Over at The Public Discourse, Micah Watson demolishes David Gushee’s attempt to draft John Locke into service in favor of gay marriage. Watson does an admirable job of establishing that Locke saw no contradiction between 1) religious freedom and government based on natural law, and 2) public regulation of familly, marriage, and sex in the interest of procreation and the nurturing of children, even going far beyond anything desired by most public opponents of gay marriage today.
Some points I’d like to add:
1) Watson doesn’t directly challenge Gushee’s characterization of Locke’s politics as something other than “Christian.” This is something I run into all the time – if it’s Lockean it’s not Christian, and if it’s Christian it’s not Lockean. In fact, Locke’s politics rely extensively on Christianity in numerous respects, especially in anthropology. Locke drew primarily on Christian intellectual sources (though I will admit there is a serious incursion by the non-Christian nominalists, who got their hooks into Locke through their critique of Descartes) and in turn had extensive influence on subsequent Christian thought. Jonathan Edwards, for example, drank very deeply at the Lockean well.
2) For the record, Locke may or may not have held unorthodox views about the Trinity – the evidence is incomplete – but he was at the very least Christian in the ways that matter most for the formulation of political philosophy. As I once heard someone say, “Locke thought he was a Christian.”
3) Watson doesn’t pursue Locke’s views on marriage more broadly, but they are stronger than most people are led to believe. For example, Locke thinks the natural law absolutely forbids divorce if there are minor children in the family. If that were enacted into law today, how radical of a change would it be from the status quo?
4) Watson’s piece is titled “John Locke and the Evangelical Retreat from Marriage.” What evangelical retreat from marriage?
March 15th, 2011 | 9:00 pm
[...] See more here: Locke, Christianity,… [...]
March 15th, 2011 | 9:58 pm
Locke didn’t believe in extending his principles of religious liberty to Roman Catholics and atheists. Jefferson, I’ll paraphrase and look the exact quote up on request, said where Locke stopped short, they would go further.
Not sayin’ Jefferson et al. would go for same sex marriage. Rather, they were riding the “living Lockean” train that Professor Gushee argues could take us to gay marriage.
March 16th, 2011 | 9:12 am
No, it’s not that simple. Locke wanted to extend toleration to Catholics. But the papal bull in 1570 (if I remember correctly) purporting to remove Elizabeth from the throne and absolve English Catholics from their civic responsibilities to the government had screwed everything up. It was not unreasonable in 1570 for the English government to consider the Roman church an enemy of the state. And the problem still had not been resolved in 1689. Rome did its best to walk back from the bull in 1580, but it couldn’t formally repudiate the bull without totally upending its own understanding of the authority of the church. So the problem continued to fester for centuries. It still hasn’t completely gone away – my understanding is that English monarchs are still legally required to be Protestant.
That’s a long story and we can’t have the full discussion here and now. The point is: Locke wanted toleration for Catholics, so long as they were willing to forswear giving Rome a veto on their civic responsibilities. And that was something they couldn’t do in 1689.
Locke also supported toleration for Muslims on the same terms – terms Muslims were even less able to meet in 1689. Locke supported toleration for “pagans” as well. Everyone but atheists.
March 16th, 2011 | 9:52 am
I’m no expert on the content of the bull of 1570 (Regnans in Excelsis), but it seems that, in general, the lifting of an excommunication or the changing of its conditions is something the Holy See can do without prejudice to infallibility (which has to do with dogma and general moral teaching). The Church can choose to impose a penalty or not, just as it can choose to impose a discipline (such as priestly celibacy) or not. These are prudential matters having to do with specific circumstances. But perhaps I am missing something here.
From what I understand, the “stepping back” from the bull of 1570 involved saying that English Catholics should obey the queen in all civil matters until she could be deposed. Of course, this is just a side issue to the question at issue.
March 16th, 2011 | 10:13 am
Let me hasten to add that I’m no expert either. I may well be wrong about whether Rome “could” have lifted it. But the fact is, it didn’t – not formally. What it tried to do was walk it back in practice without a formal reversal.
