What impact did John Locke have on the Christian faith?

Our English philosopher, Locke, wrote that "every one has to decide for himself what is REVELATION, and believe accordingly." The Apostle Paul, "that if any one thought himself a prophet or 'spiritual' (πνευματικός) he was to recognise the Apostle's words as from God" (1 Cor. 14:37); and he evidently assumed that the persons whom he had in mind possessed some Divine afflatus, such as resided in the Ante-Nicene Church down to the time of Tertullian.

135 In a word, conscience and reason must have objects to judge of. A revelation communicates objects which men have not. There is no contrast with revelation; they are no parts of its instrumentality. Reason and conscience have their own proper power in their place, needing, in order to act in divine things, a light wholly independent of them, that is, a revelation. In their place they are like every other faculty, and, as the most important ones, blessed. As I have said, when conscience has got light, it can say, Jupiter and Saturn cannot be gods; and reason can say, when it has got the idea of God, there cannot be two. Reason can never say, "is," or "is not," but "must," and "cannot." Ideas, and not facts, are its sphere. Revelation says "is" — another most important difference. I believe the idea of God is, in spite of Locke, at the bottom of every heart — corrupted and dimmed, but in every heart; and so, of course, are conscience and reason, though blind and corrupted, till light comes, and through passions, interests, and Satanic power, losing the light and being blinded when men have had it. They did not discern to retain God in their knowledge.

95 Dr. Newman partly distinguishes afterwards between inference and assent, but he has no idea of believing what God has said, simply because He has said it. Quoting from Locke's "Degrees of Assent," he says, "Where any particular thing, consonant to the constant observation of ourselves, and others in the like case, comes attested by the concurrent reports of all that mention it, we receive it as easily, and build as firmly upon it, as if it were certain knowledge, and we reason and act thereupon, with as little doubt as if it were perfect demonstration … These probabilities rise so near to certainty, that they govern our thoughts as absolutely, and influence all our actions as fully, as the most evident demonstration … Our belief thus grounded, rises to assurance." When we talk of "belief rising to assurance," with Locke, it is all very well, because it is mere human reason, and, for practical purposes, we must act on what is adequately proved as true though only "exceeding high probability," we have, save what is seen, nothing more. But all this shuts out divine faith. There is no rising to anything, no exercise of the mind to prove, no degree of anything, no possibility of human deceit. If God has spoken, it is the truth. But the whole of his reasoning in the chapter on assent, considered as unconditional, though he separates inference and assent, yet he speaks only of "the facts of human nature as they are found in the concrete action of life," i.e., men are certain enough to act on it, is all true. But on page 169, he insists that assent is "unconditional, and' that in 'subject-matters which admit of nothing higher than probable reasoning."

96 Page 171. He says, "None of us can think or act without the acceptance of truths, not intuitive, not demonstrated, yet sovereign." But some believe that things exist besides ourselves, "that there is a Supreme Being." He insists our nature is so constituted - so do I. "Nor," he adds, "has any philosophical theory the power to force on us a rule which will not work for a day." Now we have here inference, and, besides that, convictions which flow from "the constitution of our nature," of which we have no doubt (till we reason, and which reason may cast into doubt, rightly or wrongly); I admit all this, but none of this is divine faith. That "England is an island" is no example, because visible. "An island" means what I see, or others do there. He insists (page 179) that all this "does not interfere with the pre-eminence of strength in divine faith, which has a supernatural origin, when compared with all belief which is merely human and natural." But still, it is only because it has its origin in grace and its motions. "The greater certainty is according to appreciation, not intuition, for natural truths are often more clearly perceived!" "The connection of knowledge with truth is more apparent than the connection of faith with the same!" And another author, he quotes, says: "The adhesion of the will is stronger." And again, "The difference of certainty from the difference of motives." This only regards an exterior difference, for every natural certainty, formally looked at, is equal. "There is a transcendant adhesion of mind, intellectual and moral."

Volume 2, pages 58, 62. Notice this about truth and persecution, "guilt of error" and "cause of persecution" - clergy! "Among the Protestants it may, I believe, be safely affirmed, that there was no example of the consistent advocacy or practice of toleration in the sixteenth century that was not virulently denounced by all sections of the clergy, and scarcely any till the middle of the seventeenth century"! "Persecution among the early Protestants was a distinct and definite doctrine, digested into elaborate treatises, indissolubly connected with a large portion of the received theology, developed by the most enlightened and far-seeing theologians, and enforced against the most inoffensive as against the most formidable sects. It was the doctrine of the palmiest days of Protestantism"! "If man is bound to form his opinions by his private judgment … it is absurd to brand honest error as criminal, and to denounce the spirit of impartiality and of scepticism as offensive to the deity. This is what almost all Protestant leaders did in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and what a very large proportion of them still do, and it was out of this conception of the guilt of error that persecution arose"!

