Locke and the Politics and Theology of Toleration
| Published date | 01 March 2006 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2006.00567.x |
| Author | Timothy Stanton |
| Date | 01 March 2006 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Locke and the Politics and Theology
of Toleration
Timothy Stanton
University of York
Locke’s theory of toleration has been understood to rest on the claim that persecution was insufficient
to instil either (i) true or (ii) sincere belief in people.Although Locke did indeed make both these claims,
neither was fundamental to his theory. Locke was principally concerned to deny that persecution was
necessary to instil true or sincere belief; its insufficiency to those ends he, and his contemporaries, took
for granted. His denial of the necessity of persecution presupposed that human beings were, in princi-
ple, naturally adequate to the discovery of God’s wants for them.The same presupposition, which derives
from natural theology, underwrote the views in politics and revealed theology that complete his theory
and supplied its moral content. Contemporary theories of toleration purposing to proceed on Lockean
assumptions are morally and philosophically impoverished by their failure to see the requirements laid
on an adequate theory of toleration by genuinely Lockean terms.
Sometimes it happens that a philosophical theory becomes so well known
that the concerns that first motivated its articulation recede into relative obscu-
rity.When this happens, it becomes difficult to distinguish the claims that answer
to these concerns specifically – and, by opposing, end them – from those that
are complementary but have no functional role in the theory itself. One conse-
quence of this can be that a particular claim comes to be treated as the hub of
the theory, when in fact it plays only a supporting role: the real work is done
elsewhere.
So it has been with Locke’s theory of toleration. Recent discussions have vari-
ously identified the claim that persecution is ineffective as a means of instilling
true belief or the right intentions in people as the ‘principal consideration’ that
animates this theory (Waldron, 1988, p. 67; Bou-Habib, 2003, p. 611).We cannot
doubt that both claims figure prominently in Locke’s writing on toleration.Yet
in an important sense, their centrality has been taken for granted: discussion has
focused on the meaning and character of these claims in the confident pre-
sumption that Locke’s ‘subordinate’ claims fall into a pattern of subservience in
relation to the fundamental (Waldron, 1988, p. 62; Bou-Habib, 2003, p. 612).This
presumption narrows disagreement to the question of which of the claims really
is fundamental.1 Once made, we are drawn ineluctably into discussions of the
meaning and character of particular claims and the lines of argument that support
them. It is no longer possible to consider all of Locke’s claims as elements of a
theory, that is, a systematic attempt to understand and make explicit the presup-
positions of the practice of toleration.
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L O C K E ’ S T H E O RY O F TO L E R AT I O N
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We need not share this presumption. It is, after all, a peculiarly recent one. Over
a century ago, D. G. Ritchie (1894, p. 175) was able to notice, if not explain, how
[a] change in the notion of what constitutes a Church, and a change in opinion
as to what is essential in religious belief and what is not, and furthermore, a dimin-
ished sense of the importance of correct intellectual conceptions about the nature
of God ... with, perhaps, some scepticism as to the possibility of attaining com-
plete certainty in such deep matters
are all necessary preliminaries to accepting Locke’s theory of toleration. Call these
preliminaries P1, P2, P3 and P4, respectively.The article takes its cue from Ritchie
and argues that these, together with a changed view of human capacities (P5),
are correlated conditions sine qua non, without which Locke’s theory is deprived
of its comprehensive explanatory power. In short, it suggests that Locke offers a
genuine theory and not a merely eclectic composition.
At the same time, it explains why toleration was a central item in Locke’s politi-
cal theory. On recent readings, toleration turns for Locke on a question of fact
– does persecution produce a particular result? This reduces the argument about
toleration to a term in a means–end relationship, with deeply unsatisfactory con-
sequences. But Locke’s theory in fact provides a paradigm for toleration as an
aspect of a genuinely philosophical view of the human mind and the human sit-
uation. The theory explains why toleration is the political consequence of our
knowledge and our moral position, not simply the default that follows from the
failure of persecution – should it fail. In reconnecting Locke’s treatment of tol-
eration to his political thought, new light is cast on his claims about persecu-
tion, and a rather broader set of considerations than has been supposed is seen
to inform his theory. These considerations respond directly to the view Locke
was opposing.
