In the three centuries since the publication of the Two Treatises, a series of verbal cairns set therein by Locke, though scarcely concealed, has gone entirely unremarked. Only from the vantage point their trail affords, however, can we grasp the coherence of the Treatises and thereby comprehend both the severity of Locke's critique of Christianity and the power of his theory of property, a theory so powerful—certainly in Locke's own estimation—that it reconstitutes the relation between children and parents, wives and husbands, servants and masters, persons and polities, and ultimately between man and God. As we shall see, Locke's theory of property is also a story of man's enlightenment, a history of man's coming to own his own mind, freed from the irrational claims of revelation.

The world of scholarship needs no reprise of the debate between “Straussians” and their critics and none will be attempted here.Footnote ¹ I should say a word, however, about method. I follow closely the sequence in which Locke presents his points in Two Treatises and attend carefully his advice to the “Reader” (Preface, 1.40, 1.44, 1.49, 1.121). Likewise, I make little reference to Locke's other works: Locke wrote the Two Treatises anonymously, without referring to his other works and he wrote his other works without referring to the Two Treatises. Accordingly, we may safely believe Locke thought the Two Treatises fully accessible on its own.Footnote ²

Indeed, the reader who follows the trail marked by Locke's cairns should find his presentation systematic, not “scattered.”Footnote ³ In the First Treatise, Locke signals the reader to a vantage point where he views in common frame the utter irrationality of Peruvian cannibalism and the “Fatherly Authority” of Judeo-Christianity. Here Locke informs the reader that using reason as his only star and compass, he will examine “in its due place” the true character of fatherly authority and properly distinguish it from political authority. We can reach that place in chapter 6 of the Second Treatise, “Of Paternal Power,” but only if we trace Locke's argument from the “estate all men are naturally in” (2.4), where Locke presents a radically deist version of man as the workmanship of God (hence the property of God and his servant), through his famous, but imperfectly grasped, treatment of property in chapter 5. There, this servant, through the course of human history, becomes “Master of himself.” On this foundation of self-ownership, Locke then reconstitutes household, polity, relations among polities, and, of course, revolution. More subtly, his repeated references to Jephthah invite a more rational understanding of our relation to God. This is the trail I follow below.

The First Treatise

We pick up Locke's trail in the First Treatise, where he refutes Sir Robert Filmer's account of political authority, an apology for Stuart absolutism and the divine right of kings. The work now seems so antiquarian and tedious that most publishers consider Locke's summary of it at the outset of the Second Treatise to be quite sufficient. In his preface to the First Treatise, Locke appears actually to encourage this depreciation: the claim of divine right has become passé since the people put King William on the throne by their consent. Further, we have here only the beginning and end of his discourse; some “Fate” has disposed of the middle papers. What remains, however, he hopes, will satisfy “the Reader,” for Locke will likely not find time or have the inclination “to repeat [his] Pains . . . by tracing Sir Robert again, through all the Windings and Obscurities which are to be met with in the several Branches of his wonderful System.” Locke makes it easy to get lost in his own windings and obscurities, but for the attentive reader he also marks a path leading to a shocking but illuminating vista.

To affirm the divine right of kings, Filmer believed he needed to deny that man was ever born free; instead, Filmer argued, man was born under what he styled “Fatherly Authority.”Footnote ⁴Patriarcha, published posthumously, was Filmer's most sustained and influential effort and the central object of Locke's criticism. But this work, according to Locke, offers no real argument for this “Fatherly Authority.” Instead, Filmer simply tells us the “Story” of how absolute, unlimited sovereignty was vested by God in Adam and then by his will descended through biblical history down to contemporary monarchs. Filmer seems to believe he obviates the historical difficulties with this account by invoking the fifth commandment to “Honor Thy Father,” which Locke jokingly calls a “one half Reason,” as Filmer omits the rest of the commandment—“and thy Mother”—“as little serviceable to his purpose.” Then, Locke tells the attentive reader he will have more to say about this scriptural support from the fifth commandment in “another place” (1.6)—what I have called his verbal cairn.

