Background
Johnson, Merwyn Stratford was born on October 27, 1938 in Annapolis, Maryland, United States. Son of John Edward and Lila Miree (Thomas) Johnson.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
book
Locke on Freedom: An Incisive Study of the Thought of John Locke
(Locke on Freedom began as a comparative study of John Loc...)
Locke on Freedom began as a comparative study of John Locke (1632-1704) and Karl Marx (1818-1883). Marx regarded Locke as the key to the founding vision of Western Liberal Democracy, hence the běte noire of Capitalism. By all accounts Locke is a pivotal thinker in modern social, political, economic, and philosophical history. He was also an able, lay Christian theologian for his time. Nimble, wide-ranging, and probing in his thoughts, he made an impressive player living in one of the most tumultuous periods of British history. Locke's concept of freedom is the prism through which the book reviews the different aspects of his thought and how they fit together. "Where there is no law, there is no freedom," says Locke, and his view of freedom unfolds in three spheres of law-the law of nature or of God, the laws of civil society, the laws of human ethics and of reason. The laws fit together like concentric circles with the smaller contained inside the larger but each with its own agent and dynamic. Locke's Christian theology emerges in the various avenues of his thought. Christology, centered in Jesus Christ, is an authentic mediating key to his thought as a whole. The dynamic interplay of Law and Gospel, basic to the Protestant notion of justification by grace through faith, informs all his reflections on law, coming to rest finally in a gracious tolerance. Locke subordinates reason to law, not the other way around. His dynamic view of the Golden Rule provides him a tool to analyze the commitments and operations of civil society, including the State of Nature, the State of War, and Civil Society. This distinctive feature helps explain the staying power of Western Liberal Democracy over the last 300+ years; it also differentiates him from his contemporary, Thomas Hobbes, and from such modern alternatives as socialism, communism, anarchism, and social Darwinism.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0960159002/?tag=2022091-20
Merwyn Stratford Johnson
Edit ProfileEducation
Bachelor, University Virginia, 1960. Bachelor's Degree cum laude, Union Theological Seminary, Virginia, 1963. Master of Theology, Union Theological Seminary, Virginia, 1964.
Doctor of Theology summa cum laude, University Basel (Switzerland), 1973.
Career
Assistant minister, 1st Presbyterian Church, Staunton, Virginia, 1964-1966; evangelist, Birmingham (Alabama) Presbytery, 1966-1969; professor religion and philosophy, Stephens College, Columbia, Missouri, 1973-1974; assistant professor theology, Austin (Texas) Presbyterian Theological Seminary, 1974-1980; professor historical and systematic theology, Erskine Theological Seminary, Due West, South Carolina., since 1980.
Achievements
Works
book
-
Locke on Freedom: An Incisive Study of the Thought of John Locke
(Locke on Freedom began as a comparative study of John Loc...)
-
Locke on Freedom: An Incisive Study of the Thought of John Locke
Membership
Member Calvin Studies Society, American Academy Religion, Society for Biblical Literature.
Connections
Married Beverly Meade Neale, July 25, 1964. Children: Neale, Sarah, Carlysle.
-
Born
-
Nationality
American
Education
-
1960
-
1963
-
1964
-
1973
Career
-
1964 - 1966
-
1966 - 1969
-
1973 - 1974
-
1974 - 1980
-
1980