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John Locke and the Theological Foundation of Liberal Toleration: A Christian Dialectic of History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Joshua Mitchell
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Abstract

Locke's doctrine of toleration is best understood in the context of his larger argument about the political significance of Christ. Christ, Locke argues, separated the spiritual and political realm. His argument for separating the two realms, his basis for insisting that magistrates be tolerant of religious heterodoxy, is essentially theological. This claim is further developed by exploring Locke's thoughts of the unconcealment of foundation of moral duty which Christ was purported to have brought about. The bearing this unconcealment has on Locke's thoughts of the necessity of toleration is also explored. Finally, some comparisons between Locke and Hobbes's understanding of the significance of Christ are made, with a view to providing a new theoretical approach to their thought.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , Winter 1990 , pp. 64 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1990

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References

Notes

Thanks to Ricardo Barerra, Eldon Eisenach, Julia Thomas, and Nathan Tarcov for helpful comments on earlier versions of this essay, and on the larger project into which it fits. A. large measure of gratitude is due also to trie Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation for generous postdoctoral support.

1. But see Warren, Scott, The Emergence of Dialectical Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984),CrossRefGoogle Scholar for the claim that Kant marks the beginning of this kind of speculation.

2. See, for example, The Positivity of the Christian Religion and The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate in Hegel, G. W. F., Early Theological Writings, trans. Knox, T. M. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1948).Google Scholar

3. The biblical passage which expresses this notion most succinctly is the proclamation by Christ in Matthew 5:17. “Think not that I have come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am come not to destroy, but to fulfill.” Charles Taylor describes Hegel's dialectic in precisely these terms. See Taylor, Charles, Hegel and Modem Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 49,Google Scholar where, “Aufhebung [is Hegel's term] for the dialectical transition in which the lower stage is both annulled and preserved in a higher one.”

See Smith's, Steven B. “Hegel's Discovery of History” Review of Politics 45 (1983): 163–87,CrossRefGoogle Scholar for an excellent discussion of the relationship of Hegel's early theological works to his later philosophy of history.

4. See Reventlow, Henning Graf, The Authority of the Bible and the Rise of the Modem World (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985),Google Scholar for the claim that biblical criticism (of the sort with which Hegel was concerned early on) originates not in Germany but rather in England, notably in the thought of Wycliife (1320–1384). Importantly for my purposes here, Reventlow claims that Locke is but one of a long line of thinkers in England whose biblical interpretation and political thought is intertwined.

Also see Eisenach's, EldonTwo Worlds of Liberalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).Google Scholar Eisenach casts light on that moment of liberal thought which has received too little attention: human servitude to the God who reveals Himself through and throughout history. Liberal thought, in Eisenach's view, is concerned with freedom and Providence. In this essay I focus on Locke's understanding of God's revelation in history, and suggest that the best way to understand its political import is to ask a seemingly simple question of the authors we study: how do they conceive the meaning of Christ's fulfillment of the Old Testament truth?

5. Strauss notes that had Locke really believed that the two Testaments provided the foundation of political order, he would have written a “Politiqué tiree des propres paroles de l'Écriture Sainte” rather than his Two Treatises of Government. See Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), p. 205.Google Scholar While a treatment of the Two Treatises is beyond the scope of this essay, the opposition Strauss announces is a false one. Dunn is quite helpful on this point. In his words, “the Two Treatises [are] saturated with Christian assumptions—and those of a Christianity in which the New Testament counted very much more than the Old” (see Dunn, John, The Political Thought of John Locke [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969], p. 99).CrossRefGoogle Scholar While Locke's theory of government does not “consist of properly arranged quotations from scripture” (Strauss, , Natural Right and History, p. 205),Google Scholar it is not the secular theory Strauss would make it out to be. Likewise, Locke's doctrine of toleration is not a secular doctrine. It is more akin to a “politique tirée des propres paroles de l'Écriture Sainte” than has been imagined.

