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John Locke and The Enlightenment Metanarrative: A Biblical Corrective to a Reasoned World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Kim Ian Parker
Kim Ian Parker
Affiliation:
Memorial UniversitySt John's Newfoundland Canada A1C 5S7
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Extract

According to recent literature, the crisis of modernity owes much to an uncritical acceptance of the ‘Enlightenment metanarrative’. The Enlightenment, with its sanctification of reason, privileged technological progress and personal advancement and created the illusion that human potential and happiness was unlimited. All one had to do was to free oneself from superstition (for example, religion) and the world would be a better place. Modernity has, correspondingly, emphasized individual rights, personal power, and wealth. In spite of the promise of modernity, however, the wars, famines, poverty, and inequality of the modern world have made it all too obvious that the end result of the Enlightenment's goal to alleviate the miseries of the human condition applies only to a small portion of the population. In this respect, the contradiction between the universality of the Enlightenment project and its application to a minority of the population lies at the heart of many of the critiques of modernity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , February 1996 , pp. 57 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1996

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References

1 The phrase ‘metanarrative’ or ‘grand récit’ is used by François Lyotard to describe the way in which narratives (popular stories, myths, legends) bestow legitimacy on social institutions, and legitimate a certain type of knowledge. For Lyotard, the hero of the Enlightenment metanarrative uses his or her reason to ‘work toward a good ethico-political end — universal peace’ (The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Bennington, Geoff and Massumi, Brian [Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press, 1984], p. xxiv)Google Scholar.

2 For the way in which the Enlightenment impinges upon modernity see Adorno, Theodor W. and Horkheimer, Max, ‘The Culture Industry’, in Dialectic of the Enlightenment (1947), trans, by Cumming, John (New York: Seabury, 1972), pp. 120–167Google Scholar, and Habermas, J., ‘Modernity Versus Postmodernity’. New German Critique 22 (Winter, 1981)Google Scholar.

3 Phillips, Gary A. lists Locke as one (among others) responsible for the ‘metanarrative of self-improvement and self-control’ (p. 21)Google Scholar. See his ‘Exegesis as Critical Praxis: Reclaiming History and Text from a Postmodern Perspective’, Semeia 51 (1990), pp. 7–49. Phillips also claims that ‘the high priestly statement of this quest for mastery and control with its clear moral consequences for realizing the individual and collective good we owe tojohn Locke’ (p. 22). In one sense, to discuss Locke's role in the decline of western civilization is to reopen an old, but unresolved problem. Both the Marxist critic Macpherson, C. B. in The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962Google Scholar) and the neo-conservative critic Leo Strauss Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965) maintain that although Locke is responsible for enshrining the values of freedom and equality in modern liberal democracies, Locke is only able to maintain the plausibility of his notions of freedom and equality by subverting other values such as religion and biblical morality.

4 See his The Political Thought of John Locke: An Historical Account of the Argument of the ‘Two Treatises of Government’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969)Google Scholar. Nevertheless, as Dunn points out, ‘there has yet to be a serious synthetic study which reexamines Locke's intellectual life from the perspective of his religious concerns. It is an astonishing lacuna’ (p. 195, n. 1). Coincidental with and following Dunn's work, however, a number of other studies have appeared which discuss Locke's religious ideas. These include: Ashcraft, Richard, ‘Faith and Knowledge in Locke's Philosophy’, in Yolton, J. W. (ed.), John Locke: Problems and Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969)Google Scholar; Pearson, Samuel C., ‘The Religion of John Locke and the Character of His Thought’, Journal of Religion 58 (1974)Google Scholar; Tully, James, A Discourse on Property: John Loch and His Adversaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spellman, W. M., John Locke and the Problem of Depravity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Dworetz, Steven M., The Unvarnished Doctrine: Locke Liberalism, and the American Revolution (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

5 See Dunn, op. cit., p. xii, and his concern that ‘if the religious purpose and sanction of the calling were to be removed from Locke's theory, the purpose of individual human life and social life would both be exhaustively defined by the goal of the maximization of utility’ (p. 250).

6 Some attention has been given to Locke's use of the Bible in Reedy, Gerald, The Bible and Reason: Anglicans and Scripture in Late Seventeenth-Century England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reventlow, Henning Graf, The Authority of the Bibleand the Rise of the Modem World (London: SCM Press, 1984), pp. 243–285Google Scholar; and Mitchell, Joshua, Not by Reason Alone: Religion, History, and Identity in Early Modem Political Thought (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 73–97Google Scholar. These studies, however, do not go so far as to demonstrate the striking dependency of Locke on the Bible, a dependency that, in effect, minimizes the efficacy of reason.

