I feel safe in making the following claim: there is no one who has spent more time deciphering John Locke’s interpretation of Biblical dominion than I.
Wish I was able to draw better diagrams! Still piecing together what he understands the “creeping” animals to be (other than that they are reptiles and, presumably, bugs and amphibians).
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but why?
It is nice that “property” is part of the natural order of living things. I suppose I should have guessed that it would be.
Yes, property is a thoroughly natural institution for Locke. It is also a theological category for him – it is naturalness is justified on theological grounds. The political only exists to administer complex relations between property owning individuals. It is a political theology of property!
(And wolves and lions are naturally dangerous; and it would seem that snakes are naturally evil.)
I meant that it is one thing to say property is a “natural” right, grounded in some conception of pre-social humanity. Its another to draw a map of God’s creatures where the attribute or quality that differentiates species is “property.” As if property were a natural thing like vertebrate vs. invertebrate, Eight-legged vs. six-legged. That requires me to do more mental aerobatics than the conventional “state of nature” or “theological-political” interpretations.
I see what you mean. With Hobbes, it is a matter of moving from a non-theological, non-political starting point to a position where the political subsumes the theological such that the leviathan – a monstrous mixture of human, animal, machine, and divinity – becomes like “a Mortall God.” (Except, I think, that Hobbes has no other option but to adopt a “the king is dead, long live the King” position to account for the transmission of sovereignty over time.) Hobbes, of course, justifies his position through both rational and theological arguments, although the theological arguments ring a little hollow suggesting they are there to protect him from attacks more than to defend his position.
Locke, on the other hand, takes scripture quite literally. His discussion of Adam’s dominion draws upon Latin, Greek and Hebrew sources to argue that all the words in scripture, regardless of language, support his position. This is an application, I think, of his defense of (more or less) “clear and distinct” ideas presented in the Essay on Human Understanding. Etymologically, Locke is correct: cattle and chattel are linked. He seems to believe that some animals – sheep, goats, cows, horses, etc – were created for the sole purpose of satisfying man’s needs.
However, he overlooks that God, in his donation of dominion to Adam, specifies the herbs and green things as meat and only allows the consumption of meat in the second donation to Moses following the Flood. Adam and Eve were vegans – this would certainly present theoretical problems for Locke because he interprets Adam’s dominion as property and not, say, as a stewardship or shepherding of the cattle.
Humans, by the way, when they act contrary to reason are delegated to the category of beasts and this is what justifies one human exercising power over another in the natural condition.
Hmmm. So the error of modern liberalism is a theological misreading. Let’s hope the future doesn’t depend on such a reading of Locke.
By the way, I recall Jeremy Waldron has a book on Locke interpreting him primarily as a christian thinker. Voila: God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations in Locke’s Political Thought. Thoughts? Disagreements?
You’d think I’d read that, especially the first two chapters! I know what I’m doing this morning. I have, however, read the theological interpreters of the passages from the OT – well, some of them. There’s a nice series called Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture that collects major passages of commentary and orders them according to scripture. From Gen. 1:1 all the way to the end.