The Restoration Mind . . .

Restoration Review · 1971-72
(Volumes 13, 14)

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PREFACE

In a volume on the restoration mind it is appropriate to say a word about John Locke, not only because of his influence upon Alexander Campbell and the Restoration Movement of the 19th century in the United States, but also because of the character of his thinking and his contributions to the 17th century, which Whitehead has described as “the century of genius.” As one of the architects of the new England and the age of liberalism, he did indeed restore to modern thought some of the elements that has provided it with continual renewal. He moved thought from the dogmatism of medievalism to the common-sense method that came to reflect English character. He was not a blind partisan to any cause, and he was by temperament a skeptic. As a champion of individualism and freedom, he influenced the political systems of both England and the United States, and it was his writings that inspired three revolutions.

He was a man of broad interests, for after studying medicine he went on to create a philosophy that influenced religion, politics, and education. He wanted to sweep away the cobwebs from man’s mind, so he produced that great landmark in modern thought, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which he wrote while in exile in Holland, having fled the fury of James II. He concluded that most people never reason at all, while the few who do are hindered by emotionalism. Man is also hindered by partiality and by abuse of words, so he called for an objective study of words, the tools for all ideas. Campbell, who called Locke “the Christian philosopher,” was impressed with his insistence that reason must govern faith and that revelation can never be contrary to reason.

In a day when church and state were tragically intermingled and persecution was the means of preserving orthodoxy, Locke not only called for a separation of church and state, but insisted that toleration is the chief characteristic of the true church. In his “Letter Concerning Toleration” he writes on the nature of the church in a way that sounds much like Thomas Campbell a century and a half later: “Since men are solicitous about the true church, I would only ask them here, by the way, if it be not more agreeable to the Church of Christ to make the conditions of her communion consist in such things, and such things only, as the Holy Spirit has in the Holy Scriptures declared, in express words, to be necessary to salvation.” This is better, he says, than for men to impose their own inventions and interpretations upon others as if they were of divine authority. It is no wonder then that the Campbellite preachers of the early 1800’s would carry in their saddlebags, along with a Bible and hymnal, a volume of Locke’s essays.

The restoration ideal is not, then, a parochial concept of a few enthusiastic religionists, for it has long been a part of man’s search for both reality and freedom. It is a part of political, educational, and philosophical thought as well as in religion. A big word in Locke is consent. People are to be ruled only by their consent, and people come into the church only by their consent. They are not members by circumstance of birth nor by the dictates of orthodoxy in hands of the state. To an unfree people such ideas stirred the fires of revolution. But toleration was another of his big words, for he was sure that no society or church could really be a blessing to the human spirit without an attitude of openness and forbearance.

This is the restoration mind that came alive like a prairie fire on the American frontier, and it is that disposition of heart and intellect that we commend to the church of our time.