John Locke and Christianity: Contemporary Responses to The Reasonableness of Christianity

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Jun 2001 by Bross, James B

John Locke and Christianity: Contemporary Responses to The Reasonableness of Christianity. Edited by Victor Nuovo. Bristol: Thoemmes, 1997, 284 pp., $24.95 paper.

The Reasonableness of Christianity was published by John Locke in 1695, but it was published anonymously. The content of the treatise was such that Locke expected to stir controversy, and he certainly was not disappointed. Nuovo's book is a compilation of contemporary background literature and responses to Locke's work, varying from Anglican Calvinism through Socinianism (Unitarianism) to outspoken deism. Locke definitely had a strong leaning toward a rationalistic Christianity that was heavily influenced by the Socinians and deists. Whether he was personally a Socinian or deist may be doubtful, but surely his work tries to establish that Christianity supported beliefs and morality similar to those of the rationalists. Thus, Locke argues that reason supports a morality that the Christian religion reveals. It might be fair to state that Locke believed that Christian revelation was necessary for the common people, but the intellectual elite might discover the same truths through reason alone. At any rate, Locke himself saw no conflict between reason and the Christian revelation, and that is his primary theme in his treatise.

Nuovo's edited work contains a brief introduction to The Reasonableness of Christianity and to the related controversy. He presents a case that Locke's argument may be understood as an apologetic for Christianity, possibly even having an evangelistic intent to appeal to reasonable people who doubt the truth of Christianity. This seems to be a fair interpretation. However, contemporary writers divided on the issue; some saw Locke as a Socinian, while others saw him as an orthodox apologist for Christianity. The selections in this book illustrate many of the options and give insights into the Anglican Calvinism of John Edwards, the Socinianism of the Racovian Confession, Chillingworth's rational defense of Protestantism, moderate English Roman Catholicism, the Presbyterianism of Daniel Williams, the Dutch Arminianism of Philip van Limborch, the deism of Charles Blount, and the orthodox Trinitarianism of the Cambridge master Daniel Waterland.

The book by Nuovo gives a very interesting snapshot of the English religious background surrounding Locke's writing. It provides excellent insight into several of the numerous controversies of the times. To me it is apparent that Locke and many of his respondents hoped both to defend the Christian faith and to encourage Christian unity in a time of religious perplexity. This book would be excellent reading for a course in the religious thought of seventeenth and eighteenth-century England.

James B. Bross

Southern Wesleyan University, Central, SC