John Toland’s Argument for Religious Toleration in Nazarenus

Diego Lucci

doi:10.18290/rf24723.8

Published : 2024-09-27

Vol. 72 No. 3 (2024)

John Toland’s Argument for Religious Toleration in Nazarenus

Diego Lucci

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9640-3821

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rf24723.8

Abstract

In Nazarenus: Or, Jewish, Gentile, and Mahometan Christianity, written in 1709–10 but published in 1718, the Irish-born freethinker and republican John Toland (1670–1722) provided a novel, heterodox account of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which he described as the three phases or manifestations of the same monotheistic tradition. Toland wrote Nazarenus after examining, in Amsterdam, an Italian manuscript that was believed to be a translation of a “Gospel of the Mahometans.” Identifying this text with the apocryphal Gospel of Barnabas, Toland argued that this gospel contained the beliefs of the Ebionites or Nazarenes, whom he regarded as the first Christians. Drawing on this manuscript and on several canonical and noncanonical sources, as well as the works of modern Hebraists, Orientalists, and biblical scholars, Toland described Mosaic Judaism, primitive Christianity, and early Islam as grounded in the law of nature. Accordingly, he maintained that the core of these three religions, and of “true religion” in general, was natural morality, which he considered to be universal, eternal, accessible to natural reason, and restored by Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad. Thus, he added that the ancient Israelites, the first Christians, and the early Muslims practiced toleration of all those who respected the Noachic precepts, which he deemed consistent with the law of nature. Toland’s argument for religious toleration in Nazarenus has been defined as a “historical argument.” Toland indeed buttressed his stance on toleration with his reinterpretation of canonical material and Judeo-Christian and Islamic apocryphal sources, which he appropriated to his philosophical and political agenda. However, Toland’s argument for toleration in Nazarenus is essentially a deistic argument, because it is based on a deistic view of “true religion” as natural religion, which is fundamentally a moral religion and which, according to Toland, is at the origin and core of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Keywords:

Christianity, deism, Gospel of Barnabas, Islam, John Toland, Judaism, law of nature, natural religion, religious toleration, republicanism

Details

References

Statistics

Authors

Download files

pdf

Altmetric indicators

Cited by / Share

Licence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

References

Addison, Lancelot. The Life and Death of Mahumed. London, 1679.

Berman, David. “Disclaimers as Offence Mechanisms in Charles Blount and John Toland.” In Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment, edited by Michael Hunter and David Wootton, 255–72. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.

Bernardini, Paolo, and Diego Lucci. The Jews, Instructions for Use: Four Eighteenth-Century Projects for the Emancipation of European Jews. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2012.

Bernardini, Paolo. Introduction to Ragioni per naturalizzare gli ebrei in Gran Bretagna e Irlanda (1714), by John Toland, 25–104. Edited by Paolo Bernardini and translated by Laura Orsi. Florence: Giuntina, 1998.

Brett, Thomas. Tradition Necessary to Explain and Interpret the Holy Scriptures. London, 1718.

Browne, Peter. A Letter in Answer to a Book Entitled, Christianity Not Mysterious. Dublin, 1697.

Champion, Justin. “Legislators, Impostors, and the Politic Origins of Religion: English Theories of ‘Imposture’ from Stubbe to Toland.” In Heterodoxy, Spinozism, and Free Thought in Early Eighteenth-Century Europe: Studies on the Traité des trois imposteurs, edited by Silvia Berti, Françoise Charles-Daubert, and Richard H. Popkin, 333–56. Dordrecht: Springer, 1996.

Champion, Justin. “Père Richard Simon and English Biblical Criticism, 1680–1700.” In Everything Connects: In Conference with Richard H. Popkin: Essays in His Honor, edited by James E. Force and David S. Katz, 37–61. Leiden: Brill, 1999.

Champion, Justin. “Toleration and Citizenship in Enlightenment England: John Toland and the Naturalization of the Jews, 1714–1753.” In Toleration in Enlightenment Europe, edited by Ole P. Grell and Roy Porter, 133–56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Champion, Justin. Introduction to Nazarenus, by John Toland, 1–106. Edited by Justin Champion. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1999.

