Joe, no doubt you’re right about Lewis, who explicitly compared modern science to demonology. However, I think you misread Locke, whose views of labor and property are deeply scriptural and well within the mainstream of historic theology—especially the mainstream Anglicanism of the day.
Yes, Locke says that God puts the raw materials of nature into our hands “almost worthless,” awaiting the value-creating transformation of human work. This is exactly how the Bible describes things, and from Irenaeus to Calvin to the present day (read Tim Keller’s new book) it has been an important theme in Christian theology.
As only one example, consider the description of the creation order outside Eden in Genesis 2:5:
No bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground.
A vast, barren wasteland, awaiting cultural-mandate-bearing humanity “to work the ground.” We cannot here consider the question of whether this passage describes the state of the world outside Eden pre-fall or immediately post-fall, but for present purposes it doesn’t matter. The point is that humanity, leaving Eden, enters a world of “almost worthless” raw material that it is his job to transform.
Does this mean Locke doesn’t appreciate the bounteous generosity of God? Not at all; he rebukes those who fail to see all creation as God’s bounteous providence to humanity, quoting I Timothy 6:17 (“God richly provides us with everything to enjoy”). The point is that God expects us to work transformatively in order to enjoy the riches he has provided. And if you think that’s not a biblical view, you’re not reading the same Bible I am.
As I have said for many years, Locke’s theological writings do have deficiencies, but every single aspect of his political thought that is ever held up as a point of discontinuity between Locke and Christianity always—every time, without fail—turns out upon inspection to be a point of especially strong continuity between Locke and Christianity. Even his errors (such as on marriage) turn out to be exactly the errors that predominated in mainstream late seventeenth-century Anglican theology.
This implies that the whole division between “Team Classical and Christian” and “Team Early Modern” needs to be rethought. I will accept a division between “Team Classical” (or, more accurately, “Team Medieval”) and “Team Early Modern,” but let’s not identify Christianity exclusively with one side of the divide.
It also implies that there is a Christian critique of Lewis’s view that science is demonic. If the early modern Christians are too suspect to be considered, Abraham Kuyper’s reflections on science in Wisdom and Wonder are worthy of attention. The advance of science, by its nature, is implicitly an advance in humanity’s knowledge of God; this of course can be (and inevitably is) perverted to evil, but it is good in itself.
December 20th, 2012 | 12:30 pm
Again I recommend Eleonore Stump’s chapter “Justice” in her book “Aquinas” for an exposition that contrasts Thomas with Locke illuminatingly. (I don’t expect to convert any confirmed Locke-ophiles, but you never know.)
December 20th, 2012 | 4:39 pm
I grant that Joe seems to have a flat view of Locke, but you have a flat view of Lewis. He did not explicitly compare modern science to demonology – he compared the historical origins of parts of modern science (and only one part – the origins of modern science date way before the Enlightenmen – i.e. see James Hannam’s book “God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science”) to the contemporary (to that time) interest in magic. He did consider some of the spirit of scientism (you do know the difference, don’t you) demonic in nature.
But to say that Lewis considered science demonic is quite a bit of a stretch. If you don’t want people misreading Locke, misreading Lewis is kind of an odd way to go about it.
December 21st, 2012 | 12:58 am
The Lockean property is biased towards settler polities–a land must be invested with human labor and only then it becomes a property. But why can’t a hunting tribe own its hunting ground?
Locke, like almost all economists, fails to properly distinguish between private property and national territory and this failure leads economics into numerous puzzles and paradoxes.
Man lives in tribal or national groups. The tribes mutually exist in a state of nature (Locke “Princes exist in a state of nature”). The state of laws exist within a particular tribe or nation. These being the particular laws of a particular tribe. Property, being a rightful thing, arises as a conclusion of a series of arguments, arising ultimately from the command “man shall eat of the sweat of his brow”. The argumentation require shared premises and that shared moral space is provided by the shared moral sense of the tribe or the nation.
Thus, the property acquisition (in land) exists only in the state of laws. Otherwise, we have not property but “Territory” that is defended by force.
Thus, Property being a Right, exists in State of Laws and is secured by laws (or arguments).
While Territory is an Assertion, exists in State of Nature and is secured by force.
Thus, it is always wrong to violate a Property i.e. commit a theft and it is not wrong per se to violate a Territory i.e. conquer a territory.
December 21st, 2012 | 8:49 am
I’m certainly no expert on C.S. Lewis, but I agree with Steve Billingsley. Lewis probably, not unlike most intellectually inclined religious people today, thought that the misinterpretation of empirical science is the problem, not science itself. His problem was not with empirical science, but with unwarranted materialistic interpretations of scientific findings. He would not deny that the findings of empirical science (i.e.,neuroscience) can provide great insight into the human mind, but it cannot explain the essence of the mind (he had a great argument, which I think cannot be superseded, for why materialism is insufficient to account for the existence of, and our knowledge of, truth).
December 21st, 2012 | 12:24 pm
I suspect that in the last paragraph, the author of the post really meant to convey that “modern science” is demonic (see first paragraph), with the implicit assumption that “modern science” is synonymous with “scientism.”
December 21st, 2012 | 1:03 pm
What you’re laying out is a perfectly defensible view, but it is not what Lewis wrote. No space to show it in a comment, so new post coming soon.
December 21st, 2012 | 2:03 pm
[...] commenters on this post object to my characterization of C.S. Lewis’s views of modern science in The Abolition of [...]
December 21st, 2012 | 4:51 pm
“The Lockean property is biased towards settler polities–a land must be invested with human labor and only then it becomes a property. But why can’t a hunting tribe own its hunting ground?”
Because as soon as a hunting tribe conceives of land as property, it trades the vissisitudes and perils of hunting for the safer and more predictable outcomes offered by agriculture. Corn doesn’t hide or counterattack.
“Locke, like almost all economists, fails to properly distinguish between private property and national territory and this failure leads economics into numerous puzzles and paradoxes.”
Modern economists don’t fail to properly distinguish between private property and national territory, they don’t believe in national territory, as evidenced by their treatment of any restriction on immigration as affronts to human dignity. Of course, the greatest paradox is that the first line of defense in holding private property is national territory (and it’s vigorous assertion not the irredentism of our time)
.
December 24th, 2012 | 7:09 pm
Rothbard calls Locke a “Protestant Scholastic” for a reason…
http://www.3rdwavelandsproperties.net/2012/09/theistic-rationalism-or-protestant.html
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