But first, Locke seeks a more exact definition of this “Fatherly Authority,” a concept that Filmer extends to both kings and natural fathers. Because this fatherly authority assumes a “Gigantic Form,” “very odd and frightful,” contrary to “what either Children imagine of their Parents, or Subjects of their Kings,” Locke alleges that Filmer has deviously “scattered” its various aspects throughout Patriarcha (1.7). Locke gathers these from Patriarcha as well as Filmer's other works to reveal an absolute, arbitrary power over “his Children and Subjects; so that he may take or alienate their Estates, sell, castrate, or use their Persons as he pleases, they being all his Slaves, and he Lord or Proprietor of every Thing, and his unbounded Will their Law” (1.9). Given the awful character of this “Fatherly Authority,” it is remarkable that in the whole of Patriarcha, we find “not one Pretense of a Reason” to support it—except Filmer's aforementioned “Honor thy Father,” by which logic, Locke observes once again, all power could be lodged in an absolute queen, since the Bible commands as well: “Honor thy Mother” (1.11).

With his précis of Patriarcha complete, we might expect Locke now to analyze the fifth commandment as promised. Instead, we find another cairn, telling us we will find that analysis “in its due place” (1.11). First, Locke writes, we must consult Filmer's other works—so that we “might omit no care to inform” ourselves concerning Filmer's support for fatherly authority. From Filmer's Observations on Aristotle, Hobs, Etc., he selects a passage,Footnote ⁵ which he paraphrases as a set of propositions a reader will find “up and down in [Filmer's] other Treatises” (1.11). To each of these propositions Locke devotes a chapter: “Of Adam's Title to Sovereignty by Creation” (chapter 3), “Of Adam's Title to Sovereignty, by Donation” (chapter 4), “Of Adam's Title to Sovereignty, by the Subjection of Eve” (chapter 5), and “Of Adam's Title to Sovereignty, by Fatherhood” (chapter 6). Devastating in his logic and wit, Locke occasionally will tell the reader to read the scripture and Filmer's text directly to gain the full force of his critique. For example, in making the case for fatherly authority by virtue of the subjection of Eve, Filmer had relied on this biblical passage: “And thy desire shall be to thy Husband, and he shall rule over thee.” Locke asks the reader to “carefully Read [Filmer's] own reasoning from these Words and consider … ‘the Line and Posterity of Adam’” (1.44). One who does so will find that Filmer has inadvertently conflated the case for Adam's sovereignty with a case for incest, adultery, and homosexuality.Footnote ⁶ And further encouraging this reader (“any sober Man”) to read Filmer and the Bible, Locke repeats the joke a few paragraphs later (1.49).

With each of Filmer's other biblical claims dispatched or ridiculed, one should think that now we have reached the place where Locke will analyze Filmer's reliance on the fifth commandment. Yet in another gesture of mock courtesy, or “fair play” (1.51), Locke gives us another cairn: before examining Filmer's reliance on the fifth commandment, we should first take a side excursion to consider two “Reasons others give” for fatherly authority, “since [Filmer] offers none” (1.51) (!). The first holds that it is the father who gives children their “Life and Being” (1.52–55), neglecting thereby, Locke notes, the intricate “Workmanship” of God as well as the labor of the mother. That man is the workmanship of God, of course, is the premise on which Locke will articulate the laws of nature in the Second Treatise and which we will explore further in that context.

The second “Reason” given is the “Practice of Mankind.” If we rely on mere “practice,” Locke responds, we risk building upon “the most shameful Action, and most unnatural Murder, humane nature is capable of,” that is, filicide, a parent killing his own child—or at its perfection, feasting upon that child. The latter point he illustrates famously with a passage from Garcilaso de la Vega describing cannibal warriors of Peru: they were “so liquorish after Mans Flesh,” they would suck the blood from their still living victims and offer human flesh in “publick Shambles” (butcher shops); indeed their “Madness herein was to that degree” that they would beget children by their captive women only to fatten them to eat as tender adolescents (1.56–57).

