Month: May 2015

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On the Subject of Civil Authority, and On Resistance of Tyranny

by Henri Grenier

The Québécois priest, theologian, and philosopher, Henri Grenier (1899-1980), was the author of a popular Cursus Philosophiae that was translated into both French and English. He was a major Thomistic opponent of personalism, and is thought to have been an influence on the great Laval School Thomist, Charles De Koninck. The following passages are taken from Thomistic Philosophy, Vol 3: Moral Philosophy, trans. J.P.E. O’Hanley (Charlottetown: St. Dunstan’s University, 1949). A scan of the relevant pages (including sections omitted below) can be found here. The overall context is a discussion of the causes of civil (or political) society. Grenier’s reflections on the ‘subject’ of civil authority, and on resisting tyrants are highly relevant to the problem of legitimacy discussed by Daniel Lendman, Felix de St. Vincent, and E. M. Milco. — The Editors

Subject Of Civil Authority

1116. Statement of the question

1° The question of the subject of civil authority is entirely distinct from the question of the origin of civil society. The former question is concerned with the material cause of civil society, and the latter with its efficient cause. Continue reading “On the Subject of Civil Authority, and On Resistance of Tyranny”

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Dubium: When Is Any Government “Legitimate”?

Mr. Daniel Lendman published a note recently here on The Josias that proposed that a government is illegitimate insofar as it is not “operating in accord with the laws and rules which properly govern” it. A state that redefines marriage contrary to the natural law does so illegitimately, and makes an illegitimate law. Lendman argues that this has implications for the legitimacy of the government as a whole, and may at some point abrogate citizens’ duty to obey the law. Continue reading “Dubium: When Is Any Government “Legitimate”?”

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‘In Dread of Modernity’: Republican Liberty and the Common Good in the American Tradition

by Felix de St. Vincent

The revolutions of the 18th century appealed to ancient as well as to modern authorities. As I have argued elsewhere, the American Revolution appealed to ancient republican notions of the rule of law and the advantages of a mixed regime, and to medieval English conceptions of cosmic order being embodied in the ancient laws which had held since ‘time out of mind.’ But, as Charles Taylor argues, these ancient conceptions were to a large extent ‘colonized‘ and taken over by modern, Enlightenment ones which took over much of the form of the more ancient ideas, but without the substance of cosmic order and the primacy of the common good: « The American Revolution is in a sense the watershed. It was undertaken in a backward-looking spirit, in the sense that the colonists were fighting for their established rights as Englishmen. Moreover they were fighting under their established colonial legislatures, associated in a Congress. But out of the whole process emerges the crucial fiction of “we, the people”, into whose mouth the declaration of the new constitution is placed. »[1] Several articles here on The Josias have examined the defects of liberal, Enlightenment political philosophy. But perhaps it would be possible for Americans to revive the ancient republican element in their founding, and thus find a form of politics that would be at once autochthonously American and truly ordered to the common good. This is the position argued in Felix de St. Vincent’s first essay for The Josias. We are pleased to publish it for its lucid exploration of the transmission of the ancient republican tradition in England and America, and its eminently practical suggestions for political action today. I myself disagree with a number of Felix de St. Vincent’s points including his reading of St. Thomas Aquinas on sovereignty, his account of the relative importance of ancient republican and modern liberal ideals in the American founding, and the ideal relative weight of the different elements in a mixed constitution for promoting the common good (he thinks the republican form per se preferable to the monarchical). But I agree with on the most important principles, especially the primacy of the common good, and am very pleased to be able to present his thought provoking essay to the public. — Pater Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist.

Are American democracy and Catholicism compatible? Are liberal democracy and Catholicism compatible? The first question was asked by John Courtney Murray in We Hold These Truths (1960).[2] More recently, Patrick Deneen proposed that the debate was about liberal democracy, slightly reframing the debate between Murray’s compatibilism and its “radical Catholic” critics.[3] Insofar as this debate is about Catholic teaching, the two questions appear the same. Continue reading “‘In Dread of Modernity’: Republican Liberty and the Common Good in the American Tradition”

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Locke’s Doctrine of Toleration: A Contract with Nothingness (Part III)

by Jeffrey Bond

Today we present the third and final installment of an essay on John Locke’s doctrine of toleration.  The first part can be found here, and the second here.  An earlier version of this essay appeared in A Letter from the Romans, the Newsletter of the Roman Forum and the Dietrich von Hildebrand Institute, February, 1999, No. 4.

PART III

Although Locke initially attempted to identify toleration with the Christian virtue of charity, his doctrine of dogmatic toleration actually rests upon his conviction that human knowledge concerning eternal salvation is wholly subjective. Although Locke’s epistemology is somewhat concealed in his Letter, we know from his Essay Concerning Human Understanding[1] that he is an empiricist. That is to say, Locke denies that man has any innate speculative or practical notions; rather, man depends solely upon sense perception and internal reflection to obtain knowledge. Accordingly, Locke defines knowledge as “the perception of the connexion and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our Ideas” (p. 525). He asserts that his definition of knowledge is sound because it “is evident that the Mind knows not things immediately, but only by the intervention of the Ideas it has of them” (p. 563). Hence, Locke rejects the realistic epistemology of the ancients and the medievals who understood truth as the mind’s conformity to things. For Locke, reason has no intuitive capacity, no immediate grasp of the reality outside of itself; knowledge is therefore merely discursive. Indeed, Locke defines knowledge by the discursive act of the knower rather than by the object known. Man can know the operations of his own mind, but he cannot objectively know things outside of his mind. As a result, man is restricted to engaging in hypothetical explanations of the object before him by means of sense perception and introspection, for man cannot truly know the object itself.

