assist our understanding of his particular texts.
This chapter was previously published in The Philosophy of John Locke. New Perspectives, ed. Peter Anstey (London: Routledge, 2003) 129–53.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
John Locke, A Second Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity, 344–45.
- 2.
John Dunn, ‘What is living and what is dead in the Political Theory of John Locke’ in Interpreting Political Responsibility (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 11.
- 3.
On the meaning of the term ‘Messiah’ in various biblical contexts see William Horbury, Messianism in the Old Testament (London: SCM Press, 1998). For the biblical idea of Messiah, I have relied mostly on this book and used it as a guide to other primary and secondary sources; see also Gersham Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York: Schocken Books, 1971).
- 4.
In his two most heavily used interleaved Bibles and Testaments: Locke 16.25 (LL 309) and Locke 9.103–7 (LL 2864) there are respectively 132 and 216 citations of Lightfoot’s works, exceeding by far any other work cited. For an example of Lightfoot’s narrative theology, see A Chronicle of the Times and Order of the Texts of the Old Testament and The Harmony, Chronicle and Order of the New Testament, John Lightfoot, Works, 2 vols (London: Robert Scot, Thomas Basset, Richard Chiswell, and John Wright, 1684), which offers a view of history as a process of divine self-communication: i. 1: ‘The Almighty Trinity [םיחלא] having dwelt from all eternity in and with itself, when it saw good to communicate it self, did in the beginning of the being of things, create Heaven and Earth, the two parts of the world, of nothing in an instant’. There follows a prose narrative that in its various themes is Miltonic in its vision.
- 5.
A transcription and translation of Locke’s notes on Christian Knorr von Rosenroth’s Adumbratio Kabbalae Christianae, are presented below, Chap. 6.
- 6.
See WR, xxiv–vi; also ‘A List of theological places in An Essay concerning Human Understanding’, WR, 245–56.
- 7.
Dunn, op. cit., 22–25.
- 8.
See LL, 140; see also Reasonableness, xxvi.
- 9.
Locke to Van Limborch, 10 May 1695, Correspondence, v. 370–71.
- 10.
Richard Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 29, 68ff.
- 11.
The charge that in the Reasonableness, Locke reduced Christianity to a single doctrine, was first made by John Edwards (1637–1716) in Some Thoughts Concerning the Several Causes and Occasions of Atheisme (London: J. Robinson, 1695), 105 and passim. For a full account of Edwards’s criticism of Locke and Locke’s responses see my introduction to John Locke: Vindications of the Reasonableness of Christianity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, forthcoming, 2011).
- 12.
Reasonableness, 26; WR, 102.
- 13.
See Horbury, op. cit. See also E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, rev. edn, 3 vols. (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1973–87) ii, 448–554.
- 14.
Ibid., 23–36; WR, 102–13. Note that Locke regularly used the Authorised Version when citing biblical texts, but here, when quoting Messianic passages from it, he regularly replaced ‘Christ’ with ‘Messiah’.
- 15.
A succinct yet remarkably detailed summary of Locke’s narrative Christology is given in Paraphrase and Notes, ii. 616–18, n. 10(t). It is Locke’s note on the theme of Eph. 1:10, the recapitulation of all things in Christ. Much of the discussion that follows will be illuminated if read with this text in mind.
- 16.
See Luke 3:38; see also Reasonableness, 113–14; WR, 169–70.
- 17.
Ibid.
- 18.
Reasonableness, 10–11; WR, 94–95; Locke argues that God did no injustice in extending mortality to Adam’s posterity, because even mortal existence is better than no existence at all.
- 19.
Reasonableness, 113; WR, 170.
- 20.
Reasonableness, 6, 11, 113, 198–99, 206; WR, 92, 95, 170.
- 21.
Reasonableness, 113; WR, 170.
- 22.
Reasonableness, 114; WR, 171.
- 23.
‘Adversaria Theologica’, p. 28; WR, 26–27.
- 24.
Locke’s G citations are transcribed in the Appendix.
- 25.
