Nguyen 1

Br. Paul Nguyen, OMV

Modern Church History, Orlando
April 10, 2015
John Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration
In this tract, Locke imposes his idea of toleration and radical separation between church
and state not only on the macro-scale church, but on particular churches and even on the
members within them.
In the first part of the letter, Locke defines the civil magistrate and the church and
describes their proper jurisdictions. They are completely disjoint, the civil having to do with the
administration of the commonwealth, a society of men constituted only for the procuring,
preserving, and advancing their own civil interests. Those civil interests are: life, liberty,
health, and indolency of body; and the possession of outward things, such as money, lands,
houses, furniture, and the like. The civil magistrate executes laws concerning these things, for
that reason.
Locke then turns to religion and the church. He focuses on the intellectual sphere,
conceding the possibility of men to try to lead each other into truth by every means short of
violence and obligations of law, which fall to the civil magistrate. He also emphasizes the free
assent of faith, claiming that religion is an opt-in society that one enters out of hope for his
salvation, and perseveres for the same. Remaining consistent, he admits each such society its
own internal governance, independent of not only the state but other such societies, no matter
how similar (this flies in the face of apostolic succession, which he grants if a particular church
deems it necessary; it also directly challenges the deference to the See of Rome). He claims that
the Scriptures should be the sole source of authority, which, at a glance, would seem to violate
his principle of toleration (of those who dissent from the claim that the Scriptures are the sole
font of divine revelation).

Nguyen 2
To test his theory, Locke explores excommunication. Members have entered this society
freely, but their own opposition to the doctrines of that society expresses their own nonmembership, which may be judged by the community's leadership, and which may be formally
declared as such (the publication of the fact that an individual, by his own assertion, is no longer
a member of this church). The church may not, however, follow up with sanctions of civil
goods, because it lacks such jurisdiction. He goes further in closing this letter to say that there is
no such thing as a heretic or schismatic in truth, but that there are only men who are members of
this religious society and not others, or of none, and even further, at this time (since each man
may choose for himself now to accept this religious society, now another, or none). This is truly
extreme toleration, and it claims to operate within a framework that acknowledges absolute truth
(or at least that there are those who claim an absolute truth basis).
Locke seems to require toleration of all but himself; the absolute claim about the primacy
of toleration is itself intolerant. He is right to point out the capacity of men to preach about their
own beliefs and try to persuade others, and he is right about each man's freedom to give his
assent to a body of belief that he finds true and conducive to his salvation. He must, however,
utterly reject the notion of a single true church and all the claims that the Catholic Church makes
about her original foundation by Christ and her fidelity to that original constitution and mission.
He seems to admit that some churches can be useful for obtaining salvation, but he again falls
short of identifying anything beyond the Scriptures (which none who call themselves Christian
reject) as marks of orthodoxy (because that is a claim to be made based on each church's own
law and doctrine).
In the end, this whole scheme is manifestly impracticable, but was, unfortunately,
fundamentally formative of western democratic and republican governments henceforth.