LDS principles of government: Edwin Brown Firmage and John Locke

One fun thing I discovered recently is that the theological and philosophical musings of Enlightenment hero and devout but free-thinking Christian John Locke have striking parallels with the positions later taken by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In a previous essay I identified nine points in which Locke’s reasoning moved him away from mainstream protestant Christianity and in the direction of what would later become the LDS camp: rejection of original sin, rejection of salvation by faith alone, openness to modern revelation, the suggestion that the soul might be material, openness to polygamy in certain circumstances, rejection of the creeds, and most especially rejection of the Trinity (but belief in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost). Locke searched for truth through a diligent study of the Bible and through reasoning from that foundation. Some of his conclusions of course represent a very serious divergence from the creeds and contemporary Protestant doctrines, but remain faithful to Locke’s reading of the Bible and his personal understanding of God and Truth.

Toward the end of his life Locke reportedly joined the Unitarian Universalist church, which would have welcomed his free-thinking approach and which wasn’t as far gone doctrinally and spiritually then as it is now. I like to think Locke would have considered the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had it been around at the time - but of course such ahistorical speculation is purely for my own entertainment. Maybe a better question would be whether the early Church doctrinal positions were influenced by Locke. I think a direct influence is unlikely, as the early church leaders show no inclination toward systematic study of philosophy, but maybe a more general vibe was in the air of faithful questioning of the creeds, as many others in Joseph Smith’s time were prepared for and seeking the type of doctrine taught by the Church. As it says in Doctrine and Covenants section 4, “The field is white already to harvest.”

I came across a 1976 Ensign article (the Church's official periodical, renamed Liahona in 2020) by University of Utah law professor Edwin Brown Firmage, who also gave legal and political support to the Church’s First Presidency. I hadn't heard of Firmage before seeing this, but it seems like he was mostly known in his profession as an outspoken pacifist during the age of nuclear proliferation, a position I can respect. The title of Firmage’s article was “Eternal Principles of Government: a Theological Approach,” a message timed with the upcoming bicentennial anniversary of the USA. What struck me was a strong connection with or influence of John Locke’s political ideas, which were themselves very much guided by his theology.

Firmage has seven principles of government that he describes as “so basic to human nature that they are applicable to different times and cultures as well as to our own. These seem to me to be some fundamental eternal principles of government.” This is a clear reference to natural law theory which is also a defining principle of John Locke's thought. Natural law for Locke is not just about government, but it's about discerning the moral principles and social structures that lead to the best outcome for humanity (in this world and the next). Revealed truth is the key to knowing the best way to live, and reason helps us understand and apply its principles in society. In his influential Second Treatise on Government, Locke quotes Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity: “Laws human must be made according to the general laws of nature, and without contradiction unto any positive law in Scripture. Otherwise they are ill made.” Implied in the natural law worldview is an objective and concrete good and evil, a clear and knowable right and wrong. Natural law is usually seen as quaint and outdated in today's secular and relativistic world, and it may be that there is no going back from where we are now. A new legal standard has arisen since the 1960s based on the principle of viewpoint neutrality in place of the old good and evil. In my opinion this change is harmful and unsustainable. A vacuum of values and principles will eventually be filled. We would be wise to be studious and deliberate about the principles we settle on as a society. That was the whole motivation for John Locke’s life work during the pivotal moment of change during the Enlightenment, and I think also the point of Edwin Brown Firmage’s comments in the Ensign for our own unsettled times. Below, I will introduce Firmage’s principles and compare with Locke’s writings.

The 7 “Eternal Principles of Government”

Principle #1: "Government properly constituted is both necessary and good. It is not a necessary evil that must be tolerated since the alternative is anarchy." In Locke's Second Treatise on Government, he starts off with a discussion of a hypothetical "state of nature" in which man exists without government, and shows how this tends to lead to a "state of war." Locke's great contribution in the Second Treatise is to outline how a government can be properly constituted to avoid the extremes of anarchy in the “state of nature” and the tyranny of Hobbes’s Leviathan. But I think Firmage takes the point a little further than Locke when he continues "nor is it [government] something that we will necessarily 'outgrow' once we overcome some particular human or social weakness." Firmage, quoting Joseph Smith, takes law and government to be an eternal principle that will apply even in the Celestial Kingdom. "Can we suppose that He has a kingdom without laws? Or do we believe that it is composed of an innumerable company of beings who are entirely beyond all law?" That's an intriguing idea that could change how we think about law and government.

