In the political competition between the religions of the sixteenth and sev­enteenth centuries, the laws of nature and of nations played a crucial role.

Universal and supranational in scope, these vocabularies were a means of communication between opposing camps as much as a further area for disa­greement and debate. Reformation in its various shades and shapes as well as the Counterreformation invested in articulating their understanding of nat­ural law situated somewhere between eternal and civil law and of the law of nations, sometimes defining their own exceptional state of true believers viz- a-viz the rest of the world.

Central to this volume are the Leiden context and Hugo Grotius as its most important exponent.

This very instability of the interface between theology, ethics, politics and jurisprudence goes a long way to explain the creative tension between the idea of sacred polity and law. Calling a political entity sacred is to consider it under the aegis of a deity in some sense of religious understanding. Obvious candi­dates for such religious discourses in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were the various Christian denominations that had emerged in com­petition during the Reformation. One could speak of a Lutheran, a Catholic or a Calvinist sacred polity, if that would not be too general in view of the more fine-grained self-articulation of actual existing polities. �?Sacred' is what religious communities believe it to be, such as the frame of a �?New', or �?Dutch Israel' that looked upon the Republic of the Seven Provinces as a second Israel, guided by God out of (Hapsburg) captivity, and in sacred bond committed to live according to God's special commands. Similar notions of exceptionalism can be found in other political communities, up to and including the �?City upon a Hill'^[4] of Puritan America. Moreover, American exceptionalism also points to possible implications for the law of nations, since a manifest destiny like a divine reason of state can easily be seen to �?break the law'.

Not all sacred polities are understood as exception, while the sacred pre­supposes sacred space and sacred time.^[5] Moreover, as Jonathan Sheehan notices: �?The discovery that all religion needs a place for its performance was a child of religious controversy’,^[6] whether that place is Jeruzalem, Mekka Rome, Wittenberg or Dordrecht.

Logically it is possible to distinguish religious sacred objects from civic sacred objects, for example the Vatican is different from the Forum Romanum, but arguably only by degree. In actual fact, the religious and the civic interrelate in ambiguous ways. This is reflected in the various attempts in the last century or so to define the sacred (and the profane). The sacred or the holy, as in saints, sanctification, desecration, grace, of course is present in the religious language of the world religions, but in different shades and meanings. The Catholic saint is unlike the true believer of Protestantism as in the Latter Day Saints, in nature and function. The godly nature of politics and of the law thus is expressive of an ideological stance in political theology. Just as natural law and law of nations, the notion of sacred polity has different shades of meaning, that do not exclude each other. A sacred polity is, for example, the mystical body of the church, but also a religiously defined community as in the �?Godly’ or the �?Chosen’; it can also refer to a body politic that understands itself as embodying a religious identity, and everything in between. In some approaches to the his­tory of civilization, the sacred has obtained a more principled definition. This volume touches on these latter topics but does not engage with them in a prin­cipled manner.

In the course of these chapters, this book finds that political context, reli­gious and legal debate and theory are best studied in combination, if only because of the ambiguity of the sacred between city and religion, and that of natural law between God's moral order and the rules of sociability. This com­plexity has traditionally asked for some teleological interpretative schema. Dominant paradigms are that of secularization, more recently that of confes- sionalization, while modernization reduces the interaction between religion and law to a footnote of the larger secular trend producing �?the modern world', and �?the modern worldview'. The latter sees modern science, the discovery of the New World, and the rise of the nation state, with its rationality (reason of state) and bureaucracy as an autonomous driving force that inevitably pulled along the articulation of natural law and law of nations as well as the submis­sion of religion to political goals. But such global pictures are inevitably teleo­logically charged and presupposing a historical development that it wants to explain, this is not what this volume aims at. By looking into the nuts and bolts of the historical processes and considering the micro-processes that make up the path of historical development, the contributors to this book highlight the actual actions and interactions that show not so much a grand historical telos, but the extent to which the parties to the drama are inevitably intertwined. In that sense the various chapters also reflect upon our present-day predicament, where - more so than in the Early Modern period - religion has been under the suspicion of being ultimately irrelevant, even while the post-secular age has been announced.^[8] One should not overlook what Christoph Strohm has termed �?the productive force of confessional competition': �?From confessional competition and warfare, models of legal management of conflicts between mutually exclusive truth claims arose.

