The Reasonableness of Christianity [antikvár]

FOREWORDPROFESSOR GEORGE W. EWING'S introduction to the 1965 edition of Locke's 1695 work, The Reasonableness of Christianity as Delivered in the Scriptures, offers a clear and concise description of Locke's life, influence, and stature in a mere thirteen pages. It would be foolish to attempt to supersede it. Instead, let me draw the reader's attention to the remarkable fact, often overlooked, that Lockethe pioneer of empiricism (Essay Concerning Understanding [1689]) and of civil liberty (Two Treatises on Government [1689-92])was a self-professed enthusiast for Jesus Christ and the Bible.This unusual combination of a highly critical mind, with its commitment to empiricism and liberty, and a profound, almost evangelistic zeal for the person of Christ and the authority of the Bible, may help explain why the country he most influenced, the United States, combines a great measure of personal religion in the general population with a government and educational system that are at best indifferent to religion, if not outright hostile to it. The key is Locke's effort to proclaim in a nondogmatic way a religion that depends in large measure on its dogmas.Locke wanted people simply to trust and honor Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of God. He did not want to entangle himself in the theological inquiry and reasoning that explained how a man could in fact be God's only-begotten Son: for to do so would produce dogma, and according to Locke, creed-makers garbled the inspired writings of the Holy Scriptures and magisterially ascribed orthodoxy "to a select set of fundamentals, distinct from those