Principle #2: Here, Firmage starts with a question: "If there are principles of government that are sufficiently basic to human nature so as to transcend the limitations of a given time and place, how are these principles to be known?" This question is taken straight from Locke, especially his "Essays on the Law of Nature," which contains Essays with titles like "Is the law of nature given to us? Yes." and "Can the law of nature be known by the light of nature? Yes." Locke determines in his Essays that these principles are not "inscribed in the minds of men," but must be sought after through reason and learning about the world, or what Locke calls the "light of nature." Locke declares that "all men everywhere are sufficiently prepared by nature to discover God in His works," so long as they are willing to apply reason and "do not refuse to follow where nature leads." Fitmage’s answer to his question parallels Locke's by stressing the importance of "struggle and intense mental effort characterized by straining to the limit one’s own mental powers, followed by seeking confirmation from the Lord." Firmage quotes D&C 9:8-9, which says "You must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right." This improves on Locke by clarifying that Locke's ill-defined "light of nature" is really the Holy Ghost. I would add that (unless your king is Christ Himself) the injunction to prayerful study and personal revelation complements but does not replace the formal procedures for consensus building and restricting centralized power. A (non-divine) theocracy is just as corruptible (if not moreso) as a secular government. Similarly, Locke wrote that though lawmakers should seek the natural law, laws need to be settled “by common consent… for though the law of nature be plain and intelligible to all rational creatures; yet men being biassed by their interest, as well as ignorant for want of study of it, are not apt to allow of it as a law binding to them in the application of it to their particular cases.”

Principle #3: "While government is good if constituted and administered properly, such propriety depends in part upon the limitation of coercion to the least possible degree." This is taken straight out of Locke and the liberal tradition that we are all familiar with today. The fundamental basis for this is in Locke’s words, that 

“men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker; all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another’s pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us. … Men [are], by nature, all free, equal, and independent.”

Principle #4 follows from Principle #3: "Even though force may sometimes be necessary to govern behavior, matters of conscience must not be regulated by government." This is also right out of Locke, who encouraged toleration in belief (except for atheists, interestingly). In Firmage’s doctrinal discussion, however, he consciously takes this principle one step beyond Locke’s liberalism: “This allowance of diversity is based not merely upon a philosophical spirit [of] liberalism, but more fundamentally upon the eternal principle of free agency.”

Principle #5: “A fifth principle of government is the necessity of the consent of the governed,” or the “voice of the people.” We are seeing a pattern here - this principle is also straight from Locke, in his Second Treatise: “No one can be subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent.” Firmage, like Locke, takes this typically to mean majority rule, but he notes that one outcome of the principle of consent and the principle of toleration is that “majority rule would have to be limited by the protection of basic minority rights.” Firmage illustrates this point with citations from Mosiah 29 in the Book of Mormon:

“Because all men are not just it is not expedient that ye should have a king or kings to rule over you. For behold, how much iniquity doth one wicked king cause to be committed, yea, and what great destruction! … It is not common that the voice of the people desireth anything contrary to that which is right; but it is common for the lesser part of the people to desire that which is not right; therefore this shall ye observe and make it your law—to do your business by the voice of the people.” 

He notes that Mosiah’s reasoning rests on an assertion based on human nature, hinting again toward natural law.

The US Constitution may be the gold standard for minority protection in a system based on majority rule, but Firmage accepts that “this advice would not necessarily eliminate a constitutional monarchy, a parliamentary government, a unitary state, a federal republic, or even a more authoritarian form of government that truly represented the people. The test is whether the ‘voice of the people’ conducts the business.” I would note that it is standard practice for Communist states to claim the “the voice of the people” as justification for oppressing the very same people. It must be the actions, not the rhetoric, that a government is to be judged by.

