It's my favorite
The lack of Biblical literacy in modern society makes it difficult to teach philosophy, though. Just last night I was teaching Locke's
Second Treatise, and we got to paragraph 21 (in chapter III: "Of the State of War"), where Locke references Judges 11.27 (Judges may be my favorite book of the Bible, actually), writing that Jephtha was forced to make an "appeal to Heaven" between Israel and the Ammonites, and that "where there is no Judge on Earth, the
Appeal lies to God in Heaven."
So, I asked the class what it meant. One student said it meant we should be nice to each other, because that's what God wants. Another said that we shouldn't judge each other, because only God can judge. An black woman, in the back, in her 50's, just smiled and shook her head at this--it turned out that of a class of almost 40 students, the only one who was familiar with the story was the older black woman (and she had the wrong details in mind, i.e., the vow sworn by Jephtha that inadvertently leads him to sacrifice his own daughter). Locke's point was simple: to say that God will judge between Israel and the Ammonites was simply to say that where there is no judge on earth,
force resolves the issue. How will Jephtha know if God is on his side? Through victory. In other words, Jephtha
can't rely on God in the state of nature, he
must rely on force of arms.
Ugh. no one here cares about that
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)