‘Adversaria Theologica’, p. 27; WR, 7.
- 26.
Paraphrase and Notes, ii. 487.
- 27.
Ibid., 616–18, fn. 10(t).
- 28.
The genealogy in Luke 3:23–38, which differs from the one given Matt. 1:1–17, was taken to be an account of Jesus’ descent through Mary’s line. See the account of given by John Lightfoot Works, i. 21: ‘Matthew derives his Line by the Pedigree of Joseph his supposed Father, and draws it from Solomon: Luke by the Pedigree of Mary his Mother, and draws it from Nathan: For as the Jews looked on him as the Son of David, they would regard the Masculine Line and the Line Royal... But looked on, as the seed promised to Adam, the seed of the woman [Gen. 3: 15], he was to be looked after by the Line of his Mother. And whereas this seed of the woman was to destroy the power of Satan by the word of truth, as Satan had destroyed men by words of falshood, Luke doth properly draw up his line to Adam, now when he is to begin to preach the Word’.
- 29.
Tolerantia, 116–17; Reasonableness, 146, WR, 193; Second Vindication, 86–87.
- 30.
Cf. Reasonableness, 94; WR, 156. On Locke’s interpretation the transition from ὁ νῦν αἰων (the present age) and ὁ μέλλων αἰών (the age to come) is marked by an act of Messianic retribution against the nation that rejected him; see also, Ibid., 65–66; WR, 133–34.
- 31.
Reasonableness, 95–96; WR, 156–57.
- 32.
See Chap. 5.
- 33.
A Discourse of Miracles, WR, 48.
- 34.
For Locke’s detailed account of the last things, see ‘Resurrectio et quae sequuntur’, Bodleian MS. c. 27, fols. 162–73, Paraphrase and Notes, ii. 679–84.
- 35.
Reasonableness, 120; WR, 175.
- 36.
For Locke’s comment in the 1667 Essay, see Adversaria 1661, 270, critical text in Toleration, 313. I borrow the term ‘transactional’ from Locke, Reasonableness, 149. Locke’s late remarks on Christ’s priesthood appear in notes on Hebrews written circa 1700, and found on an insert in his polyglot interleaved New Testament (Locke 9. 107); transcribed in WR. 238–41.
- 37.
The text is inscribed on a sheet inserted in loc. in interleaved polyglot New Testament Bodleian Library Locke 9.107; for a transcription of the text, see WR, 239.
- 38.
See Westminster Confession, Chap. 8, §5.
- 39.
John Edwards, Some Thoughts concerning the several Causes and Occasions of Atheisme (London: J. Robinson, 1695), 112; John Locke, A Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity (London: A. and J. Churchill, 1695), 6.
- 40.
Reasonableness, 142;WR, 191.
- 41.
Second Vindication, 465.
- 42.
MS Locke c. 27, fol. 101; transcribed in Reasonableness, Appendix, I, 199.
- 43.
Athanasius, Contra Gentes and De incarnatione verbi, ed. R. W. Thomson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971).
- 44.
On Athanasius, see R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988), 417–58, esp. 423.
- 45.
Athanasius, Contra Gentes, §2.
- 46.
Ibid., §34.
- 47.
Athanasius, De incarnatione verbi, §13.
- 48.
See Hanson, op. cit., 427.
- 49.
Reasonableness, 146; WR, 193–94.
- 50.
The problem is that Locke may also be styled a Platonist (see Chap. 7), and, I believe, his empiricism fits closely with his Platonism; they are united in the intellectual character of the Christian Virtuoso (see Chap. 1). But the sort of empiricism that is practiced by the Christian Virtuoso causes him to attend to facts, be they natural or historical—it is a duty; virtuosity when applied to Scripture regards it as a narrative of divine deeds that represents the Messiah as subordinate to the divine will. The Platonism of Athanasius seems of a different sort, and even though Athanasius should be regarded as a biblical theologian, his supposition that God is substantially present in his revelation—a supposition that favors a different sort of hermeneutics, causes him to look aside from the creatureliness of the Messiah as represented in Scripture to the divine presence—it is like seeing God in every cognition. In this respect, Athanasius would have fallen into a class that Locke labeled ‘enthusiast’; see my article ‘Enthusiasm’, in The Continuum Companion to Locke, ed. S-J Savonius-Wroth, Paul Schuurman, Jonathan Walmsley (London: Continuum, 2010), 141–43.