Of this passage, Laslett comments that Locke must have “dragged [it] in to make a sensation,” since “it has no particular relevance” to his argument.Footnote ⁷ On the contrary, no passage is of greater relevance, for it is this passage that Locke uses to frame what he wishes the reader to see when he assesses Filmer's reliance on the fifth commandment. What Filmer brings to “perfection” in theory, the Peruvian warriors bring to “perfection” in practice (see 1.5 and 1.57). With this vivid image of cannibals before us, Locke asks the reader to consider how “far can the busie mind of Man carry him … when he quits his reason … which is his only Star and compass.” And with reason now firmly as our guide, Locke asks the reader to “impartially survey the Nations of the World.” He must see that if reason is set aside, man is ready for every “extravagant project.” In fact, the more extravagant the deed, the more impressive the doer, and the more likely the doer is to inspire followers. When “Fashion” establishes “what Folly or craft began” and “Custom makes it Sacred,” it will be thought “impudence or madness, to contradict or question it.” Indeed, Locke notes, even the “people of God,” the ancient Hebrews, by adopting a Canaanite custom, came to resemble the Peruvians—except they fed their children to idols rather than themselves (1.58).Footnote ⁸

Mindful again that Locke has just implored us to “impartially survey the Nations of the World” using reason as our only “Star and compass” (1.58), we do at last reach our destination, where Locke will analyze Filmer's fifth commandment claim (1.60). If we fail to read these paragraphs with care, however, we are likely to be disappointed: Locke seems merely to repeat the observation with which he began. That is, he notes that the fifth commandment reads, “Honor thy father and thy mother!” (emphasis added), and then he merely piles on more scripture saying the same thing—as if we harbored doubt about the biblical authority of the Ten Commandments. But if we do read these paragraphs with care, we see something odd in his choice of references: the power shared “equally” by father and mother includes what Locke has just called “the most shameful Action, and most unnatural Murder, humane Nature is capable of” (1.56)—parents killing their children. “He that smiteth his Father or Mother, shall surely be put to Death [Exod.] 21.15. He that Curseth his Father or Mother, shall surely be put to Death” [Exod. 21] Ver.17. Repeated Lev. 20.9; … Matthew 15.4” (quoted by Locke at 1.61). More disturbing still, if a child gives false prophecy, the Bible commands that “his Father and his Mother that begat him, shall thrust him through” (quoted by Locke at 1.61, quoting Zech. 13:3; see also 1.55).

As Locke dryly notes, “Here not the Father only, but Father and Mother joyntly, had Power in this Case of Life and Death” (1.61). Then in his only reference to Jesus Christ in the whole of the Two Treatises, Locke observes that this “equality” of father and mother (including by implication the obligation to respond to idolatry with filicide) is also supported “by our Savior's Interpretation” (1.61; repeated, 1.66).Footnote ⁹ In sum, here Locke charges the authority of Judeo-Christianity with the same “most unnatural murder” as the practice of Peruvian cannibalism.Footnote ¹⁰

Using now reason as his only star and compass, Locke points the reader to a new destination, where “we shall in its due place examine” (1.66) the true character of fatherly authority, or rather parental authority—and sharply distinguish it from political authority. The remainder of the First Treatise is not unimportant, but with Filmer now fully refuted, Man's “Natural Liberty” affirmed (1.67), and compass in hand, the reader can take a short cut to the Second Treatise.Footnote ¹¹

The Second Treatise

In the Second Treatise Locke will set down what he proposes “to be Political Power.” And he will distinguish this power from that of “of a Father over his Children,” as well as that of “a Master over his Servant, a Husband over his Wife, and a Lord over his Slave” (2.2). To do this, Locke will restate the “Workmanship” thesis he offered in the First Treatise and, in chapter 5, “Of Property,” he will trace man's endeavor to make something of himself.

