QuestionsWhat is a just society?Belief cannot be forced: toleration
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Belief cannot be forced: toleration

John Locke 1632 · 1704The mind is born a blank slate; power comes from consent.
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What it claims

The care of souls does not belong to the magistrate: the state must not impose a religion by force.

Why

Force can make people comply but not believe, and a religion only counts if it is truly believed.

In short

"Belief cannot be forced: toleration" is an argument by John Locke (Letter concerning Toleration) on the question "What is a just society?" (answer: liberties). Its claim: The care of souls does not belong to the magistrate: the state must not impose a religion by force. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Letter concerning Toleration
Valid with an implicit premise

In the 17th century Europe was emerging from wars of religion, and France had just revoked the Edict of Nantes (1685). Locke, in exile in Holland, writes that a state has no business imposing a religion. His argument is not that all religions are equally good, but that force cannot produce faith. He also sets limits, and one of them shocks today: he refuses to tolerate atheists.

P1The magistrate's (the state's) power consists only in outward force: laws, fines, prison.
P2True religion consists in the inward persuasion of the mind; without it, nothing is acceptable to God.
P3The understanding is so made that it cannot be compelled to believe anything by force.
P4 · implicit premiseA power that cannot reach a goal has no business pursuing it: penalties that cannot convince are beside the point.
Therefore the care of souls does not belong to the magistrate: the state must not impose a religion by force.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, the computer finds a case where the state cannot produce true religion by force, yet is still in charge of the care of souls.
P1, P2 and P3 show only that the state cannot produce true faith by force. To conclude that it must not interfere, we need P4: one does not entrust a task to someone unable to carry it out. Locke half-says it (penalties are "impertinent"). The strongest historical objection, Proast's, targets P4. Note the scope of the conclusion: it forbids imposing a belief, not punishing what harms civil order. That is how Locke excludes atheists and certain churches.
Analogy. A teacher can make a student copy out "I love maths" a hundred times. He cannot make him love maths. For Locke, religion is like the love of maths: only persuasion leads there.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Objection anticipated by Locke attacks premise 1

The magistrate can also use arguments to bring heretics back to the truth and procure their salvation.

Locke replies
Locke
Yes, like any good man. But persuading and commanding, pressing with arguments and pressing with penalties, are two different things. Only the second belongs to civil power, and it convinces nobody.
Jonas Proast 1690 · attacks premise 4

Force does not produce faith directly, but it can help indirectly: moderate penalties make people examine reasons they refused to hear. So they are not "beside the point".

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
Locke did reply, but that text is not yet in our corpus.
P
Pierre Bayle 1682 · attacks the conclusion

A society of atheists could live honestly: morality does not depend on belief in God (Thoughts on the Comet). Applied to Locke: if belief cannot be forced, excluding atheists contradicts the very principle of his toleration.

Locke replies
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
Locke
Locke does not answer Bayle directly, but the Letter gives his reason: promises, covenants and oaths, the bonds of society, have no hold on an atheist. So he excludes him not for his belief, but because he judges him dangerous to civil order.
What today's voices say
Defend it
Martha NussbaumShe prefers equal respect for conscience, as in Roger Williams, to mere toleration, which suggests a favour granted by the majority.