We can understand, then, why Locke belittles the value of speculative knowledge at the beginning of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Since man cannot really grasp things as they are in themselves, he ought to turn his attention to matters that directly affect his life and conduct here and now. After all, Locke believes that the empirical phenomena that the mind encounters through the senses are in themselves worth little or nothing; it is the mind’s activity, according to Locke, which gives meaning to the otherwise meaningless phenomena. Here we see a perfect correspondence between Locke’s epistemology and his famous labor theory of value. In the Second Treatise, Locke stresses again and again that man’s labor gives value to nature which, prior to the addition of human effort, is relatively worthless. Since man can perceive no definite purpose or end in the empirical phenomena of nature, it is his labor, physical or mental, which artificially creates value where there was none before. In the physical realm, man’s labor transforms the meager material of nature into whatever his desires lead him to value; and in the mental realm, the activity of man’s mind brings organization and structure to the phenomena that he cannot really know in themselves. Therefore, just as physical labor is the source and value of real property, so too mental labor creates meaning by transforming the worthless raw materials of the empirical world into man’s own intellectual property, namely, his ideas.

Locke’s doctrine of toleration is a supreme example of man’s creative power with respect to intellectual property. Like the invention of money, which he identifies as the artificial creation most responsible for lifting man out of the poverty of the state of nature, Locke’s doctrine of toleration has no objective ground in the nature of things; and yet this doctrine, once it has been conventionally accepted by others, is capable of transforming the entire world in accordance with his personal vision. For Locke, even the law of non-contradiction, which the ancients and medievals identified as the first principle of the speculative intellect, has no intrinsic worth due to its speculative truth; the only value of the law of non-contradiction, or any other idea, is the labor put into formulating it, and its subsequent acceptance as valuable by others, much as men once agreed to make gold or silver the medium of exchange. Locke himself recognizes that his doctrine of toleration has no intrinsic value; but if men subjectively believe this doctrine to be true or valuable, much as they believe in money, then the doctrine becomes true and valuable for them. Although Locke rejects the possibility of a self-evident truth that can be grasped immediately by the mind, he is willing to operate as if his doctrine of toleration is self-evidently true. Simply put, the power to affect human behavior is more important to Locke than theoretical reasonableness, because man cannot really know whether or not his ideas actually conform to reality. Locke believes that man’s relation to the universe can only be defined in terms of man’s awareness of the ideas of order he constructs in his own mind, for each individual creates for himself the meaning of all empirical phenomena.

Locke’s position would seem to be as follows: since man cannot really obtain objective knowledge of a divine order outside of himself, it makes no sense to attempt to impose or even urge religious uniformity on men, for there is no standpoint outside of ourselves from which religious and political disputes can be settled. Consequently, it would be irrational to impose religious ceremonies and doctrines where man possesses mere opinions, and no real knowledge. For Locke, even the very idea of God is the product of the mind’s activity. In fact, the mind that conceives of God is really God himself. This radical subjectivism, however, is not directly taught by Locke, who apparently wished to avoid the anarchy to which this view would lead if widely embraced. Consider what Locke writes in his Two Tracts on Government about the destructive practical consequences of the collapse of all law: “all authority will vanish from the earth and, the seemly order of affairs being convulsed and the frame of government dissolved, each would be his own Lawmaker and his own God.”[2] While Locke’s view does in effect make each man the measure of all things—his own Lawmaker and his own God—Locke is at pains to conceal the full implications of his doctrine of dogmatic toleration. And yet, because he denies that there are any innate speculative or practical notions, Locke cannot really say that peace and order are objectively preferable to anarchy. He seems to grant implicitly that peace and order are self-evident goods for man, yet his own subjectivism undermines his arbitrary preference for a comfortable life rather than a violent death. Locke can really only say that he himself prefers peace and order to anarchy, although what he means by “peace” and “order” is of course wholly subjective. Apparently Locke spoke his real mind when he asserted at the beginning of the Letter that all claims of orthodoxy are disguised quest for power, for this assertion rightly applies to his own attempt to establish a new orthodoxy, i.e., to remake the world in his own image.

Despite first appearances, the doctrine of toleration is, ironically, an attempt to impose religious uniformity on the world. Locke’s claim to orthodoxy is hidden by his emphasis on toleration, but the toleration Locke preaches is dogmatic, not practical. Thus Locke gives the appearance of neutrality with respect to religious belief, but his position is anything but neutral. Real neutrality would have to allow men to consider every position, including the position that said it was the one and only true position. But this position, which is that of the Catholic Church, cannot be permitted because it directly questions the truth and authority of Locke’s dogmatic toleration. The Catholic Church, then, is the greatest impediment to Locke’s quest for power because the Church embraces dogmatic intolerance. Locke’s plan is to impose religious uniformity on the world by eliminating any real choice with respect to religion. The plan is as follows: as long as each religious group subordinates its doctrine and practices to the one supreme doctrine of toleration, these religious groups are free to differ all they want in their self-confessed subjective beliefs. And despite all their apparent disagreements, they will nevertheless belong to Locke’s universal church of toleration. The Catholic Church will then be eliminated by consensus, for all the other churches will be united against the Catholic Church for rejecting the one supreme dogma. Toleration will then become the ultimate religious good.

