TOLERATION WITHOUT TOLERANCEEpistolain November 1685, while living in exile in Utrecht, and it is for the most part a
reiteration of another essay from 1667—entitled ‘‘An Essay Concerning Toleration’’—
which Locke refused to have published. One reason for this might be that the 1667 essay
represents a change in Locke’s thinking, which until then had been rather conservative,
favoring the right of the civil powers in matters of religious worship. But mindful of what
he had learned from the early Earl of Shaftesbury, who defended the Whig Revolution
against King Charles II, Locke became convinced that the time was ripe for another kind
of government, one that would guarantee the liberty of individuals who live in opposition
to their government. This led to the theory of private property that lies at the heart of
Locke’sSecond Treatise of Government(1690). It also led to what a majority of contempo-
rary theorists see as the foundation upon which theEpistolarelies.^9
Without oversimplifying, we might say that Locke’s theory of private property has
two parts. The first part shows how religion belongs to the jurisdiction of the private
sphere, based on the assumption that religious beliefs, like other modes of private prop-
erty, are a product of the labor that individuals put into the land given by God to mankind
in general. The second part shows that it is impossible to regulate the private sphere
politically, since politicians, being subject to the jurisdiction of the public sphere, only
have the means toprotectproperty, leaving it to each individual to decide how he or she
wants toappropriatethis property. These insights demonstrate not only the irrationality
of persecution but also the rationality of a policy that limits the jurisdiction of the state.
Indeed, they lead Locke to conclude that we must distinguish the business of the church
from that of the state. ‘‘If this be not done,’’ Locke warns, ‘‘there can be no end put to
the controversies that will be always arising between those that have, or at least pretend
to have, on the one side, a concernment for the interest of men’s souls, and, on the other
side, a care of the commonwealth.’’^10
Needless to say, the distinction between church and state earned Locke a place in the
canon of modern secular liberalism. It anticipates the idea of limited government, and it
shows why this kind of government should stay neutral in debates about religion. But
what seems like a purely secular theory is more than a cornerstone in the history of
modern liberalism. It is also a party to the controversy concerning the reasonable, and,
hence, true nature of the Christian faith, which, Locke argues, shows both ‘‘the necessity
and advantage’’ of, if nottolerance, then at leasttoleration.^11 More than a few commenta-
tors have been critical of the Christianization that this proposition entails. They argue
that it compromises the neutrality of liberalism and that it makes Locke’s argument ‘‘un-
interesting from a philosophical point of view.’’^12 It may be true that Christian belief, no
matter how charitably we define it, compromises the neutrality of liberalism. But the
lesson is not that this makes Locke’s discourse uninteresting. Rather, it shows how issues
like tolerance and toleration depend upon arguments that do not distinguish sharply
between politics and religion. The way we negotiate this dependency hinges on the con-
PAGE 331331.................16224$ CH17 10-13-06 12:35:43 PS