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John Locke on The Status of Faith

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

S. N. Williams
S. N. Williams
Affiliation:
United Presbyterian Theological College, Aberystwyth, Dyfed SY23 2LT
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Extract

Michael Polanyi's thought has received increasing attention from theologians over the last few years. He offers both an historical and a critical analysis of the intellectual roots of contemporary Western culture. One aspect of this is his diagnosis of Locke's contribution to the emergence in Western epistemological theory of the supremacy of demonstrative knowledge over faith. This is reported, for instance, by Professor Thomas Torrance, quoting, first, this passage from Locke's Third Letter on Toleration:

For whatever is not capable of demonstration … is not, unless it be self-evident, capable to produce knowledge, how well grounded and great soever the assurance of faith may be wherewith it is received; but faith it is still, and not knowledge; persuasion, and not certainty. This is the highest the nature of the thing will permit us to go in matters of revealed religion, which are therefore called matters of faith; a persuasion of our own minds, short of knowledge, is the last result that determines us in such truths.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , November 1987 , pp. 591 - 606
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1987

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References

1 Torrance, T. F., ed., Belief in Science and the Christian Life (Handsel, 1980)Google Scholar. All quotations are from pp. 7f.

2 Polanyi, M., Personal Knowledge (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958), p. 266.Google Scholar

3 Newbigin, L., The Other Side of 1984 (World Council of Churches, 1983), p. 21Google Scholar; Gunton, C., Enlightenment and Alienation (Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1985), p. 5.Google Scholar

4 See Essay on Human Understanding, ed. Nidditch, P. (Clarendon, 1975)Google Scholar, Book IV.xivff. and the second reply to Stillingfleet, , Works (London, 1823), vol. 4Google Scholar. I do not say that Locke makes this distinction consistently in his literature, nor that he sustains it successfully when he does.

5 Though note Polanyi's reference to the exceptional possibilities for religious belief in the above citation from his work.

6 Cf. Ashcraft, Richard, ‘Faith and Knowledge in Locke's Philosophy’ in Yolton, J. ed., John Locke: Problems and Perspectives (CUP, 1969), pp. 194–223.Google Scholar

7 Perhaps that is suggested by the very references to the Christian religion found at this point of the Letter. See Works (1823 ed.), vol. 6, pp. 144f.

8 See, too, in this connection, the abrupt Fourth Letter on Toleration (Works, vol. 6) and Abrams, P., ed., Two Tracts of Government (CUP, 1967), pp. 7ff.Google Scholar

9 I say this without prejudice to the question of whether Locke's religious epistemology is internally consistent, i.e., in this case, consistent with statements outside the Essay. But as a summary and systematic declaration it appears to make clear, to the extent it is clear, what Locke is getting at in his mature philosophy of religion.

10 Leibniz could take cases of probability in the highest degree to amount to ‘moral certainty’, New Essays on Human Understanding, eds. Remnant, P. and Bennett, J. (CUP, 1981), p. 68Google Scholar. Cf. van Leeuwen, H., The Problem of Certainty in English Thought, 1630–1690 (The Hague, 1963), p. 124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 See J. Yolton's extended review of Dunn's, J.Locke in The Locke Newsletter, 1985, pp. 88–95Google Scholar, e.g.: ‘To place the emphasis on demonstration as the source of rationality, or to identify it with criteria, misses some of the most fundamental aspects of Locke's concept of reason’ (p. 86); ‘… to be rational for Locke means a number of things’ (p. 89).

12 The significance of Locke's belief that miracles allow assent to propositions that are not demonstratively true is heightened, in the context of my discussion, by the role miracles actually do play in procuring assent to the central proposition that Jesus is the Messiah. See The Reasonableness of Christianity, Works, vol. 7 (ed cit.). See too remarks on the relation of magisterial and miraculous coercion in the Third Letter on Toleration, pp. 435ff.

13 For what follows, see IV.xviii.3–11.

14 For ‘simple ideas’, see Essay II.ii, v-viii.

15 It is often claimed that Locke never satisfactorily explains how judgments on revealed propositions are in fact reached. See, e.g., Biddle, John, ‘Locke's Critique of Innate Principles and Toland's Deism’ in Journal of the History of Ideas, 1975, pp. 411–422 esp. pp. 415–417Google Scholar; Yolton, John, Locke: an Introduction (Blackwell, 1985), pp. 87–91.Google Scholar

16 This point could be formulated more strictly to take into account possible distinctions between the original revelation of a new quasi-sensory idea and the original or immediate revelation of a proposition. I am grateful to David Walford for pointing this out. What may be at stake here could be usefully pursued by studying the explicit or implicit concepts of original revelation in the Essay and Locke's Paraphrases of the Pauline epistles – which paraphrases, incidentally, tend to show how Locke could exalt revelation of the undemonstrable.

17 The Reasonableness of Christianity probably provides the best quarry for clues, but it lacks a certain kind of epistemological self-consciousness.

18 Op. cit. above.

19 Helm, P., ‘Locke on Faith and Knowledge’, Philosophical Quarterly, January 1973, pp. 52–66.Google Scholar

20 Loc. cit. above.

21 For this aspect, see Wallace, D. D., ‘Socinianism, Justification by Faith and the Sources of John Locke's The Reasonableness of Christianity’ in Journal of the History of Ideas, 1984, pp. 49–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Works, vol. 7, pp. 183–424.

23 Locke did not deny the possibility, in principle, of constructing a comprehensive, rational, deductive ethics. ‘… The Gospel contains 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.’ (Letter of 5th April 1696 in The Correspondence of John Locke ed. de Beer, E., (Clarendon 1979), vol. 5, p. 595.Google Scholar) So this contingency does not obviate the actual and properly exercised ability of faith to perceive what reason does not de facto demonstrate. In any case, direct appropriation of the proposition that Jesus is the Messiah is the opus of faith.

24 For discussion of the historical relation between the two works, see recently Kato, T., ‘The Reasonableness in the Historical Light of the Essay’ in The Locke Newsletter, 1981, pp. 45–59.Google Scholar

25 Laslett, Peter points out the contrasting attitude to rational knowledge of natural law in Two Treatises of Government, 2nd ed. (CUP, 1967), p. 87.Google Scholar

26 I am most grateful to both Huw Parri Owen and Paul Helm for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.