7 A cursory glance at any of the political tracts of the seventeenth century will show this to be the case. For a detailed analysis see Gerald Reedy, op. cit., pp. 63–89.

8 I have suggested elsewhere that the debate between Filmer and Locke concerned the correct reading of three verses in Genesis: 1:28, 3:16, 4:7. See ‘John Locke's Theologico-Political Teaching’, in Parker, Kim Ian (ed.), Liberal Democracy and the Bible. (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

9 As do, for example, Daly, James, Sir Robert Filmer and English Political Thought (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), p. 57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Schochet, Gordon, Patriarchialism and Political Thought (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1975), p. 122Google Scholar.

10 See Reedy, op. cit., p. 70.

11 Ibid., pp. 63–89. The most influential allegorical interpretation was perhaps Dryden's poem, ‘Absalom and Achithophel’. Dryden drew an uncomplimentary analogy between the struggle for a successor to Charles II with the biblical story of Absalom's revolt against his father, David, in II Samuel 15–18.

12 Locke, , Two Treatises of Government, ed. with introduction and notes by Laslett, Peter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, First Treatise, sections 32 and 36. Further references to this work will be provided in the body of the text and appear as ‘TT’, followed by the treatise and section number.

13 John Locke, A Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistle of St Paul, 2 vols, ed. with introduction and notes by Arthur W. Wainwright (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). Further references to this work will be provided in the body of the text and appear as ‘PN’ followed by the page number.

14 In The Works of John Locke in Ten Volumes (London: Tegg, Thomas et al. , 1823Google Scholar; reissued by Scientia Verlag Aalen, 1963), volume 7, p. 357. Hereafter citations from Locke's Worts will appear in the body of the text, by volume and page number only. For Locke, the theological or scholastic tradition is often less than helpful in trying to determine the meaning of a particular passage. Locke seems to be saying that the word of God, although infallible, might have no reliable infallible guide to it. In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (ed. by Nidditch, Peter H. [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975], Book 3, chapter 9, section 23), he writesGoogle Scholar: ‘though every thing said in the Text be infallibly true, yet the Reader may be, nay cannot choose but be very fallible in the understanding of it. Nor is it to be wondered that the Will of GOD, when clothed in Words, should be liable to that doubt and uncertainty, which unavoidably attends that sort of Conveyance, when even his Son, whilst clothed in Flesh, was subject to all the Frailties and Inconveniences of human Nature, Sin excepted’. (Further references to the Essay will be provided in the body of the text and appear as ‘ECHLT’, followed by the relevant book, chapter, and section numbers.) Locke implies here that it is impossible for us to attain perfect knowledge about what the Bible may have meant. This problem is compounded by learned theologians who try to mask obscurity in ‘artificial Ignorance and learned Gibberish’ (EUHU3:10:9).

15 Locke's Essay on Infallibility has been translated (with introduction and notes) by Biddle, John C. and appears in the Journal ofChurch and State 19 (1977), pp. 301–327CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The quote is on p. 327.

16 While Locke understands that Scripture teaches other doctrines as well, he is reluctant to impose doctrines of any sort. In a letter to his friend van Limborch in 1694 Locke writes that ‘nothing should be imposed on the consciences of Christians except what is contained in the clear and express words of Writ', Holy (The Correspondence of John Locke, ed. DeBeer, E. S., 8 vols. [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976–1985], volume number 1804 [hereafter references noted by ‘Correspondence’ followed by volume and letter number]; cited in Reedy, op. cit., p. 137)Google Scholar. In this sense, Locke, like many of the Anglican divines of the later part of the seventeenth century, such as Taylor and Chillingsworth, is reluctant to specify or impose church doctrine on the basis of Scripture (see Biddle, op. cit., pp. 308–09). Locke's own strong views on toleration may have motivated his refusal to create a hierarchy of doctrines, but he is adamant that his own writings should not be used to justify a creed to be forced on believers.

17 This seems to be the whole point of Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity. See Works, 7:28, and the same point made by Biddle, op. cit., p. 303.

