Locke S Premise in His Tract on Religious Toleration Term Paper

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Locke and Proast: Religious Toleration

Proast's main criticisms of Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration are that the government does have a right and, indeed, a duty to use moderate force in order to compel its subjects to adhere to the one true religion -- which in Proast's view is the religion of the Anglican Church. This was in response to Locke's contention that by attempting to regulate religion, the State supported conflict, but that in adopting a policy of religious tolerance for religions that promoted tolerance as well (thus ruling out the Catholic Church in his view) the State could avoid promoting conflict. Locke also argued that the State had no mandate from God to oversee religion or religious development and that thus religious toleration was the only moral principle for the State to follow. Proast disagreed, asserting that the magistrate did have a duty to oversee the religious developments of its people and to keep the spread of false religion to a minimum so as to prevent spiritual and social harm coming to its populace. Moreover, the magistrate's mandate was obvious in the Anglican Church's mandate, which saw the king's role as head of the Anglican Church. Thus, with Anglicanism recognized as the true religion in England, the State had a clear mandate to support it and prevent false religions (i.e., Catholicism) from gaining an advantage.

These criticisms are only justified if one agrees with Proast's sense of Anglicanism being the true religion. If one follows the scholastic conception that truth has rights, errors has none, then it follows that the Anglican Church being the church of the true religion has the right to exert moderate force in its defense; such a strategy is consistent with the idea of militancy in defense of a doctrine or a of a culture/way of life. Without defenses, a culture, way of life or religion can be attacked, undermined and eventually subjugated or eliminated altogether. Proast's argument is valid on this point, because his aim is one of preservation. It is not, however, consistent with Locke's aim, which is not preservation but rather prevention: Locke's idea of religious toleration is meant to prevent the Catholic Church from spreading or gaining a foothold in Protestant England. The idea is that because Catholicism represents itself as the one true religion and does not promote religious toleration (at least, it did not in the 17th century), then it has no right to exist in a state that enforces religious toleration. Here, according to Locke, the principle to be enforced is religious liberty (which equates to no church asserting itself as the one true church). The problem for Proast is that he believes the Anglican Church is and should assert itself as the church of the true religion. Thus, Proast cannot support the doctrine of religious toleration as it is promoted by Locke, because ultimately Locke's sense of toleration would undermine the authority that the Anglican Church should seek to cultivate. In this sense, if one accepts the premise that the Anglican Church is the church of the true religion (as Proast does), Proast's argument is completely valid.

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But if one does not accept that premise, and Locke does not appear to accept it, as he asserts that the state has no right to make assertions on the truth of religion (for this is a matter of religious institutions rather than of civil or secular institutions), then Locke's argument may lay a claim to validity -- to an extent. Locke promotes the notion of the separation of church and state -- and this is not something that can be reconciled with a church like the Anglican Church or the Catholic Church -- or any church that views itself as being the custodian of true religion. For Locke, the matter is not one of much importance as far as the state should be concerned -- but for Proast, the state and its form of government is an extension of the religion of its people; the state should protect and guide the truth as vigilantly as it guards and protects and defends its borders. Truth and truth in religion demands as much militancy as the nation's resources do in terms of protection and support. For Locke, this is not the case -- but that is only because his aim is not one of preservation: the purpose of his treatise is to undermine the Catholic Church; if the Anglican Church must also suffer as a kind of collateral damage, so be it. Thus, Locke's argument is only partially valid in the sense that if one's aim is to destroy all religious bodies who seek to assert themselves as custodians of true religion, then one can promote and enforce religious toleration because it will ensure that no one religion is allowed publicly to proclaim itself as true and thus fulfill its missionary duties and activities as a propagator of the faith. Religious toleration has a crippling effect on the idea of religion being true. It supports the civic notion that truth in religion simply does not matter and one should not fight about it -- and if one chooses to fight about it, he and his group shall be completely banished, outlawed, or suppressed.

Therefore, Locke's arguments can only be defended against the criticisms of Proast if one's premise is that truth in religion is superfluous and irrelevant. If it is relevant and not superfluous, it should bear upon the state, as Proast suggests, to uphold it, as the authority in any country should uphold the truth as vehemently as it upholds any other important institution, resource, or law. Truth, according to the Grecian philosophers who pursued it most vehemently themselves (Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, for instance) was of prime importance in society (in their view) and religious truth was of equal importance (as all truth no matter the sphere or sector is related). Thus, for Locke's position to be upheld as valid, the premise has to be that truth does not matter, that truth in fact cannot be known, and that truth is ultimately what one makes of it.….....

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