https://www.kimi.com/en/

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794767&forum_id=2Reputation#49411168)

https://i.imgur.com/gfiOyaT.png

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794767&forum_id=2Reputation#49411179)

Because the First Treatise is a polemic crafted against Sir Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha, Locke chooses his ground with exacting care. Filmer had built his defence of absolute, hereditary monarchy almost entirely upon the Old Testament—upon Adam’s supposed original dominion, the fatherhood of the patriarchs, and the transmission of authority through genealogical lines from Adam to Noah and beyond. If the divine right of kings rested, as Filmer claimed, upon the Scriptural record of creation, fall, promise and patriarchy, then the proper way to defeat it was to meet it within that very archive. Locke accordingly confines himself to the Old Testament, dismantling Filmer’s exegesis point by point: the grant of dominion in Genesis is common to mankind and not exclusive to Adam; paternal power is not political power; the command to honour “father and mother” subverts Filmer’s attempt to vest absolute right in the father alone; and, not least, there is no coherent line of succession by which Adam’s alleged authority could have been transmitted to later kings. The First Treatise is, in that sense, a forensic exercise in counter‑exegesis, conducted on the terrain Filmer had chosen.

There is also a deeper strategic reason for the Old Testament emphasis. The New Testament does not furnish the materials Filmer requires: its concern is the kingdom of God, not the genealogy of earthly thrones. Where it speaks of civil authority at all, its counsel is largely pastoral—urging peace, order, and conscientious obedience to magistrates—texts such as Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2 that royalist divines had long used to buttress obedience rather than to describe the origin or scope of political right. Those passages are ill‑suited to Locke’s immediate purpose in the First Treatise, which is not to give a positive account of political authority, but to show that Filmer’s claim to a divine and absolute monarchy lacks biblical warrant. To invoke the apostles here would either distract into contested interpretations of Christian duty, or risk conceding rhetorical ground to the very absolutist reading Locke aimed to discredit.

Locke’s method throughout the Two Treatises confirms this division of labour. The First Treatise clears the field by refuting Filmer’s theological foundation; the Second Treatise then constructs a positive theory of political society upon natural law, reason, and consent, eschewing revelation as the basis of civil right. In other works Locke did not shrink from New Testament interpretation—his Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St Paul and his Reasonableness of Christianity attest to his engaged Christian scholarship—but he kept that engagement distinct from the architecture of civil power. For him, the gospel announces salvation and the rule of conscience, while the origin and limits of government are to be determined by natural reason and the rights of men in the state of nature. To mix these domains was, in Locke’s eyes, both philosophically unclean and politically dangerous.

There is, finally, a matter of audience and occasion. Writing in the wake of the Exclusion Crisis and on the cusp of the Glorious Revolution, Locke addresses a culture in which Anglican defences of monarchy often proceeded by Old Testament citation and patriarchal analogy. He demonstrates, with a certain relish, that even if one grants the authority of Scripture in civil argument, the Old Testament will not yield the conclusions Filmer demands. Only after that demolition does Locke invite his readers to leave the thicket of genealogies and patriarchs for the plainer ground of consent, property by labour, and the limited ends of political society.

In sum, Locke’s reliance upon the Old Testament in the First Treatise is deliberate and tactical. He answers Filmer on his own terms, where the patriarchal thesis lives or dies, and he avoids New Testament appeals because they are either beside the point of Filmer’s claims or liable to be misread as supporting passive obedience. The positive philosophy of government, for Locke, properly belongs to the realm of reason; Scripture is invoked here only to show that Filmer’s divine right has no scriptural foundation at all.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794767&forum_id=2Reputation#49411209)

https://i.imgur.com/gaHiFLX.png

Also point #2 borders on offensive to Christians. Locke could have EASILY found support for many of his positions in the gospels.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794767&forum_id=2Reputation#49411199)

That's really the only explanation anyone needs. Anything beyond that is reaching. No LLM should need more than a few paragraphs to make the point.