If the implications of Locke’s doctrine of toleration appear to be frightening, that is because they are. To see the real meaning of Locke’s doctrine is to see the internal logic of the modern enterprise. Although Locke repeatedly asserts, as do all contemporary Lockeans, that each individual is the measure for himself of religious truth, nevertheless Locke sets forth this very doctrine as somehow true for all men, namely, that God only requires each man to perform those actions and hold those beliefs that he subjectively believes God requires of him. But how, given Locke’s subjectivism, can he claim to know that the Catholic position—which says that each individual is not the measure of religious truth—is wrong? On Locke’s own terms, he must admit that an individual Catholic, who subjectively believes that the Catholic position is true, is as right in his belief as Locke is in his own. The reason Locke hates the Catholic position is that the individual Catholic claims that Catholic beliefs are objectively true and necessary for himself and others. Locke cannot say that the Catholic position is wrong, unless he claims that objectivity in religious matters is in fact possible after all. But because Locke begins by denying that men can resolve political and religious disputes on the basis of the objective merits of the conflicting positions, the best he can do is to try to achieve power over the Catholic position by convincing the world that the doctrine of toleration is in each man’s best interests. In this way, Locke works to create a universal consensus that the doctrine of toleration is sacrosanct. This, of course, requires the absolute suppression of true Catholic doctrine, or the transformation of Catholicism into a subjective sect like every other religious sect.

Recall that Locke said that only those who teach the duty of tolerating all men will be granted the right to toleration by the magistrate. Note that what is prior for Locke is the duty to tolerate others. Only those who will accept the duty of toleration are granted the civil right to be tolerated themselves. This priority that Locke gives to the duty of toleration is mirrored in the way in which men enter into the Lockean social contract. In fact, it is now clear that Locke’s doctrine of toleration is not an addition to the social contract, but the very essence of it. Each man must first renounce his natural right to denounce and punish evil in others before he is granted the civil right to have his life, liberty, and property protected by the magistrate. We can see, then, in the very origin of the social contract, the “logic” of our contemporary situation where our duty to tolerate evil has increasingly eclipsed individual rights, even understood in Lockean terms. When a man enters into a Lockean social contract and accepts the duty to tolerate the subjective opinions and practices of all other men, that man thereby renounces his right to make objective judgments. The apparently irresistible allure of this contract is that those who accept the duty of toleration will likewise have the right to have their own subjective views tolerated by others, as long as these view do not violate the doctrine of toleration which holds the entire contract together. Clearly modern man has not been able to resist Locke’s flattering assumption that each man’s subjective views are sufficient for his happiness as long as he does not insist on their absolute objectivity. Like his forebears in Eden, modern man seems unable to resist the promise of being a God unto himself, even at the price of being a communion of one.

Perhaps the most frightening aspect of Locke’s doctrine of toleration is that it is wholly negative and without objective content. Like Protestantism, which gave birth to this monster, Locke’s doctrine is only intelligible insofar as it is a rejection of Catholicism. Since an individual’s religious interests cannot be established objectively, the interests of each individual are determined by his freedom to choose those doctrines which he believes will advance his interests. But no one is really free to choose other than Locke’s position. The situation is much like that of the communist elections we were repeatedly told about in grade school: there are many candidates to choose from, but they are all communists. American elections in Lockeland are no different. By convincing men to embrace subjectivity as the pseudo-objective truth, Locke seemingly satisfies the soul’s desire for objective truth while simultaneously emptying that truth of any real content. Thus, man is left adrift in the sea of constantly shifting, subjectively determined interests of all parties to the social contract. Life is reduced to vector forces, and to the vectors go the spoils. In Lockland, objective claims about right and wrong will be rarely made, and even more rarely understood. Since there is no objective knowledge to which men can refer to resolve disputes, there is no real boundary to the magistrate’s authority, or rather, power over men. Thus does the so-called order established by Lockean law become an end in itself. Unlike the ancients and medievals, who understood law to be a means to promote other ends, such as virtue and the salvation of souls, Locke sees only the power of the law, not its reasonableness. And there is no standard external to the magistrate’s will that man can evaluate with his reason. Therefore, the obligation to obey does not depend upon knowledge, but upon power; and the sole foundation of the magistrate’s power is the need to avoid the consequences of anarchy. But one man’s anarchy is another man’s order. Hence, the will of the magistrate becomes the supreme temporal and spiritual power in Lockean society, and in Locke’s church there are conveniently no clergy from whom the magistrate must wrest power.

Although Locke’s imposition of a universal church is achieved indirectly rather than directly, it is all the more powerful for having entered, as it were, through the back door. And because Locke’s doctrine of toleration instills in men a subjectivist habit of mind, it renders them inhuman by eroding their ability and desire to make objective judgments about good and evil. Thus, Locke’s doctrine not only undermines the specifically human act of moral judgment, but it also destroys rationality itself. It is difficult to imagine a doctrine better suited to prepare minds for the reign of the Anti-Christ, the anti-Logos. Certainly Locke’s doctrine, which is contrary to reason, is grounded upon faith alone, where “faith” is understood in the most subjective sense of the word. In fact, Locke’s universal church seeks to replace the three supernatural virtues as follows: faith is reduced to an irrational belief in the social contract, which is really a contract with nothingness; hope is reduced to the vain expectation of endless material comfort; and charity is reduced to the supreme duty of toleration, the practice of which leads to the eternal loss of our very selves.

NOTES

[1] All quotations from Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding are from Nidditch, P., ed., An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford University, 1979).

[2] Abrams, P., ed., John Locke: Two Tracts on Government (Cambridge University, 1967), p. 45.

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Locke’s Doctrine of Toleration: A Contract with Nothingness (Part II)

by Jeffrey Bond

Today we present the second installment of an essay on John Locke’s doctrine of toleration.  The first part can be found here.  An earlier version of this essay appeared in A Letter from the Romans, the Newsletter of the Roman Forum and the Dietrich von Hildebrand Institute, February, 1999, No. 4.

