Locke as a heretic Christian:

I have made the assertion that John Locke, (America’s philosopher), rejected the Trinity. And I have been challenged on this assertion on another website. Let me make my case here.

Let me say at the outset that I think, at the very least, that Locke was a non-Trinitarian Christian. My own opinion is that he probably was nothing more than a Deist. And he may very well have been an atheist. Leo Strauss and his (non-Jaffaite) followers believe that Locke was an atheist, as are all true philosophers. (There is an interesting anecdote that I have heard regarding Strauss & this topic. One day someone asked him whether Descartes was a believer. He threw is hands up in the air and exclaimed something along the lines of “dammit, philosophers are paid not to believe in God!”) That God doesn’t exist is one of the supposed “esoteric truths” that philosophers have been passing down through the generations. And the fact that individuals presently are free to assert this and speak their mind on practically any issue is exclusively the result of the Enlightenment that Locke helped to usher in.

The “esoteric teaching” doctrine of the Straussians is highly controversial for obvious reasons. We can hardly see why, in the present age, philosophers have any real need or use for this doctrine. But that’s precisely the point. Today, where we can get away with saying practically anything, philosophers no longer need to speak in “code.” That Socrates was executed for attempting to speak the truth illustrates why philosophers needed to make use of this doctrine in the first place.

And Locke too had to beat around the bush (so to speak) regarding what he really believed. After all, one couldn’t so easily wear one’s atheism, deism, or non-Trinitarianism on one’s sleeve back then. This passage about Calvin from Walter Berns’s excellent book, Making Patriots, illustrates why all this is so: “For Calvin, liberty of conscience meant just that, and no more than that. If someone gave voice to his conscience, thus being heard or read by others, he might rightly be punished. So it was that, as the effective governor of his city of Geneva, Calvin had one of his anti-Trinitarian critics put to death.” p. 42.

Denying the Trinity was just flat out dangerous back then, so I don’t know if I can produce a “smoking-gun” regarding Locke’s anti-Trinitarianism. But let me point out a few things. First, in The Reasonableness of Christianity, Locke seemed to question the doctrine of the Trinity. So much so that leading pro-Trinitarians accused him of anti-Trinitarian heresy: “Among his critics was Bishop Stillingfleet who in his Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity attacked” what Locke wrote in The Reasonableness of Christianity, arguing that anti-Trinitarian inferences could be drawn from what Locke wrote.

Second, on scientific as well as religious matters, Locke was greatly influenced by his friend Isaac Newton, who clearly denied the Trinity. “In the early 1690s [Newton] had sent Locke a copy of a manuscript attempting to prove that Trinitarian passages in the Bible were latter-day corruptions of the original text. When Locke made moves to publish it, Newton withdrew in fear that his anti-Trinitarian views would become known.” It was even rumored that Newton and Locke together anonymously authored a pamphlet attacking the Trinity.

Finally, in his later years, Locke became a Unitarian. And Unitarians generally rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. Unitarians were the archetypical “liberal Protestants.” There was a point where liberal Protestantism morphed into Deism. And Unitarianism often served as the place where this would occur. (For instance Jefferson at times called himself a “Christian,” a “Unitarian,” and a “Deist.”) Unitarianism was and continues to be an organization of folks who bucked orthodox Christian convention.

I don’t think that the religious conservatives or orthodox Christians of today are right to claim folks like Locke, Jefferson, or the “liberals” of that day. Most of these Enlightenment influenced individuals were either religious skeptics and/or members of liberal Christian Churches like the Quakers, or Unitarians. I think the present day liberal Protestant Churches (for instance, the folks who appointed Gene Robinson), or the Unitarians and Quakers of today are the true descendents of the “liberals” of the Founding period.