Locke,God,and Civil Society

In an interesting attempt to reconcile the dichotomy between individual liberty and government authority that many have perceived in Locke’s political philosophy, Timothy Stanton has argued that Locke intended no such dichotomy at all. ¹ On the contrary, by inscribing the presence (and the authority) of God at the center of Locke’s political philosophy, Stanton insists that Locke renders both the liberty of the individual and the authority of government thoroughly subordinate to the duties and obligations each owe to God (pp. 6, 18-22). Further, Stanton declares that those who view liberty and authority within Locke as opposed, and reconcilable only by consent, apply a misleading “picture” to Locke, ignoring how he reduces both to God’s “purposes” if they are to be “accounted authoritative,” and so mistake what is essential in Locke’s political philosophy (pp. 7, 13, 18, 20, 21, 22).

Far from this being an accurate depiction, Locke sought to remove God and His “purposes” from the center of his political philosophy, and adopted three strategies to achieve this. It is true that, at the most foundational level, Locke perceived each individual to be one of God’s “creatures,” and derived the equality of their natural rights from this equal status. ² Yet contrary to Stanton, he in no way sought to subordinate the ends of individuals, civil society or government to divine purposes (cf. pp. 19-21), nor justified their limits on this basis, even if the result of such limits was indeed a separation of church and state. Locke, after all, knew that such divine purposes were theological matters upon which individuals, and religious congregations, were likely to disagree—each church being “orthodox to itself; to other, erroneous or heretical.” ³ Such theological matters therefore constituted no grounds for the civil agreement necessary to establish civil peace or the foundations and limits of government. Indeed, quite the contrary. As Locke stated: “No peace and security, no, not so much as common friendship, can ever be established or preserved amongst men, so long as this opinion prevails, that dominion is founded in grace.” ⁴ It was therefore to avoid such outcomes that Locke sought an alternative foundation for “dominion”—that is, for the foundations and limits of government—one based upon material interests which, being common to all individuals, all could adhere to, even if they were divided by faith. His three strategies were directed to this end.

It is true that, in the Two Treatises of Government, Locke depicts natural law as arising from the will of God and, in the wake of the transition from the state of nature to civil society, as still maintaining a moral authority. ⁵ But this is far from suggesting that Locke subordinated the ends of government, civil society or the individuals within it to God’s purposes, as embodied in natural law or elsewhere (cf. pp. 19-21). On the contrary, Locke states that “being unwritten, and so no where to be found but in the minds of Men . . . [natural law] serves not, as it ought, to determine the Rights, and fence the Properties of those that live under it.” ⁶ Indeed, after identifying natural law with the state of nature, Locke tells us that “[t]he Liberty of Man, in [Civil] Society, is to be under no other Legislative Power, but that established, by consent, in the Common-wealth, nor under the Dominion of any Will, or Restraint of any Law, but what the Legislative shall enact, according to the Trust put in it.” ⁷ Thus although Locke insists there are some natural rights which, being God-given, no individual has the authority to surrender to another (thereby justifying resistance to government should these be threatened) nevertheless outside very broad natural law injunctions to preserve as much of humanity as possible, and not harm another in “Life, Health, Liberty or Possessions,” it was legislative authority based on consent, not “divine guidelines” (p. 21), which provided the boundaries of liberty within Locke’s civil society, distinguishing it from “license.” ⁸ There is therefore no reconciliation between liberty and authority in terms of divine purposes within Locke’s political philosophy, as Stanton suggests, but rather a perennial need to balance one against the other. Indeed in the Two Treatises of Government, Locke argued that the only limits on liberty that individuals are likely to consent to in civil society are not those that accord with God’s “purposes,” as Stanton claims, but rather those that guarantee greater security for their liberty overall. ⁹

Locke’s first strategy to remove God and theology from civil and political affairs was to ensure that the grounds of coexistence within civil society were premised on the basis of commensurate interests all shared, and not on the basis of divine purposes on whose meaning, Locke’s own post-Reformation experience told him, individuals were endemically divided. ¹⁰ For Locke, these commensurate interests were material interests, centered on individuals’ “Lives, Liberties, and Estates,” to which he gives the very material description of “property.” ¹¹ Locke saw such interests as “shared” as it was for the protection of these, he believed, that individuals left the state of nature and agreed to establish civil society and government. ¹² Contra Stanton, it was not to better live in accordance with “duties under natural law” (p. 20), to “better . . . perform duties to God” (p. 20) nor because government is grounded in “divine commission” (p. 21) with individuals having a God-given duty to inaugurate it (p. 20). Locke was quite explicit on this:

Commonwealths, or civil societies and government, if you will believe the judicious Mr. Hooker, are, as St. Peter calls them (I Pet., ii. 13) . . . the contrivance and institution of man. . . . You must show them such a commission, if you say it is from God. And in all societies instituted by man, the ends of them can be no other than what the institutors appointed; which I am sure could not be their spiritual and eternal interest. ¹³

Thus only by removing theology as a basis for civil society and government (as well as a basis for its ends) and grounding these in commensurate interests all shared, could Locke ensure civil agreement between individuals fundamentally divided by faith. Locke’s second strategy to remove God and theology from civil and political affairs was therefore to “privatize” faith—that is, to render it a matter of private belief, personal conscience, and voluntary church attendance—so that it would form no part of civil agreement. ¹⁴ Privatization was linked to religious liberty, in that so long as it remained within these “private” bounds, government had no authority over the religious faith of individuals. ¹⁵ But Locke’s Letter denies liberty to those churches or sects which seek to overstep these “private” bounds, “arrogating to themselves . . . some peculiar prerogative . . . opposite to the civil right of the community.” ¹⁶ In this way, although the privatization strategy does not resolve the differences between religious sects and denominations, it at least mutes and pacifies their potential for civil conflict, by convincing all to treat these differences as matters for private opinion, debate, and admonishment rather than something upon which the fate of civil society depends. By reintroducing theology, grounded in God’s “purposes” (pp. 19-21), to the center of civil and political affairs, Stanton’s account reverses all of this.

Yet just as the privatization strategy limits faith, preventing it from impinging on civil affairs, so it limits government, the second feature of this strategy being to ensure that legislative authority is not exercised for theological motives. To this end, Locke insists that the magistrate must treat all religious or theological matters falling within his/her scope, even those which at a personal level he/she considers “sinful,” as “things indifferent,” and subject to proscription only insofar as they impinge on those civil matters for which he or she has authority. ¹⁷ In this way, Locke sought to ensure that government authority extended only to civil affairs and not to “men’s souls.” ¹⁸ Locke’s proscription of Catholics and atheists is often provided as evidence to the contrary, but again, Locke insisted governments should proscribe these groups for the civil consequences of their beliefs (for which the magistrate has authority) not their theological content—Catholics threatening public security given their allegiance to a foreign power, and atheists being assumed “incapable of all society” because, belief in God being “the foundation of all morality,” they cannot be trusted to act “morally” or abide by their “promises, covenants and oaths.” ¹⁹ Needless to say, Stanton’s claim that Locke perceived both the justification, the limits, and the ends of government as determined by “God’s fixed purposes” (pp. 20, 21) is entirely contrary to Locke’s insistence that governments treat all such matters as “things indifferent.”

Locke’s third strategy to remove God and theology from civil and political affairs concerns the limits he sought to impose on civil debate, negotiation, and agreement. This was evident in Locke’s engagement with the Anglican clergyman Jonas Proast, who sought to deny toleration to all those who refused to conform to the Church of England, on the grounds that the Church of England advanced the “true religion.” ²⁰ Locke’s response was that as it was precisely the question of “true religion” that would be most at issue in any confrontation between Proast and his antagonists, it was an incommensurable basis for civil negotiation, and therefore for the exercise of political power, since being unable to elicit consensus or consent, it could only produce civil discord. ²¹ In this way, Locke understood every bit as well as John Rawls three hundred years later that in a diverse society, where many matters are likely to be sources of dispute, individuals “should be ready to explain the basis of their actions to one another in terms each could reasonably expect that others might endorse,” thereby removing from the political agenda “the most divisive issues, serious contention about which must undermine the bases of social cooperation.” ²²

Contrary to Stanton, it is those who seek to ignore these strategies of Locke, and instead reinstate God and theology at the center of his political philosophy, who apply to that philosophy a misleading “picture” and, in the words of Stanton, “impoverish it imaginatively” (p. 7).