18 This seemingly insoluble hermeneutical problem forms the basis for the argument of those who want to show the supremacy of reason in Locke's writings. See for instance, Macpherson, op. cit., Strauss, op. cit., and more recently Schouls, Peter A., The Imposition of Method: A Study of Descartes and Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), especially 216–251Google Scholar, and Pangle, Thomas, The Spirit of Modem Republicanism: The Moral Vision of the American Founders and the Philosophy of Locke (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

19 On the matter of the confluence of reason and revelation, see the discussion in Dworetz, op. cit., pp. 125–134. On the matter of the superiority of revelation over reason see the citations listed in R. Ashcraft, ‘Faith and Knowledge in Locke's Philosophy’, in Yolton, J. W. (ed.), John Locke: Problems and Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 216, n. 1Google Scholar. A clear statement of Locke's position is found in the introduction to chapter II of his Common-Place-Book to the Holy Bible (fifth edition, ed. by Dodd, William [London: Osborne, T. et al. , 1766], p. 6)Google Scholar: ‘but the scriptures having given us a plainer and fuller account of the divine Being that the reason of man can discover of itself, the best and easiest way of coming to the right knowledge of God is by his word.’

20 Ashcraft, op. cit., p. 217.

21 See Spellman, op. cit., p. 126; and Ashcraft, op. cit., p. 219.

22 On this point see the useful discussions in Pearson, op. cit., 244–62, and Biddle, John, ‘Locke's Critique of Innate Principles and Toland's Deism’, Journal of the History of Ideas 37 (1976), pp. 411–422CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Locke's posthumous Discourse on Miracles (in Works, 9:256–265) where Locke discusses miracles in order to authenticate revelation and lay a foundation for faith and morality.

23 See Spellman, op. cit., pp. 8–10, for an elaboration of this position. In fact, Locke's explicit purpose in writing The Reasonableness of Christianity was to show because of our impaired reason, all humans need Christianity. Reason alone cannot come up with an adequate morality (Works, 7:139). As Locke writes, ‘it is plain, in fact, that human reason unassisted [by revelation] failed men in its great and proper business of morality …And he that shall collect all the moral rules of the philosophers, and compare them with those contained in the New Testament, will find them to come short of the morality delivered by our Saviour, and taught by his apostles; a college made up, for the most part, of ignorant, but inspired fishermen’ (Works, 7:140). In order for all humans to be moral in this life and saved in the next, they must rely on the Bible and not on fallible reason (Works, 7:141–143). As Locke writes in Some Thoughts Concerning Reading and Study for a Gentlemen, ‘a full knowledge of true morality’ could found ‘in no other book than the New Testament’ (in Works, 3:296).

24 See Tennant, F. R., The Sources of the Doctrine of the Fall and Original Sin (New York: Schocken Books, 1965 [1903]), pp. 248–272Google Scholar; Williams, N. P., The Idea of the Fall and Original Sin (London: Longmans, Green & Co. Ltd., 1927), pp. 327–332Google Scholar; Urban, L., A Short History of Christian Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 140–144Google Scholar.

25 The Augustinian and Pelagian controversy is obviously more complex than can be articulated here. For further discussion of the controversy see Williams, op. cit., pp. 332–347; Tillich, P., A History of Christian Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), 122–131Google Scholar; Chadwick, H., Augustine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 107–112Google Scholar; and Spellman, op. cit., pp. 15–20. For our present purposes, it is crucial to note how much more ‘Pelagian’ than ‘Augustinian’ Locke's views are.

26 In his early writings, especially Two Tracts on Government (orig. written 1660 [?]; text ed. with introduction, notes, and translation by Philip Abrams [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967]), Locke advocates a strong authoritarian government to curb an intractable sinfulness on the part of humans. This was a Locke writing shortly after the bloody religious wars and fanaticism of the Interregnum, a position he was to modify in The Two Treatises (1690).

27 Ms Locke, Lovelace Collection, Bodleian Library, c. 28, fol. 113V.

28 A doctrine commonly associated with the Protestant reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin. Calvin is somewhat more optimistic about the human condition suggesting that humanscan rise above the corruption by performing virtuous acts. See his Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Battles, F. L., 2 vols. (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960)Google Scholar, Book I, ch. 3, pt. 3 (hereafter by book, chapter, and section numbers). Nevertheless the general trend of the discussion in the Institutes is that of affirming the total depravity of humanity. See for instance the Institutes II. 1.8–11; II2.12, and the relevant discussion in Williams, op. cit., pp. 431–32. It was the Calvinist idea of the depravity of human nature that had a profound impact on the Reformation in England (see the discussion and references in Spellman, op. cit., 26–28).

