Lockes Essay and Unitarianism

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Lockes Essay and Unitarianism

John Locke has been called the greatest philosopher of the western world. His greatest achievement is considered to be the “Essay Concerning Human Understanding”. However, the Essay Concerning Human Understanding is very difficult to read. We are removed by 300 years from Lockes time and some of his statements seem odd. We don’t know why he said what he did in his Essay.

I will here provide a key to understanding much of Lockes Essay. I will show what I call the red thread that runs through John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

George W. Ewing, in the introduction to the 1964 reprint of John Locke’s “Reasonableness of Christianity” states: “Lockes private library had a considerable collection of Sociniana”. So what is Sociniana? Sociniana is a name given to the Unitarian, also called Antitrinitarian, writings from that period. The name comes from Faustus Socinus (1539-1604). Click this link for more information on the Socinian’s:

socinian.org/socinian_refresher.html

Socinian is another term for Unitarian. Unitarian, as it was understood in the time of Locke, means a Christian that believes in one God and rejects the Trinity. Locke was a Unitarian. In order to understand Lockes Essay you must understand that Locke was a Unitarian, because much of what he says in the Essay pertains to the Trinitarian verses Unitarian controversy of his time. If you are unaware of the Trinitarian verses Unitarian controversy, and unaware that Locke was a Unitarian you will not understand Lockes Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

Lets start with this one:

“Words being intended for signs of my ideas…it is plain cheat and abuse, when I make them stand sometimes for one thing, and sometimes for another; the wilful doing whereof, can be imputed to nothing but great folly, or greater dishonesty. And a man in his accounts with another may, with as much fairness, make the characters of numbers stand sometimes for one and sometimes for another collection of units. e.g. this character 3 stands sometimes for three, sometimes for four and sometimes for eight…If men should do so in their reckonings (business affairs) I wonder who would have anything to do with them…And yet in arguings and learned contests the same sort of proceeding passes commonly for wit and learning: but to me it appears a greater dishonesty than the misplacing of counters in the casting up of a debt, and the cheat the greater, by how much truth is of greater concernment than money.”

[Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book 3, Chap 10, Sec 5]

Notice how Locke is critical of those who say “this character 3 stands sometimes for three and sometimes for another number”. Why does he say that? If you understand that Locke was Unitarian it becomes self evident. It’s in reference to those defending the Trinity.

“He that needs a probation (trial period) to convince him that two are not three, that white is not black, that a circle is not a triangle, etc. or any other two determined distinct ideas are not one and the same, will also need a demonstration to convince him that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be.”

[Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book 4, Chap 7, Sec 19]

Here again, notice how Locke is critical of those who "need a probation (trial period) to convince him that two are not three. Why does he say that? It’s a refute to those that defend the Trinity.

Keep in mind that you must read these in context and I’m quoting excerpts for brevity. Locke does not outright say that he is referring to the reasonings being used in the Trinitarian versus Unitarian controversy. But once the reader is aware of Lockes Unitarian leanings it becomes self evident that it played a significant part in his Essay.

“And I desire those who lay so much stress on the sound of these two syllables, ‘substance’, to consider whether applying it as they do to the infinite incomprehensible God, to finite spirit and to body it be in the same sense, and whether it stands for the same idea, when each of those three so different beings are called ‘substances’?..If the name ‘substance’ stands for three several distinct ‘ideas’ they would do well to make known those distinct ‘ideas’, or at least to give three distinct names to them, to prevent in so important a notion (e.g. idea of God) the confusion and errors that will naturally follow from the promiscuous use of so doubtful a term.”

[Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book 2, Chap 13, Sec 18]

Observe how Locke says “each of those three so different beings are called ‘substances’” in this passage, and it’s in reference to an idea of God. Again, the criticism of the reasonings used to defend the Trinity become self evident.

This quote from Aquinas is an example of the reasonings used to explain the Trinity and Christ’s incarnation:

“Of course, as is evident, when a whole is divided, each separate part has its own proper existence; but according as parts are considered in a whole, they do not have their own existence for they exist with the existence of a whole.”

[Aquinas’s Shorter Summa, Sec 212]

Now, compare that quote from Aquinas with this one from Locke:

“Is it impossible to know that one and two are equal to three, but by virtue of this or some other axiom, viz. 'the whole is equal to all its parts taken together ?”

[Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book 4, Chap 7, Sec 10]

Again, once the controversy between the Trinitarians and Unitarians is understood, and when it is realized that Locke was a Unitarian you will then begin to understand why Locke makes these, and other similar such statements in his “Essay Concerning Human Understanding”.