The problem is that only a formal reversal would have sufficed. “Obey the queen until she can be deposed” is not really an improvement over “don’t obey the queen,” at least for this purpose. There are two reasons. First, “until she can be deposed” means it’s still open season for assassination attempts. Second, the real question for purposes of facilitating toleration is not whether Rome exercises its veto over the civil authority, but whether it has such a veto in principle.
March 16th, 2011 | 10:39 am
Yes I remember (I think) reading the 1570 document when I inquired into how the different factions understood Romans 13. If I remember correctly the Roman Catholic Church viewed what Henry the VIIIth did as “usurping” legitimate (meaning God ordained Romans 13) power.
“Usurpation” became a term of art with lots of loaded meaning in debates in Christendom over whether some kind of separation, resistance, or rebellion was permitted.
March 16th, 2011 | 11:31 am
The withdrawal of Regans in Excelsis would not have solved the problem, for the English government’s response had been to include in the Oath of Allegiance a declaration “that I do from my Heart abhor, detest & renounce as impious & heretical that wicked Doctrine & Position that Princes Excommunicated or deprived by the Pope or and Authority of the See of Rome may be deposed or murdered by their Subjects or any other whatsoever.”
Obviously, no Catholic could pronounce heretical a doctrine held, not only by Pius V, but many other popes – Gregory VII, Innocent III and Boniface VIII, to name a few.
It was only in the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 that this was changed to “It is not an article of my faith that princes excommunicated… ”
Curiously, the new oath could be taken, with a good conscience, by a Catholic who personally did believe in the deposing power, just so long as he did not believe it to be a piece of infallible teaching.
March 16th, 2011 | 11:38 am
Whether withdrawing the bull would have “solved the problem” depends on what you mean by “the problem.” Without withdrawl, there is no path to toleration on Lockean terms. If it had been withdrawn, there would have been such a path, and Locke would have been in favor of toleration. Whether the crown and Parliament would have gone along with it is another question. And of course the whole thing is moot because it wasn’t withdrawn.
March 17th, 2011 | 7:10 am
I feel sure that Locke would have allowed the state to regulate marriage, as a matter of public policy, without having to draw on natural law arguments for its justification.
After all, in the last couple of years, we have seen the Cour de Cassation and the Conseil Constitutionnel refuse to recognize same-sex marriage as a human right, or as entailed by republican equality and few countries are so wedded to the principle of laïcité as France, which provides civil unions for both same-sex and opposite-sex couples.
The Code Civil contains no formal definition of marriage, but French jurists have long found a functional definition in art 312 of the Code Civil: « L’enfant conçu ou né pendant le mariage a pour père le mari.» (“The child conceived or born during the marriage has the husband for father”).
To summarise their conclusions: (1) Mandatory civil marriage, makes the institution a pillar of the secular Republic, standing clear of the religious sacrament (2) The institution of republican marriage is inconceivable, absent the idea of filiation, enshrined, not in Church dogma, but in the Civil Code (3) The sex difference is central to filiation.
The principle is derived, not from Christianity, but from Roman law – Pater est is quae nuptiae demonstrant; there is nothing in this, with which Locke would have disagreed. In fact, the English Dissenters were keen advocates of civil marriage and of removing it from the purview of the Church Courts.
March 17th, 2011 | 11:25 am
Locke would certainly have disagreed with the suggestion that “Roman Law” or any other positive law is, by itself, a sufficient basis for setting policy on marriage, or anything else. Positive law requires a justificatory basis in natural law; this is for him precisely the key distinction between civil government properly so called and tyranny. In particular, he treats the family as a pre-political institution governed by natural law, which restricts the freedom of positive law to shape the institution.
March 17th, 2011 | 2:06 pm
Greg,
Do you have ANY insight on how Locke’s use of the concept of “state of nature” is or is not authentically “Christian”? It’s my understanding that, whatever their differences, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau shared common ground on “state of nature.” Again, their understanding of “state of nature” differed; but if we keep going for a lower denominator, we arrive at a point where those three DO agree on a lowest common denominator “state of nature.” And this “state of nature” is either a-biblical or anti-biblical.