Champion, Justin. Republican Learning: John Toland and the Crisis of Christian Culture, 1696–1722. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003.

Champion, Justin. The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken: The Church of England and Its Enemies, 1660–1730. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Cirillo, Luigi, and Michel Frémaux. Evangile de Barnabe: recherches sur la composition et l’origine. Paris: Beauchesne, 1977.

Cirillo, Luigi. “Un nuovo vangelo apocrifo: il vangelo di Barnaba.” Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 11 (1975): 391–412.

Colie, Rosalie L. “Spinoza and the Early English Deists.” Journal of the History of Ideas 20, no. 1 (1959): 23–46.

Collins, Anthony. A Discourse of Free-Thinking. London, 1713.

Daniel, Stephen H. John Toland: His Methods, Manners, and Mind. Kingston, ON–Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1984.

Dixon, Philip. Nice and Hot Disputes: The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Seventeenth Century. London: T&T Clark, 2003.

Ettinger, Shmuel. “Jews and Judaism in the Eyes of the English Deists of the Eighteenth Century.” [In Hebrew.] Zion 29 (1964): 182–207.

Evans, Robert R. Pantheisticon: The Career of John Toland. Bern: Peter Lang, 1991.

Fabricius, Johann Albert. Codex apocryphus Novi Testamenti. Hamburg, 1703.

Force, James E. William Whiston: Honest Newtonian. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Garcia, Humberto. Islam and the English Enlightenment, 1670–1840. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012.

Giuntini, Chiara. Panteismo e ideologia repubblicana: John Toland (1670–1722). Bologna: Il Mulino, 1979.

Hammond, Henry. A Paraphrase and Annotations upon all the Books of the New Testament. London, 1659.

Hooker, Richard. Of the Lavves of Ecclesiasticall Politie. London, 1604.

Hudson, Wayne. The English Deists: Studies in Early Enlightenment. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2009.

Huet, Pierre-Daniel. Demonstratio Evangelica. Frankfurt, 1679.

Israel, Jonathan I. Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Jackson-McCabe, Matt. “The Invention of Jewish Christianity in John Toland’s Nazarenus.” In Jones, Rediscovery of Jewish Christianity, 67–90.

Jacob, Margaret C. The Newtonians and the English Revolution. Cornell, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976.

Jaffro, Laurent. “Toland: la constitution primitive de l’Église philosophique.” In Figures du théologico-politique, edited by Emmanuel Cattin, Laurent Jaffro, and Alain Petit, 149–74. Paris: Vrin, 1999.

Jenkins, Philip. “Gospel of Barnabas.” In Early New Testament Apocrypha, edited by J. Christopher Edwards, 38–57. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2022.

Jones, F. Stanley, ed. The Rediscovery of Jewish Christianity: From Toland to Baur. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012.

Jones, F. Stanley. “From Toland to Baur: Tracks of the History of Research into Jewish Christianity.” In Jones, Rediscovery of Jewish Christianity, 123–36.

Jones, F. Stanley. “The Genesis, Purpose, and Significance of John Toland’s Nazarenus.” In Jones, Rediscovery of Jewish Christianity, 91–101.

Jones, Jeremiah. A New and Full Method of Settling the Canonical Authority of the New Testament. London, 1726.

Karp, Jonathan. “The Mosaic Republic in Augustan Politics: John Toland’s Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews.” Hebraic Political Studies 1, no. 4 (2006): 462–92.

La Monnoye, Bernard de. Menagiana. 4 vols. Paris, 1715.

Lancaster, James A. T. “From Matters of Faith to Matters of Fact: The Problem of Priestcraft in Early Modern England.” Intellectual History Review 28, no. 1 (2018): 145–65.

Leask, Ian. “The Undivulged Event in Toland’s Christianity Not Mysterious.” In Atheism and Deism Revalued: Heterodox Religious Identities in Britain, 1650–1800, edited by Wayne Hudson, Diego Lucci, and Jeffrey R. Wigelsworth, 63–80. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014.