6. See, for example, Waldron's, Jeremy recent “Locke: Toleration and the Rationality of Persecution,” in Justifying Toleration, ed. Mendus, Susan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 61–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar While Waldron's intention to extract for us today what is viable in Locke's doctrine of toleration is commendable, his philosophical rendering of it misses the mark. Waldron concludes that Locke's argument “appeals to and is concerned with the interests of the persecutors and with the danger that, in undertaking intolerant action, they may exhibit a less than perfect rationality” (p. 85). In the following theological analysis of Locke's position I show that Locke's understanding of rationality was broader than Waldron wishes to allow. Rationality cannot be equated with interest in Locke.

Richards, David A.J., in Toleration and the Constitution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986),Google Scholar is closer to the truth of Locke's doctrine of toleration in noting that “[the] protection of the right to conscience [is] central to justice in politics and law because it preserves the moral sovereignty of the people” (p. 99). Richards also quite correctly sees the linkage between Locke's “Letters” and the Two Treatises, and argues that what underlies this linkage is Locke's hypothetical contract. While this is in an important sense correct, we should not forget that, unlike Hobbes, Locke's contracting individuals possess the natural reason given to Adam. The inviolability of the faculty of reason, given to Adam by God in the beginning (which Locke stresses), receives little attention by Hobbes. What Hobbes and Locke impute about their contracting individuals differs, I believe, in accordance with their judgment of whether reason survived the fall or not. With Hobbes and Locke we must go behind their contract theory to their interpretation of biblical history in order to arrive at a theoretically adequate point of departure into their political theory.

7. Locke, John, “A Letter Concerning Toleration” (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1955), p. 18.Google Scholar

8. Ibid., p. 19.

9. Ibid., p. 42.

10. This, in effect, is the position Hobbes takes also, though Hobbes claims that this is the case after Christ's first coming as well. The Leviathan, like Moses before him, is granted the right to interpret because reason remains unilluminated by God; it tends to go astray, to get caught up in itself. See, for example, Hobbes, , Leviathan, ed. Oakeshott, Michael (New York: Macmfflan, 1962), chap. 12, pp. 87–97,Google Scholar where, because reason cannot know first principles (God), it falls into superstition. See also Hobbes's, reference to the myth of Ixion in De Cive, trans. Gert, Bernard (Gloucester, MA: Humanities Press, 1978), pp. 97–98.Google Scholar Here Ixion is not allowed to sit at Jupiter's table because the result is always “contention and bloodshed.” From the first passage we learn that humankind cannot know God; from the second, that it should not be tempted to try. The political solution to the pride of those who do try is the Leviathan: the king of the children of pride.

11. Locke, , “Letter,” p. 43.Google Scholar

12. Ibid., p. 13.

13. See Locke, John, The Reasonableness of Christianity (Boston: T. B. Wait & Co., 1811), p. 223,Google Scholar where, “yet [the revelation of the Old Testament] was shut up in a little corner of the world. … But our Savior, when he came, threw down this wall of partition …” (emphasis in original).

14. Note that the Resonableness was written six years after the “Letter” (in 1695), and that while this conviction is there in the Resonableness, it is merely consistent with the sentiment expressed in the “Letter.” In the “Letter,” however, the justification for tolerance is not expressed in terms of the unconcealment of reason. Perhaps Locke was working toward that notion in the “Letter” and fully articulated it later, in the Resonableness. But see Gough, J.W., John Locke's Political Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950), p. 175,Google Scholar for the claim that Locke's thoughts on toleration had already coalesced in 1659. Regarding Gough's more general claim that “the essential question [of Locke's toleration] is a political one” (p. 176), I argue, to the contrary, that Locke's doctrine of toleration is essentially theological.

15. Hobbes, of course, argues that the task of the sovereign is precisely that: to exercise political power in matters of doctrinal interpretation (though not, he claims, in matters of faith). See Hobbes, , De Cive, chap. XVII, pp. 344–45,Google Scholar where Hobbes says that “[Christ did not come] into the world to teach logic. It remained therefore that the judges … of controversies, be the same with those whom God by nature had instituted before, namely, those who in each city are constituted by the sovereign” (emphasis in original).