One friend of mine, during conversation, analogized “state of nature” to Darwin’s evolution. Some folks see evolution as contradicting the biblical record (in that case it would be anti-biblical). Others can reconcile evolution with the Bible’s text (in that case, evolution would be “a-biblical,” unless someone wants to argue the Bible is responsible for Darwin’s evolution).
Anyway, I don’t doubt “Christians” could reconcile “state of nature,” similar to how Christian philosophers reconciled Aristotle or later, Darwin.
But I wonder what you think of the idea that “state of nature,” however it may be reconciled with them, comes from philosophy, NOT the Bible or traditional Christianity.
March 17th, 2011 | 2:21 pm
The idea of a “state of nature” is present in Chrsitian natural law thinking going at least as far back as William of Ockham. It may be even older, but Ockham is the oldest reference I’m familiar with.
Ockham distinguishes three possible meanings of the term “natural law.” One of them is “that which ought to be kept by those who use natural equity alone, without any human custom or statute, which is natural because it is not contrary to the original state of nature.”
Locke uses the concept of the state of nature in exactly the same way as Ockham – the state of nature is the state people are in if they are subject to “natural equity” unmodified by “any human custom or statute.”
It is important to notice that this concept has no historical importance at all. The state of nature in this Christian sense does not refer to something that happened a long time ago. It has nothing to do with the historic origins of either the human race (evolution) or governments. It is totally irrelevant to such questions.
For Locke, the state of nature is a useful hypothetical to facilitate a thought experiment. Locke is saying something like the following: Okay, you’re not sure whether and on what terms government authority is legitimate. So let’s ask what would happen if we had to live without it. Suppose we didn’t have government. What would happen? What would the moral laws of natural equity, given by God, require us to do in such a circumstance? As it happens, the moral laws of God would require us to create a government. Therefore, obedience to the governments we actually find in the real world is morally justified. If we were without them, we would have to create them.
This is totally and in every way distinct from the “state of nature” in both Hobbes and Rousseau.
The state of nature for Hobbes is also an ahistorical thought experiment. However, Hobbes denies that there is any such thing as natural equity. The term itself is meaningless. There is no such thing as a moral law that transcends human social organization. Thus Hobbes is asking not what we *ought* to do if we had no government. He is demonstrating (or so he thinks) that without government the word “ought” would have no meaning.
Rousseau, on the other hand, is really offering a historical account. He’s really trying to go back in history to the origins of the human species and ask how it is that we came to be organized in civil societies. Thus his state of nature is, again, a very different thing, bearing no serious resemblance to either Hobbes’s or Locke’s.
March 18th, 2011 | 1:13 am
I have always felt that there is a deep tension between Locke’s understanding of property and what is taught by the Church. Locke believes in the absolute right to one’s own property; only by one’s own consent through the social contract do others or the community gain rights to some of one’s property. The Church teaches that our property rights are not absolute because they remain subordinate to the universal destination of goods (see the Catechism #2402 and following). In the Christian understanding, our property does not ultimately belong to us. It is on loan to us from God, and once our basic necessities have been met, others who are in need have legitimate right to our excess. This is why in the writings of the early fathers it is not uncommon to read statements about our excess wealth/possessions being “stolen” from the poor.
March 18th, 2011 | 9:30 am
Vincent
Locke’s views on property are clearly influenced by the jejune treatment of this topic in English law. In common with Germanic law in general, it fails clearly to distinguish between possession, which is a fact, and ownership, which is a right. It is largely judge-made law and judges are concerned, not with abstract notions of ownership, but with which of the parties has the better “right to possession.”
The French Revolutionaries, in general admirers of Locke, but familiar with the more refined concepts of the Civil Law (made, not by judges, but by professors), differed from him fundamentally on this.
Take Mirabeau (a moderate): “Property is a social creation. The laws not only protect and maintain property; they bring it into being; they determine its scope and the extent that it occupies in the rights of the citizens.” [“Les lois” – clearly referring to enactments, rather than “le droit.”]
