advisory . With respect to content , divine reason and human reason must be sufficiently analogous that human beings can reason about what God likely wills . Locke takes it for granted that since God created us with reason in order to follow God ' s will , human reason and divine reason are sufficiently similar that natural law will not seem arbitrary to us . Those interested in the contemporary relevance of Locke ' s political theory must confront its theological aspects . Straussians make Locke ' s theory relevant by claiming that the theological dimensions of his thought are primarily rhetorical ; they are “ cover ” to keep him from being persecuted by the religious authorities of his day . Others , such as Dunn , take Locke to be of only limited relevance to contemporary politics precisely because so many of his arguments depend on religious assumptions that are no longer widely shared . More recently a number of authors , such as Simmons and Vernon , have tried to separate the foundations of Locke ' s argument from other aspects of it . Simmons , for example , argues that Locke ' s thought is over-determined , containing both religious and secular arguments . He claims that for Locke the fundamental law of nature is that “ as much as possible mankind is to be preserved ” ( Two Treatises 135 ). At times , he claims , Locke presents this principle in rule-consequentialist terms : it is the principle we use to determine the more specific rights and duties that all have . At other times , Locke hints at a more Kantian justification that emphasizes the impropriety of treating our equals as if they were mere means to our ends . Waldron , in his most recent work on Locke , explores the opposite claim : that Locke ' s theology actually provides a more solid basis for his premise of political equality than do contemporary secular approaches that tend to simply assert equality . With respect to the specific content of natural law , Locke never