The controversy over the so-called way of ideas and the British Trinitarian debates most famously intersected in the debate between Bishop Edward Stillingfleet and the polymath John Locke (The way of ideas was a philosophical movement moving through Descartes and Locke that, curtly stated, emphasized the importance of clear and distinct ideas). Stillingfleet accused Locke of unwittingly paving the way for the antitrinitarianism promulgated in John Toland’s Christianity Not Mysterious. Their ensuing lengthy debate gave no definitive answer to whether Locke was a Trinitarian or if his epistemology—identified as being in the tradition of the way of ideas—could support Trinitarianism (Woolhouse 2007; Marko 2017 & 2023; et al.). A second intersection of the way of ideas in the tradition of Locke and the British Trinitarian debates took place about a decade later and after Locke’s death. It has received little attention in scholarship (Yolton 1956; cf. Sell 1997). A protégé of John Locke, Anthony Collins, maintained, like Locke, that we can only assent to propositions and doctrines for which we can form an idea (the criterion of perception). But what Collins was much clearer about is that one cannot, therefore, assent to the doctrine of the Trinity since a summative idea cannot be formed of it. In his An Essay Concerning the Use of Propositions, he attacks the Trinitarianism of the Lockean Francis Gastrell advanced in the latter’s Some Considerations Concerning the Trinity. Another Lockean Trinitarian, John Witty, in turn attacks Collins, and defends a Lockean Trinitarianism and the acceptance of other incomprehensible doctrinal mysteries in his The Reasonableness of Assenting to the Mysteries of Christianity.
In this paper, I will demonstrate that while Collins does appropriate Locke’s criterion of perception from Locke’s Essay and The Reasonableness of Christianity, Gastrell and Witty understand Collins and those of his ilk to be applying the principle to an extent that Locke never thought reasonable. I also will suggest that there is reason to believe that these vastly different applications of Locke’s epistemology do not show a failure in Locke’s epistemological system, but, for him, a success.
This paper will be accomplished in three parts. Part I will offer a historical overview of the British Trinitarian debates and the controversy regarding the way of ideas. Part II will be a short explanation of Locke’s criterion of perception, notable exceptions to it, and a description of his overall theological program. Part III will consist of an overview of Gastrell’s Lockean Trinitarian formulation, an analysis of Collins’s critique, and an analysis of Witty’s response to Collins.