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Preface to Liberalism: Locke's First Treatise and the Bible

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Robert Faulkner
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Extract

A modern constitution is a man-made fundamental law, and it sets up a supreme government as agent of the people. What, however, of the commandments of the supreme God? How in face of Him can a man-made law and government be fundamental and supreme?

This is the political-theological problem, we will argue, at the deepest level of John Locke's First Treatise of Government. At that level the First Treatise chiefly undermines, although it also revises. It undermines the primacy of the biblical God, of both his providence and his law, and it also revises biblical fundamentals so as to permit a more rational and civil faith. These are the two leading contentions of this study. If they prove to be true, the First Treatise is much more important to Locke's liberalism than is commonly believed. It is the precondition for his works on toleration and Christianity, the writings setting forth the liberal religion that can abide the primacy of civil government and of “civil interests” generally. It is also, then, the precondition for the Second Treatise of Civil Government. The famous Second Treatise may be the seminal articulation of modern representative government, but the neglected First Treatise proves to be its necessary preface. So we will contend.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 67 , Issue 3 , Summer 2005 , pp. 451 - 472
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2005

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References

For comments on this essay I am grateful to Christopher Bruell, Robert Eden, and Susan Shell, and also to the anonymous readers for The Review. The original version was prepared for “America and the Enlightenment: Constitutionalism in the 21st Century,” a conference held in 2001 under the auspices of the Institute of United States Studies at the University of London. I owe special thanks to the distinguished Director of the Institute, Gary L. McDowell.

1. Pangle, Thomas, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 131–275;Google ScholarZuckert, Michael, Launching Liberalism, On Lockean Political Philosophy (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2002), pp. 129–68;Google Scholar Peter Myers, C., Our Only Star and Compass: Locke and the Struggle for Political Rationality (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefleld, 1998), pp. 1–65;Google ScholarTarcov, Nathan, Locke's Education for Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 9–76;Google ScholarFoster, David, “The Bible and Natural Freedom in John Locke's Political Thought,” in Piety and Humanity, ed. Kries, D. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefleld, 1997);Google ScholarFoster, D., “Taming the Father: John Locke's Critique of Patriarchal Fatherhood,” Review of Politics 56, no. 4 (1994);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 202–251.Google Scholar The quotation in the text is from Locke's, A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. Tully, James H. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1986), 26.Google Scholar

2. Rorty, Richard, “The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy,” in Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 175–96.Google Scholar For three of the latest of Rawls‘ reformulations, and for his muffling of the religious challenge, see “Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical,” “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” and “Commonweal Interview with John Rawls,” all in Rawls, Collected Papers, ed. Freeman, Samuel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 388–414, 573–615, 616–27.Google Scholar The problem is clarified and plumbed in Owen, J. Judd, Religion and the Demise of Liberal Rationalism (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2001).Google Scholar

3. Fortin, Ernest L., Human Rights, Virtue, and the Common Good: Untimely Meditations on Religion and Politics (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1996), p. 55.Google Scholar

4. Waldron, , God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations in John Locke's Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); on the postmodern void and the superior depth of Locke, pp. 1–15. For the passages quoted or referred to, see pp. 1–28, especially 13, 18–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Consider Israel, Jonathan I., Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), esp. p. 516, but see also 468–60, 470, 265–70, 70, 78, 259, 583, etc.CrossRefGoogle Scholar John Dunn is a chief authority for the view that as to politics Locke's works are philosophically irrelevant; they are merely “historical,” that is, confusedly Calvinist and wrapped within the “tradition and change” of his own time. The Political Thought of John Locke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969).Google Scholar For refutations see Tarcov, Nathan, Locke's Education, pp. 90, 127, 142–44,Google Scholar and Myers, , Political Rationality, pp. 14–23, 32. n.66, 107, 135 n.52.Google Scholar

6. All such references to the Treatises are to Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).Google Scholar

7. See Zuckert, , “An Introduction to Locke's First Treatise,” in Launching Liberalism, p. 137,Google Scholar and in general the works cited before in footnote 2.

8. Letter, ed. Tully, pp. 38, 55;Google Scholar the ensuing quotations in the text are from pp. 23, 26, 32, 37, 42, 49, 51, 52.

9. As to Locke's acknowledgement of Filmer's foundation in divine providence, see Tarcov, , Locke's Education, 13–21Google Scholar, and Zuckert, , “An Introduction to Locke's First Treatise,” in his Launching Liberalism, pp. 129–46.Google Scholar

10. As to Locke's two quotations from the New Testament, other allusions, and the pattern of distortion, see Windstrup, George Alan, “Politic Christianity: Locke's Theology of Liberalism” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Princeton University, 1977), p. 255.Google Scholar Windstrup's little known work is among the most tenacious and extensive inquiries into Locke's political theology.

11. Some Thoughts Concerning Education, ed. Grant, Ruth W. and Tarcov, Nathan (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1996), sections 4,5,7, 39, 41; cf. 34, 35, esp. 78.Google Scholar

12. Consider the examinations by Pangle, , in Modern Republicanism, pp. 136–49,Google Scholar and in Political Philosophy and the God of the Bible (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), pp. 10–11.Google Scholar

13. Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV. xi. 12 and also IV. iii. 27.Google Scholar

14. Laslett's index to both Treatises has no entries for prophets, prophecy, Messiah, Christ or Savior.

15. Strauss, Leo, Philosophy and Law, tr. Baumann, Fred (New York: The Jewish Publication Society, 1987), Introduction 10–14.Google Scholar See also Davis, Matthew, “Locke and the Problem of the Biblical God,” chapter two of “Ancient and Modern Approaches to the Problem of Relativism: A Study of Husserl, Locke and Plato” (Ph. D. Dissertation, Boston College, 1995), pp. 25–85.Google Scholar

16. As to the definition of “essay” and the political significance of the essay form, see Faulkner, Robert, “Francis Bacon,” in Encyclopedia of the Essay, ed. Chevalier, Tracy (London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997).Google Scholar