PART II

Having briefly reconstructed the orthodox Catholic teaching on toleration, both dogmatic and practical, we are now in a better position to consider Locke’s arguments for toleration in his Letter.  Locke’s professed reason for promoting toleration is the same as that given by proponents of toleration today:  he wishes to establish peace in civil society by putting an end to men persecuting and even killing one another over religious differences.  We see immediately, then, that Locke’s promotion of toleration is consistent with what he identifies as the purpose of the social contract as outlined in his Second Treatise.  Man voluntarily leaves the state of nature and enters into civil society to protect his life, his liberty, and his property from invasion by others.  Locke teaches that the very purpose and justification for civil society consist in this alone:  to ensure a life of comfortable self-preservation.  Thus, Locke defines the commonwealth as “a society of men constituted only for the procuring, preserving, and advancing their own civil interests,” and he carefully restricts these civil interests to “life, liberty, health, and indolency of the body; and the possession of outward things, such as money, lands, houses, furniture, and the like.”  In fact, Locke expressly asserts that the jurisdiction of the magistrate, who in Lockean society possesses the legislative power, “neither can nor ought in any manner to be extended to the salvation of souls” (p. 172).  Locke rejects not only the Platonic and Aristotelian teaching that politics is the architectonic art the business of which is the care of souls, but also the Catholic Church’s perfection of that teaching, which holds that politics, while remaining autonomous in its own realm, must nevertheless be subordinate to the higher principles revealed by the Catholic Faith.

Having so narrowly limited the business of government to that which pertains to the body alone, it becomes an easy task for Locke to accomplish what he sets forth as his goal in the Letter:

I esteem it above all things necessary to distinguish exactly the business of civil government from that of religion, and to settle the just bounds that lie between the one and the other.  If this be not done, there can be no end put to the controversies that will be always arising between those that have, or at least pretend to have, on the one side, a concernment for the interest in men’s souls, and, on the other side, a care of the commonwealth (p. 171).

We are not surprised, then, when Locke informs us that, “the church itself is a thing absolutely separate and distinct from the commonwealth.  The boundaries on both sides are fixed and immovable.”  Moreover, Locke asserts that the church and commonwealth “are in their origin, end, business, and in everything perfectly distinct and infinitely different from each other” (p. 184).

By insisting that the line between church and state is absolute, Locke attempts to put two traditional notions to rest:  first, that religious purposes are served by civil authority; and second, that civil interests are served by the public support of religion.  In order to undermine this traditional Catholic teaching on the mutual reciprocity between the Church and the state, Locke uses two sets of parallel arguments:  the first set is dependent upon his understanding of religion, which is generically Christian, but specifically Protestant; and the second set is dependent upon Locke’s understanding of the nature of civil society.  Having already defined the commonwealth in such a way as to limit it strictly to matters pertaining to the body, Locke then defines a church in such a way as to limit it strictly to matters pertaining to the soul:

A church, then, I take to be a voluntary society of men, joining themselves together of their own accord in order to the public worshipping of God in such a manner as they judge acceptable to Him, and effectual to the salvation of their souls (p. 175, emphasis added).

As Locke’s subjective language makes clear, his definition is clearly Protestant, emphasizing as it does the private judgment of the church members as to what is and is not acceptable to God.  Furthermore, Locke’s definition of a church emphasizes the freedom to join, not the content of what the church believes.  Note, however, that the freedom Locke grants to individuals to define what is acceptable to God, as well as the freedom to join or leave any church without physical coercion, does not include the freedom to extend their religious concerns into the affairs of the body politic.  Locke insists that civil authority may not be assisted by religion in any way, nor may religion be served by an intervention of the civil authority.  He rejects the idea of legal imposition of religion; instead, he carefully limits the legally permissible scope of religious activity so that conflicts will not arise.  In this way, Locke attempts to establish civil peace by effectively banning religion from the body politic, as if men’s souls were not merely distinguished notionally from their bodies, but were somehow completely separate in reality itself.  By treating the soul and body as abstractions, as if a human being were two distinct things instead of one, Locke is able to make a radical separation in principle between church and state.  In language made familiar to Americans through the First Amendment to the Constitution, Locke insists that the laws may neither establish nor forbid any articles of faith or forms of worship.

There is, of course, a problem with Locke’s insistence on the absolute separation of church and state.  Although he neatly divides reality into two completely distinct worlds, nevertheless man’s civil and religious interests, just as a man’s body and soul, must still live together in the same place.  Clearly, then, some relationship between them must exist, and therefore Locke is compelled to consider more specific rules to govern possible conflicts.  The principle he enunciates is as follows:  the magistrate can forbid anything that endangers the civil interests of the commonwealth, whether it occurs in a church or not.  Thus, whatever the magistrate can lawfully forbid in the public realm he can also forbid in the private realm if it has practical consequences adverse to civil interests.  For example, if it is unlawful to kill infants in secular life, then it can also be forbidden in a church, even if that particular church claims such killing as part of what they believe is owed to God.  Hence, according to Locke, the magistrate is not actually forbidding a religious sacrifice; it is the slaughter of children that is forbidden.  The magistrate, since he cannot concern himself with the good of souls, cannot forbid something because it is a “bad” religious practice, but only because it is a bad political practice.

But what is to be done if the magistrate, while operating within his legitimate authority, violates a man’s religious conscience?  Locke states that anyone is free to break a law that violates his conscience, but he must suffer the punishment for breaking that law.  If, however, the magistrate acts outside of the law, then there is no obligation to obey him.  Locke’s position is thus summarized as follows:  there is no legitimate civil law that has a specifically religious purpose; and the individual has no exemption from legitimate civil law on religious grounds.  There can be no doubt, then, that Locke’s separation of church and state is heavily weighted in favor of the state.  In addition, the state, in principle, makes no distinctions between true and false religion in deciding what religious doctrines it will or will not suppress.  Locke writes the following:

Further, the magistrate ought not to forbid the preaching or profession of any speculative opinions in any church, because they have no manner of relation to the civil rights of the subjects.  If a Roman Catholic believe that to be really the body of Christ, which another man calls bread, he does not injury to his neighbor. . . I readily grant that these opinions are false and absurd.  But the business of laws is not to provide for the truth of opinions, but for the safety and security of the commonwealth, and of every particular man’s good and person (p. 205).