This view accords more or less with that of Spinoza, who claims that the frequent disputes in Christian states stem from the separation of ecclesiastical and political orders. See de Spinoza, Benedict, A Theologico-Political Treatise (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1951), chap. XIX, pp. 254–55,Google Scholar where, “the Christian religion was not taught at first by kings, but by private persons, who, against the wishes of those in power … were for a long time accustomed to hold meetings in secret churches. … [This separation between ecclesiastical and political power was later further effected by the] multiplication of dogmas of religion to such an extent … that their chief interpreter was bound … to have leisure for a host of idle speculations: conditions which could only be fulfilled by a private individual with much time on his hands.” Locke would have agreed with Spinoza (and with Hobbes) on the matter of the unity of ecclesiastical and political power, had not Christ come into the world and separated the two realms. Christ has no significant place in Spinoza's Treatise; in his view, the New Dispensation and Old teach the same lesson: the necessity of obeying God. (See, for example, Spinoza, Ibid., chap. XIV, p. 183, where both Moses and the Gospels enjoin obedience.)

16. Locke, , “Letter,” p. 54.Google Scholar

17. Ibid., p. 57.

18. Luther expressed a similar sentiment with his claim that when the two worlds, spiritual and carnal, are confused “the door is opened or every kind of knavery [in its name].” See Luther, Martin, “Secular Authority: The Extent To Which It Must Be Obeyed,” in Martin Luther, ed. Dillenberger, John (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1961), pp. 371–72.Google Scholar

It should be made explicit here that for both Luther and Locke the argument for separating the political and religious realm is itself a theological argument. The implications of this have not been understood fully by those who see in Protestantism the agency which evacuates religion from the political sphere, and applaud it (Troeltsch, Weber, Wolin, and Pocock), or by those who see the same and decry the disenchantment it occasions (MacIntyre, Neuhaus). Neuhaus claims, for example, that “[the] vacuum with respect to political and spiritual truth is the naked public square. If [the West] is overthrown, the root cause of the defeat would lie in the impossible effort to sustain that vacuum. [John Courtney] Murray is right: not communism, but the effort to establish and maintain the naked public square would be the source of the collapse” (Neuhaus, Richard John, The Naked Public Square (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman's Publishing Co., 1984), p. 85).Google Scholar Neuhaus is particularly concerned with the abortion issue (ibid., pp. 26–28), and argues that it represents an instance in which the separation of the political and religious spheres is untenable; the public square cannot remain naked in this case. Locke, as I have mentioned, makes a theological argument for the separation of the political and religious realms, the purpose of which was to assure that obstacles to salvation be removed. (See T.A.N. 27 infra.) His concern is that the light of reason, of conscience, not be obliterated. He was, moreover, concerned with the adult human beings in whom reason had developed. How he would have viewed the unborn in whom reason and conscience had not yet developed is unclear.

19. Locke, , “Letter,” p. 59.Google Scholar

20. Locke is really concerned with two kinds of differences that make a difference: (1) heterodoxy and (2) differences among different religions. Regarding this second type, Locke argues that persons of different religious orientation cannot be heterodox to each other. Heterodoxy only occurs within a religious community where “the rule of faith and worship are of the same religion” (“Letter,” p. 59). This latter type of difference is so foreign as to not be a threat to civil peace at all. Difference of this sort, Locke seems to suggest, does not occur within one state and therefore is not problematic, though it can be a source of contention between states.

21. As already pointed out, toleration, for Locke, is necessary because of the truth of Christianity. It should not be surprising, therefore, for him to say: “those are not to be tolerated who deny the being of God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold on the atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all” (“Letter,” p. 52).

22. See Locke, John, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), bk. 1, chap. 1, §5, p. 45,Google Scholar where, “[human beings] have light enough to lead them to the knowledge of their Maker, and the sight of their duties”; and Ibid.., bk. 1, chap. 19, §21, p. 698, where, “Revelation is natural Reason enlarged by a new set of Discoveries communicated by GOD immediately” (emphasis in original).

23. Only the last four of the fifty pages of the “Letter” are concerned with internally generated difference. Note that in Revelation 22:18,19 John enjoins everyone “that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book” neither to add on to or subtract from—a similar thought.

24. Locke, , “Letter,” p. 62.Google Scholar In Locke's definition, a heretic or schismatic is a person who separates from or adds on to that content.