We encounter the workmanship thesis at the outset of the Second Treatise, where Locke tells us, if we are “to understand Political Power right, and derive it from its Original, we must consider what State all Men are naturally in …” (2.4). This condition is neither a state of sin, as a Christian might think, nor a polis, as an Aristotelian might think, but a state of “Equality” and “perfect freedom”—a condition therefore lacking common political authority, or what he calls a “State of Nature.” Though lacking established authority, it is not a “State of License” because it has a law of nature to govern it. This law is reason and will teach any “who will but consult it.”

Many assume Locke's “law of nature” to fit the long Christian tradition of reconciling reason and revelation, begun with Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century and restated by the Anglican Thomas Hooker in the seventeenth. And indeed, Locke cites Hooker as authority for his presentation of the state of nature and its laws. But, as many have noted, Hooker is just a cloak of respectability.Footnote ¹² Where Hooker quotes the first of the two Great Commandments, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Matt. 22:37–38), Locke with clever editorial adjustments restates Hooker's text to read in effect, “preserve yourself” (2.6). And where Hooker quotes the second of these Great Commandments, “Love thy neighbor as thyself” (Matt. 22:39), Locke restates its terms as “preserve the rest of Mankind as much as you can, when your own Preservation comes not in competition” (2.6).Footnote ¹³

Indeed, Locke derives these duties not from scripture, but from our status as the “Workmanship of one Omnipotent, and infinitely wise Maker”; all his “Servants,” “his Property,” “made to last during his, not one another's Pleasure” (2.6). Though these expressions are sufficiently reminiscent of Christian doctrine that conventional interpretation regards them as such,Footnote ¹⁴ we can better grasp what Locke had in mind if we return to the passage in the First Treatise where Locke paused to consider “Reasons others give” for fatherly authority, “since [Filmer] offers none” (1.51). There Locke had responded to the outsized claim of fathers that because they bring children into being, they have absolute authority over them. We must recall, Locke wrote, it is God who is “the Author and Giver of Life: ‘‘Tis in him alone that we live, move, and have our Being.” The passage is from Acts 17:28, but rather than explicating scripture, Locke invites the reader directly to observe the intricacies of bodily parts and that wondrous “Operation wherein Life consists in the whole” (1.52). Anatomists and philosophers, he notes, after a lifetime of inquiry remain at a loss to explain this phenomenon. He then states the classical deist argument that design implies a designer, commenting on the human eye, “The structure of that one part is sufficient to convince us of an All-wise Contriver” (1.53). This idea of God as an inference from natural reason, informed by empirical evidence, Locke never rejects in Two Treatises, nor does he fully abandon the idea of moral obligations rooted in (though not fully formed by) God's workmanship.

This interpretation of Locke as a sort of deist contrasts not only with the common portrayal of Locke as Christian, but also, though in more subtle ways, with the highly influential interpretation of Michael Zuckert. Zuckert agrees that the two obligations Locke articulates at the outset (preserve yourself; preserve others when you can) do match deism more closely than revelation. But this mildly esoteric teaching of a “transcendent natural law,” Zuckert believes, provides only temporary scaffolding, which Locke promptly starts to dismantle, by displaying two difficulties. The first difficulty concerns the power of each man to execute the law of nature. With each person preserving himself, the state of nature quickly collapses into a state of war, failing thus to effect the “Peace and Preservation of all Mankind” as willed by the law of nature (2.7).Footnote ¹⁵ The second difficulty occurs when Locke discusses the condition of one who, having forfeited his own by life by designing to take another's, has been made a slave. There is no injustice in making this man a slave, Locke had argued, because he now has no right to live, and if he would rather die, he can resist the will of his master and so “draw on himself the Death he desires” (2.24). Such power, according to Zuckert, implies the slave has a right of suicide. But suicide would be incompatible with the law of nature (“preserve yourself”). It would, however, according to Zuckert, be compatible with natural rights and self-ownership—and there we have Locke's true teaching.