Locke is apparently willing to tolerate this central Catholic doctrine concerning the Eucharist—even while he ridicules its content—but he refuses to tolerate Catholic opinions in practical matters, as we shall soon see.  The reason for Locke’s intolerance in non-speculative matters becomes clear when he finally admits that the boundaries between the church and the state are not as “fixed and immovable” as he had initially claimed.  He now acknowledges that there is in fact a meeting point between the church and the state:

The good life, in which consists not the least part of religion and true piety, concerns also the civil government; and in it lies the safety both of men’s souls and of the commonwealth.  Moral actions belong, therefore, to the jurisdiction both of the outward and inward court; both of the civil and the domestic governor; I mean both of the magistrate and the conscience.  Here, therefore, is great danger, lest one of these jurisdictions intrench upon the other, and discord arise between the keeper of the public peace and the overseers of souls.  But if what has been already said concerning the limits of both these governments be rightly considered, it will easily remove all difficulty in this matter (pp. 205-206).

While admitting the “great danger” of conflict with respect to the realm of moral actions, Locke is confident that invasions by one jurisdiction into another will be rare, presumably because men in Lockeland will prefer their civil interests to religious ones.  With self-interest having been liberated by means of the narrowing of civil interests to bodily concerns alone, Lockean men can be counted on to choose their own comfortable self-preservation rather than risk the possible loss of life, liberty, and property for the sake of their private religious beliefs.  Therefore, despite Locke’s sudden concern for the “good life,” he is manifestly not reverting to the classical and medieval teaching that promotes virtue for its own sake as the proper political end for man.  After all, Locke has so arranged matters that the state and church have an interest in moral actions for very different reasons.  Lockean morality is not for the sake of virtue or for the salvation of souls, but rather for the sake of preserving property and a pleasant existence.  In sum, civil society has a legitimate interest in morality only insofar as it is concerned with protecting life, liberty, and property, but no further.

Like Hobbes and his followers, who initially banished all traditional moral education in favor of a new “scientific” analysis of humanity, but then rushed to assure us that moral education can be used to restrain the passions their systems have unleashed, Locke, too, finds himself looking to morality to prop up his social contract.  Modern man has every reason to fear this kind of moral education, for our age has seen it all too often in the form of re-education camps, gulags, mental hospitals, and the silencing of those who have embraced traditional morality.  Instead of the objectively good life being the purpose or end of civil society as it was for the ancients and the medievals, Locke seeks to use morality as a means to support his radically limited political ends.  If we keep this in mind, it is easy to understand why and when Locke sets limits to his doctrine of toleration which, in effect, subordinates the church to the state.  For example, because Lockean society is built upon the social contract, Locke is very concerned with men keeping their promises.  He therefore refuses to extend the right of toleration to atheists because their denial of the existence of God undermines civil society:  “Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon the atheist.  The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all” (pp. 212-213).  Although in the Second Treatise Locke suggests that enlightened self-interest—without any additional moral support—is sufficient to keep men true to their promises, here, in the Letter, Locke indicates that the social contract itself depends upon some religious belief.

Locke’s social contract, however, does not rely upon just any religious belief.  He seeks to promote only those beliefs that will support, and not challenge, the limited political ends which he has proposed.  Therefore, just as Locke refuses to tolerate atheists for their lack of belief, he is even more determined to suppress Catholicism for having the wrong religious beliefs, namely, those that undermine his doctrine of toleration.  Locke makes his case as follows:  “I say, first, no opinions contrary to human society, or to those moral rules which are necessary to the preservation of civil society, are to be tolerated by the magistrate” (p. 210).  Although Locke admits that examples of these kinds of opinions are rare in any church, he identifies another “more secret evil” which is more dangerous to the commonwealth.  This greater danger, Locke explains, is “when Men arrogate to themselves, and to those of their own sect, some peculiar prerogative covered over with a specious show of deceitful words, but in effect opposite to the civil right of the community” (pp. 210-211).  For example, although Locke notes that no sect openly teaches that princes may be dethroned by those who differ from them in religion, certain sects, he claims, say the same thing in other words:

What can be the meaning of their asserting that kings excommunicated forfeit their crowns and kingdoms?  It is evident that they thereby arrogate unto themselves the power of deposing kings, because they challenge the power of excommunication, as the peculiar right of their hierarchy.  That dominion is founded in grace is also an assertion by which those that maintain it do plainly lay claim to the possession of all things. . .  I say these have no right to be tolerated by the magistrate; as neither those that will not own and teach the duty of tolerating all men in matters of mere religion (p. 211).

 Although Locke does not mention the Catholic Church by name here, his attack upon certain distinguishing aspects of Catholic doctrine is unmistakable, such as the pope’s authority to excommunicate even kings.  Moreover, in his less famous An Essay on Toleration,[1] Locke writes that Catholics or “any similar group” should not be tolerated because “where they have power, they think themselves bound to deny it to others.”  Catholics, “who owe blind obedience to an infallible pope,” cannot be won over “either by indulgence or severity;” they are “irreconcilable enemies” both in regard to their “principles and interest.”  Catholics, Locke explains, are “like serpents” who can “never be prevailed on by kind usage to lay by their venom” (pp. 95, 96).  Thus, Catholicism ought not to be tolerated because it contains doctrines “absolutely destructive to society” (p. 92).  Locke even goes so far as to imply, by way of comparison to the brutal persecution of Catholics in Japan, that it would be prudent to employ a similar policy of suppression in England.  For although he generally counsels against persecution, since it often engenders compassion and esteem from those of different religions, Locke argues that this will not occur in the case of the persecution of Catholics who “are less apt to be pitied than others, because they receive no other usage than what the cruelty of their own principles and practices are known to deserve.”  After all, Catholics will not “be thought to be punished merely for their consciences” because they “own themselves at the same time the subjects of a foreign enemy prince” (p. 96).  In his Letter, Locke makes this same accusation against those who submit to a “foreign enemy prince,” by which title Locke clearly means the pope, and perhaps even the Prince of Peace, our Lord Himself:

That church can have no right to be tolerated by the magistrate which is constituted upon such a bottom that all those that enter into it do thereby ipso facto deliver themselves up to the protection and service of another prince.  For by this means the magistrate would give way to the settling of a foreign jurisdiction in his own country, and suffer his own people to be listed, as it were, for soldiers against his own Government.  Nor does the frivolous and fallacious distinction between the court and the church afford any remedy to this inconvenience, especially when both the one and the other are equally subject to the absolute authority of the same person, who has not only power to persuade the members of his church to whatsoever he lists, either as purely religious, or in order thereunto, but can also enjoin it them on pain of eternal fire (p. 212).

Because Catholicism will not and cannot teach Locke’s doctrine of dogmatic toleration, and because Catholics submit to the pope and ultimately to Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, Catholicism cannot be granted the right of toleration by the magistrate.  As was evident from the beginning, Catholicism is Locke’s mortal enemy.  Note, however, that Locke rejects the primacy of the pope not on theological or religious grounds, but because the papacy allegedly undermines civil society.  Earlier in the Letter, Locke directly challenges the Catholic doctrine of apostolic succession, but his argument is weak in the extreme.  Consider his response to those who would insist that the true church must have a bishop “with ruling authority derived from the very apostles:”

To these I answer:  In the first place, let them show me the edict by which Christ has imposed that law upon his church.  And let not any man think me impertinent, if in a thing of this consequence I require that the terms of that edict be very express and positive; for the promise He has made us [Matthew 18:20], that wheresoever two or three are gathered together in His name, he will be in the midst of them, seems to imply the contrary.  Whether such an assembly want anything necessary to a true church, pray do you consider.  Certain I am that nothing can there be wanting unto the salvation of souls, which is sufficient to our purpose (pp. 176-177, emphasis added).

Certainly the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura is lurking behind Locke’s response, to say nothing of his explicit reliance upon private judgment and individual certitude.  The only support Locke gives for his position is to quote a single passage from Matthew, all the while ignoring the more determinate passage two chapters earlier where our Lord explicitly founds His Church on the Rock which is Peter (Matthew 16:18).  Locke shows little interest in pursuing the all-important question of church authority; and if we consider the context of the passage Locke does cite (Matthew 18:15-20), we see that when our Lord says “wheresoever two or three are gathered in My name,” His words presuppose that the two or three are already in His Church, which Matthew records our Lord as having established two chapters earlier.  In other words, two or three men coming together in His name does not definitively found a church, because Christ established His Church on Peter; but whenever those who are already in His Church gather in His Name, our Lord says He will be with them.

Locke likewise does not pursue the question of how Scripture is to be interpreted with any genuine concern, for he immediately falls back on the subjectivity of all interpretation.  He writes as follows:

But since men are so solicitous about the true church, I would only ask them here, by the way, if it be not more agreeable to the church of Christ to make the conditions of her communion consist in such things, and such things only, as the Holy Spirit has in the Holy Scriptures declared, in express words, to be necessary to salvation; I ask, I say, whether this be not more agreeable to the church of Christ than for men to impose their own inventions and interpretations upon others as if they were of Divine authority, and to establish by ecclesiastical laws, as absolutely necessary to the profession of Christianity, such things as the Holy Scriptures do either not mention or at least do not expressly command?  Whosoever requires those things in order to ecclesiastical communion, which Christ does not require in order to life eternal, he may, perhaps, indeed constitute a society accommodated to his own opinion and his own advantage; but how that can be called the church of Christ which is established upon laws that are not His, and which excludes such persons from its communion as He will one day receive into the Kingdom of Heaven, I understand not (pp. 177-178).

If there is no living authority established by God to interpret even the “express words” of Holy Scripture, then each man logically becomes the ultimate authority for himself.  There is something deeply ironic about the fact that Locke—in the very place where he presents himself as somehow knowing the mind of the Holy Spirit, the true laws of the church of Christ, and who will and who will not be saved—criticizes the pope for allegedly manipulating the church of Christ to accommodate his own opinion and his own advantage.  Finally, Locke shows the disingenuous nature of his inquiry into these fundamental theological matters when he writes at the conclusion of the passage quoted above that this is “not a proper place to inquire into the marks of the true church” (p. 178).  Since Locke began his Letter by setting forth toleration as the chief characteristic mark of the true Church, his comment must be seen as ironic.  At the same time, Locke’s comment points to the very heart of his doctrine of toleration because it indicates that theological debates of this kind are precisely what he wishes to eliminate by convincing men to adopt dogmatic toleration.  All claims to orthodoxy, as Locke has already insisted, are just pretenses to seeking power.  Rather than engage in frivolous and fruitless speculations, then, Locke invites his readers to accept the true church’s sole article of faith, namely, that this is no objective knowledge of a divine order.

(Continued in Part III . . . )

NOTES

[1] All quotations from Locke’s An Essay on Toleration are from Viano, C., ed., “An Essay on Toleration,” in John Locke: Scritti editi e inediti sulla toleranza (Einaudi, 1961).