25. For Luther, the content of the scripture is revealed in the abyss of powerlessness where the Gospel is grasped “with other eyes [than] carnal reason doth [have]” (see Martin Luther, “Commentary on Galatians,” in Dillenberger, , Martin Luther, p. 164).Google Scholar In the abyss of powerlessness the light of the Gospel is revealed, to borrow Locke's language. For Locke, because Christ supplied the light, human beings can with their reason discover the content “manifestly contained” in the Gospel. The abyss of powerlessness (and the will necessary to encounter it) do not occasion the light that illuminates. It is simply there to been seen. There is an understandable content, and though some may “separate from” or “add on to” it, the content remains there to be seen by all who possess the faculty of reason. Luther, in other words, finds the will the key to the meaning of the Gospel, while Locke finds the key in the faculty of reason.

26. Where, for Locke, Christ brought into the world the light and foundation of Christian duty, for Hobbes, Christ renewed the covenant with God, which renewal grants the sovereign the authority to interpret the Gospel. In Locke's case, the light of revelation shines brightly enough (now) for all to interpret (along the same lines because Christ revealed the necessary foundation). In Hobbes's case, Christ was not the revealer, but the renewer; reason remains in the dark, as it were, after Christ as well as before His first coming.

27. Locke, , “Letter,” p. 34.Google Scholar

28. Ibid., p. 35.

29. It is for this reason that church affiliation must be completely voluntary (see “Letter,” pp. 20–26Google Scholar). All must be free to choose the church in which they worship, according to their own conviction. Much has been made of Locke's voluntarism. Indeed, it seems consistent with the supposed atomism of the liberal soul. I argue that Locke's voluntarism must be seen in terms of his conclusions about the dialectic of biblical history and not in terms of the analytical distinction between atomistic and socially constituted human beings, a distinction plagues contemporary readings of Locke, and of Hobbes as well.

30. Locke, , Resonableness, p. 181.Google Scholar

31. See Eliade, Mircea, A History of Religious Ideas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), vol. 2, sec. 224, pp. 359–61,Google Scholar for an excellent synopsis of the three theological explanations possible for the delay of the parousia: either a more fervent apocalyptic hope; a deferment of the kingdom until some future date; or a new life possible now because of Christ. Locke takes this third alternative.

32. Locke, of course, makes much of this grant of reason when discussing government in the Two Treatises. The other grant given by God to Adam in the beginning—the right of dominion — is the foundation for Locke's doctrine of property.

33. Locke, , Resonableness, p. 219Google Scholar (emphasis in original).

34. Ibid., p. 225.

35. Though I have not considered this important point, for Locke the society ruled by reason is the free society. See, for example, Locke, , Second Treatise, p. 348,Google Scholar where, “the end of [the] Law [of Reason] is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge Freedom” (emphasis in original).

Also note that Locke, like Luther before him, did believe Christianity provided the “bonds of union”— Rousseau's term — necessary to hold society together. It was Rousseau's subsequent claim that Christianity did not provide such bonds. See Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The Social Contract, trans. Roger, D. and Masters, Judith R. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1964), p. 186.Google Scholar

36. Locke, , Resonableness, p. 225.Google Scholar Augustine, much earlier, expressed the same thought in his City of God. The heading of bk. 2, chap. 7, reads: “The conclusions of the philosophers are ineffective as they lack divine authority. Man is easily corrupted and the God's examples influence him more than the argument of man” (cited in St. Augustine, , City of God, trans. Bettenson, Henry [New York: Penguin Books, 1984], p. 54).Google Scholar

37. Locke, , Resonableness, p. 227.Google Scholar

38. Ibid., p. 236. MacPherson's argument on this point is quite unsatisfactory. He claims that Locke's intention is to show that “the laboring class, beyond all others, is incapable of living a rational life” (MacPherson, C.B., The Theory of Possessive Individualism [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962], p. 226),Google Scholar and that this served as a justification for the political disenfranchisement of all wage earners. Locke, however, is not concerned with wage earners in the passage cited; he is concerned to show that Christ's revelation is the Divine supplement to the natural reason of the philosophers.