Is this a matter of interreligious competition bringing about of religious irrelevance? Or is this competition itself proof of the continued relevance of religion? Looking at the development of natural law and the law of nations in sacred polities will allow to take this dilemma by the horns.

Confessionalization refers to the process of the increasing level of social dis­ciplining that characterizes the Early Modern confessional state. Both within and without the state churches, the believers and citizens underwent increas­ing control, of their morals, their public behavior, executed by church councils and state bureaucracy. In its original formulation - by Heinz Schilling, Wolfgang Reinhard and their collaborators^{[10] [11] - confessionalization was the most impor­tant effect of the political and religious fragmentation during the reformation. Although the reformation was the starting point, this process of confessional­ization and social disciplining was not limited to Protestant nations only but happened across the denominational spectrum. Thus, the reformation was the motor behind the modernization of the state, but modernization was not an effect of Protestantism as such, as previously Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch had defended.11}

Against the social-discipline thesis, historians like Christoph Strohm, Mathias Schmoeckel and Michael Stolleis have returned to the Weber the­sis and defended an epistemological argument about the juridical effects of Protestantism.

For Michael Stolleis, �?to talk of the “impact” of the Reformation reduces to the triviality that the whole Early Modern period stood under the aegis of ref­ormation and church reform.’^{[12] [13] [14] As a background to our present concerns the Reformation is important, but the debate between religion and natural law can barely be said to have started with the Reformation.}

More in particular, it has been (correctly) remarked that the founders of modern natural law invariably were Protestants, but it would certainly be incorrect to say that modern natural law is a Protestant invention?³ Even a Protestant scholar like David VanDrunen argues that Reformation natural law is a straightforward continuation of the Thomist tradition, and that the resist­ance theories of the sixteenth century are no exception to this genealogy?⁴ Knud Haakonssen understands this strand as a continuation of the intellectu­alism and value objectivism of Scholasticism and contrasts it with another sort of natural law, a new kind of voluntarism that reduces natural law to human nature and in particular to human will from which all morality arises. This is the natural law of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), Samuel Pufendorf (1632­1694), Adam Smith (1723-1790), triggered by the ambivalent Hugo Grotius (1583-1645).

The intellectualist natural law with its ethical realism continued to see God as the author of the natural law, with the simile of natural law as the law writ­ten in the heart of man, with conscience and recta ratio supported by God’s revelation, and its realization in history through Providence. Operating at the border of theology and philosophy this natural law was sensitive to politico­religious issues in ways that the strictly philosophical approach of the new vol­untarism was not.

The new voluntarist strand, on the other hand, took distance from theology and was part of the rise of philosophy as a discipline, although that did not by itself unburden it from religious involvement. Natural jurists had a stake in the political organisation of the church and in the religious justification of sovereignty, and more often than not the latter played an important role in the particular articulation of natural law principles and applications. Sometimes the dominant issue was to defend one's position against an aggressive church. Notwithstanding the separation of philosophy from theology these conflicts were not only about secularization, and they could easily cut across otherwise important doctrinal distinctions in natural law. Toleration is a case in point.

Other practical issues also come to mind. The book as a whole shows how sacred and profane interact, interplay and hang together when it comes to issues as the limits of civil authority, questions of political legitimacy, resist­ance theory, societal stability, conceptions of the common good, value plural­ism, toleration and identity (�?fatherland', exceptionalism, God's own people, the revolution of the Saints).

By presenting Early Modern writers on natural law - preceding and follow­ing Hugo Grotius, from different denominations - this volume shows what the religious background was that helped shape modern natural law around 1600, and what the issues were that as a consequence had to be addressed in both law and theology. Lutheran, Catholic, Calvinist and heterodox attempts to find answers to questions like how to square the universality of God's creation with the exceptionalism of the select few who live in the certainty of God's grace and who follow God's commands thanks to having obtained the (true) revelation; or how to rule a country that is composed of both true believers and those out­side the fold; or how to deal with heretics and pagans in international affairs. The answers to such questions often depended on other decisions - theoreti­cal or practical - that set the boundaries to the answers available. In the follow­ing chapters there are many examples of such practical issues that determined particular positions in natural law, as happened, for example, when the French Monarchomachs embraced Stoicism to support their claims against the French king, or when Samuel Pufendorf tried to find his way between the demands of the Lutheran ministers and those of the princes of the Furstenstaat.

