In the past decade, a small cottage industry of important new books and articles has emerged, dedicated to documenting distinctive Calvinist contributions to the development of Western theories of natural law. Rejecting the stern anti-naturalism of Karl Barth and his many followers, several writers have shown that early modern Calvinists throughout Europe and North America used natural law concepts and methods to work out their ideas and institutions of law, politics, ethics and society. Some of these early Calvinist contributions were continuous with the teachings of the ius commune; others bore the distinct theological marks of John Calvin and his diverse followers.Footnote ² Natural law was not, as BarthFootnote ³ and his followers taught, a scholastic hangover or Enlightenment intoxicant that clear-eyed Calvinists rejected. It was a vital and variant part of early modern Calvinist teachings.

In this article, I focus on the natural law theory of one such early modern Calvinist jurist, Johannes Althusius (1557–1638). Althusius has been called ‘the clearest and most profound thinker which Calvinism has produced in the realm of political science and jurisprudence’.Footnote ⁴ Born in a tiny German town in Wittgenstein-Berleburg in 1557, he studied law, theology, philosophy and the classics at the universities of Cologne, Geneva, Heidelberg and Basel, working intermittently with such Calvinist worthies as François Hotman and Denis Godefroy. He took his doctorate in canon law and civil law (doctor juris utriusque) from the University of Basel. His first appointment came in 1586 as lecturer in Roman law and philosophy at the Herborn Academy, a new Calvinist college that was attracting teaching staff and students from throughout Europe. Among his new Herborn colleagues was Caspar Olevianus, co-author of the Heidelberg Catechism (1568), a Calvinist creedal landmark. In 1594, Althusius was promoted to Professor of Law at Herborn, and served twice as rector of the Academy, in 1597 and 1602. His later years there, however, were marked by repeated internal controversy. Particularly notable for our purposes was Althusius' debate with his colleagues about the modern uses of biblical law.

In 1604, Althusius moved to Emden, an important seaport city in eastern Frisia, near the border of the Holy Roman Empire and the newly united Netherlands. Emden was a major centre for Calvinist refugees from the whole of Europe, and an emerging intellectual and missionary centre for the spread of Calvinism. Althusius was appointed as legal counsel for the city (Stadtsyndicus) and became deeply involved in the city's multiple legal, commercial and diplomatic negotiations. He played a leading role in helping Emden wrest greater independence from the local territorial count and nobles, an accomplishment that made him something of a local hero. Although he continued to give lectures, he did not hold a formal university position thereafter and turned down attractive chairs in Leiden and Frankener. Althusius was also elected as an elder of the Reformed Church of Emden in 1617, and served for years on the Emden Consistory, hearing cases on spiritual, moral and family questions, much as John Calvin had done half a century before on the Genevan Consistory.

While these local achievements in church and state were notable in their day, Althusius' more enduring contributions came through his writings. While he left a score of books, it was especially his trilogy of works on ethics, politics and law that made signature contributions. His two-volume Civil Interactions of 1601 (expanded in 1611) worked out a system of ‘ethical habits and techniques’ of ‘speaking and listening’, ‘proclamation and silence’, to guide rhetoric, dialogue and persuasion in various social institutions, most notably in the church and the state.Footnote ⁵ His massive Politics of 1603 (revised in 1610 and again in 1614), set forth a comprehensive theory of social, political and legal order and activity, and the forms and norms of sovereignty, authority and liberty that obtain within each sphere.Footnote ⁶ His three-volume Theory of Justice (1617) laid the groundwork for a comprehensive theory of law and justice, with attention to the rights and liberties of private persons and the various private and public associations that they formed.Footnote ⁷

Althusius presented these three big tracts as ‘comprehensive’, ‘total’, and ‘universal’ accounts of the disciplines of ethics, politics and law respectively. Each tract was amply illustrated by ‘sacred and profane examples’. Each tract used the dialectical method of the French Calvinist logician Peter Ramus, by which Althusius defined the first principles of these three disciplines, and then divided their constituent precepts and practices into a series of ever more particular binary opposites. Each tract drew on hundreds of scholarly sources – sundry ancient Greeks and Romans, the Bible and Apocrypha, various apostolic and patristic writers, numerous medieval theologians, philosophers and civilians, a few canonists and rabbis, various protestant jurists, numerous contemporary catholic and protestant political writers, and several collections of civil, imperial, feudal and urban law, both ancient and modern. Using this vast library, Althusius' ambition was to explore deeply the foundations and fundamentals of law, politics and society, and to bring the insights of the entire Western tradition into a ‘total’ and ‘universal’ theory that would appeal not only to fellow Calvinists and countrymen but to anyone in his world of Christendom who was serious about faith and order, authority and liberty.

