The Reasonableness of Christianity
- An inclusive and uniting vision of Christianity
- Christian faith that is strengthened and confirmed by reason
- Rationality that is strengthened and directed by Christian convictions and morality
- A belief that personal happiness and societal prosperity are most likely to be realized through the application of Christianity and rationality
The mission of this blog (The Reasonableness of Christianity Blog) is to foster understanding, hope, and harmony in some small way, by promoting and applying this Lockean worldview in a society in which both Christianity and rationality are losing their foothold.
The Enlightenment setting of “The Reasonableness of Christianity”
It was 1695, 178 turbulent years since Martin Luther posted the 95 Theses and set the Reformation into high gear. Most of those years saw intra-Christian conflict between groups espousing different sects and variations of Christian beliefs. The previous “unity” (by force if necessary) of the Catholic church had been shattered. Though almost everyone in the West remained devoted Christians of some sort and outright atheism was still beyond the pale, some new non-Christian philosophies like Spinozism and early deism had arisen, which don’t deny the existence of something like God, but reject the idea of revelation or divine intervention in man’s affairs.
Isaac Newton published his Principia Mathematica in 1686, revealing to the world – really for the first time – that nature operated by mathematical principles that could be rationally deduced and understood. A new rational evaluation of all government, social structures, and institutions (including religion) was enabled by the increasing liberality and freedom in parts of Western Europe following the Reformation. That emphasis on reason and skepticism of religious doctrine and practice picked up throughout the Enlightenment. To beclear, I think this movement of rational re-evaluation (even of religion) was a Good Thing, but it certainly was uncharted territory for a Christianity that had been suppressing dissent for centuries under Catholicism.
By 1695 Locke had already made a name for himself with the publication of “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” and “Two Treatises of Government.” Now he turned his attention to Christianity’s identity crisis, striving to answer two burning questions:
A) What does it mean to be Christian
B) How should we understand the relationship between Christianity (or revelation) and reason?
Let me quickly emphasize that these two questions have only increased in relevance since 1695. Christianity is now in decline in the West, hounded on one side by a rationalist scientific materialism and on the other by an anti-rational postmodernist criticism. However, rather than working together and standing strong against the onslaught, Christianity now has more of a focus on entertainment than on the core mission of bringing souls to justification and sanctification through Christ. While atheism remains a minority in the US (except among educated elites – for example, philosophers and elite scientists), the main result of all this is that much of Christianity has devolved into a new worldview that has been called “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”, which holds that God exists and wants people to be happy but doesn’t ask much of us and doesn’t get involved much. This apathetic vision holds little power to improve individual lives or for the betterment of society. Christianity needs to be bolstered from within to withstand the attacks from without.
The big questions
A. What does it mean to be a Christian?
The full title of Locke’s 1695 work is “The Reasonableness of Christianity as Delivered in the Scriptures.” I will here shorten it to “TROC”. Literally, the first 80% of the book goes through the exercise of systematically searching the four gospels to understand what it is that Christ requires, with the assumption that this can be taken as the essence of what it means to be Christian. Locke searches for 1) all the times Christ makes invitations to follow Him, to identify what it is He invites people to do; 2) all of Christ’s specific teachings, to identify what He asks of His followers; and 3) all the times Christ speaks of judgement, to identify for what people will be judged.
Locke is exemplary in citing scripture and verse to back up his points with revelation, but I will just very briefly summarize Locke’s conclusions for each of these 3 systematic evaluations:
- Christ’s invitations. When Christ makes invitations to follow Him, he repeatedly tells people either directly or indirectly, “I am the Messiah,” though He was extremely careful to avoid public pronouncements that might have the appearance of inciting a political rebellion. In Locke’s paraphrase, His message is “the good news of me, the Messiah, and my kingdom, shall be spread through the world.” Locke then emphasizes “This was the great and only point of belief they were warned to stick to.” Later Locke reiterates “The faith required was, to believe Jesus to be the Messiah, the Annointed: who had been promised by God to the world.”
- Christ’s moral teachings. Locke concludes that “He began his preaching with a command to repent” and “He commands they should be exemplary in good works.” Christ “re-inforces all the moral precepts of the Old Testament” and “commands self-denial.” Locke adds, “Moreover, upon occasion, [Christ] requires the obedience of his disciples to several of the commands he afresh lays upon them; with the inforcement of unspeakable rewards and punishments in another world, according to their obedience or disobedience.”
- Christ on judgement. Locke concludes that “None are sentenced or punished for unbelief, but only for their misdeeds.”
From this analysis, Locke concludes that what makes one a Christian is not the specific details of their theology, but the acceptance of Christ as the Messiah and a commitment to follow Christ’s moral teachings.Though our different churches may have different worship practices and different theological details, we share a common Christian identity as taught by Christ in the gospels.
This was the great proposition that was then controverted, concerning Jesus of Nazareth, “Whether he was the Messiah or no?” And the assent to that was that which distinguished believers from unbelievers.