Leclerc, Jean, ed. Ss. Patrum qui temporibus Apostolicis floruerunt. Antwerp, 1698.

Levitin, Dmitri. Ancient Wisdom in the Age of the New Science: Histories of Philosophy in England, c. 1640–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Lim, Paul C. H. Mystery Unveiled: The Crisis of the Trinity in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Locke, John. The Reasonableness of Christianity, as Delivered in the Scriptures. Edited by John C. Higgins-Biddle. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999.

Lucci, Diego. “Ante-Nicene Authority and the Trinity in Seventeenth-Century England.” Intellectual History Review 28, no. 1 (2018): 101–24.

Lucci, Diego. “Cristianesimo e Islam secondo John Toland. Cristianesimo originale, concezioni islamiche e tolleranza religiosa nel Nazarenus (1718).” Atti dell’Accademia di Scienze Morali e Politiche 116 (2005): 349–70.

Lucci, Diego. “Deism, Freethinking, and Toleration in Enlightenment England.” History of European Ideas 43, no. 1 (2017): 345–58.

Lucci, Diego. “John Toland e la cultura ebraica.” Atti dell’Accademia di Scienze Morali e Politiche 112 (2001): 157–72.

Lucci, Diego. “Judaism and the Jews in the British Deists’ Attacks on Revealed Religion.” Hebraic Political Studies 3, no. 2 (2008): 177–214.

Lucci, Diego. “The Law of Nature, Mosaic Judaism, and Primitive Christianity in John Locke and the English Deists.” Entangled Religions: Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Religious Contact and Transfer 8 (2019). https://er.ceres.rub.de/index.php/ER/article/ view/8354.

Lucci, Diego. John Locke’s Christianity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.

Lucci, Diego. Scripture and Deism: The Biblical Criticism of the Eighteenth-Century British Deists. Bern: Peter Lang, 2008.

Lurbe, Pierre. “John Toland and the Naturalization of the Jews.” Eighteenth-Century Ireland 14 (1999): 37–48.

Lurbe, Pierre. “John Toland’s Nazarenus and the Original Plan of Christianity.” In Jones, Rediscovery of Jewish Christianity, 45–66.

Lurbe, Pierre. Introduction to Raisons de naturaliser les Juifs en Grande-Bretagne et en Irlande, by John Toland, 1–94. Edited by Pierre Lurbe. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998.

Luzzatto, Simone. Discorso circa il stato de gl’Hebrei, et in particolar dimoranti nell’inclita Città di Venetia. Venice, 1638.

Luzzatto, Simone. Discourse on the State of the Jews: Bilingual Edition. Edited by Giuseppe Veltri and Anna Lissa. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019.

Mangey, Thomas. Remarks upon Nazarenus. London, 1718.

Marko, Jonathan S. John Locke’s Theology: An Ecumenical, Irenic, and Controversial Project. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023.

Marko, Jonathan S. Measuring the Distance between Locke and Toland: Reason, Revelation, and Rejection during the Locke-Stillingfleet Debate. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2017.

Marsham, John. Chronicus Canon Aegyptiacus, Ebraicus, Graecus, et disquisitiones. London, 1672.

Matar, Nabil. Henry Stubbe and the Beginnings of Islam: The Originall & Progress of Mahometanism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.

Matar, Nabil. Islam in Britain, 1558–1685. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Mori, Gianluca. L’ateismo dei moderni. Filosofia e negazione di Dio da Spinoza a d’Holbach. Rome: Carocci, 2016.

Myllykoski, Matti. “‘Christian Jews’ and ‘Jewish Christians’: The Jewish Origins of Christianity in English Literature from Elizabeth I to Toland’s Nazarenus.” In Jones, Rediscovery of Jewish Christianity, 3–41.

Nelson, Eric. The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.

Nye, Stephen. A Brief History of the Unitarians, Called also Socinians. N.p., 1687.

O’Higgins, James. Anthony Collins: The Man and His Works. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1970.

Paterson, James. Anti Nazarenus. London, 1718.

Pons, Luis Fernando Bernabé. El texto morisco del Evangelio de San Bernabé. Granada: Editorial Universidad de Granada, 1998.