NATURAL LAW, COMMON LAW AND POSITIVE LAW

Natural law was one of the foundations of Althusius' impressive new system. (Complex theories of natural rights, human nature, social contract, divine covenant, symbiotic association, written constitutionalism and political federalism were among the others.) Particularly in later editions of his Politics, and in his Theory of Justice, Althusius set out a ‘demonstrative theory’ of natural law – a theory designed to ‘demonstrate’ the ultimate concordance between biblical and rational, Christian and classical teachings on the nature and purpose of law.Footnote ⁸

Althusius effectively merged the hierarchies of law developed by fellow jurists and theologians of his day, both catholic and protestant. Civil law and canon law jurists generally distinguished three main types of law:

1. i. The natural law or law of nature (ius naturale, lex naturae), the set of immutable principles of reason and conscience that are supreme in authority and divinity;

2. ii. The law of nations or common law (ius gentium, ius commune, lex communis), the legal principles and procedures that are common to multiple political communities and often the basis for treaties and other diplomatic conventions; and

3. iii. The civil law or positive law (ius civile, ius positivum), the statutes, customs and cases of various states, churches, fiefdoms, manors and other local political communities.Footnote ⁹

Theologians and moralists, in turn, generally distinguished three main types of biblical law:

1. i. Moral law (lex moralis), the enduring moral teachings of the Decalogue and the New Testament;

2. ii. Juridical or forensic law (lex juridicales, ius forensi), the rules and procedures by which ancient Israelites and apostolic Christians governed their religious and civil communities; and

3. iii. Ceremonial law (lex ceremonialis), the Mosaic laws of personal diet, ritual sacrifice, priestly life and the like that governed the religious life of the ancient Israelites.

Some theologians saw parallels between these three ancient types of biblical law and the three layers of modern catholic and protestant church law that governed, respectively, the essentials of doctrine and morality, the commonplaces of ecclesiastical polity and property, and the discretionary aspects (the adiaphora) of local church life.Footnote ¹⁰

In his early writings, Althusius repeated these traditional hierarchies of law. In his later writings, however, and most fully in his 1617 Theory of Justice, he collapsed these traditional legal terms and hierarchies into two main types of law: natural law and positive law; most of the other traditional types of law were subsumed within these two categories. He treated the moral laws of the Bible and the common laws of nations as two visible forms of the same invisible natural law hidden within each person's reason and conscience. And he regarded the laws of ancient Israelites and of modern churches as two types of positive law that stood alongside the positive laws of historical and modern states. The modern validity of all these positive laws turned on their concordance with natural law. Their modern utility for the state turned on their compliance with the fundamental law (lex fundamentalis) of the community, which would ideally be articulated by a written constitution.Footnote ¹¹

Natural law is ‘the will of God for men’, Althusius argued. God has ‘written this natural law’ on the hearts, souls, minds and consciences of all persons, as Romans 2:15 and sundry other biblical and classical sources make clear. Everyone, by his or her very nature, thus has the ‘ideas (notitiae) and inclinations (inclinationes) of this natural law’ borne within them. Some of these ‘natural inclinations’ are common to humans and animals. For example, like animals, humans are inclined, by nature, to ‘preserve their lives and to procure the necessities to remain alive’. They are inclined to defend themselves against force and force majeure. They are inclined to ally themselves with others and to rally around natural leaders to aid them in their self-defence. They are inclined to ‘procreate by the union of male and female and to educate their natural-born children’. They are inclined to care for themselves and for their loved ones when they are sick, hurt or ailing. Self-preservation, self-protection, and self-perpetuation are ‘natural inclinations’ that the natural law teaches to persons and animals alike.Footnote ¹²

The natural law also teaches human beings higher ideas, which appeal uniquely to human reason and conscience. By them, ‘a person understands what justice is, and is impelled by this hidden natural instinct to do what is just and to avoid what is unjust’. Through the natural law, God commands all persons to ‘live a life that is at once pious and holy, just and proper’. He teaches them the natural ‘duties of love that are to be performed toward God and one's neighbour’. He sets out the basic ‘rules of living, obeying and administering’ that must govern all persons and associations. He sets forth ‘general principles of goodness and equity, evil and sinfulness’ that every person must know in order to live with himself or herself and with others. He teaches the ‘actions and omissions that are appropriate to maintaining the public good of human society’, as well as the private good of households and families. By the natural law, Althusius wrote in a final summary of his position, God

This natural law has had many names in the classical and Christian traditions, Althusius recognised – Godly law, divine law, moral law, natural law, natural justice, natural equity, the law of conscience, the law of the mind, the law of reason or right reason, the law inside people, the immutable law, the supreme law, the general law, the common law and others. Parsing the names for the natural law was not especially important to Althusius: he regarded them mostly as synonyms and used them interchangeably.Footnote ¹⁴

The more important and more difficult task was determining the norms that the natural law teaches. Althusius knew the traditional formula taught by the mediaeval scholastics and by the neo-scholastics of his day: that the natural law gives all persons an innate or natural knowledge of good and evil (called synderesis); that, by exercising their reason, persons can come to understand the norms of this natural law; and that, by exercising their conscience, they can learn to apply these norms equitably to concrete circumstances. But Althusius also recognised that, throughout history, persons and peoples have reached different formulations and applications of the natural law. Even in avowed Christian societies of his day, persons had