In this to and fro between practical issues and doctrinal positions both the presumed universalism of natural law and the exceptionalism of Christianity contain promises of ideological victory, provided the right kind of proof can be produced. Philosophers argue from reason, theologians from belief, some­times in harmony, sometimes at cross purposes.

The history of the law of nature and the law of nations shows many remark­able episodes where religion and politics develop together. In that respect it is a Christian thing, more or less, even while important conceptual qualifica­tions were introduced in classical philosophy, in interaction with which the early Church Fathers expressed their conviction that the law of nature and God's commandments together provide the moral and political guidance in this world.

It was, for example, John Chrysostom's stated principle that �?when God formed man, he implanted within him from the beginning a natural law... He gave utterances to conscience within us; and made the knowledge of good things, and of those which are the contrary, to be self-taught.'^{[15] [16] [17] Others con­curred. Origen distinguishes two laws �?one being the law of nature, of which God would be the legislator, and the other being the written law of cities'?6 Origen enlarged here on Irenaeus who in Against Heresies had God �?inscribe the nat­ural law, or the Decalogue upon the hearts of men?7 The two Church Fathers agreed that such basic principles as �?thou shalt not kill' are commanded by God as self-evident norms, not for some extrinsic reason. Underlying this natural law are the Golden Rule and the requirements of human society. Chrysostom and Origen could rely on Philo of Alexandria and Flavius Josephus who had praised the Mosaic law as �?imperishable, and stamped by immortal nature on the immortal mind’.[18] [19] It is plausible to see here a mutual influence of Stoicism and Christianity, as for example in the case of ChrysostomJ9}

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - the Age of Reformation - take a special position in this historical development, not only because that period saw the increased dogmatic debate between the fragmented Christian churches for a more pregnant and more sustained expression of alternative interpretations, but also since the coeval appearance of colonial exploration and exploitation introduced a completely new set of questions about the rela­tionships between pagan/non-Christian nations and the ordo Christiana.

The revealed discourse is not too precise on these issues, however, and needs philosophy for further details. The Golden Rule is found in �?Let not thine eye be envious when thou giveth alms’. (Tobias 4:16) and �?Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets’ (Mattheus 7:12). Paul’s view on political obe­dience and the law written in the heart (Romans 2, 14-15), together with the general cosmology of the Genesis story provide a framework for a notion of natural law, additional conceptual structures be they Stoic or Aristotelian in origin were needed to develop that framework into something coherent and applicable. The Ciceronian take on natural law and its Christian development by Augustine and the Thomist natural law are the prime examples here. Yet again, it is the circumstance of practice and history that provides the fruitful medium for the development of natural law, and without the thriving practice of law in ancient Rome and its registration in the Corpus iuris civilis (sixth cen­tury) and the Corpus iuris canonici (twelfth and thirteenth centuries) much of the philosophy and theology of natural law might have lost its meaning and historical significance. The articulation of systematic theology created a bridge between philosophical concepts and the legal doctrines - the Mosaic law and Roman law - and the political challenges of the time. Concepts like ius natu­rae, ius gentium, ius civile, and the distinction between leges and iura became increasingly sophisticated and allowed for a wider applicability of this political theology.

If this is true, then why is divine revelation of moral precepts needed? Thomas had answered in question 91 of his Summa theologiae, ι-ιi:

Because of the lack of certitude in human judgment, especially with respect to particular and contingent matters. In order, therefore, that man can know without doubt what for him is to be done and what is to be avoided, it was necessary that in his own acts he be directed by a law divinely given, concerning which law it is obvious it cannot err.^{[20] [21] [22]}

As Thomas argued: �?the extrinsic principle moving to good is God, Who both instructs us by means of His Law, and assists us by His Grace’?¹

Thus, against the philosophers’ claim that natural law has been introduced by philosophers, in particular those of Stoicism, here we see argued that natu­ral law is part and parcel of Christianity, if only because God’s command gives certainty where reason supposedly wavers.

