Recently, scholars have disputed whether Locke's political theory should be read as the groundwork of secular liberalism or as a Protestant political theology. Focusing on Locke's mature theory of toleration, the article raises a central question: What if these two readings are compatible? That is, what would be the consequences if Locke's political philosophy has theological foundations, but has also given shape to secular liberalism? Examining Locke's theory in the Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), the article argues that this is indeed the case. The liberal model of toleration is a secularization of the theology of Christian liberty and its division of society into a temporal political kingdom and the spiritual kingdom of Christ. Therefore, when liberal toleration travels beyond the boundaries of the Christian West or when western societies become multicultural, it threatens to lose its intelligibility.
Michael P. Zuckert, Launching Liberalism: On Lockean Political Philosophy ( Lawrence, KA: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 1, 20.
2.
Paul Bou-Habib , "Locke, Sincerity and the Rationality of Persecution ," Political Studies51 (2003): 611-26, 623-5; Ingrid Creppell, "Locke on Toleration: The Transformation of Constraint," Political Theory24, no. 2 (1996): 200-40, 231-2; Ruth W. Grant, John Locke's Liberalism (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), 198-205; Alex Tuckness, "Rethinking the Intolerant Locke," American Journal of Political Science46, no. 2 (2002): 288-98; Richard Vernon, The Career of Toleration: John Locke, Jonas Proast, and After (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1997), 14-5; Anthony G. Wilhelm, "Good Fences and Good Neighbors: John Locke's Positive Doctrine of Toleration," Political Research Quarterly52, no. 1 (1999): 145-66.
3.
John Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke: An Historical Account of the Argument of the `Two Treatises of Government' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), xi.
4.
John Marshall, John Locke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xviii. See also Richard Ashcraft, "Religion and Lockean Natural Rights," in Religious Diversity and Human Rights, ed. Irene Bloom, J. Paul Martin, and Wayne Proudfoot (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 208.
5.
Jeremy Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations in Locke's Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 82.
6.
Ian Harris , The Mind of John Locke: A Study of Political Theory in Its Intellectual Setting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) and "The Politics of Christianity," in Locke's Philosophy: Content and Context, ed. G. A. J. Rogers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); P.J. Kelly, "John Locke: Authority, Conscience and Religious Toleration," in John Locke: A Letter Concerning Toleration in Focus, ed. John Horton and Susan Mendus (London and New York: Routledge, 1991); Kim I. Parker, The Biblical Politics of John Locke (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier Press, 2004); Micah Schwartzman, "The Relevance of Locke's Religious Arguments for Toleration," Political Theory33 (2005): 678-705.
7.
Greg Forster, John Locke's Politics of Moral Consensus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 21.
8.
Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, 242-43.
9.
John Locke, "A Letter Concerning Toleration," Two Treatises of Government and a Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. Ian Shapiro (New Haven and London : Yale University Press, 2003), 218.
10.
Ibid.
11.
John Locke, "First Tract on Government," in Locke: Political Essays , ed. Mark Goldie ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 11.
12.
Bernard Williams, "Toleration: An Impossible Virtue?" in Toleration: An Elusive Virtue, ed. David Heyd (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 22.
13.
Peter De Marneffe , "Liberalism, Liberty, and Neutrality," Philosophy and Public Affairs19, no. 3 (1990): 253-74, 255f.; Ronald Dworkin, A Matter of Principle ( Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 191-204; Charles Larmore, "Political Liberalism," Political Theory18, no. 3 (1990): 339-60; John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).
14.
Kirstie McClure , "Difference, Diversity and the Limits of Toleration ," Political Theory18, no. 3 (1990): 361-91; Susan Mendus, Toleration and the Limits of Liberalism (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989), 9-11; Mary Warnock, "The Limits of Toleration," in On Toleration, ed. Susan Mendus and David Edwards (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).
15.
Dworkin, A Matter of Principle, 335-72; David Dyzenhaus, "John Stuart Mill and the Harm of Pornography ," Ethics102 ( 1992): 534-51; Bernard Harcourt, "The Collapse of the Harm Principle," Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology90, no. 1 (1999): 109-95; Robert Skipper, "Mill and Pornography ," Ethics103, no. 4 (1993): 726-30. But see Richard Vernon, "John Stuart Mill and Pornography: Beyond the Harm Principle." Ethics106, no. 3 (1996): 621-32.
16.
Dworkin, A Matter of Principle, 336-7; John Gray, Mill on Liberty: A Defense ( London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983), 49.
17.
Alan Wolfe, "Public and Private in Theory and Practice: Some Implications of an Uncertain Boundary," in Public and Private in Thought and Practice: Perspectives on a Grand Dichotomy, ed. Jeff Weintraub and Krishan Kumar (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press , 1997) 195.