- 51.
For the background of Locke’s Arianism, see Maurice F. Wiles, Archetypal Heresy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); on Arius’ Christology, see Hanson, op. cit., 3–18.
- 52.
Essay, IV.xix.4 (698).
- 53.
Reasonableness, 141–59; WR, 191–201; for a discussion of this section of the Reasonableness see my ‘Locke’s Hermeneutics of Existence and his Representation of Christianity’, in Conscience and Scripture. Locke and biblical Hermeneutics, ed. Luisa Simonutti (Dordrecht: Springer, in preparation).
- 54.
See ‘A list of theological places in An Essay concerning Human Understanding’, in WR, 245–56, from which much of what follows is taken.
- 55.
The text is printed in Appendix A of Chap. 2.
- 56.
See Law of Nature.
- 57.
John Locke, Drafts for the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch and G. A. J. Rogers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 1–11; 101–28.
- 58.
‘Adversaria Theologica’, 32–40; WR, 28–31.
- 59.
Locke to Van Limborch, 11 Dec. 1694, Correspondence, v. 237–38.
- 60.
Conduct, 193; see the epigraph to Chap. 2.
- 61.
This in general is the Straussian view; see Michael P. Zuckert, ‘An introduction to Locke’s First Treatise’, Interpretation, 8, 1979, 58–74.
- 62.
Locke, Law of Nature, 110–11; Essay II. xxvii. 8 (352).
- 63.
Reasonableness, 13–22; WR, 96–101. There is an interesting parallel here between justice and charity in Two Treatises; see Stephen Buckle, Natural Law and the Theory of Property (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 159–60. Buckle’s model of the idea of property suggests that the purpose of mankind on earth is to restore paradise as far as this is possible.
- 64.
James Tully, ‘Locke’, in Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450–1700, ed. J. H. Burns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 622. On the notion of ‘possessive individualism’, see C.B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962). The distinction between these two concepts is this: a political individual is essentially a rational being who regards himself and other rational beings as subject to the law of nature; a possessive individual is a creature of desire who strives to safeguard whatever may properly be called his own: his capacities and the products of his labor. For an appreciative yet critical and historically sensitive account of the Macpherson notion see, James Tully ‘After the Macpherson thesis’, in James Tully, An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 72–95.
- 65.
See Locke, ‘Infallibility’, PRO 30/24/47/33, WR, 72; Locke grants to pastors a ‘directive [but] not definitive’ infallibility to pastors, as a means of providing ‘a way that is safe and secure’ for their Christian flocks.
- 66.
See Locke, ‘Critical Notes upon Edward Stillingfleet’s Mischief and Unreasonableness Separation, MS Locke c. 34, p. 171; WR, 78; Locke compares independent churches with birdcages equipped with trap doors, that allow birds to enter but deny them exit.
- 67.
God being perfectly righteous, there could never be any just reason to seek the dissolution of his kingdom. The same cannot be said of civil magistrates.
- 68.
MS Locke d. 10, ‘Lemmata Ethica’, pp. 43–44, WR, 80. Perhaps the earliest application by Locke of the principle to ecclesiastical polity can be dated to 1674 in a manuscript entitled ‘Excommunication’. There, drawing a distinction between Church and State, Locke wrote, ‘Church membership is perfectly voluntary & may end when ever any one pleases, without any prejudice to him but in Civil Society it is not soe’, MS Locke c. 27, fol. 29r, critical text in Toleration, 331.
- 69.
WR, xlvi.
- 70.
Jonas Proast, The Argument of the Letter concerning Toleration, Briefly Consider’d and Answer’d (London: George West and Henry Clements, 1690; facs. ed. New York: Garland Press, 1984), 2.