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Locke’s Doctrine of Toleration: A Contract with Nothingness

by Jeffrey Bond

Today we present the first installment of an essay on John Locke’s doctrine of toleration.  Though we have already published an extended analysis of Locke’s famous Letter on Toleration, the topic merits further analysis, especially given the centrality of this doctrine to American politics today. This series will focus less on the particulars of the Letter and more on Locke’s doctrine at large and our proper attitude toward it as Catholics.  An earlier version of this essay appeared in A Letter from the Romans, the Newsletter of the Roman Forum and the Dietrich von Hildebrand Institute, February, 1999, No. 4.  — The Editors  

PART I

By all accounts, John Locke was one of the most influential figures of the Enlightenment.  Although he was indebted to the writings of both Machiavelli and Hobbes—a debt he never acknowledged—nonetheless it is generally recognized that Locke’s two most influential writings, the Second Treatise of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration, established him as the principal founder of modern liberal society.  Certainly no student of American politics would deny the significance of Locke’s impact on the Founding Fathers, for they often cited him as an authority to justify their political prescriptions.  More broadly, it is fair to state that most modern men, whether religious or not, accept Locke’s fundamental principle concerning the proper relationship between politics and religion, namely, separation of church and state.  In fact, Locke’s doctrine of toleration, as set forth in A Letter Concerning Toleration, is the most universally accepted political-theological dogma in the West today, yet this dogma is not the benevolent and salvific solution to the problem of religious pluralism that modern men suppose it to be.

Locke begins A Letter Concerning Toleration[1] with an astonishing claim:

Since you are pleased to inquire what are my thoughts about the mutual toleration of Christians in their different professions of religion, I must needs answer you freely, that I esteem that toleration to be the chief characteristic mark of the true church (p. 167).

In immediate support of his opening claim, Locke says that all men boast of the orthodoxy of their own faith, “for everyone is orthodox to himself.”  According to Locke, all such claims to orthodoxy are far from being marks of the true church; they are “much rather marks of men striving for power and empire over one another, than of the church of Christ” (p. 167).

Here, then, at the very beginning of the Letter, Locke reveals the core of his enterprise.  While cynically dismissing all claims of orthodoxy as quest for power over others, Locke himself establishes the new measure of orthodoxy for Christians, namely, his doctrine of toleration.  He is careful to wrap his bold new doctrine in the mantle of Christian humility by immediately affirming that if a man “be destitute of charity, meekness, and good-will in general towards all mankind, even to those that are not Christians, he is certainly yet short of being a true Christian himself” (p. 167).  But Locke’s identification of his doctrine of toleration with the supernatural virtue of Christian charity cannot hide the clearly self-contradictory nature of his attempt to erect a new orthodoxy on the assertion that every claim to orthodoxy is simply the expression of a man’s thirst for power and dominion.  Now, if we are to make sense of Locke’s project, we either must assume that he could not see this contradiction—which is highly unlikely given his evident intelligence—or we must assume that he was not troubled by it, a position about which we will have more to say as we attempt to unpack his teaching.  This much we can now say:  if Locke is right, that all claims to orthodoxy are disguised attempts to dominate others, then his own orthodoxy is fundamentally an attempt to dominate even while preaching the Christian virtue of charity, and his writings are nothing less than the new holy scriptures for all who profess his new creed.

In order to appreciate fully the radical nature of Locke’s doctrine of toleration, it is important to have clear in our minds the orthodox Catholic doctrine that he is attempting to replace with his own new orthodoxy.  Such clarity is not easily achieved in our times because Locke and his followers, especially our own Founding Fathers, have so successfully established the orthodoxy of toleration.  Indeed, it is rare to find anyone who can formulate a rational argument against toleration, to say nothing of actually accepting that argument as true, and yet Locke’s doctrine was not readily accepted in his lifetime.  Nonetheless, the intellectual habits of the contemporary mind, both Catholic and non-Catholic alike, are such that any challenge to this supposedly self-evident doctrine appears idiotic, if not perverse.  But at the risk of appearing both perverse and idiotic, let us reconsider the orthodox Catholic position.

Far from viewing the charge of intolerance as a reproach, the Catholic Church has always preached dogmatic intolerance because it follows from the very nature of the Catholic Faith.  After all, dogmatic intolerance is an essential prerogative of truth, and it is a universal and necessary consequence of the very existence of the Catholic religion, which alone is true and binding upon all men.  The Church, by the very fact that she is certain of possessing religious truth in its entirety, must in principle condemn all error in matters of faith and morals.  Thus, to reproach the Church with dogmatic intolerance is to reproach her for being, and for believing herself to be, necessarily true.  Obviously it belongs to truth by its very nature to exclude all that is contrary to it, and consequently not only is true religion intolerant, but so also is all true science.  A teacher of mathematics, for example, cannot pretend, nor should he, that the Pythagorean theorem is no truer than the claim that it is false.  Once one has grasped the Pythagorean theorem as true, his mind must close to the contrary view.  Indeed, he becomes doctrinally intolerant toward any and all contrary opinions on this matter, for the possession of truth makes him necessarily intolerant of what is false.

Now, at the same time that the Church is justly intolerant of all false teachings and of all vice, she makes a fundamental distinction between dogmatic toleration and practical toleration.  Dogmatic toleration, which the Church has always condemned, amounts to religious indifferentism because it refuses in principle to acknowledge any religion as exclusively true.  Practical toleration, on the other hand, is perfectly consistent with dogmatic intolerance, for although the Church condemns all errors in principle, she nevertheless recognizes that there are circumstances where errors may be licitly tolerated for grave reasons.  As the repository of all truth concerning faith and morals, the Catholic Church, in imitation of her divine Founder, discerns the need to tolerate human ignorance and weakness in certain circumstances for one of two reasons:  either to avoid a greater evil, or to attain or preserve a greater good.  Toleration in this sense belongs to the supernatural virtue of charity, which perfects the natural virtue of prudence.  Prudence, with one hand, as it were, firmly grasping the universal and unchanging truths known through natural reason, and with the other hand grasping the particulars of the here and now, judges it necessary at times to tolerate something evil.  While steadfastly refusing to grant such an evil the right to exist, prudence, especially when guided and perfected by charity, properly discerns the particular circumstances in which truth and goodness are better served by permitting error or vice to continue for a time.

