Conclusion

That Niels Hemmingsen's De lege naturae stood squarely in the Philippist strand of Protestant theological and philosophical thought is well established. It is also well known that Hemmingsen sought to explain the law of nature solely on the basis of reason.

First, Hemmingsen’s endeavour was to treat the law of nature on the basis of reason and philosophically was premised on Melanchthon’s theological distinction between Gospel and Law, and the concomitant definitions of moral philosophy and natural law. But this should not obscure the fact that to Melanchthon and Hemmingsen, moral philosophy (ethics, politics) and law were disciplines in their own right independent of theology, and which were programmatically based on reason. This chapter has also attempted to show that Hemmingsen followed his (humanist) methodological programme to a much greater degree than he has been credited with.

Hemmingsen, then, worked to develop a philosophical theory of natural law on the basis of reason and independent of Scripture, to serve as a foundation for ethics, law and politics. At the same time, however, one must also recog­nise the more confession-specific characteristics of this theory of natural law. These can be found particularly in the very construction of the concrete deter­mination of its precepts governing social and political life as organised around the three estates. Hemmingsen’s theory of natural law also illustrates, however, that these confessional or theological characteristics did not reduce this the­ory, or Philippist moral philosophy more generally, to a �practical theology’ or a �political theology’.

Although Melanchthon in some of his philosophical and in particular the­ological works was clear on the limits of reason after the Fall, in ways which could arguably tend to undermine the independent character of moral philos­ophy, Hemmingsen’s work on the law of nature forcefully reminds us of this other characteristic of Philippist moral philosophy. Hemmingsen’s discussion of the law of nature as the foundation for ethics, politics and law was a philo­sophical endeavour. This Philippist programme contrasted sharply with con­temporary scholastic works, for instance by Francisco Vitoria, where similar topics were discussed explicitly as part of theology.^[181]

Hemmingsen’s work also clarifies the relationship between the law of nature and the Decalogue. Where scholars have tended to see both Melanchthon and Hemmingsen as deriving the laws of nature from the Decalogue, this chap­ter has sought to show how, to Melanchthon as well as Hemmingsen, the usefulness of the Decalogue as a summary of natural law depended on it cor­responding with what reason could in fact determine on its own accord. In other words, theologians (and philosophers) had, as Hemmingsen did, first to provide a philosophical account of the law of nature, in order to then, second, demonstrate how the commandments of the Decalogue accorded with this theory of natural law (a part of the work we have not been able to discuss here). This philosophical demonstration did not take away from the divine ori­gin of natural law, or the more explicitly divine authority of the Decalogue, rather it underscored its universality. It emphasised how a Christian ruler, and not just the Israelite kings, were obliged to rule with the sword in one hand and the Decalogue in the other.

Finally, Hemmingsen’s work shows the centrality of a philosophical pro­gramme to �Lutheran’ confessional ordera. Recent scholarship has arged extensively that the confessional Lutheran �politica christiana’ was developed in theological works by �political theologians’. But this confessional political order was not only defended though a political theology based on Scripture. As the case of Hemmingsen shows, philosophical positions were developed to serve these confessional polities. Hemmingsen had shown philosophically how the law of nature established the three estates in practical, or political, life and required the ruler to safeguard true religion and the spiritual estate. This goes some way to explain how and why the perceived secularising Protestant natural law theories of Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf and others in the seventeenth century were met not just with vehement theological critiques, but equally with philosophical ones.^[182]