I like Locke’s argument for a very simple definition of Christianity. If St. Peter at the Pearly Gates made each supplicant for salvation pass a detailed theological exam, the less-educated would be ineligible for salvation and that goes against the nature of God. Locke argues:
Had God intended that none but the learned scribe, the disputer, or wise of this world, should be christians, or be saved, thus religion should have been prepared for them, filled with speculations and niceties, obscure terms, and abstract notions. But men of that expectation, men furnished with such acquisitions, the apostle tells us, 1 Cor. i. are rather shut out from the simplicity of the gospel; to make way for those poor, ignorant, illiterate, who heard and believed promises of a Deliverer, and believed Jesus to be him; who could conceive a man dead and made alive again; and believe that he should, at the end of the world, come again and pass sentence on all men, according to their deeds. That the poor had the gospel preached to them; Christ makes a mark, as well as business of his mission, Matt. xi. 5. And if the poor had the gospel preached to them, it was, without doubt, such a gospel as the poor could understand; plain and intelligible; and so it was, as we have seen, in the preachings of Christ and his apostles.
That is not to say that differences between Christian sects are unimportant. On the contrary, I strongly believe that the specific church I go to is the true church of Jesus Christ with God’s authority and the best representation of revealed doctrine. I draw great meaning and purpose from my church, and I hope that all Christians would feel the same way about theirs. One weakness of the theology of TROC is that it doesn’t address the issue of church worship and fellowshipping, which is a critical aspect of Christian practice. (On the other hand, from the perspective of a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints the true church hadn’t yet been restored in Locke’s day, so maybe we can give him a pass on that one. 😊)
Regardless of denomination, there is a great need for all Christians of all stripes to stand together in defense of Christ and His teachings against the World, and I feel like Locke’s analysis of the scriptures lays out a rational and workable foundation for Christian unity – a broad tent, if you will, for strength in numbers. In other words, this is an appeal to bring Christians together based on what we all have in common, similar to the motivation behind C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity.
B. On Reason and Revelation
The latter 20% or so of TROC contains a discussion of the second burning question on reason and Christianity. It appears (https://openpublishing.psu.edu/locke/bib/ch0i.html) that one of Locke’s aims was to combat new (at the time) deistic philosophies that rejected the idea of divine intervention or revelation from God to man. This deism held that reason is the only means we have for understanding Truth. Locke counters this by arguing that reason alone is insufficient for understanding or implementing Truth, but that Truth can be understood and put to practice for the good of society only by means of revelation and religion. Reason is not rejected or replaced by revelation in Locke’s view – rather reason confirms the truths revealed by revelation, and the two act together to bring about greater insight and power. Christians should be proud of the revelations and the miracles that they have access to, rather than shrink away from them.
Locke highlights the deficiencies of pure reason in two ways:
- Reason alone is not sufficient to understand the Truth of this world and the next, or to establish true morality. Locke highlights the failure of philosophers throughout time to uncover the Natural Law (more on this later) – the set of behaviors and moral beliefs that if followed would lead to happiness for Man in this life and salvation in the next. It was only through Christ that the true law was revealed by which man can achieve happiness and salvation.
- Even if pure reason could uncover true morality, reason and philosophy alone are not sufficient to convince the world and establish a moral society. Christian religion brings this power through faith in Christ.
“And I ask, whether one coming from heaven in the power of God, in full and clear evidence and demonstration of miracles, giving plain and direct rules of morality and obedience; be not likelier to enlighten the bulk of mankind, and set them right in their duties, and bring them to do them, than by reasoning with them from general notions and principles of human reason? And were all the duties of human life clearly demonstrated, yet I conclude, when well considered, that method of teaching men their duties would be thought proper only for a few, who had much leisure, improved understandings, and were used to abstract reasonings.”
By a slightly different definition of “reasonable,” Locke supports Christianity’s reasonableness by virtue of not being a fanatical or revolutionary religion. Nayeli Riano points out that “by 1675, 'reason' entered analytical and exegetical debates in theology as an attempt to redeem religion from a characterization of zeal and fanaticism.” This helps explain why Locke makes such a great effort in the first section of the TROC to emphasize that Christ avoided every opportunity to turn his religious following into a political revolution, despite knowing that most of the Jews expected the Messiah to be the one to cast off the shackles of the Roman occupation. Even while announcing himself in private as the spiritual Messiah, He never publicly announces His Messianic role and avoids even the outward appearance of being a political troublemaker, so that Pilot would have nothing to accuse him of. By this means, “after a life illustrious in miracles and good works, attended with humility, meekness, patience, and sufferings, and every way conformable to the prophecies of him; should be led as a sheep to the slaughter, and with all quiet and submission be brought to the cross, though there were no guilt, nor fault found in him.” Christ sets the example for a reasonable Christianity.