As we shall see in his account of property, Locke will sometimes assert a proposition that he gradually, though dramatically, qualifies or restates, but Zuckert's claim that Locke undermines his fundamental premises with these two arguments is premature at best and almost certainly misguided. The tendency of the state of nature to lapse into the state of war by virtue of each individual holding the executive power merely shows that additional voluntary human steps are needed to secure one's rights and effectuate peace, that is, government by consent, but it does not require that we conceptualize these rights as primary rather than secondary to a natural law.

More important for Zuckert is the slave's power to “draw on himself the Death he desires.” This “right” of the slave, he asserts, “settles the question [of ownership] definitely in favor of self-ownership.”Footnote ¹⁶ We must recall, however, that a person becomes a slave only by committing a crime of such magnitude that he forfeits all of his rights (2.23). Though Zuckert's interpretive and conceptual efforts are impressive,Footnote ¹⁷ it remains difficult to comprehend how one who forfeits his rights entirely comes thereby to own himself completely. Instead, as I shall argue, for Locke, man must earn his way toward self-ownership. This is not merely a matter of rhetorical presentation; it is a theory of human history. We find this theory in Locke's chapter 5, “Of Property.”

“Of Property”

“Theory of history” might seem an exaggeration for Locke's treatment of property, but true to the word's etymology (theōria), Locke does offer us a way “to see” the historical unfolding of this right. Although chapter 5′s twenty-seven paragraphs have been as closely analyzed as any in political philosophy, they have not been understood because they have not been seen from the perspective urged by Locke in the First Treatise and in relation to his promise there to put fatherly authority in its “due place,” wholly reconstituted and sharply distinguished from political authority. Locke delivers on that promise, but to see how he does so, we must follow him through an intricate argument tracing human development—and ultimately, enlightenment—through three ages: that of the hunter-gatherer, that of the subsistence farmer, and that of commerce.Footnote ¹⁸

Locke has two interdependent concerns in chapter 5. The “outer” one regards the scope of the right of property. Does the duty of charity so constrain this right that it is not really a right at all?Footnote ¹⁹ Or is it a true natural right, but limited to a right to subsistence?Footnote ²⁰ Or does Locke actually justify rapacious exploitation by a burgeoning class of capitalists?Footnote ²¹ Given the range of interpretations, one might think it safer to believe that Locke's argument is deeply incoherent;Footnote ²² or at a minimum in need of the serious repairs thought necessary by Locke's libertarian apologists.Footnote ²³ Obviously, space will not permit a detailed response to each of these theses, but I maintain the answer is “none of the above.” Locke coherently justifies a right to property that is unlimited in scope but not rapacious; indeed in a curious way, it is itself charitable.

Locke's “inner” concern regards the foundation of this right. Locke opens the chapter with feet planted in both reason and revelation, or so it might seem, but he will pivot and push forward on mature reason alone. More subtly, he will demonstrate how man works his way from being the “servant of God,” his “Workmanship,” to one who is fully “Master of himself.”

Though baroque, Locke's argument is well structured. For each age of man, Locke indicates certain background conditions; he formulates (or reformulates) his thesis on man's right to property; he gives voice to an objection to this thesis, resolves the objection with a “clarification” of the thesis, and then concludes (that will be three distinct times) that he has shown how man has come to have a private property out of what was given to him in common. I will first follow the discrete steps of Locke's outer argument, that concerning the scope of the right to property. This close attention to the argument's structure will set the stage for our subsequent analysis of his inner argument and allow Locke's intended resonance to come through more clearly.

