Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>John Locke’s Theology: An Ecumenical, Irenic, and Controversial Project argues that Locke’s intent for The Reasonableness of Christianity, his most noted theological work, was to describe and defend his version of the foundational or fundamental doctrines of Christianity and not his own personal theological views. He intended the work to be an ecumenical and irenic project during a very controversial time in philosophy and theology. He described what qualifies one as a Christian in the simplest and most irenic terms and argued for the necessity of Scripture and the reasonableness of God’s means of conveying His authoritative messages. Thus, Locke thought that revelation and the promulgated redemption are eminently reasonable. He argued for the simplicity of the Christian faith, to which the uneducated and the laborers could assent. His project could be construed as personal, or individually focused, in the sense that through it he foisted the burden of understanding the Bible and arriving at theological convictions on the autonomous individual, including the uneducated, and rejected basing one’s doctrinal opinions on so-called authorities. His work was inadvertently controversial, in part, because then, like today, readers typically failed to make a distinction between Locke’s personal and programmatic positions. The book also points to other places in Locke’s corpus where he attempts to avoid advocating for a particular sectarian position in his treatment of theological doctrines. This helps explain the difficulty scholarship has had in labeling Locke along the lines of a particular Christian sect.</jats:p>