Locke’s Target
Locke’s target was an influential view of Christianity, which took the proper pur-
poses of government to include the repression of false doctrine and the promo-
tion of the true. On this view, church and state were implicated in a complicit
spiritual enterprise. Their complicity was necessary because the Fall of man had
left people incapable of self-direction and made needful the provision of direc-
tion by the heads of church and state, upon whom God had bestowed His grace.
This view was widely held in the medieval period and its influence persisted
into the seventeenth century and beyond. It was ecumenical, for it was held alike
by the Roman Church, the Church of England and most Protestant Dissenters,2
which may sound surprising but is explicable enough, because it turned on shared
assumptions made in revealed theology – assumptions which relied on certain
venerable philosophical doctrines – and applied these to political thinking.
Within this consensus, there was scope for disagreement about the kinds of direc-
tion necessary and the efficiency of some means of repression, but nearly all
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T I M A . S TA N TO N
believed that the magistrate had both the right and the duty to establish true
religion within his territories, order the outward form of the church and punish
those who refused to conform (see at length Coffey, 2000).
This view was uncongenial to Locke. In An Essay Concerning Toleration (1667) he
assaulted it directly, laying down ‘for a foundation, which I think will not be
questioned or denied’ the premise that the state was a purely secular organisa-
tion which had no business either to promote or repress religious doctrine
(Locke, 1997, p. 135). Over the next 20 years, he developed a series of views that
explained the foundation he had laid down and, in doing so, articulated the
theory of toleration that in time became liberal orthodoxy. By assuming that
people were naturally adequate to self-direction, explaining this adequacy in
terms of their ability to adhere to the precepts of natural law, Locke bypassed
the older view. This assumption enabled him to rewrite the received characters
of church and state – in particular, to explain the secular character of the latter
– and thereby set their relations in new terms.These terms underwrote his mature
theory of toleration.
The theory Locke developed altered the bearings of toleration by making it the
matter of purely civil significance we nowadays take it to be. A more detailed
account of the steps by which he came to this view, as he diverged progressively
from the older view, will help us to see why, for all its familiarity, the Lockean
theory of toleration is more complex than we may readily suppose.
The Politics of Intolerance
To appreciate the complexity of Locke’s theory, we need to understand the view
it was designed to overcome. The obvious alternative to conceiving the state as
a secular organisation is to suggest that it is not limited to secular purposes, but
includes within its terms the provision of assistance to people in their spiritual
lives, even if this assistance is directed at the way they conduct themselves on
earth. This assistance could be conceived necessary if it were supposed that,
without it, people would be unable to conduct themselves in the manner
required by God. This supposition would make sense if there were postulated
some pervasive incapacity in people that made such conduct impossible without
institutional support, that is, the combined support of the church and the state.
Considered in these terms, the state might be understood as a Christian organi-
sation, one implicated in a central Christian purpose. So understood, its purposes
would not be confined to protecting people in this life but would extend to
preparing them for the next.
The implications of this for the question of toleration are not far to seek.Tolera-
tion is usually understood nowadays as the attempt by the state to manage a
modus vivendi between different and sometimes conflicting opinions about the
good life. The state is conceived as the neutral arbiter of these conflicts (see
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L O C K E ’ S T H E O RY O F TO L E R AT I O N
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Mendus, 1989; MacIntyre, 1990, pp. 133–55). But ‘the Question of Toleration’,
as Locke understood it, was ‘whether the Magistrate shall tolerate different
Churches’ (Locke, 1681, f. 7); and the assumed complicity of church and state in...
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