As with Principle 1, Firmage takes Principle 5 further than Locke by quoting Brigham Young’s suggestion of a Celestial precedent - that even for God in Heaven “the consent of the creature must be obtained before the Creator can rule perfectly.” I suspect that it will not take much to convince the Hosts of Heaven to give their assent to the Father’s loving leadership. Maybe the test of a worthy government is the eagerness of the citizens to place themselves under its rule of their own volition.

Principle #6: “Though power is essential, it may be fatal to good government. Power must be given and harnessed simultaneously.” Firmage aptly cites Doctrine and Covenants 121: “We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.” Again, this is consistent with Locke’s philosophy of government, and with structures for separation of powers, limitations on powers, and checks and balances within government in the British and US systems.

Principle # 7: “The human factor: unwise or dishonorable men can corrupt a fair system; conversely, wise and good men can make good government out of a flawed structure. This human factor demands that “honest men and wise men should be sought for diligently, and good men and wise men ye should observe to uphold.” (D&C 98:10.) This is the only one of the seven principles that I didn’t see specifically enumerated by Locke. He does mention in his model of how the first governments arise that a society probably chose a leader based on his personal virtue. He also mentions in passing that a more virtuous age would consequently have better governors. The principle of the last point may be that a society gets the leaders it deserves. (What does that say about our society?) But overall Locke’s focus was on the systems and incentives to ensure that the government and its officers have the good of the people in mind, rather than on the personal virtue of the individuals. Locke is right in his thinking like an economist that incentives matter, but Firmage is also right that personal virtue matters, even within a well structured system.

Individualism and Communalism

The second half of Firmage’s Ensign article has some interesting comments on the fundamental challenge of balancing the rights of the one and the needs of the many. I suspect that living through the Cold War conflict between Communism and Liberalism helped motivate some of his thinking on this topic.

“All these principles of liberty flow together toward two preeminent principles—a harmony of the one and the many, with man’s god-like individuality on the one hand and his natural, uncoerced communality on the other. These two principles provide at once the origin and the apex of all other governmental principles.”

Firmage emphasizes a union of the two, avoiding either extreme. At one end we have the communal belief, founded on classical Greek philosophical realism ¹ and natural law, “which held that because the good existed and could be discerned, force was justified in obtaining it; that is, the good is known and is embodied in the whole of the community, and the individual may therefore be coerced into conforming to that fact.” At the other extreme we have modern individualism, founded in philosophical nominalism and a rejection of natural law and objective morality. In this case, “Freedom becomes simply the untrammeled accomplishment of individual desires... Community is therefore minimal and artificial.”

Firmage’s theological synthesis of individualism and communalism is beautiful:

“Latter-day Saint theology maintains that a mixture of truth and error exists in both classical Greek and liberal thought. Objective reality exists and can be known, forming the basis of uncoerced and natural community. At the same time, however, the Latter-day Saint belief in man’s uncreated individuality and in the sanctity of his agency - an agency so sacrosanct that God himself will not infringe upon it — denies the legitimacy of force as a means of attaining the community’s ends. Man’s goal is seen as being the perfection of his individuality in the image of his Heavenly Father, until he is able to enjoy a celestial community.”

In philosophical terms, this is something like the nominalist’s emphasis on the individual but without the modern rejection of objective knowable morality. This formula, which I will express as liberalism + natural law, is essentially John Locke’s philosophy for good government and the approach that brought such great success to the United States. Still, even this elegant philosophical formula pales in beauty, depth, and power compared to the theological synthesis as expressed by Firmage. 

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        1  Like natural law theory, to which Firmage strongly alludes but does not name, in this section Firmage strongly alludes to the philosophical conflict between philosophical realism (or universalism) and nominalism. Without going into depth on a very confusing debate (that I don’t understand at great depth myself), nominalists asserts that groups and categories (early relevant examples include Greek vs barbarian, citizen vs slave) are nothing more than collections of individuals to which humans have applied some name or description. Therefore the individual is what is real, not the category. Philosophical realists, on the other hand assert that groups and collections (universals) themselves represent real fundamental concrete and eternal entities. The debate is very abstract but traditionally philosophical realism has emphasized the importance of the collective and nominalism has emphasized the individual. Realism was dominant from Plato through the Middle Ages, but Nominalism has has won out in modern times.   ^↩