- 71.
Locke, Tolerantia, 65, 115.
- 72.
Reasonableness, 144; WR, 192; see also ‘Error’, MS Locke Film 77, 320–21, transcription WR, 81–83 and ‘Sacerdos’, MS Locke Film 77, 93, transcription in WR, 17.
- 73.
It may be useful here to clarify further Locke’s voluntarism with respect to the moral law. It is true that he emphasises the principle that there can be no law without a lawgiver, and makes clear that the necessity for this is motivation: the lawgiver enforces the law through promises of reward and punishment. But it makes a great difference whether the lawgiver is righteous and consistent with justice or capricious and arbitrary. In the former case, voluntarism and rationalism are quite compatible; see Richard Ashcraft, Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (London: Allen and Unwin, 1987) 267, n. 16, for a different version of this, one that supposes a more substantial failure of reason. To assert that the moral law is grounded in the will of God is not to be a voluntarist pure and simple, unless one supposes that the will of God is entirely self-determining and not subject to some real standard, in this respect, the divine goodness and a knowledge of what is best.
- 74.
Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) 448–76. Others in this group mentioned by Israel are Robert Boyle, Jean Le Clerc, Philippus van Limborch and Richard Simon.
- 75.
Liberal Christianity is not an entirely modern phenomenon. It has antecedents in a looser pre-Nicene orthodoxy with its roots in a Christian culture or paideia fashioned largely by the Greek fathers, in particular, by Justin, Clement of Alexandria, Origen and the Cappadocians. To be better understood, Locke’s theology should be viewed in this historical context. This something that I hope to show in subsequent writings.
- 76.
See Nicholas Wolterstorff, John Locke and the Ethics of Belief (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) and my review the Journal of Theological Studies, New Series, 48/1, 334–38; see also my Introduction to WR, pp. xxvi–ix.
- 77.
Essay II. xxvi. 26 (346).
- 78.
Two Treatises II. ii. 7 (312).
- 79.
Immanuel Kant, Religion within the boundaries of mere reason, in Kant, Religion and Rational Theology, ed. and trans. Allen Wood and George Di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 53–66. This work represents Kant’s attempt to demonstrate reasonableness of Christianity by interpreting it from the standpoint of pure practical reason.
- 80.
Kant, op. cit.
- 81.
I am grateful to J. R. Milton for clues that directed G’s identity. On Gibbon, see art. Nicholas Gibbon, Anthony A Wood, Athenae Oxienses, ed. Philip Bliss, 4 vols. (London: Lackington, et al., 1820; Hildesheim: Olms, 1969), iv. 787–89.
- 82.
There are three unpublished texts by Gibbon in the Bodleian Library: A summe or body of divinitie real (1651, shelf mark Wood 276b (29)); A summe or body of divinitie real (1653, with author’s notes, shelf mark Vet. A3 q.3 (20)); Theology real, and truly scientifical: in overture for the conciliation of all Chritians (1667, shelfmark Wood G57 (26)).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Appendix
Appendix
The following notes transcribed in Locke’s interleaved Bentley Bible (Bodleian Shelfmark Locke 17. 25, LL. 309) are almost certainly from writings of Nicholas Gibbon the younger (1605–97).Footnote 81 Gibbon was a minister of the Church of England, a Royalist, and a conciliarist. How his theological writings, which were printed but unpublished, became available to Locke is unknown. These notes are evidence that he had read them. Almost all of the entries are marked with the single letter ‘G’ to designate the author. Two are have the designation ‘Gib’, and two more, ‘Gibbon’.Footnote 82
Gen. 1:2 | Spirit of God i.e. The Energy of God the Creator. G |
Job 38:4 | Laid the foundations manifested my decree to make the world Gib: |
Job 38:7 | morning stars and sonnes of god i.e. Angells or the Intellectual creation. Gib: |
John 1. 15: | ὅτι πρῶτός μου ἧν [for he was before me]. the intellectuall nature of the mediator created immediately upon the interpellation after the fall & taken into union by God the word & there resting in the bosome of the father till the incarnation vid. 1 Cor. 15. 47. |