So, too, Robespierre (not a moderate): “In defining liberty, the first of man’s needs, the most sacred of his natural rights, we have said, quite correctly, that its limit is to be found in the rights of others. Why have you not applied this principle to property, which is a social institution, as if natural laws were less inviolable than human conventions?”
March 18th, 2011 | 10:23 am
Vincent: Locke does not believe property rights are absolute. He teaches that all property ultimately belongs to God and our “ownership” of “property” is delegated from God, and therefore property rights are subordinate to other needs that come higher in God’s law. Anyone can discover this by opening Locke’s book and reading it.
Michael PS: Since Locke argues at length that possession does not imply ownership, I’m surprised at your characterization. If anything Locke was a critic of the view you describe. I’m also surprised to hear that the French Revolutionaries were fans of his, since it seems so unlikely – can you point me to sources on this?
March 18th, 2011 | 10:53 am
Greg,
Thanks for your clarification.
“I’m also surprised to hear that the French Revolutionaries were fans of his, since it seems so unlikely….”
I wonder why you think it so unlikely. Locke’s thoughts significantly DROVE the American Revolution. And while there were obvious differences between the two, the French were greatly influenced by the American Revolution and saw what they did as a continuation of what went on in America. Heck most Americans at the time thought the very same thing. (Even if they turned out to be wrong.)
March 18th, 2011 | 11:03 am
I don’t see nearly as much continuity between the American and French revolutions as you do.
Michael PS asserts that “the French revolutionaries” were “in general admirers of Locke.” That sounds like the kind of assertion for which there ought to be clear evidence. If all we have is a sort of general impression that the French revolutionaries were broadly influenced by ideas that were largely Lockean, that’s a very different assertion and it doesn’t give you nearly the same result. I’m just trying to find out what we can back up with evidence.
Even the connection between Locke and the American revolution, which I think is strong, is problematic and mediated through various intervening influences. The Two Treatises was not widely read in 1776 America. The American founders were not actually reading Locke, for the most part; they were reading people who had read Locke, or reading people who had read people who had read Locke. The influence is clearly there (there are passages in the Declaration that bear close verbal similarity to the Two Treatises) but it’s not simple and there are other, competing influences that matter.
And if it’s that problematic in the American context, I think I’m entitled not to have a strong expectation to find it in the radically different French context. (The language barrier alone would justify a healthy skepticism.)
Likewise, the assertion that “most Americans” saw the French revolution as being an extension of their own is one I’d like to hear the evidence for. Jefferson thought so, but was that a popular view? (I’m not saying it wasn’t, I’m saying it’s a question that needs some evidence.)
March 18th, 2011 | 11:21 am
Greg,
Well I’m much less learned on how the French Revolutionaries thought of Locke in particular and I agree that the American Revolutionaries got their Locke through mediating influences. However, I have, in detail, investigated the connections between the AR and FR. It’s certainly reasonable in hindsight to see profound differences between the two events, the influence of Rousseau on the French, and little if any on the Americans.
The more narrow claim is how AMERICA and FRANCE at the time viewed the events. And there is abundant evidence that THEY initially saw their revolutions as sister events with some notable figures remaining outliers like Edmund Burke and John Adams (they turned out right, though). Eventually things started going wrong in France and in America it became partisan politics for the Federalists to be against the FR and the Democratic-Republicans to support it until the ship was almost entirely sunk.
I’m not the first “historian” (technically my terminal degree is a JD) to uncover this; but I do seem to be the only person who regularly publishes about this currently online.
I find I get more readers by blogging than publishing in “respectable” places that no one reads. However, I have thought about taking this stuff about how America and French viewed each other and their respective revolutions because there is so little understanding.
