A dirty word? The Christian development of the traditional conception of toleration in Augustine, Aquinas, and John Owen

As the first Christian theologian to write a defense of the use of force against schismatics, Augustine of Hippo has played an important role in the history of intolerance. His vision of the church as a mixed body, however, is also central to Christian thinking about toleration. Shifting our attention from his influential ideas about the limits of toleration to the more fruitful terrain of the nature of toleration, this chapter focuses on the role that Augustine's understanding of evil has upon his understanding of toleration. The chapter next considers Aquinas' expansion of Augustine's ethics of toleration to the political realm, and finally John Owen's adaptation of this mentality to the increasingly plural early modern world.