On Natural Law
One oft-noted theme from Locke’s theology is the concept of Natural Law. This is the idea that there is a gold-standard optimal set of morals and behaviors that if followed would lead to the optimum outcome for humanity. In principle this optimum outcome includes personal fulfillment or happiness (a word Locke uses 22 times in TROC), personal salvation in the world to come, as well as an optimal societal outcome here on the Earth. When Christ came to the earth he revealed the Christian law. Locke suggests that Christ’s teachings illuminate for us the Natural Law. Under the Natural Law hypothesis, it would not be surprising therefore that the social outcomes for Western Civilization, founded even very imperfectly on Christian principles, are far and away the best of any other society ever. Philosophers, theologians, and individuals outside of the Christian tradition can use reason, revelation, their conscience, or other means to seek out the Natural Law to the best of their ability, and their individual and societal outcomes will reflect how close they came in their behavior and morals to the Natural Law, even they did not know of Christ. A similar idea is taught by Paul in his Epistle to the Romans verses 2:14-15, KJV:
“For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness”
Locke makes it his opinion in TROC that philosophers have universally failed in their attempts to find the Natural Law by means other than revelation, and that only through Christ has anything close to the Natural Law been discovered and implemented:
“it is plain, in fact, that human reason unassisted failed men in its great and proper business of morality. It never from unquestionable principles, by clear deductions, made out an entire body of the “law of nature.” And he that shall collect all the moral rules of the philosophers, and compare them with those contained in the New Testament, will find them to come short of the morality delivered by our Saviour, and taught by his apostles; a college made up, for the most part, of ignorant, but inspired fishermen.”
Locke takes it for granted in TROC that his audience would recognize the beneficial outcomes of Christian religion and morality in society. This improvement in the human condition that occurred through time after imprinting Christian principles on human hearts supports (but does not prove) the divine origin of these teachings. Sadly, if he were writing today, Locke would need to spend some ink to defend these points, as Marxist / Critical Theory / Postmodernist influences have obscured this previously self-evident analysis. Still, both Christians and non-religious rationalists (see here for example) today are able to see the large body of empirical evidence linking Christianity with the success of the West, though they may talk about it differently.
Other views expressed in TROC
It is clear that Locke approaches his scriptural investigation as a true-believing devoted Christian, disturbed by the varieties of doctrines taught by different people and churches. Locke works to sort out the truth the best he knew how, through good faith, open-minded rational evaluation of divine revelation. Locke starts out TROC by weighing in on a couple of eternal debates in Christian theology: original sin and faith vs. works. As it happens, a lot of Locke’s conclusions overlap considerably with my own views, but that is really beside the point of this essay. The point rather is that Locke makes an effort to put his theory into practice through reason based on revelation to better understand for himself the gospel. Here is a brief summary of his hot takes:
- Locke rejects original sin, concluding that “every one’s sin is charged upon himself only.”
- Locke also rejects the liberal over-reaction to original sin in which “there was no redemption necessary”, and that Christ was “nothing but the restorer and preacher of pure natural religion.” Locke clearly believes in the redemption from sin and the resurrection of Christ, asserting “those who believed him to be the Messiah, must believe that he was risen from the dead.”
- Locke rejects the idea that we are saved by faith alone. Instead, Locke argues that we are asked to obey commandments (what he calls the “law of works”) – but that none of us are perfect at this, so we are dependent on Christ to justify those who believe and follow Him despite their imperfections “by counting their faith for righteousness” (what Locke calls the “Law of Faith”).
Conclusions and Applications
In summary, as I see it, the Lockean worldview set forth in TROC has four primary components:
- An inclusive and uniting vision of Christianity
- Christian faith that is strengthened and confirmed by reason
- Rationality that is strengthened and directed by Christian convictions and morality
- A belief that personal happiness and societal prosperity are most likely to be realized through the application of Christianity and rationality
TROC sets out to define and defend Christianity from the perspective of this worldview. Notably, Locke does not attempt to prove that Christianity is real or that its teachings are true by reason alone. Religious beliefs will always require faith and revelation, and that is as true then as today.
Locke’s worldview of Christianity and rationality was once an influential and formative philosophy for modern Western society, but now both Christianity and rationality are dwindling and under siege. I feel some urgency to use my voice to defend, promote and apply this worldview. Asher and I are just some random guys, but we hope to be one voice among many to signal strength in numbers of a rational and empowered Christian faith, to stand firm and faithful against the challenges of the world. The mission of this blog (The Reasonableness of Christianity Blog) is to foster understanding, hope, and harmony in some small way, by promoting and applying this Lockean worldview in a society in which both Christianity and rationality are losing their foothold.
TROC was written in 1695, but it takes on a number of topics in book form that I now want to continue to contemplate in blog form, 326 years later. Here are some ideas I hope to get to in this blog:
- History from a faith perspective
- Inter-denominational conversations
- Open minded analysis of Christian topics
- Christianity under attack
- Empirical fruits of Christianity
- Rationality
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