Defendants of a specifically Christian, revelation-dependent natural law along these lines claim on the one hand a natural world where laws must be obeyed and on the other a world of salvation where Christ rules, summarized in the Golden Rule and the command of love. On this view Christian natu­ral law is the set of obligations that apply to mankind in general, because of God’s Creation of the world and the justification in Christ. Recently, Alexander Hollerbach defended this position anew. He moreover considered that secu­lar natural law might well claim a foundational justification in human reason, yet that this claim fails.22 This is of course a (post-)modern point of view, that incorporates the criticism of the Enlightenment as a failed project, the sup­posedly unsurmountable arguments of relativism and nihilism, and the con­sequences of today's liberal value-pluralism.^{[23] [24] [25] It hasn't always been like that. The great instigators of modern natural law were convinced that man's reason is sufficient to come to grips with the fundamental principles of justice, even if disagreement existed about the nature of their obligation. In the Grotian formula, the natural law is �?a dictate of right reason', and although right reason is an educated reason, it is assumed that this is shared by all mankind and thus points the way to a universal moral code. Before the claims of right reason, the man without revelation is not excused.}

Falling back onjustification through Christ is, if we look at it closely, an attempt to formulate the greatest common factor, or overlapping consensus, of Christianity: that it is named after Jesus Christ. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries this would not have been sufficient argument. As Nicholas Hardy argued convincingly in his Criticism and Confession. The Bible in the Seventeenth Century Republic of Letters, humanist scholars and theologi­ans were involved in a serious fight about their religious beliefs by means of lit­erary criticism of the sacred texts?⁴ Not having given up on their doctrinal dif­ferences, the study of the texts and their historical contexts became a separate weaponry in the disagreements, instead of being a scientific and value-neutral area of mutual understanding. Of course, we nowadays are not surprised: reli­gion is not a matter of proof, nor of Vernunjt, but of belief and beliefs differ. In the seventeenth century things were not different. Thus, both religion and rea­son are under-determined and do not by some magical trick come to sorting out relativism or let alone skepticism, and the temptation is there to aim at a combination of the two swords, so to say, and make religion and reason both part of the weaponry. The so-called Christian Enlightenment of the eighteenth century expressed this in its conviction that reason and revelation essentially agree and say the same thing?⁵ They help us in the right direction: to embrace the law of nature as God's law. Grotius seems to say so much in the prolegom­ena to his De iure belli ac pacis:

Herein, then, is another source of law besides the source in nature, that is, the free will of God, to which beyond all cavil our reason tells us we must render obedience. But the law of nature of which we have spoken, com­prising alike that which relates to the social life of man and that which is so called in a larger sense, proceeding as it does from the essential traits implanted in man, can nevertheless rightly be attributed to God, because of His having willed that such traits exist in us.... There is an additional consideration in that, by means of the laws which He has given, God has made those fundamental traits more manifest, even to those who possess feebler reasoning powers.. But sacred history, besides enjoining rules of conduct, in no slight degree reinforces man's inclination towards socia­bleness by teaching that all men are sprung from the same first parents.^{[26] [27] [28]}

The law of nature as the dictate of right reason, that men can discover from their own nature is - argues Grotius - also given to us in God's commands and supported by the story of the Creation in the Bible.

Pryor gives this an unexpected, evangelical twist: �?Natural law in the politi­cal realm is thus primarily a tool for crafting a civil order in which those who know God's revealed will can express it in ways that can gain a hearing in the public square'. 2⁷ Or, as Grotius understood this, echoing Calvin: natural law makes men inexcusable before God?⁸

But let us not forget the warning of Mathias Schmoeckel: �?While [histori­ans] are only focussed on theology, religion and church, they fail to see the real dimension of the Reformation - the decisive moment of the Reformation is the dynamic of the two realms, i.e that of the secularization of political rule, as well as that of knowledge and science’.^[29]

As these and other recent publications testify, the interaction between the­ology and religion is a continuing debate, see for example the neo-Calvinist writings - from Kampen, The Netherlands and Grand Rapids, Michigan -, that follow Abraham Kuyper and Herman Dooyeweerd and are now increas­ingly recalibrated against a new history of the reformed scholasticism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.^{[30] [31] Similar motives drive the Radical Orthodoxy movement from Oxford around John Milbank, and of course the Encyclical Fides et ratio (1998) of Pope John-Paul II?1}