Prideaux, Humphrey. The True Nature of Imposture Fully Display’d in the Life of Mahomet. London, 1697.

Ragg, Lonsdale, and Laura Ragg, eds. The Gospel of Barnabas. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907.

Ravid, Benjamin. Economics and Toleration in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Background and Context of the “Discorso” of Simone Luzzatto. Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1978.

Reland, Adriaan. De Religione Mohammedica libri duo. Utrecht, 1717.

Sale, George. The Koran: A Preliminary Discourse. London, 1734.

Selden, John. De iure naturali et gentium, iuxta disciplina Ebraeorum, libri septem. London, 1640.

Selden, John. De Synedriis et Praefecturis iuridicis veterum Ebraeorum. 3 vols. London, 1650–55.

Simonutti, Luisa. “Deism, Biblical Hermeneutics and Philology.” In Atheism and Deism Revalued: Heterodox Religious Identities in Britain, 1650–1800, edited by Wayne Hudson, Diego Lucci, and Jeffrey R. Wigelsworth, 45–62. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014.

Sirota, Brent S. “The Trinitarian Crisis in Church and State: Religious Controversy and the Making of the Post-Revolutionary Church of England, 1687–1702.” Journal of British Studies 52, no. 1 (2013): 26–54.

Smalbroke, Thomas. The Judgment of the Fathers concerning the Doctrine of the Trinity. London, 1695.

South, Robert. Twelve Sermons upon Several Subjects and Occasions. The Third Volume. London, 1698.

Sox, David. The Gospel of Barnabas. London: Allen & Unwin, 1984.

Spanheim, Frederick. Ecclesiastical Annals. Translated by George Wright. Cambridge, 1829.

Spencer, John. De Legibus Hebraeorum ritualibus, et earum rationibus. Cambridge, 1685.

Stillingfleet, Edward. A Discourse in Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity. London, 1697.

Stubbe, Henry. An Account of the Rise and Progress of Mahometanism. Edited by Hafiz Mahmud Khan Shairani. London: Luzac, 1911.

Sullivan, Robert E. John Toland and the Deist Controversy: A Study in Adaptations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.

Sutcliffe, Adam. Judaism and Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Tindal, Matthew. Christianity as Old as the Creation: Or, The Gospel, a Republication of the Religion of Nature. London, 1730.

Toland, John. A Collection of Several Pieces of Mr. John Toland. Edited by Pierre Desmaizeaux. 2 vols. London, 1726.

Toland, John. Adeisidaemon […] annexae sunt […] Origines Judaicae. The Hague, 1709.

Toland, John. Amyntor: Or, A Defence of Milton’s Life. London, 1699.

Toland, John. Anglia Libera. London, 1701.

Toland, John. Christianity Not Mysterious. London, 1696.

Toland, John. La Constitution primitive de l’Eglise chrétienne – The Primitive Constitution of the Christian Church. Edited by Laurent Jaffro. Paris: Champion, 2003.

Toland, John. Letters to Serena. London, 1704.

Toland, John. Nazarenus. Edited by Justin Champion. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1999.

Toland, John. Nazarenus: Or, Jewish, Gentile, and Mahometan Christianity. London, 1718.

Toland, John. Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews in Great Britain and Ireland. London, 1714.

Toland, John. Tetradymus. London, 1720.

Toland, John. The State-Anatomy of Great Britain. London, 1717.

Vermigli, Peter Martyr. Loci Communes. London, 1576.

Walker, Christopher J. Reason and Religion in Late Seventeenth-Century England: The Politics and Theology of Radical Dissent. London: I.B. Tauris, 2013.

Weiner, Max. “John Toland and Judaism.” Hebrew Union College Annual 16 (1941): 215–42.

Whiston, William. Primitive Christianity Reviv’d. 5 vols. London, 1711–12.

Wigelsworth, Jeffrey R. Deism in Enlightenment England: Theology, Politics, and Newtonian Public Science. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009.

Wiles, Maurice. Archetypal Heresy: Arianism through the Centuries. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.