A Collection Of Tracts Publish D In Vindication Of Mr Lock S Reasonableness Of Christianity As Delivered In The Scriptures And Of His Essay Concerning Humane Understanding

In John Locke's Theology: An Ecumenical, Irenic, and Controversial Project, Jonathan S. Marko offers the closest work available to a theological system derived from the writings of John Locke. Marko argues that Locke's intent for The Reasonableness of Christianity, his most noted theological work, was to describe and defend his version of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity and not his personal theological views. Locke, Marko says, intended the work to be an ecumenical and irenic project during a controversial time in philosophy and theology. Locke described what qualifies someone as a Christian in simple and irenic terms, and argued for the necessity of Scripture and the reasonableness of God's means of conveying his authoritative messages. The Reasonableness of Christianity could be construed as personal, but mainly in the sense that it puts the burden of understanding Scripture and arriving at theological convictions on the autonomous individual, rejecting the notion that one should base one's doctrinal opinions on so-called authorities. His work was inadvertently controversial partly because then, like today, readers typically failed to make a distinction between Locke's personal and programmatic positions. Marko also points to places in Locke's corpus where he avoids advocating for a particular sectarian position in his treatment of theological doctrines. What is more, it shows why attempting to categorize Locke--a philosopher, theologian, and political scientist all at once--according to traditional Christian paradigms is a dangerous misstep and a difficult scholarly feat.

'Where Christian apologetics are concerned, is Locke to be endorsed, repaired, modified, or forsaken?' The diverse answers given to this question by the eighteenth-century divines form the complex subject of this book, which offers the first detailed account of his influence upon the religious thinkers of the eighteenth century. The work is based upon a thorough search of relevant materials, many of them scarce and widely dispersed. But the question is still relevant three centuries after Locke's death, and Professor Sell's objective in this volume is not only historical. From this study of the reception of Locke by the divines there emerge pressing questions about method, reason, faith, revelation, and authority which need to be addressed by those who would attempt Christian apologetics as Christianity's third millennium approaches. Although this book stands in its own right, it can also be read as a companion volume to the author's Philosophical Idealism and Christian Belief (University of Wales Press, 1995). Together, the two books represent soundings taken in important Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment intellectual traditions. The question whether an apologetic method may be found which avoids the pitfalls exposed both by the examination of Locke and the idealists, and which circumvents latter-day embargoes upon Christian apologetics, will be addressed in a third and final volume.

This is the twenty-first volume in the Clarendon Edition of the Works of John Locke. The series aims to provide authoritative critical editions of all the writings of one of the most important intellectuals in the early-modern Anglophone world. The present volume completes the Correspondence edited by the late E. S. de Beer, published between 1976 and 1989. It contains some 300 documents: newly discovered or augmented, or newly collected, letters by or to Locke, or between his close associates. New finds have emerged from archives worldwide; previously known letters are now improved from new manuscripts or supplemented by enclosures that had become detached from them; 'epistles dedicatory' in books by Locke or addressed to him are collected; third-party letters with direct bearing on Locke are included; as also Locke's agreements with publishers for the printing of his books. The volume covers Locke's manifold interests, from childrearing to medicine to cartography; from the exercise of patronage to the political economy of England's burgeoning empire; from the management of his Somerset tenants to relations with fellow philosopher Damaris Masham; from a trial for heresy to surveillance letters when Locke was suspect; from book collecting to calendrical reform. Locke's critics and vindicators are here, attacking and defending his published works. Considerable material has come to light bearing on Locke's encounters with Carolina and policies when a founding member of the Board of Trade and Plantations. The volume is supported by Mark Goldie's introduction and by an extensive explanatory editorial apparatus.