Locke vs Stillingfleet
The Essay, substance, and the suspicion of heresy
Venue: Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester, *A Discourse in Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity* (1696); Locke, three published letters in reply; Stillingfleet, two further replies.
A bishop's suspicion that Locke's philosophy undercuts the Trinity, and Locke's slow, careful, voluminous reply.
Edward Stillingfleet, the Bishop of Worcester, saw in Locke's *Essay Concerning Human Understanding* (1689) the philosophical scaffolding for John Toland's sceptical *Christianity Not Mysterious* (1696). Stillingfleet's 1696 *Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity* argued that Locke's account of substance ("something we know not what") and his way-of-ideas epistemology threatened the intelligibility of the Trinity. Locke replied in a long Letter (1697), then another (1697), then a Third Letter (1699), patiently explaining what his philosophy did and did not entail. The exchange is one of the most detailed surviving disputes over Locke's metaphysics in his lifetime and pushed him to clarify positions on substance, personal identity, and the relation of reason to faith. Stillingfleet died in 1699; Locke survived him by five years and incorporated revisions reflecting the debate into the *Essay*'s fourth edition.
Historical Context
Stillingfleet was an eminent Anglican churchman; his political-ecclesiastical position made the exchange more than academic. Locke's religious views were always under suspicion (his Socinian and possibly Unitarian sympathies were widely discussed), and the *Essay*'s implications for orthodox theology were a live political issue.
Parties
Locke's philosophy of substance and his way-of-ideas epistemology, however unintended by Locke himself, supply the conceptual resources for Trinitarian heresy. To safeguard orthodoxy, Locke's positions on substance, certainty, and faith require correction.
Key arguments
- If our idea of substance is so thin ("something we know not what") that we cannot ground the unity-in-distinction the Trinity requires, then Locke's philosophy threatens orthodox theology.
- The Lockean criterion of certainty (clear and distinct ideas) sets a standard the doctrines of revealed religion cannot easily meet; Toland reads Locke this way.
- Substance language has been the carrier of orthodox theology for centuries; Locke's account requires either qualification or rejection.
- The pastoral and political stakes are high — religious peace in England depends on orthodox theology being defensible.
Allied schools
The *Essay*'s account of substance is methodological — what we *can* know about substance — not metaphysical denial of substance itself. Faith and reason both have proper domains; revealed truths exceed reason's reach without contradicting it.
Key arguments
- Substance: we know of its existence (qualities require a bearer) but not of its inner constitution; this is a limit on our knowledge, not a denial of the substance.
- Way of ideas: clear and distinct ideas are required for certainty, but probable belief covers the broader range of human cognition, including most of what we hold by faith.
- Trinity: assent to it on the authority of revelation is consistent with the *Essay*; what reason cannot fully comprehend, faith may still embrace where evidence warrants.
- Pastoral implication: religious certainty grounded in dogmatism is more fragile than religious commitment that acknowledges the limits of human reason.
Allied schools
Dimensions Engaged
Matter
Matter · Ontological Status: how thick must our concept of substance be to support the work theology and metaphysics require of it?
Observer
Observer · Knowledge Extent: where do the proper domains of reason and faith lie?
Verdict in retrospect
Locke did not retreat from his positions but refined them in the fourth-edition revisions of the *Essay* and in his later *Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St Paul* (posthumous, 1707). Subsequent reception of Locke split: Anglo-American empiricism continued the *Essay*'s programme, sometimes more radically (Hume); orthodox theology continued to find the Lockean account thin. The deeper question of how empiricist epistemology relates to theological substance-talk remains a live thread through Berkeley, Hume, Reid, Kant, and into 20th-century philosophy of religion.
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Further reading
- Locke, *Letters to Stillingfleet*, in *The Works of John Locke* (1823 edition), vol. 4
- Stillingfleet, *A Discourse in Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity* (1696)
- Marko, *Measuring the Distance: Stillingfleet and Locke on the Trinity, Substance, and the Limits of Reason* (2017)