To return for a moment to our example of the Pythagorean theorem, a good teacher of mathematics will understand how a student may not initially grasp its proof.  Certainly a prudent teacher will be patient with well-intentioned students who are struggling to learn.  Having perhaps struggled himself when he first learned the Pythagorean theorem, the teacher would be foolish indeed to expect all his students to grasp it immediately and surely.  In other words, the teacher would be tolerant of his students’ initial mistakes, and he would patiently guide and correct them.  In doing so, the teacher would be practicing what we have identified as practical toleration, for he would be allowing something evil—in this case, ignorance—to exist for a time in the hope that some good would come from it, namely, genuine knowledge of the theorem.  Under no circumstances, however, would a true teacher embrace dogmatic toleration; that is, he would never declare to his students that they have a right to be wrong about the Pythagorean theorem, which would be equivalent to saying that there is no objective truth concerning the relationship between the sides of right triangles.  Indeed, even if every student in his class failed to see the truth of the Pythagorean theorem, the teacher would nevertheless insist that it is true, though he might wonder about his skill as a teacher.  Similarly, in moral matters, it is a father’s duty to correct his child if his child does something wrong.  In certain circumstances, however, it may be imprudent for a father to make such a correction.  And we can see this same distinction operating even on the level of bodily health.  Although in principle food is essential to human life, the same food that is ordinarily productive of good health may, under certain circumstances, be poisonous for an unhealthy man.

The point of these analogies should be clear enough:  it is one thing to be tolerant of a falsehood or error as a practical matter; it is quite another to insist that falsehood is in principle as “true” as truth.  And certainly that brings us to the heart of the matter.  What sense does it make to say that the true position is that every position is equally true to itself?  Such a claim, which is the first premise of dogmatic toleration, makes practical toleration meaningless.  If we grant that no position is any truer than any other, then why should we be tolerant of those with whom we disagree?  Why would it be any more wrong to assault, imprison or even kill those with whom we disagree rather than put up with them?  On what basis could one defend toleration itself?  What would make tolerance superior to intolerance?  If we truly believe that no one position is better than any other, it would make just as much sense to preach intolerance.  Paradoxically, only those who recognize that the truth is dogmatically intolerant can exercise practical toleration in more than an accidental way.  Indeed, a teacher who knows the truth can exercise charity and patience in a meaningful way towards his students precisely because he knows there is truth; but a teacher who denied the very possibility of truth would have no reason, other than an arbitrary one, for exercising charity toward those with whom he disagreed.

By analogy, it is only the Catholic Church, which openly proclaims herself to be the one true Church established by God, that can exercise practical toleration in religious matters in other than an accidental way.  In other words, practical toleration belongs intrinsically to the Catholic Church because, in her dogmatic intolerance, she is the measure of all religious truth.  All other churches can at best practice toleration in an accidental manner; that is, the individuals that comprise those churches may or may not be tolerant of others based upon their individual dispositions and characters, for if they reject the very possibility of absolute truth in religion, they have no real reason to choose tolerance over intolerance either in the practical or dogmatic realm.

It may be argued, of course, that religious truths are less easily grasped than mathematical ones, and thus the analogy to the Pythagorean theorem is inappropriate.  There is some truth to this objection insofar as the truth of certain fundamental mathematical principles is self-evident to anyone who is capable of reasoning, whereas grace and faith are required for someone to grasp the truths taught by the Catholic Church.  But this merely suggests the need for greater charity in teaching the truths of the Faith since the teacher cannot simply present them and expect them to be grasped.  Moreover, the analogy holds insofar as one understand the very nature of truth, mathematical or religious.  If one grants that the Catholic Church is the one true Church which cannot teach error in matters of faith and morals, or if someone at least grants that such a church could in principle exist, then it follows that dogmatic toleration cannot be true since it is based upon the self-contradictory premise that there is no objective truth.  Surely someone cannot logically insist on the truth of dogmatic toleration, because dogmatic toleration rests on the assumption that there is no truth.  And yet this is Locke’s position, for he begins by asserting that toleration is the chief characteristic mark of the true church.  Locke, as we shall see, is careful to blur the distinction between practical and dogmatic toleration; and the fact that so few are aware of this fundamental distinction is a sign of how successful his enterprise has been, for almost all who call themselves Christian, including most Catholics, devoutly profess their faith in this one supreme dogma of Locke’s universal orthodox church.

(Continued in Part II…)

NOTES

[1] All quotations from Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration are from Sherman, C., ed.  John Locke’s Treatise of Civil Government and a Letter Concerning Toleration (D. Appleton-Century, 1937).

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A Note on the Legitimacy of Governments

In general we consider something to be legitimate when it is operating in accord with the laws and rules which properly govern that thing. In this way, we say that a person acts legitimately when he operates in accord with the laws of the state in which he dwells. In this is perhaps the first meaning of the word. However, states likewise have a legitimacy or illegitimacy by which they must be measured. Since Locke, many have seen that legitimacy as something “derived from the consent of the governed.” Some, such as Max Weber with his notion of “Legitimitätsglaube”, exclude all normative criteria for legitimacy and reduce it to a set of beliefs that a people have about their government.[1] Such notions, however, are (finally) excluded when one turns to the teachings of the Church summarized well by Pope Saint John XXIII, “Since God made men social by nature, and since no society can hold together unless some one be over all, directing all to strive earnestly for the common good, every civilized community must have a ruling authority, and this authority, no less than society itself, has its source in nature, and has, consequently, God for its author.”[2] Political legitimacy, therefore, must be derived from God.

Continue reading “A Note on the Legitimacy of Governments”