Here is George Washington, to a French Minister, January 1 1796:
“Born, Sir, in a land of liberty; having early learned its value; having engaged in a perilous conflict to defend it; having, in a word, devoted the best years of my life to secure its permanent establishment in my own country; my anxious recollections, my sympathetic feelings, and my best wishes are irresistibly excited, whensoever, in any country, I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of Freedom. But above all, the events of the French Revolution have produced the deepest solicitude, as well as the highest admiration. To call your nation brave, were to pronounce but common praise. Wonderful people! Ages to come will read with astonishment the history of your brilliant exploits! I rejoice, that the period of your toils and of your immense sacrifices, is approaching. I rejoice that the interesting revolutionary movements of so many years have issued in the formation of a constitution designed to give permanency to the great object for which you have contended. I rejoice that liberty, which you have so long embraced with enthusiasm, liberty, of which you have been the invincible defenders, now finds an asylum in the bosom of a regularly organized government; a government, which, being formed to secure the happiness of the French people, corresponds with the ardent wishes of my heart, while it gratifies the pride of every citizen of the United States, by its resemblance to their own. On these glorious events, accept, Sir, my sincere congratulations.
“In delivering to you these sentiments, I express not my own feelings only, but those of my fellow citizens, in relation to the commencement, the progress, and the issue of the French revolution: and they will cordially join with me in purest wishes to the Supreme Being, that the citizens of our sister republic, our magnanimous allies, may soon enjoy in peace, that liberty which they have purchased at so great a price, and all the happiness which liberty can bestow.
“I receive Sir, with lively sensibility, the symbol of the triumphs and of the enfranchisement of your nation, the colours of France, which you have now presented to the United States. The transaction will be announced to Congress; and the colours will be deposited with the archives of the United States, which are at once the evidences and the memorials of their freedom and independence. May these be perpetual! and may the friendship of the two republics be commensurate with their existence.”
I’ve got lots more; I don’t want to make this comment too ridiculously long.
March 18th, 2011 | 11:44 am
Greg,
Something else: You talk about Jonathan Edwards being influenced by Locke to bolster his Locke’s Christian credibility. But it could also be that even someone as hardcore as Edwards imported something foreign into the “Christian pulpit.” Not sayin’ I’m willing to defend this thesis like a, for instance, Michael Zuckert would; but just something to think about.
And the way that the Christian pulpit in America not only promoted republicanism and the American Revolution BUT ALSO the French Revolution shows the Christian pulpit can be misused into promoting “civil religion” ideas that have little to do with historic orthodox or biblical Christianity.
There is a lot of interesting material out there on the Anglo-clergy who happened to be Francophiles. Some of them, you would expect were heterodox or unitarian (Joseph Priestley, Richard Price, Bishop James Madison). But there were some notable orthodox figures in there as well (Ezra Stiles).
March 18th, 2011 | 11:50 am
Thanks for posting this historical material! I appreciate it.
I mentioned Edwards not to establish that Locke is Christian, but to combat the broader historical methodology – which I have encountered regularly in discussions of the American revolution – that runs something like this: X was heavily influenced by Christian figures, therefore X was not heavily influenced by Locke.
I’m familiar with the Zuckert thesis but 1) it’s a false reading of Locke himself and his ideas, whatever you may think of his reading of the Americans, and 2) it’s a false reading of the Americans.
March 18th, 2011 | 12:07 pm
Greg,
My pleasure. I’m not so quick to waive away Zuckert. I’m not a “Straussian,” but am somewhat “Strauss” influenced.
I read the original texts myself and here is how I see it: Locke indeed does this strange beating around the bush suggesting an esoteric message. But at the time, what was suspected of him, what his “esoterism” was likely about was secret unitarianism or heterodox Christianity. And, at that time, not only could your public reputation be ruined for denying the Trinity, but it was against the law, something for which you could be executed or otherwise criminally punished. Yeah, I understand why I’d keep my mouth shut and talk in code under those circumstances.
Locke, rather, was esoterically pushing some ecumenical liberal for the time Christianity that transcended Trinitarian orthodoxy, not secretly promoting Hobbsean atheism. That’s how I read him.
March 18th, 2011 | 12:13 pm
1) What do you see as “strange beating around the bush” justifying looking for an esoteric meaning? None of the stuff Zuckert or Strauss points to is actually strange at all, if you put it in the late-17th-century Anglican context (which neither of them does).
