scholarly journals Reconciling Locke’s Consciousness-Based Theory of Personal Identity and His Soteriology

Locke Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 1-39
Author(s):  
Diego Lucci
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Moral Accountability ◽  
Last Judgment ◽  
Temporal Continuity ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Resurrection Of The Dead ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Essay Concerning Human Understanding ◽  
Galen Strawson

This article maintains that Locke’s consciousness-based theory of personal identity, which Locke expounded in book 2, chapter 27 of the second edition of An Essay concerning Human Understanding (1694), perfectly fits with his views on the resurrection of the dead, the Last Judgment, and salvation. The compatibility of Locke’s theory of personal identity with his soteriology has been questioned by Udo Thiel and Galen Strawson. These two authors have claimed that Locke’s emphasis on repentance, which he described as necessary to salvation in The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695), clashes with his notion of punishment as annexed to personality and, hence, to consciousness. Pace Thiel and Strawson, I argue that Locke’s theory of personal identity is compatible with his concept of repentance. To this purpose, I first explain Locke’s views on the soul’s death and the resurrection of the dead on Judgment Day, when, according to Locke, we will all be raised from death by divine miracle, but only the repentant faithful will be admitted to eternal bliss while the wicked will be annihilated. Locke’s mortalism, along with his agnosticism on the ontological constitution of thinking substances or souls, played a role in his formulation of a non-substantialist account of personal identity, because it denied the temporal continuity of the soul between physical death and resurrection and it rejected the resurrection of the same body. I then analyze Locke’s consciousness-based theory of personal identity, with a focus on the implications of this theory regarding moral accountability. Finally, I turn my attention to Thiel’s and Strawson’s considerations about Locke’s views on consciousness and repentance. To prove that Locke’s views on salvation are consistent with his theory of personal identity, I clarify Locke’s soteriology, which describes not only repentance, but also obedience, faith, and the conscientious study of Scripture as necessary to salvation.

The Concept and Task of Eschatology — Theological and Philosophical Reflections

1988 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 499-515 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerhard Sauter
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
The State ◽  
Human History ◽  
Preceding Section ◽  
Last Judgment ◽  
The World ◽  
Resurrection Of The Dead ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Lutheran Orthodoxy ◽  
And Task

(1) The term ‘eschatology’ stems from Abraham Calov who entitled the twelfth and last section of his masterpiece of dogmatics, Systema locorum Theologicorum (1677), ‘EΣXATOΛOΓIA Sacra’. This final section, which concludes the Dogmatics of a leading representative of Lutheran Orthodoxy, deals with the ‘last things’ (de novissimis), specifically death and the state after death, the resurrection of the dead, the last Judgment, the consummation of the world, hell and everlasting death, and, finally, life everlasting. Calov does not define the artificial term ‘eschatologia’ which he himself had probably coined; he hardly even explains it in the course of his presentation, so that it remains a mere heading. Clearly it applies to the eschaton, namely ‘the end’, which, according to I Cor. 15.24, comes about when Christ, after subjugating all powers and authorities, delivers over the dominion to God the Father (quaestio 2). In the preceding section Calov had cited NT texts which explicitly or implicitly speak of the eschata, the last things, or of the last day/days as the conclusion of human history.

scholarly journals Locke's Person is a Relation

Locke Studies ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 79-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marko Simendić
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Simple Question ◽  
Essay Concerning Human Understanding

John Locke added a chapter called ‘Of Identity and Diversity’ to the second edition of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1694) [hereafter E or Essay] in which he presented a revolutionary account of persons and personal identity. Chapter II.xxvii proved to be an immensely important contribution to the philosophical scholarship of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and remains the focus of a substantial and growing body of commentary. Within the abundant literature on Locke’s views on personhood, a number of contemporary accounts endeavour to answer a seemingly simple question— what is Locke’s person? Locke gives no explicit answer but offers three possibilities. ‘Complex ideas’, Locke writes, ‘may be all reduced under these three Heads’ (E, II.xxi.3) and these three are: modes, substances and relations.

Bold, Samuel (1649–1737)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
G.A.J. Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Essay Concerning Human Understanding ◽  
Definition Of

Samuel Bold (or Bolde) was a Latitudinarian minister who defended John Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity and his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Bold published a series of pamphlets and short books which argued a theological position substantially identical to that of Locke. He also mounted a philosophical defence of Locke’s definition of knowledge and his supposition that it was possible that God could, if he so wished, superadd to matter the power of thought. In a book on the theological issue of the resurrection of the same body he defended Locke’s account of personal identity.

