LIBERTY, TYRANNY AND THE WILL OF GOD: THE PRINCIPLE OF TOLERATION IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE AND COLONIAL INDIA Jakob De Roover 1 & S.N. Balagangadhara 2 Abstract: Early modern political thought transformed toleration from a prudential consideration into a moral obligation. Three questions need to be answered by any explanation of this transition: Did religious toleration really become an obligation of the state in this period? If this was the case, how could tolerating heresy and idolatry possibly become a moral duty to Christians? How could Europeans both condemn practices as idolatrous and immoral, and yet insist that these practices ought to be tol- erated? To answer these questions, the article shows how the early policy of toleration in British India was constituted by a Protestant theological framework. Toleration turned into a moral obligation, it is argued, because the Reformation had identified lib- erty in the religious realm as God’s will for humanity. This gave rise to a dynamic in which Christian states and churches were continuously challenged for their violations of religious liberty. The principle of toleration developed as a part of this dynamic. Much is written on the rise of toleration in early modern Europe. 3 This vast body of scholarship raises an important issue: Did religious toleration become a moral value during this period and, if yes, why? After all, one could and did defend the attitude of toleration as a modus vivendi on various pragmatic grounds. However, this pragmatic stance attained the status of a normative value during this period. How did this transition come into being? Why did people start arguing that toleration is a universal duty of all states? How could it become a moral obligation of even those colonial states which ruled over HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT. Vol. XXX. No. 1. Spring 2009 1 Postdoctoral Fellow of the Research Foundation (FWO), Flanders. Email: jakob.deroover@ugent.be 2 Research Centre, Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap, Ghent University, Apotheek- straat 5, B–9000 Gent, Belgium. 3 The Emergence of Tolerance in the Dutch Republic, ed. C. Berkvens-Stevelinck, J.I. Israel and G.H.M. Posthumus Meyjes (Leiden, 1997); J. Coffey, Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, 1588–1689 (London, 2000); Tolerance and Intoler- ance in the European Reformation, ed. O.P. Grell and B. Scribner (Cambridge, 1996); John Locke: A Letter Concerning Toleration in Focus, ed. J. Horton and S. Mendus (London and New York, 1991); W.K. Jordan, The Development of Religious Toleration in England (4 vols., 1932–40; repr. Gloucester, MA, 1965); H. Kamen, The Rise of Tol- eration (London, 1967); B. Kaplan, Divided By Faith: Religious Conflict and the Prac- tice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA, 2007); J. Lecler, Histoire de la Tolérance au Siècle de la Réforme (2 vols., Paris, 1955); J. Marshall, John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture (Cambridge, 2006); Calvinism and Reli- gious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age, ed. R. Po-Chia Hsia and H. van Nierop (Cam- bridge, 2002); R. Vernon, The Career of Toleration: John Locke, Jonas Proast, and After (Montreal, 1997). Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2005 For personal use only -- not for reproduction