John 1:18 | ὁ ὤν [he who was] i.e. who was in the bosom of the father his soule or intellectuall nature being created by God the creator in the beginning of the covenant of grace. vid. John 3. 13. |
John 3:13 | ὁ ὤν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ i.e. who was in the heaven.. The verbe substantive haveing noe participle of the praeterite tense ών must signify the same time with the verbe going before. and then the words more conformable to sense will run thus. But he that came downe from heaven even the son of man which was in heaven. i.e. preexistent in the bosom of the father vid. John 6. 62. G |
John 6: 62 | ὄπου ἦν τὸ πρότερον [where he was before] i.e. his intellectuall nature being created before & remaining preexistent to his incarnation in the bosom of the father vid. 1 Cor. 15. 47. |
John 8:58 | πρὶν Ἀβραάμ ἐγω εἰμι [before Abraham was, I am] i.e. His soule created & united to the Word the 2d subsistent of the Godhead vid. I Cor. 15. 47. |
1 Cor. 15: 47 | ἐξ οὐρανου [from heaven]. Where his intellectuall nature i.e. soule being by God the creator made presently after the fall & being assumed into union by God the word, had rested in the bosom of the father. G vid. John 1. 18. John 3. 13. John 6. 62. Heb. 10. 5. John 8. 58. John 1. 15. Rev. 3. 14. |
2 Tim. 2:19 | Foundation of God. i.e. His decree restoring mankinde Gibbon |
Titus 2:11 | Grace of god i.e. The Energy of the word or 2d Subsistent. |
Heb. 9:11 | οὐ ταύτης τῆς κτίσεως i.e. not of this Creation |
1.There was light inaccessible & immense The habitations of the deity & this is that the Apostle calls ὑπεράνω πάντων τῶν οὐρανῶν Ephesians 4.10. | |
2.God created a great orbe of light the habitation of intellectuall beings or spirits which made to them vestitures of that light & this is that which is called epouranious. This is meant in this place & Eph: 1.10 for Christ confering grace establishd the standing angells as well as restored fallen man. | |
3.God created a great orbe of darknesse the place of the fallen angels i.e. where the 1st intellectuall race were thrust out into. vid. 2 Pet. 2. 4. | |
4.Presently upon that failure of the first intellectuall race, god to supply their defection intends a 2d intellectual race, & for an habitation for them out of part of the orbe of darkness condensates the chaos & and out of it makes a spectable world. where the first thing he separates was light & here he makes a 2d race of intellectuall beings which have power to make themselves vestitures of flesh. i.e. part of this creation. & of this creation only is the hist of Moses. Gibbon | |
2 Peter 1:4 | Divine nature i.e. the energy of the 2d Subsistent God the Word. G |
1 John 5:11 | Eternall life i.e. the energy of God the Word. G |
Rev. 3:14 | ἡ ἀρχή τής κτίσεως τού Θεού The beginning [of the creation of God] i.e. the first creature of the new creation viz. his soule being created presently upon the interpellation of the word after the fall & united to God the word. Creation of God i.e. the new creation i.e. the restoring of man to that divine life that communion with god in spiritualls which by the fall was lost. vid. 1 Cor. 15. 47. |
Rev. 7. 3: | Sealed. Sealeing to translation into glory is the energy of God the spirit the 3d Subsistent. G |
NB. The following undated entry in Locke’s notebook, Adversaria 1661 (LL. 23a) p. 181 is undoubtedly from Gibbon. | |
Deus | Is spoken of in Scripture sometimes as l° in Essence Coloss 2.2. mystery of god. 2° in subsistences itd. Father. 3° Sometimes mentions God when only meanes his Energy as Jesus Christ is called god with us i.e. by the Energys of the 3 subsistents concenterd in him soe the subsistents were not in him but their energys. |
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Nuovo, V. (2011). Locke’s Christology as a Key to Understanding His Philosophy. 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_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0274-5_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-0273-8
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-0274-5
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawHistory (R0)