The Reasonableness of Christianity, and a Discourse of Miracles

Please pardon the incomplete review; but inasmuch as no other customer has reviewed John Locke's "The Reasonableness of Christianity," this review may be better than none at all. Locke's wonderful treatise itself is only 53 pages long. It's not easy reading, both because of the density of Locke's thought, and because he wrote it a little over three hundred years ago. It's truly unfortunate and unnecessary that his work is essentially lost to modern Christianity. For today's reader, by far the most important aspect of this treatise is the way Locke clearly demonstrates Jesus' divinity. Locke shows that Jesus could not have been merely a philosopher nor merely a rabbi: that Jesus' teachings were not to be found in any school of philosophy; that much of Jesus' fundamental ministry contradicted Judaism. I won't try to summarize Locke's demonstration. But I do point out that the Church in America has been doing a pathetic job of demonstrating Jesus' divinity to well-meaning rational non-believers. Lazy readers and lazy thinkers will continue not to bother their brains with Locke. But his thoughts need to be resurrected if we want to show clearly and reasonably that Jesus was divine. Of course, there is much more in this slender, inexpensive volume. Locke explains how we ought to read the Epistles in order to get a good understanding of them. Locke discusses the evidence for revelation. Any person, Christian or not, who is dismayed by the rampant immorality that infects all areas of life in America, might agree with Locke's 300 yr old observation that "'tis plain in fact, that human reason unassisted, failed men in its great and proper business of morality. . . . And he that shall collect all the moral rules of the philosophers, and compare them with those contained in the New Testament, will find them to come short of the morality delivered by Our Saviour, and taught by his apostles; a college made up, for the most part, of ignorant but inspired fishermen." I believe that moral relativism has badly failed America. Moving away from being ruled by God's laws, we turned to the wisdom of 'thinkers', and continued downhill toward the position that every person's morality is as valid as anyone else's, and that there is no God, no eternal truths. John Locke's "The Reasonableness of Christianity" can help us better understand how to combat this situation; and is therefore relevant to our lives, and well worth the effort to read.