18.
E.g., Joe Bailey, "From Public to Private: The Development of the Concept of `Private,'" Social Research69, no. 1 (2002): 15-32, 15; Jose Casanova, "Private and Public Religions," Social Research59, no. 1 (1992): 17-58, 17; Peter J. Steinberger, "Public and Private," Political Studies47, no. 2 (1999): 292-313, 293; Jeff Weintraub, "The Theory and Politics of the Public/Private Distinction," in Public and Private in Thought and Practice: Perspectives on a Grand Dichotomy, ed. Jeff Weintraub and Krishan Kumar (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press , 1997), 2.
19.
S.N. Balagangadhara , "The Heathen in His Blindness . . .": Asia, the West, and the Dynamic of Religion (Leiden: Brill, 1994); Jakob De Roover, "The Vacuity of Secularism: On the Indian Debate and Its Western Origins," Economic and Political Weekly37, no. 39 (2002): 4047-53.
20.
In the last section of the article, we will demonstrate the kind of difficulties that emerge in debates about liberal toleration in societies other than those of the West. The absence of a theoretical framework, which should allow one to identify at least one of the two spheres of liberal toleration, leads to endless disputes that cannot be settled on reasonable cognitive grounds.
21.
Locke, "A Letter Concerning Toleration," 241.
22.
Ibid.
23.
Ibid., 242.
24.
Ibid.
25.
Ibid., 242-3.
26.
John Locke, "Civil and Ecclesiastical Power," in Locke: Political Essays, ed. Mark Goldie ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 216.
27.
John Locke, "An Essay on Toleration," in Locke: Political Essays , ed. Mark Goldie ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), A Second Letter Concerning Toleration ( London, 1690), and A Third Letter for Toleration (London, 1692).
28.
W.K. Jordan, The Development of Religious Toleration in England, 4 vols. ( Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1965 ); John Coffey , Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, 1588-1689 (Essex: Longman, 2000).
29.
Martin Luther, "To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation," in Three Treatises (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1970).
30.
See Martin Luther, "The Freedom of a Christian," in Martin Luther's Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy F. Lull (Minneapolis: Fortress Press , 1989); Philip Melanchthon, "Loci Communes Theologici," in Melanchthon and Bucer, ed. Wilhelm Pauck (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1969), 123.
31.
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 vols., ed. John T. McNeill (Louisville: Westminster, 1960), vol. 2, 1180.
32.
Calvin, Institutes, vol. 1, 847.
33.
Martin Luther , "Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed," in Martin Luther's Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy F. Lull (Minneapolis : Fortress Press, 1989), 679. 34. Locke , "A Letter Concerning Toleration," 242.
34.
Richard H. Dees , "The Justification of Toleration," in Philosophy, Religion, and the Question of Intolerance, ed. Mehdi A. Razavi and David Ambuel (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997); John Dunn, "The Claim to Freedom of Conscience, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Thought, Freedom of Worship? ," in From Persecution to Toleration: The Glorious Revolution and Religion in England, ed. Ole P. Grell , Jonathan I. Israel, and Nicholas Tyacke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991); Jeremy Waldron, "Locke: Toleration and the Rationality of Persecution," in Justifying Toleration: Conceptual and Historical Perspectives, ed. Susan Mendus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) and Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality.
35.
Locke, "A Letter Concerning Toleration," 220-6.
36.
Ibid., 245.
37.
Alex Tuckness , "Rethinking the Intolerant Locke," American Journal of Political Science46, no. 2 (2002): 288-98.
38.
Ibid., 292; see Tuckness, Locke and the Legislative Point of View: Toleration, Contested Principles, and the Law (Princeton and Oxford : Princeton University Press, 2002 ).
39.
Tuckness, "Rethinking the Intolerant Locke," 294.
40.
Ibid., 295.
41.
Ibid., 296-7.
42.
"At level two there is the general principle that Locke derives from level one." Ibid., 295.
43.
"God actually is a legislator and so must take into account the fallibility of all magistrates. If we are forced to reason from His perspective, we take into account the fallibility of others as well. This is important because we are often more accurate judges of the fallibility of others than of ourselves" (Ibid., 293). How could human beings ever be forced to reason from God's perspective? One might "know" that others are also fallible; but how could one ever take their fallibilities into account unless one is able to determine how, precisely, the others are fallible?
44.
Ibid., 297, 298.
45.
