Korey D Maas

This chapter will focus on Enlightenment Europe as the most immediate background and point of reference for the early development of American ideas and practices. It will provide an analytical survey of what might be considered, from the early modern perspective, ‘live options’ in church-state relations. Despite the title’s use of singulars, therefore, the plurality of such options will be emphasized. While Enlightenment theorists might speak, for example, of an ideal relationship between ‘church’ and ‘state,’ the empirical reality was of course that of multiple European ‘states,’ in most of which were present multiple ‘churches.’ Not only did the laws of each nation differently address the relationship between the state and its church(es), but even within individual states this relationship was far from static through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Similarly, as much recent historiography acknowledges, problems also attend references to the Enlightenment as a unitary phenomenon. Even if one focuses only on those most commonly identified as representative thinkers, for instance, one cannot deduce a singular ‘Enlightenment theory’ of church-state relations. This chapter will therefore emphasize the rich diversity of both theory and practice on which subsequent thinkers were able to reflect in addressing this vexed question.

On the Law of Nature is at once a traditional and eclectic treatise of moral philosophy by one of the sixteenth century's most widely read Protestant authors. Niels Hemmingsen (1513-1600), the "Teacher of Denmark," was a Danish humanist and theologian who studied with the "Teacher of Germany," Philip Melanchthon, at the University of Wittenberg. Hemmingsen went on to serve as a professor at the University of Copenhagen--first of Greek, then of dialectic, and finally of theology. He wrote voluminously on method, theology, exegesis, homiletics, and ethics.In this treatise Hemmingsen argues that all particular rules of ethical conduct can be derived from immutable axioms or first principles. Though moral philosophy works according to its own rules, Hemmingsen shows that its conclusions, far from being at odds with the divine revelation of the moral law, are identical with the ethical commandments of Scripture. Thus Hemmingsen includes a section on the Decalogue, along with a lengthy account of the traditional cardinal virtues, supported by a myriad of quotations from classical Greek and Roman sources. This important treatise looks both backward to classical and medieval philosophy and forward to developments in the seventeenth century and beyond. -- !c From publisher's description.

Because the Danish Protestant theologian and philosopher Niels Hemmingsen (1513-1600) is today little known outside his homeland, some of the claims made for his initial importance and continuing impact can appear rather extravagant. He is described, for example, not only as having "dominated" the theology of his own country for half a century1 but more broadly as having been "the greatest builder of systems in his generation." In the light of this indefatigable system building, he has further been credited with (or blamed for) initiating modern trends in critical biblical scholarship, as well as for being "one of the founders of modern jurisprudence." Illuminating this last claim especially are the more specific claims for Hemmingsen as having been "an important forerunner for more recent founders of natural law," most specifically Hugo Grotius, often deemed the "father" of modern natural law. Such attributions rest primarily on the content and influence of Hemmingsen's De Lege Naturae Apodictica Methodus ("On the Law of Nature: A Demonstrative Method," 1562), which was read widely throughout early modern Europe. The narrative in which the natural law jurisprudence of Grotius and the Enlightenment emanated from that of Hemmingsen is, however, not quite so tidy, as others have also emphasized the great differences between Hemmingsen and Grotius. This confusion with respect to the relationship among Hemmingsen, Grotius, and modernity is perhaps entirely understandable, though, in view of Francis Oakley's droll observation that, among commentators, "there appears to be little agreement about the precise nature of the novelty, or 'modernity,' or break with scholastic thought patterns they so persistently (if somewhat mystifyingly) ascribe to Grotius." E. J. Hutchinson and Korey Maas, "Niels Hemmingsen (1513-1600) and the Development of Lutheran Natural-Law Teaching," Journal of Markets & Morality 17, no. 2 (Fall 2014): 595-617.