Property as Constitutive of Man and Reconstitutive of Family and Polity

To understand one's self as self-possessed and to understand thereby one's mind as one's own—this for Locke is enlightenment, and it is the pivot point of the Two Treatises. Indeed, such understanding may rightly be said to constitute one's very being as a person and to authorize him in his actions.Footnote ³⁹ One must also realize that as “Master of himself,” he is not only authorized in his actions, but also limited. That is, by understanding himself in this way, man becomes a free agent, but paradoxically, because of this self-understanding, he cannot simply do as he pleases. If man is, as Locke will later state, “absolute Lord of his own Person” (2.123), he must realize that he is “absolutely” absolute lord of his own person. He cannot simply choose to be other than the lord that he is; he cannot choose, for instance, to be a slave. And he cannot give up this identity to anyone else—at least not in his capacity as lord of his person, as a human being—because this identity is inalienable (2.23, 2.24, 2.135, 2.149, 2.168, and 2.172).

Consider now in overview Locke's reconstitution of all human relationships. As indicated earlier, he begins with that of “a Father over his Children”—the “due place” to which he had pointed in the First Treatise (1.61). This power bears no resemblance to the fatherly authority he critiqued in the First Treatise: it is not absolute; it is not political; it is not the exclusive province of the father (2.52–61, 2.71); nor, appearances to the contrary (cf. 2.52), as we shall develop below, is it grounded in scripture. It is not even fundamental, but rather derives from the right of children to be preserved, nourished, and educated until they are mature enough to fend for themselves and understand the law of nature (2.55–59, 2.67, 2.78). Children should obey their parents, not because of a divine commandment, but so that they may be reared to the age of understanding. Parents may transfer their power to another adult through tuition or apprenticeship, in which case the child's obligation of obedience transfers as well (2.69); and parents can forfeit their power through negligence or abdication, in which case they lose the child's obligation of obedience (2.65). Similarly, in gratitude for parental discharge of this responsibility, children should honor their parents, and they should do this through the whole of their lives, not just in childhood. But children should do so, not in the absolute terms of the fifth commandment, but “more or less, as the Father's care, cost, and kindness in his Education, has been more or less” (2.67–69).

The power “a Husband has over his Wife” no longer springs from a duty grounded in a divine commandment: “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord” (Eph. 5:22, 6:1; Col. 3:18–24). Nor is marriage a sacred union ordained by God that no man “should put asunder” (1.63), enduring till “death do them part.” Instead, Locke redefines the obligations of this union in terms of property rights. Parents should stay together until their children are reared, but then the conjunction might end “by consent, or at a certain time, or upon certain Conditions, as well as any other voluntary Compacts” (2.81). And in forming this contract, there is no question of “Who giveth away this woman?” for the woman owns herself and will continue to own herself as well as what additional property she acquires (2.82 and 2.183).

The power of “a Master over his Servant” no longer arises from a divine commandment that the latter obey the former (Eph. 6:5). Scholars of a neo-Marxian persuasion have scoured the pages of the Second Treatise in search of some hard line that separates the classes,Footnote ⁴⁰ but they miss the story's main plot—man's movement from “Servant of one Sovereign Master” (2.6) to “Master of himself “ (2.44). After chapter 5, Locke devotes only a single sentence to the power of “a Master over his Servant,” and he sharply distinguishes it from the power of “a Lord over his Slave.” A slave, by his own injustice (not by original sin), has wholly forfeited his life to the “Absolute Power” of another; since he no longer owns himself, he cannot form a contract. But “a Free-man makes himself a Servant to another” only by making a contract with another and only within its terms (2.85, 2.2). Of course, the constitutive character of man as “Master of himself” limits the sort of contracts he can make. He cannot contract himself into slavery, nor can he form a contract under duress (that is, when he cannot be said to be “Master of himself”) (1.42, 2.24; cf. Hobbes, Leviathan XIV.27). But otherwise, we are all free agents, contracting with one another on terms of mutual convenience.