29 See especially the opening pages of The Reasonableness of Christianity (Works, 7:4–12), and Ms Locke, Lovelace Collection, Bodleian Library, c. 27, pp. 101–103. This liberal view of the Fall echoes that of the mid-seventeenth century member of the Tew Circle, Jeremy Taylor, whose Discourse of Liberal Prophesying (1647) Locke had read and was influenced by (see Biddle op. cit. [1977], pp. 308–309). Throughout his writings Locke seems very reluctant to attribute the depravity of humanity to an original sin. See here the useful discussions by Wainwright, op. cit., pp. 35–37, and Mitchell, op. cit., p. 88, and his valuable discussion of Locke's biblical history (pp. 73–97).

30 Yolton makes the astute observation that at the heart of Locke's concept of a person is ‘one who can take responsibility for his actions, and who is concerned with those actions and their consequences’. See his Locke: An Introduction (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), p. 27Google Scholar.

31 Locke describes the purpose of the Essay in quite humble terms: ‘If by this Enquiry into the Nature of the Understanding, I can discover the Powers thereof; how far they reach; to what things they are in any Degree proportionate; and where they fail us, I suppose it may be of use, to prevail with the busy Mind of Man, to be more cautious in meddling with things exceeding its Comprehension; to stop, when it is at the utmost Extent of its Tether; and to sit down in a quiet Ignorance of those Things, which, upon Examination, are found to be beyond the reach of our Capacities’ (1:14; see also 1:1:6, 4:14:2). Far from existing as a manifesto for scientific rationalism, the idea for the Essay occurred, according to Locke's friend James Tyrrell, during a meeting of five or six friends in the winter of 1671, where the discussion centred around ‘religion and morality’. See Cranston, Maurice, John Locke: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985 [1957], p. 141Google Scholar. See also Ashcraft, , who writes that ‘Locke wrote the Essay Concerning Human Understanding order to secure great ends of religion and morality’, op. cit., p. 198Google Scholar.

32 See also Locke's Journal notes for June 26, 1681, printed in Aaron, R. I. and Gibb, Jocelyn (eds.), An Early Draft of Locke's Essay (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936), 117Google Scholar.

33 Although in the Essay Locke suggested that morality could be demonstrated through reason, and thus implied the perfectibility of humans, he came to see that this was a virtual impossibility. In a letter of April 5, 1696 to his friend William Molyneux, who had asked him if he was ever going to write a definitive treatise on ethics, Locke replied, ‘Did the world want a rule, I confess there could be no work so necessary, nor so commendable, but the Gospel con tains so perfect a body of Ethics, that reason may be excused from that enquiry, since she may find man's duty clearer and easier in revelation than in herself’ (Correspondence, 5:2059 = Works, 9, 377). In the Reasonableness of Christianity Locke also writes it was ‘too hard a task for unassisted reason to establish morality in all its parts, upon its true foundation, with a clear and convincing light’ (Works, 7:139).

34 In the Preface to his Common-Place-Book to the Holy Bible, Locke affirms that ‘the Knowledge most mysterious and profound is there exhibited to us: The Truths most useful and necessary are there unfolded to us: The Precepts most pure and perfective of Mankind (of which the great Secretaries of Nature, in their four thousand Years Improvement, gave us little besides Blunders and blotted Paper) are there recommended.’

35 This is the Locke that emerges from the writings of Strauss and Macpherson. For a recent revival of Strauss's position see Pangle, op. cit., especially 131–171 where Locke is cast as one who sees God as ‘either grotesquely unjust in his punishments or tyrannically cruel in his providential care (or both)’ (p. 145), and who therefore wants to eliminate this God in favour of a god of reason. Pangle goes on to argue that ‘it is no exaggeration to say that Locke and Spinoza carried out, for the sake or in the name of the god of reason, a subversion of the received Scriptures’ (p. 153). Such a Locke is hard to accommodate with the one who writes, ‘the Holy Scripture is to me, and always will be, the constant guide of my assent; and I will always harken to it, as containing the infallible truth relation to things of highest concernment’ (Works, III, 96).