De lege Naturae as a Philosophical Defence of Confessional Political Thought
Having established the ends of man by examining human nature, Hemmingsen proceeded to deduce rules governing the specific forms or aspects of human life. First, he distinguished between the theoretical and the practical life, to establish that the former should serve the latter.
Practical life as a whole had, Hemmingsen argued drawing on the previous conclusions, the purpose of maintaining itself with God as the utmost end[170] [171]Hemmingsen thus entirely adopted Melanchthohs position that God was the foremost aim - finis principalis - of the duties of moral philosophy flowing from the law of nature. However, in determining the more specific precepts and duties - the fines minus principales or externales, as Melanchthon called them - Hemmingsen gave his theory of natural law a more �Lutheran’ slant. While he adopted the conventional Aristotelian distinction between the theoretical and practical life, he asserted without further proof that the latter consisted of the domestic, the political, and the spiritual estates. This was the �Lutheran’ doctrine of the three estates.
This doctrine of the â€?three estates’ was a confessionally specific conÂception of the social and political order. While it did not play any real role in Melanchthon’s moral philosophical works/9 it had been fundamental to Luther's social and political thought, and became a staple in Lutheran political theology.[172] [173] [174] [175] Furthermore, as we saw above, Skat Sommer has argued it became central to the social thought of post-Reformation Danish confessional thought, especially as formulated by Hemmingsen. In De lege naturae too, Hemmingsen offered a philosophical account and defence of the Lutheran three estates- doctrine to establish that practical life may be divided into the economic, the political and the spiritual estates. In the case of each state, Hemmingsen adopted a simple argument based on the axiom introduced previously, that the law of nature requires whatever preÂserves nature. On this basis, he could then introduce the precept that the law of nature requires whatever conserves the political, economic and spiritual estates. Since the conservation of the economic and political estates required relations of superiority and submission, rule and subjection, these were, he argued, required by the law of nature. Further, loving marriage between husÂband and wife, procreation and education of children, and the obedience of children towards their parents were all commanded by natural law?1 In the same way, he could derive the various Aristotelian virtues. Turning to political life, Hemmingsen first observed that the end of political life was a tranquil and peaceful state achieved through political actions conÂsidering God as the ultimate end. Drawing again on the fundamental axiom, Hemmingsen thus derived the precept that â€?whatever preserves the political state is commanded by the law of nature'. Since this could not be done withÂout an order of rulers and ruled, it followed that government and subjection was commanded by the law of nature?2 Hemmingsen then went on to adduce numerous quotes from classical authors such as Plato, Homer, Xenophon and others to illustrate the duties and rights of the rulers. 5.1 A Philosophical Argumentfor the Ruler’s Duty to Uphold True Religion Finally, Hemmingsen used the claim that political life should have God as its utmost end to argue that the ruler may not command and the subject not obey anything contrary to God, that is, divine and natural law. This point was illusÂtrated by Socrates's refusal to flee Athens and Sophocles's Antlgone?3 Since the foremost purpose of the economic and political estates were God, and since the proper aim of the spiritual estate was to know, worship and fear God, the economic and political estates were therefore subordinated the spiritual estate. To transgress against this was to invert the order of nature and â€?call God’s punishment upon oneself’.[176] It was concerning the status spiritualis that Hemmingsen introduced the only significant qualification concerning the ability of reason to determine the law of nature. According to Hemmingsen, it was when this insight - that humans should worship God - had to be converted into action that non-Christians erred. As such, Christians should thank God that he had revealed his word, teaching salvation and a true way of worshipping God. Although Hemmingsen might seem, here, to depart from good, evangelical teaching on what reason could say of God, this was no more than one of emphasis. In fact, Hemmingsen rather closely followed Melanchthon here, even if he was perhaps not as clear in his writing. In his Philosophiae moralis epitomes, Melanchthon had repeatedly emphasised that moral philosophy could not determine the nature of true obedience to God in so far as this consisted in internal obedience, and neither could fallen man exercise this. It was only the revealed word of God, the gospel, which showed the nature of true obedience, and only a true Christian could exercise this obedience. This was precisely what characterised a Christian life, the â€?true virtues’ of Christian doctrine?7 We might say, then, that it was the specific characteristic, the â€?proprium’, of the spiritual estate, in contrast with the domestic and the political, that it concerned itself directly with knowledge and worship of God. It was this that accorded it higher status within practical life: it concerned the finis principalis of human practical life directly. These elements, God as the finis principalis for man's worldly life, conceptuÂalised through the doctrine of the three estates, and subordinating the domesÂtic and political estates to the spiritual, provided the means for Hemmingsen's philosophical argument that the law of nature imposed the duty to uphold true religion on the magistrate. Only the exact way of knowing and worshipÂping God could not be established philosophically, but was rather revealed to man by God, and propounded by theologians such as Hemmingsen himself. This was, in other words, a reformulation of Melanchthon's arguments for the cura religionis of the magistrate, the ruler as the principuum membrum eccleÂsiae and the guardian of both tables of the Decalogue.[180] 6