Consider another historical example. In the early days of colonial rule in India, the British officials confronted the practice of sati or "widow-burning." As the records show, they were willing to tolerate this practice (and they did tolerate it for several decades), if the native Hindu population could show that it was sanctioned by their religious scriptures. One of the justifications for tolerating this practice was eminently Lockean: even if the practice went against the biblical commandments and common morality, as fallible human beings the British officials were not allowed to infringe on the consciences of others and what the latter took to be God's will. Consequently, the British allowed sati and other practices for the "Hindus," while forbidding them to subjects from other religions. This policy of toleration would have to end, in case it turned out that the Hindu scriptures did not sanction the practice. Consequently, it would have to be forbidden by law (as it was in 1829). Now, here is where the problem lies: both the toleration and the intolerance of sati become expressions of Lockean toleration, depending on the presence or absence of an additional piece of knowledge. This demonstrates in historical terms what was said previously: whether or not some belief threatens the possibility of civil society does not depend on the nature of the belief (in itself), but on what we know or do not know about the world. Given the inevitable variation in background knowledge (spatially and temporally, but also individually), the specific principle becomes hollow: one and the same action is either Lockean toleration or not, depending on the beliefs of the individual magistrate. Such a principle is completely inadequate as a foundation for toleration.
46.
In his study of the influence of Locke's political thought on the American Revolution, Steven Dworetz shows how the common theological background of Christian liberty allowed the preachers of various Protestant confessions in the colonies to shape the American thought on religion and its liberty. Dworetz, The Unvarnished Doctrine: Locke, Liberalism, and the American Revolution ( Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), 137, 177.
47.
Chris Beneke , Beyond Toleration: The Religious Origins of American Pluralism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
48.
Richard Perry, ed., Sources of Our Liberties: Documentary Origins of Individual Liberties in the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights (Chicago: American Bar Foundation, 1952), 312, 329, 349.
49.
Susan Jacoby , Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism (New York: Henry Holt & Co , 2004), 1-65; William G. McLoughlin, Soul Liberty: The Baptists' Struggle in New England, 1630-1833 (Hannover and London: Brown University Press, 1991), 249-69.
50.
Jacoby, Freethinkers, 19.
51.
Thomas Jefferson , Notes on the State of Virginia, ed. William Peden (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1955), 223-5.
52.
Jacoby, Freethinkers, 24.
53.
Thomas Jefferson , The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 16, ed. Albert E. Bergh, Richard H. Johnson, and Andrew A. Lipscomb (Washington DC: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States, 1903), 281-2.
54.
Derek H. Davis, "Thomas Jefferson and the `Wall of Separation' Metaphor," Journal of Church and State45, no. 1 (2003): 5-14, 7-8; see also Edwin S. Gaustad, "Thomas Jefferson, Religious Freedom, and the Supreme Court," Church History67 (1998): 682-94.
55.
Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 159.
56.
Ibid., 159-61.
57.
Robert K. Faulkner, "Political Philosophy," in Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, vol. 3, ed. Alan Charles Kors ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 320.
58.
See especially the debates of the Constituent Assembly of the 1940s, which preceded the creation of the Indian Constitution. Constituent Assembly Debates, Official Report, third reprint (New Delhi : Lok Sabha Secretariat, 1999), vol. 7, 721-2, 756-9, 817-9. See also the analyses in Rochana Bajpai, "The Conceptual Vocabulary of Secularism and Minority Rights in India," Journal of Political Ideologies7, no. 2 (2002): 179-97 and De Roover, "Vacuity of Secularism." These show how the same debates are still continuing in contemporary India. No solution is in sight.
59.
E.g., Ruma Pal , "Religious Minorities and the Law," in Religion and Personal Law in Secular India: A Call to Judgment, ed. Gerald J. Larson (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001). See also Constituent Assembly Debates, vol. 7, 781-82.
60.
In India, the secular state appears to have imposed one such conception of religion on society. See S.N. Balagangadhara and Jakob De Roover, "The Secular State and Religious Conflict: Liberal Neutrality and the Indian Case of Pluralism ," Journal of Political Philosophy15, no. 1 (2007): 67-92.
61.
See: Jakob De Roover and S.N. Balagangadhara, "Liberty, Tyranny and the Will of God: The Principle of Toleration in Early Modern Europe and Colonial India ," forthcoming; Jonathan I. Israel, Locke, Spinoza and the Philosophical Debate Concerning Toleration in the Early Enlightenment (c. 1670-c.1750) (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Academie van de Wetenschappen, 1999).
62.
As Gordon Schochet puts it: "The guiding presumptions-widely shared in the West- are that religion is generally a matter of personal conscience and that religious practices that do not threaten the stability or security of the state ought not to be interfered with." Schochet, "Toleration," in Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, ed. Alan Charles Kors (Oxford: Oxford University Press , 2003), 165. E.g., Robert Audi, "The Separation of Church and State and the Obligations of Citizenship ." Philosophy & Public Affairs18, no. 3 (1989): 259-96.
