Conclusion

Several conclusions seem to follow from these considerations. Grotius bases his natural law and the law of nations on the concept of statute (lex), which is valid independent of God's will.

Grotius's intention in the treatise is not, however, to create a system of sec­ular law. His aim is to bring the various kinds of law into harmony, to demon­strate how they fit together. We saw that according to Grotius, what applies based on natural law (or even the law of nations) also applies according to the volitional divine law. Grotius's goal is to show that if we understand the vari­ous kinds of law correctly, they do not contradict but rather complement each other. It is not Grotius's fault that some of his successors, such as Barbeyrac and Pufendorf, misread his intentions.^{[688] [689]}

One can view Grotius as the father of modern natural law only in retro­spect, that is, from the perspective of how he was interpreted by his followers and based on the motifs from his work they later developed. It is quite appar­ent that in the aftermath of the Thirty Years' War, the idea of religious toler­ance had suffered a grave defeat in Europe. Answer to the question whether Grotius bases his concept of natural law on secular or theological foundations thus depends on the perspective from which we pose this question: Grotius builds natural law on both foundations. His followers, who no longer viewed religion as an integral part of their view of the world, interpreted his writings as arguing for secular foundations of natural law. For us, however, the com­prehensive approach to a system of international law and the idea of religious tolerance are the main reasons why Grotius's writings should be studied in our times.3⁴