201 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XX, 2018, 3, pp. 201-246. ISSN: 1825-5167 JOHN LOCKE ON ATHEISM, CATHOLICISM, ANTINOMIANISM, 1 AND DEISM DIEGO LUCCI American University in Bulgaria
[email protected] ABSTRACT Locke’s religious conception of morality played a primary role in shaping his views on toleration and salvation. In A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), Locke excluded from toleration atheists, whom he considered inherently immoral, and Roman Catholics, whose morals he judged harmful to society. In The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695), he turned to Christian revelation in search of the foundations of morality. His moralist soteriology denied the possibility of salvation to those who, like antinomians and deists, rejected Christ’s moral and salvific message. To Locke, antinomians denied any importance to good works, while deists relied on natural reason alone, thus neglecting the limits of unassisted reason and the weakness of human nature. Nevertheless, Locke’s hostility to antinomianism and deism did not lead him to invoke the civil power against antinomians and deists, whom he judged still able to understand, albeit partially and imperfectly, the divine law and, thus, to behave morally. KEYWORDS Antinomianism, atheism, Catholicism, deism, Locke 1. INTRODUCTION John Locke is widely known as the founder of modern empiricism and the father of political liberalism. However, his works also denote a strong interest 1 This essay is one of the results of a study period I spent at the University of Hamburg from February to July 2018, when I was a Senior Research Fellow of the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies (MCAS). I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the Director of the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies, Prof.