Page 68. As to Bayle, he says: "Bayle, like Montaigne and Descartes, was tolerant because he was rationalistic, and was rationalistic because he was sceptical"!

I do not now enter on man's fall and ruin - it would be idle when "scepticism is the only right state of mind." He says, volume 2, page 66, "Revelation is to be established by a process of reasoning" (this last may prove denial of it folly on man's ground) but it never can - in the nature of things, revelation must be on evidence. And what is axiomatically true, is only so in mathematics, which cannot apply to anything else than quantity, and in divine and moral things it is the height of folly to apply that. It is not a question of a contradiction of it - that is Leckey's stupidity, because a revelation, to be such, must be the bringing things to the knowledge of man which he is not cognizant of by his senses or faculties (save as condescension may help imperfect apprehensions) and hence no revelation can contradict physical facts, because it does not occupy itself with them. It may bring in God acting by signs, setting aside the operation of physical laws, or making them act by His will for a special object. And if He is the Author of them, that He can do; but He does not reveal anything which contradicts what is not the subject of revelation. "Arguments prove the use of popular language as to the sun's rising," etc. are childish in the extreme.

Revelation deals with nothing subject to law, nor of its reign. Revelation is of facts, or it may be nature; certain things follow necessarily but not as by a law. It deals with conscience and heart, putting God in His place - not with reason at all, in its nature it does not. Of the power of reason as absolutely incapable of knowing God I have spoken elsewhere; here I speak of the nature of revelation, that it deals with facts, reveals them, not with reasoning - it is testimony.

There is no "repressive idea of revelation," as regards conscience or reason. There is an authoritative revelation of facts, and teaching of truths by God, which act on conscience and give reason its best light. Reason judges probably, but never more, of the truth and falsehood of anything as a consequence. A revelation gives certain truth, or it is not one. If it be truth, conscience, liable to be misled, is rightly led by it. Reason, as to the direct reception of a revelation, is out of court, because reason draws conclusions, and a revelation is received as a testimony. To say that reason and conscience are absolute judges, or competent to be so, is palpably and historically false. Reason and conscience received Brahminism and Buddhism, and Ionism, and the Egyptian system, and Odin King of men, and Druidism — all false and different in form. Did they judge rightly in this? If not, are they not at least incompetent to hold the balance, and rule above the will and corrupt influences? Why am I to trust them in judging of what is infinite in excellence? They could not secure man's judgment in the grossest cases imaginable of superstition and moral vileness.

132 I do not talk of "kindred reason and conscience." I admit both, and revelation speaks to both; but I say that it is an historical fact that with them man fell from the light he had into the pit of degradation. Christianity delivered him, and set reason and conscience in the light, and on their right ground; and nothing else did. I am talking of history. I trust my reason for things of reason, as far as it is reasonable; that is, as to what is subjected to it. I have to act according to my conscience when this is in the light; indeed it is more honest to do so when imperfectly enlightened; but trust to man's pretended competency to judge of revelation by them and of what a religion ought to be, I cannot, because with them man has received everything as true that is false, base, and wicked to be God, and that is corrupt and abominable to be a duty, until God in power came in to deliver, and has rejected what was excellent and holy. I have got my senses, now I am in the light, to see that with my senses I fell into the ditch when I had not the light, and that all the eyes in the world could not make a ray of light, though now I have the light I know it is light. And I have no inclination, now I have it, to put it out, or to say that eyes without it were competent to see, kindred to light; and widen the sense of light, to make it comprehend men walking, and walking in darkness, and their feeling their way, an almost equivalent to having the light — a deepening of the idea of what light is.

You will see from what is already said that I in no wise despise the value of reason. Thus it is irrational and immoral to suppose that a Being good and holy, omniscient and omnipotent, made this world and man as they are now. But reason, unaided, cannot account for it. Revelation declares that God made all good, but suspended its continuance on the obedience of its head — that the head failed, and that the race and the world fell thereby. My reason bows to this as the only true and righteous and sufficient explanation.