39. In this instance both Locke and Hobbes agree: authority is essential for belief. See Hobbes, , De Cive, chap. XVII, pp. 349–50.Google Scholar In the contemporary debate about interpretation, it is worth noting that Michael Polanyi has claimed, like Hobbes, that interpretation is dependent upon authority; though the authority with which Polanyi is concerned is the scientist's, not the sovereign's. According to Hobbes, the interpretation of scientific truth derives from the proposition itself— which the unaided individual can judge. Religious truth, in turn, derives from the authority of the person propounding it (De Cive, chap. XVIII, pp. 373–75Google Scholar). This, in conjunction with his idea that “the want of science disposes men to rely on the authority of others” (Leviathan, p. 93),Google Scholar led Hobbes to the belief that science was wholly beneficent and could not serve sinister ambitions (Behemoth, ed, Tonnies, Ferdinand [London: Simkin, Marshall & Co. 1889], p. 96).Google Scholar Polanyi's position is that this tidy distinction breaks down; for as scientific truth becomes ever more sophisticated, individuals must undergo an extended period of training in which they must trust in the authority of the person teaching them before they can learn to interpret scientific findings correctly. In Polanyi's view, scientific truth comes increasingly to resemble religious truth, not in terms of its content, but in terms of the relationship between interpretation and authority. See Polanyi, Michael, Meaning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), pp. 182–97.Google Scholar

Returning to Locke, see his Resonableness, p. 219,Google Scholar where, rational men did worship the one true God “in their own minds, but reason could not prevail upon the multitude.” Where for Locke, Christ provides the authority, for Hobbes it is the Leviathan who does so.

40. Locke, , Resonableness, p. 233.Google Scholar

41. Ibid., p. 232.

42. Luther's notion of the equality of all human beings before Christ resonates in this Lockean formulation. For both thinkers, Christ levels all heretofore-considered-significant differences. See Luther, , “Secular Authority,” p. 392,Google Scholar where, “there is no superior among Christians, but Christ Himself and Christ alone.”

43. Locke, , Resonableness, pp. 50–51.Google Scholar

44. Ibid., p. 25.

45. Locke, John, A Discourse of Miracles, in John Locke, ed. Ramsey, I.T. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958), p. 86.Google Scholar It was Locke's position that “the holy Men of Old … had outward Signs to convince them of the Author of [the] Revelations [they received]” (Locke, , Essay, bk. 4, chap. 19, §15, p. 705),Google Scholar and that these signs had now ceased. What, then, is to be made of the claims by enthusiasts that they had received revelations from God? Locke argues that reason must be the judge of such claims. That enthusiasts believe without reasons disqualifies their claims. Reason is the standard by which claims of the receipt of revelation must be judged. In matters where even reason cannot be certain, however, revelation—which was accompanied by outward signs —is the guide. Thus, reason where possible; revelation, where not. That reason should be the criterion of knowledge rather than belief, then, does not mean that philosophy is higher than religion; rather it means that if the claims of religious enthusiasts are not evaluated by reason (which was granted to Adam in the in the beginning and assisted by Christ upon His first coming) they cannot be considered true.

Compare this to Rousseau for whom the very notion of miracles and of revelation is problematic. “Apostle of truth, what have you to tell me of which I do not remain the judge? ‘God himself has spoken. Hear His revelation.' That is something else. God has spoken! That is surely a great statement. To whom has He spoken? ‘He has spoken to men.’ Why, then, did I hear nothing about it? ‘He has directed other men to give you his word.’ I understand: it is men who are going to tell me what God has said. I should have preferred to have heard God Himself” (Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Emile, trans. Bloom, Allan [New York: Basic Books, 1979], p. 297).Google Scholar The complexities of Rousseau's overall vision cannot be treated here. A brief comment is in order, however. Rousseau locates the whole of Christianity within the moment of civil society, which itself has a history that can be remembered. The state of nature is pre-history, which, like the statue of Glaucus, has all but been effaced —that is, obliterated from memory (Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Second Discourse, in The First and Second Discourses, trans. Masters, Roger [New York: St. Martin's Press, 1964], p. 91).Google Scholar The state of nature can only be recovered through an deep anamnetic act, a going back before (or a stepping out of) the historical time of which memory knows, to grasp the authentic Self. Unlike Augustine, for whom God created memory (Augustine, , The Confessions of Augustine [Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1960], bk. 10, chap. 25, “Lord of Mind and Memory” pp. 253–54),Google Scholar for Rousseau, the God of Christianity is a creation of memory. That is, Christianity can be relegated to the civil moment, because written down and memorable. For this reason a defense of revelation and miracles, passed on from generation to generation, remembered in history, is deeply problematic.