Finally, the power of “a Magistrate over a Subject,” or Political Power, of course, Locke reconstitutes wholly apart from the tradition of Christian Aristotelianism. The purpose of political society is not to bring man's nature to its completion; nor is it to govern man's fallen nature. Its purpose is to secure man's “Property”—a term, we must note, that now encompasses man's right to “Life, Liberty, and Estate” (2.87). Man has this right by nature. But in the state of nature, in the absence of a common judge and effective executive power, this right must remain “very unsecure” (2.123). Political society exists only “where every one of the Members hath quitted this natural Power [that is, to preserve his Property], resign'd it up into the hands of the Community” (2.87). In the hands of the community what at first had been identified as an executive power (2.7) now unfolds to show the need for a distinct judicial and legislative power (not everything is sufficiently specified, he allows, by the law of nature). While man can place this newly emerged legislative power in practically any form of government he wishes, legislative authority remains limited. Locke famously describes the placement of legislative power as an act of “consent,” but active consent is neither necessary nor sufficient to render a government legitimate: a government that secures people in their property gains legitimacy (tacit consent will do: 2.119), and one that deprives its people of their property without due process of law loses its legitimacy (2.201).

Locke also relies on property to redefine the character of just war, usurpation, tyranny, and dissolution of government, and limits the claims of conquest (2.175–243): in itself, conquest can never authorize power over the conquered. Even if the claim of the conquerors is just, the right of property restricts their application of despotic power to those individuals who actually caused the injury. The rest of the population must be treated as innocents; since these people have no authority themselves to commit injustice, they cannot be thought to have authorized the government to do so. As for the property of the unjust, the conquerors may take only what is necessary to compensate themselves for their injury. The rest belongs to the presumptively innocent wives and children; their lives are their own and do not belong to the husband or father to have forfeited. Even if by right of compensation the conquerors should be entitled to everything owned by the guilty, this right must yield if it conflicts with the right of preservation of the wife and children—especially the children, since they can neither fend for themselves nor be held responsible (2.177–83, 2.196).

Fatherly Authority in Reason and Revelation

That Locke reconstitutes the family, work, polity, and the laws of war in terms of property confirms chapter 5, “Of Property,” as the pivot point of Locke's argument, where man comes into his own. We have considered only in overview the “due place” where Locke promised to tell us he would situate the true character of fatherly authority and the honor children owe their parents (1.66, 1.100). At its outset, however, chapter 6, “Of Paternal Power,” appears to contradict my thesis. Once again, Locke states that “if we consult Reason or Revelation,” we find the same lesson: the equal authority of father and mother. Indeed, Locke uses the same scriptural passages he had used in the First Treatise to make this point (Exod. 20:12; Lev. 20:9, 19:3; and Eph. 6:1Footnote ⁴¹) (1.61, 2.52). What are we to make of this seeming counterevidence? If we take a closer look, we see that Locke quotes the Bible now only with important expurgations. In the First Treatise, Locke quietly but pointedly observed that the God of revelation commands “the most shameful Action, and most unnatural Murder, humane nature is capable of” (1.56): that a child who “smiteth” or “curseth” his father or mother “shall surely be put to Death,” and that a child who gives false prophesy “his Father and his Mother that begat him, shall thrust him through” (1.61). Here he edits these unjust punishments clean out of scripture. He endeavors, that is, to make Christianity reasonable.

A critique of fatherly authority yet more profound we find in Locke's counsel that when an oppressed people have no effective judge on earth to whom they might appeal, they have no recourse but to “appeal to Heaven” “as Jephthah did” (2.21). “Appeal to heaven” seems to have been Locke's euphemism for people taking matters into their own hands, mindful that they face a final judgment by “God in Heaven” (2.21, 2.241). When there are so many biblical figures who “appealed to heaven,” why does Locke repeatedly call attention to Jephthah (2.21, 2.109, 2.176, and 2.241)?Footnote ⁴² Although the story of Jephthah seems to have dropped from today's consciousness, during Locke's lifetime it inspired more than a dozen operas and oratorios. It had been the subject of paintings, frescoes, tapestries, poems and plays.Footnote ⁴³