Vercelli Homily VIII and the Christ

PMLA ◽  
1927 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 314-330
Author(s):  
Rudolph Willard
Keyword(s):  
Central Feature ◽  
Son Of Man ◽  
Last Judgment ◽  
The World ◽  
Resurrection Of The Dead ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Hands And Feet

Homily VIII of the Vercelli Codex CXVII, is a brief dramatic sermon on penance and the Last Judgment, intended for the first Sunday after Epiphany. It opens with an admonition to the faithful to remember the Lord's warning of the tribulation attending the end of this world. Let us never think our sins too grievous or too shameful for confession: for it is better to confess our sins here before one man, than to confess them at the Day of Judgment, before God and the whole host of Heaven, when all our deeds shall be revealed. The homilist briefly outlines the advent of the Judgment: the coming of the Son of Man in power and great glory, God's mercy to the righteous, the angels blowing their trumpets to the four ends of the world, the resurrection of the dead, and the raging fire. All this, however, is introductory to the central feature of the homily—the address of the Judge to the guilty souls. From His throne of Judgment, God the Son reviews His dealings with man: the Creation, the establishment of man in the joys of Paradise, the Fall, God's mercy to fallen man in His Incarnation, Passion, and Death. The Savior dramatically calls the sinner to behold the wounds in His hands and feet and side; then, charging man with indifference and ingratitude, He sentences him to dwell forever with Satan and his host in Hell. After a brief description of the torments of Hell, the homilist closes with an exhortation to be worthy of the Lord's welcome to the righteous, and of the bliss of Heaven.

Antichrist, Simon Magus, and Dante's ‘Inferno’ XIX

Traditio ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 373-398
Author(s):  
Richard Kenneth Emmerson ◽  
Ronald B. Herzman
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Religious Significance ◽  
Last Judgment ◽  
The World ◽  
Resurrection Of The Dead ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Christian Iconography ◽  
Key Events

Luca Signorelli's frescoes portraying the last days and the end of the world which decorate the Cappella di San Brizio in Orvieto Cathedral are often described as reflecting Dante'sCommediaor as having a Dantesque quality. Commissioned in 1500 to complete the decoration of the cathedral begun by Fra Angelico half a century before, Signorelli painted — along with such scenes traditionally associated with the Last Judgment as the Resurrection of the Dead, the Damned in Hell, and the Saved in Paradise — two frescoes which portray the deeds of Antichrist and the signs of the end. Together with his illustrations from Dante'sPurgatorio, also at Orvieto, these frescoes depict the key events of Christian eschatology. The entire cycle reflects, in other words, the artist's awareness of eschatology as encompassing not only the fortune of the soul after death, but also the events which occur in the last days of the earth's history, a view of eschatology which is both personal and cosmic. It is certainly appropriate to see Dante's influence upon the artist's representation of such scenes as the ‘anti-Inferno’ and the suffering of the damned in hell. Although the subject matter need not have been drawn exclusively from Dante, a knowledge of theCommediahelps one to understand these frescoes better. Both Dante and Signorelli reflect a concern with the last events which is typical of their times, and along with other artists and poets, they share a common background in Christian eschatology. In some respects, therefore, their individual achievements are analogous, so that an understanding of the frescoes can also help us to understand theCommedia, even though the painter worked a century and a half after the poet. Particularly, Signorelli's ‘Fatti dell’ Anticristo,’ a portrayal both of the traditional Christian beliefs concerning the great deceiver of the last days and of late medieval apocalypticism, provides insights into Dante's description of the contemporary church inInferno19 (Fig. 1). The artist and the poet each draw upon long-established Christian iconography and symbolism to infuse their work with an apocalyptic expectancy which, by placing contemporary scenes in a cosmic perspective, underscores its religious significance and ultimate consequence.

Transition (Butler Dismissed)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Galen Strawson
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Temporal Continuity ◽  
With Memory

This chapter examines John Locke's theory of personal identity, which he has defined in terms of the reach of consciousness in beings who qualify as persons (being in particular fully self-conscious, able to think of past and future, and “capable of a law”). It starts with the notion that a person is an object of a certain sort, and must exemplify a certain sort of temporal continuity, if it is to continue to exist. Locke assumes that any candidate person has such continuity. The chapter also considers which parts of a subject of experience's continuous past are features or aspects or parts of the person that it now is before concluding with an analysis of Joseph Butler's incorrect identification of consciousness with memory in his objection to Locke's argument that a person can survive a change in its thinking substance even if its thinking substance is immaterial.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document