In my Christianity and Tyranny course, we are currently reading Locke's Second Treatise Concerning Government. Some of my students are disturbed by Locke's appeal to reason above scripture. On Monday, I'm going to show them these passages from Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding:
Reason is natural revelation, through which ·God·, the eternal father of light and fountain of all knowledge, communicates to mankind that portion of truth that he has put within the reach of their natural faculties. Revelation is natural reason enlarged by a new set of discoveries communicated immediately by God, the truth of which is supported by reason through the testimony and proofs it gives that they do come from God. Thus, someone who takes away reason to make way for revelation puts out the light of both – like persuading a man to put out his eyes so that he can better to receive the remote light of an invisible star through a telescope! (IV, xix, 4)
….
In any matter of divine revelation the only proof we need is that it is an inspiration from God. For he can neither deceive nor be deceived. But how can we know that a proposition in our minds is a truth put there by God - a truth that he declares to us and which we ought therefore to believe? This is where enthusiasm fails. For the enthusiasts boast of a light by which they say they are enlightened and brought into the knowledge of this or that truth. But if they know it to be a truth, they must know this either through its being self-evident to natural reason or through rational proofs that show it to be true. If they see and know it to be a truth in either of these two ways, it is pointless for them to suppose it to be a revelation; for they know it to be true the same way that any other man naturally can know that it is so without the help of revelation. . . . If they say they know it to be true because it is a revelation from God, that is a good reason; but then we should ask how they know it to be a revelation from God. If they say ‘By the light it brings with it, which shines brightly in my mind and I can’t resist’, I ask them to consider whether this amounts to anything more than ‘It is a revelation, because I strongly believe it to be true’. For the ‘light’ they speak of is only their strong though baseless conviction that it is a truth. . . . What easier way can there be to run ourselves into the most extravagant errors and miscarriages than in this way to take fancy for our only guide, and to believe any proposition to be true, any action to be right, simply because we believe it to be so? The strength of our convictions is no evidence at all of their own correctness; crooked things can be as stiff and inflexible as straight, and men can be as positive and peremptory in error as in truth. (IV, xix, 11)
Here Locke argues thus:
1. The only reasons to be convinced of the truth of some claim is that it is either self-evident to natural reason or that there is some rational proof supporting it.
2. The claim that something is revealed by God is like any other claim.
So, 3. To accept that that something is revealed by God it must be either self-evident or have rational proof supporting it.
4. It is not self-evident that any claim is revealed by God.
So, 5. There must be a rational proof that any claim is revealed by God.
So, 6. Those who accept a claim as revealed by God because of an inner light have no grounds to be convinced of the truth of the claim.
Locke’s ultimate conclusion in that the rational acceptance of any claim be on the grounds of its self-evidence or rational proof, and that another claim is revealed by God is subjected to the same scrutiny as any other claim.