That said, the point about dodging earlier Christian authors who used the gospels to justify taxation is genuinely good. It wouldn't have occurred to me but it makes perfect sense.

It's also not a point that's raised in any of the online sources on this. No one is going to write about how the New Testament runs contrary to Locke's central positions because 1. it's not true, and 2. they'd be lynched, but it IS fair to say that Locke wanted to distance himself from anyone who wrote prior to the 17th century.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794767&forum_id=2Reputation#49411231)

https://i.imgur.com/YCuA6ye.png

TBF I'm not sure that's a 100% accurate rendition of the quote. It may be working off a Chinese translation of the original English.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794767&forum_id=2Reputation#49411213)

https://imgur.com/a/UWAkHez

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794767&forum_id=2Reputation#49411271)

https://imgur.com/a/P6vmgw2

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794767&forum_id=2Reputation#49411444)

That’s a really good observation — and it points to how Locke’s First Treatise is less a work of political theology than a systematic demolition of someone else’s theology.

Here’s the context and why it’s the Old Testament that dominates:

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1. Locke is attacking Filmer, not constructing his own theology

The First Treatise of Government is a point-by-point rebuttal of Sir Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha (1680), which defended absolute monarchy by claiming it was divinely ordained through Adam. Filmer’s entire argument rests on Old Testament genealogies and patriarchal authority — that kings inherit Adam’s paternal dominion over his children and over the earth.

So Locke’s scriptural citations are primarily reactive: he quotes and analyzes the same passages Filmer uses (Genesis 1–3, 9, 10, etc.) in order to show that Filmer’s readings are mistaken or absurd. Locke is operating within Filmer’s chosen textual battlefield.

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2. The Old Testament is where Filmer grounds political authority

Filmer argues roughly:

Adam had absolute authority over his wife, children, and the world (Genesis 1–2).

That authority was passed to Noah and then to the patriarchs (Genesis 9–10).

Kings inherit this patriarchal authority.

Locke therefore spends chapters dismantling each step: showing that the Bible never says Adam had political dominion, never says it was hereditary, and never gives any biblical king such a divine right. To do that, Locke has to stay in the Old Testament, since that’s where Filmer’s “proofs” come from.

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3. The New Testament would not serve Locke’s immediate polemical purpose

Locke occasionally appeals to the New Testament for moral tone (e.g. charity, equality, or the absence of coercive hierarchy among Christians), but:

The NT doesn’t discuss political sovereignty or inheritance of dominion.

Filmer’s own argument isn’t built from NT material.

Locke’s immediate aim is refutation, not exposition of his own theory (that’s what the Second Treatise does).

In short: citing the Gospels or Epistles would have been preaching to the wrong audience — he’s engaged in a textual duel over Genesis, not a theological sermon on liberty.

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4. Locke’s strategic posture: appearing orthodox and empirical

Locke wants to show that even within the terms of traditional, biblicist reasoning, Filmer’s theory collapses. He’s careful not to reject Scripture outright but to demonstrate that reason and careful reading of the Old Testament already refute divine-right monarchy. Using the New Testament could have sounded like shifting the ground to a purely Christian moral argument; Locke instead shows that Filmer’s supposed “biblical foundation” is rotten even on its own terms.

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Summary:

Locke cites the Old Testament so often — and the New Testament so little — in the First Treatise because he is rebutting Filmer’s Old Testament–based defense of absolute monarchy. Locke keeps to Filmer’s chosen scriptural terrain to expose the weaknesses in the patriarchal reading of Genesis, not because his own political philosophy depends on Old Testament theology. The Second Treatise, which presents his positive theory of natural rights and government by consent, then proceeds largely in the language of reason and natural law, not Scripture at all.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794767&forum_id=2Reputation#49413285)

Otherwise this isn't a bad answer, but Kimi made better points out the intellectual environment Locke was writing in, and was less verbose

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5794767&forum_id=2Reputation#49413294)