2) On your thesis, we would expect Locke to try to appear to be Trinitarian and in general muddy the waters on his theology, as Hobbes did. But he doesn’t. Locke is admirably straightforward in saying that he believes the only article of doctrine necessary to salvation is Jesus’ Messiahship. (Other things besides doctrine are necessary, of course.) We would also expect him to publicly respond to accusations of unitarianism with further doubletalk, again like Hobbes did. But he didn’t.
On this thesis, Locke was surprisingly exoteric with his esotericism.
March 18th, 2011 | 12:38 pm
Perhaps you can help. But I think Locke did respond with that double talk. And re late 17th Cen. Anglican context, it could be there were enough secret unitarians (like Newton, Clarke) in the church that provided some systematic context for how secret unitarians would behave.
Re Jesus Messiahship as necessary for salvation, this is NOT a necessarily orthodox Trinitarian doctrine. What unites Arians, Socinians and Trinitarians is their belief in Jesus as Messiah (Arians believe Jesus the Messiah as created by and subordinate to God the Father; Socinians believe Jesus the Messiah as the perfect sinless man who was on a divine mission but not divine at all in his nature).
Here is one quotation of Locke’s that I see as “beating around the bush” and suggestive of secret unitarianism. When accused by (a different than the one with whom we are familiar) Dr. Jonathan Edwards of peddling secret Socinianism, Locke did NOT respond with a clear “I believe in the Trinity” response but rather with:
“At least, my lord, give me leave to wish, that your lordship had shown what connexion any thing I have said-about ideas, and particularly about the idea of substance, about the possibility that God, if he pleased, might endue some systems of matter with a power of thinking; or what I have said to prove a God, &c. has with any objections, that are made by others, against the doctrine of the Trinity, or against mysteries: for many passages concerning ideas, substances, the possibility of God’s bestowing thoughts on some systems of matter, and the proof of a God, &c. your lordship has quoted out of my book, in a chapter wherein your lordship professes to answer ‘objections against the Trinity, in point of reason.’ Had I been able to discover in these passages of my book, quoted by your lordship, what tendency your lordship had observed in them to any such objections, I should perhaps have troubled your lordship with less impertinent answers. But the uncertainty I was very often in, to what purpose your lordship brought them, may have made my explications of myself less apposite, than what your lordship might have expected. If your lordship had showed me any thing in my book, that contained or implied any opposition in it to any thing revealed in holy writ concerning the Trinity, or any other doctrine contained in the bible, I should have been thereby obliged to your lordship for freeing me from that mistake, and for affording me an opportunity to own to the world that obligation, by publicly retracting my errour.”
http://tinyurl.com/4ebb3q7
As I read him, Locke says: I may not have affirmed the Trinity, but I didn’t deny it either. All the while affirming the idea that Jesus is Messiah (a common ground that Arians, Socinians and Trinitarians share) is all that’s necessary to be “Christian.”
I privately chatted with Prof. Paul Sigmund (Locke authority from Princeton) who strongly disagrees with the Strauss/Zuckert position about this and he seemed 100% in agreement with this analysis (I won’t call it “my” analysis, because I don’t think it’s original to me.)
March 18th, 2011 | 12:47 pm
Yes, yes, yes, but why do you call that “esoteric”? That’s not at all what either Strauss or Zuckert mean by esoteric, and this isn’t just a semantic issue because to justify looking for hidden meanings, etc. you really need much more than what you’re showing here. This provides no grounds for calling into question the sincerity of anything he said. To the contrary, his unwillingness to “fake it” when challenged only reinforces the liklihood that the things he did clearly say were all sincerely meant.
Also, you’ve misunderstood my reference to Locke’s views on the ony article necessary for salvation. My whole point was precisely to show that Locke was not trying to sound like a Trinitarian. He was up front and center about where he was. Far from justifying a search for an esoteric teaching, this makes such a search all the more implausible!
(For the record, I think it’s more likely that he just had doubts about the Trinity and was undecided, rather than that he was a firmly decided unitarian. But that’s speculation.)
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact