Introduction - Locke and Biblical Hermeneutics. Conscience and Scripture

This volume is the product of meticulous research carried out over the years by international scholars of Locke's thought and the early modern period in general. The studies included in it address both the theoretical and the historical contexts of Locke's analytical methodology. Together they constitute a multidisciplinary approach that sets biblical hermeneutics in relation to Locke's philosophical, historical, and political thought, to the philological and doctrinal culture of his time and to Boyle and Spinoza. In addition to highlighting a new approach to the interpretation of Locke's thought, the essays offer valuable information concerning the influence of his biblical exegesis on Thomas Taylor, James Peirce, Joseph Hallett, and George Benson. Finally, one of the principal aims behind this study of crucial aspects of Locke's intellectual profile, and the contextualization of his biblical hermeneutics within the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century reading of the Bible, is to contribute to the analysis of the figure of Christ and the role of Paul's theology in political and religious thought from the seventeenth century to the Enlightenment. The studies in this book offer a broad and detailed illustration of how much Locke was appreciated by his contemporaries as a biblical interpreter and exegete. They also stress the need for a reconsideration of Locke that goes beyond interpretations confined within specific disciplinary ambits to address his thought in all its rich complexity.