And for centuries, the story of Jephthah had been the subject of intense theological debate.Footnote ⁴⁴ Jephthah, we are told in the book of Judges, was “a mighty man of valor.” But as “the son of a harlot,” he had been banished from the city at the instigation of his legitimate brothers, who wished to deny him any share in their inheritance. With a band of brigands, he lived on the margins of society. When the Gileadites find themselves threatened by the Ammonites, however, the elders come to Jephthah and offer to make him “captain” of the military. Reminding them that not long ago they had expelled and despised him, Jephthah wants more. The elders then agree that Jephthah should also be their “head,” or political leader, and if he succeeds against the Ammonites, he shall retain that title (Judg. 11:1–10).

Jephthah accepts these more generous terms. When negotiations with the Ammonites fail, he declares to them: “The Lord the Judge be judge this day between the children of Israel and the children of Ammon.” He leads the Gileadites totowards victory. But on the outskirts of Ammon, on the eve of the decisive battle, Jephthah makes another and more disturbing appeal to heaven. “If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering” (Judg. 11:30–31).Footnote ⁴⁵ Victorious, Jephthah returns home, and from his doors—dancing and playing the tambourine to celebrate his victory—comes his daughter, his only child. Seeing her, Jephthah tears his clothes in agony and tells her of his vow. His daughter asks only that she be allowed two months to go “up and down upon the mountains and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows.” He grants the request, she returns in two months and Jephthah did as he had vowed (Judg. 11:34–39).

Why then does Locke use this strange example? With the sacrifice of his daughter, Jephthah has violated, in fact, virtually every principle of Locke's laws of reason. His daughter has a right to life. Since she is self-possessed, she is not Jephthah's to offer to God. Her right to life indeed engenders a duty for Jephthah to protect and nurture her. Further, that duty is shared with his wife, the daughter's mother, whom Jephthah does not consult. His daughter was innocent, her purity underscored by her virginity, and nothing about the situation of war would change that fact. Even if we assume, counterfactually, that the Gileadites were in the wrong, and that the Ammonites had conquered them in a just war, Jephthah's daughter should have been protected. She had given no support for whatever wrong the Gileadites might have committed. And even if she had, she seems too young to take responsibility.

Jephthah's sacrifice, utterly without reason, a “most unnatural Murder” (to recall the phrase used in the First Treatise), returns us to the question of foundation. If we contemplate an “Appeal to Heaven,” it seems, Locke wants us to ask: “Who's there? Who makes the final judgment, if anyone? The God of reason or the God of revelation?” By the law of reason, as we have seen, Jephthah is thoroughly guilty. What could possibly be said in his defense?

Jephthah can only hope he faces the God of revelation. Then he could defend his actions, as indeed St. Augustine (among other theologians), defended them—on faith. Indeed, before Jephthah makes his vow, the Bible tells us “the spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah.” God permits his daughter to run and meet him. Even after Jephthah passes the same terrible test of faith as had Abraham and makes clear his intent to sacrifice his child, God does not intervene. And, as was noted by both Augustine and Locke,Footnote ⁴⁶ the Apostle includes Jephthah in his list of honor of those who acted according to faith—“the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”—prior to the second coming of Christ (Heb. 11:32).

Would a just God accept this sacrifice (and the vow through which it was effected)? It would not have been the first time that the biblical God visits the sins of a father on his children, but it would have been the first of two times—and only two times—when the God of revelation sanctions the sacrifice of humans. Perhaps, then, Jephthah's sacrifice of his only daughter was meant to prefigure God's sacrifice of his only son. A man of faith must praise Jephthah for his pious obedience—at least such was the argument of St. Augustine.Footnote ⁴⁷ A man of reason, Locke seems to say, must see a madness akin to that of the Peruvian cannibals and the wayward Hebrews—except here the child is fed to the God of revelation himself. Before taking the law into your own hands, Locke seems to say, appeal to heaven, as Jephthah did, but reckon, as Jephthah did not, that you will be judged by the God of reason.