46. Locke, , Resonableness, pp. 54–65 (sec. 16), and p. 95.Google Scholar We should note here that Strauss saw in Locke's exposition of Christ's gradual unconcealment an explication more of Locke's view of the necessity of caution when speaking or writing for the public than of the truth of Christ. See Strauss, , Natural Right and History, p. 207,Google Scholar passim.

47. Locke, , Resonableness, p. 66.Google Scholar

48. Ibid., p. 131.

49. Ibid., p. 131. See also Ibid.., p. 152, where, in a reference to John 16:12, Christ spoke obscurely because his hearers could not bear it.

50. Locke, , Resonableness, pp. 114–15.Google Scholar

51. This dialectic of death and revelation is found, in philosophical form, in Hegel's thought as well. There, in its starkest formulation, Geist reveals itself to itself'on the slaughter bench of history.' See Hegel, G. W. F., Reason in History (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1953), p. 27.Google Scholar

52. Locke, , Resonableness, pp. 150–51.Google Scholar See also Ibid., p. 153, where, “my death and resurrection, and the coming of the Holy Ghost, will speedily enlighten you; and then I shall make you know the will of the father” (emphasis in original). On this reading, interestingly, the Enlightenment is the Age of the Holy Ghost.

In Hegel's view, similarly, the Holy Ghost was also necessary for the apostles to be imbued with the divine. Speaking of the time when Christ openly declares His kingdom, Hegel says, “now for the first time Jesus ventures to speak to his disciples of his impending fate; but Peter's consciousness of the divinity of his teacher at once assumes the character of faith only; the faith which senses the divine but which is not yet a filling of his whole being with the divine, not yet a reception of the Ghost” (The Spirit of Christianity, p. 267).Google Scholar We should recall that for Hobbes, too, the Holy Ghost was the agent of the acceptance of the truth of Christianity. But for Hobbes the Holy Ghost acted only when there was no authority present to interpret Scripture. (See Hobbes, , Leviathan, p. 380.Google Scholar) When an authority emerges the unauthorized hearer of the Gospel no longer has the right of interpretation. In Hobbes's view, in other words, Christ does not provide the light by which the reason possessed by every human being may know the truth of Scripture once it has been unconcealed—as Locke would have it.

53. Locke, , Resonableness, p. 186.Google Scholar

54. Ibid., pp. 220–23. One piece of evidence Locke cites for the universalization of what once was a particular claim is the fact that the apostles went out “among the nations” (p. 223).

55. See Strauss, Leo, “Athens or Jerusalem,” in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983)Google Scholar for a discussion of the alternatives of reason and divine dispensation. Locke claims that these alternatives have been united by the New Dispensation. See, for example, Locke, , Resonableness, p. 243,Google Scholar where, “[upon a view of heaven], and upon this foundation alone does morality [discovered but undisseminated by philosophers] stand firm.”

56. See note 22 supra for Locke's claim to this effect in the Essay.

57. Hegel comes to mind here. Writing about faith in The Spirit of Christianity, he notes that, “faith in the divine is only possible if in the believer himself there is a divine element which rediscovers itself, its own nature, in that on which it believes, even if it be unconscious that what it has found is its own nature” (p. 266).

58. This is Waldron's argument. See note 6 supra.

59. Something like this was Luther's claim; though for him the supersession of the Old by the New required that the Christian pass through the Old law in order that the New be revealed. In Luther's words, “when a man has learned through the commandments to recognize his own helplessness and is distressed about how he might satisfy the law … he finds in himself nothing whereby he may be justified and saved” (Luther, Martin, “Freedom of a Christian,” in Dillenberger, Martin Luther, p. 57,Google Scholar emphasis added). Only when “reduced to nothing in his own eyes” (Ibid., p. 57), only when the abyss of despair opens up, is it possible to enter into a marriage with Christ. The Old law must be passed through before the New Truth of Christ can be known. Luther's is a dialectic of supersession; the Old is both preserved and annulled by the New. When the New is taken to supersede the Old nondialectically, then Christian righteousness become politically volatile, for here the power of faith is taken only to annul the powers of the world.