So, given this reality, how can we really know ‘the nature of the norms of the law that are implanted in us by nature?’ How can we be absolutely certain that we as individuals, or as the leaders of our communities, have ‘a true perception’ of the contents of the natural law? How can we even know which person's or community's formulations of the natural law are better than another's. Persons are fallible creatures, who perceive natural law only ‘indirectly’, ‘circumstantially’, ‘through a glass darkly’, through ‘flickering shadows’ emitting from distant caves of light. Communities have widely variant ‘customs, natures, attitudes, and viewpoints’ that are affected by the ‘age, condition, circumstances, and education’ of their members. There is no universal code of written natural law to consult. So how can we be sure of the natural law's norms and contents?Footnote ¹⁵

Althusius argued that we can know the norms of the natural law if we study both Scripture and tradition, revelation and reason very carefully. We know that God has given a fuller revelation of his law in the Bible, particularly in the Ten Commandments and in the moral teachings of Moses and the prophets, Christ and the apostles. This cannot be a new form of natural law, for God will not and cannot contradict the natural law that he has already revealed to all of us in and through our human nature. Biblical moral law is rather a more perfect conformation and elaboration of the natural law ideas and inclinations that are already inscribed on the hearts and minds of everyone, believers and non-believers alike. Through Moses, God rewrote on stone what was already written on our hearts. Through Christ, God rewrote this law anew by fulfilling its commandments and promises, and by teaching his followers how to discern its ‘weightier matters’. Althusius acknowledged that biblical moral law has clearer precepts and higher purposes than any other form of natural law. It provides a more certain knowledge of the will of God for our lives. It sets out a pathway to salvation for those who can abide by its letter and a pathway to sanctification for those who can live by its spirit. But the Bible's moral law only rewrites more copiously the natural law that is already written cryptically on the hearts of everyone.Footnote ¹⁶

While God and Scripture have rewritten the natural law for believers to discern, reason and experience have rewritten this natural law for non-believers to discover. In every major civilisation, Althusius argued, enlightened leaders and magistrates have emerged who have used their natural reason to translate the general principles of natural law in their minds into specific positive or proper laws (leges positivum, leges propriae) for their communities. These enlightened leaders have inevitably tailored these positive laws to ‘the customs, nature, needs, attitudes, conditions and other special circumstances’ of the people ruling and being ruled. This has produced widely variant positive laws over time and across cultures, particularly when these local laws are viewed in their details. But these enlightened leaders have also inevitably positioned these laws to reflect some of the natural light within their hearts, and have maintained these laws because they have proved to be both right and useful. This has produced laws that are common to many peoples and polities, even those that have had no interaction with each other. Every major civilisation, said Althusius, has developed comparable sets of law to govern religious worship and observance, to honour marriage and the family, to obey authorities and to respect traditions, to protect human lives, properties and reputations, to care for relatives, widows, orphans and the poor, to speak respectfully to others, to testify truthfully, to honour promises, contracts and agreements, to vindicate wrongs and to punish wrongdoers, to fight wars and repel attacks, and to give to each and everyone what is due. Althusius argued that these common laws, independently developed by different peoples and polities over time and across cultures, must be regarded as ‘visible expressions of the same invisible natural law’ within all persons. They must be taken as reflections of ‘the natural and divine immutable equity that is mixed into them’, as indications ‘of the common practice of natural law’.Footnote ¹⁷

These common laws (iura commune), or laws of nations (iura gentium) – gathered from the commonplaces of sundry positive laws and the common practices of sundry legal communities – stand alongside biblical moral laws as a second form and forum of natural law. Indeed, at a certain level of abstraction, the moral laws of the Bible and the common laws of the nations converge, even though they have very different origins, ends and languages. Althusius wrote:

This belief in the ultimate concordance, if not confluence, of biblical law, natural law and common law helps to explain Althusius' somewhat baffling style of argument in his Politics and Theory of Justice. In both tracts, Althusius piled citation upon citation, from all manner of seemingly unrelated sources, in demonstration of each simple assertion about what the natural law contained and commanded. Some of this was, no doubt, the pedantic puffery of a legal humanist – the flashy displays of unnecessary erudition that still mark some law review articles today. But, for Althusius, all this dense citation of sundry sources evidently had a larger purpose. He seemed convinced that the more frequently a legal teaching and practice appeared in diverse legal, theological and philosophical texts, the more readily it could be taken as proof of the content of the natural law. If the ancient Israelites, directed from Sinai, and the ancient Greeks and Romans, directed from Olympus, independently embraced the same legal teaching, that had to speak volumes about the natural foundations and qualities of this teaching. If Aristotle and Moses, Cicero and Christ, Plato and Paul all concurred on a given principle of right living and proper ruling, that had to give this principle a special priority in discerning the content of natural law. And, if contemporary catholics and protestants, who had been slaughtering and slandering each other with a vengeance, still came to the same conclusions about the cogency and utility of these classical and Christian legal teachings, that had to commend these teachings even more strongly as natural universals. Althusius thus scoured the sources for any and every proof text that he could find to support each step of his argument. This made his writing more of a legal brief than a philosophical argument; more of a historical demonstration of natural law precepts in action than a logical deduction from a priori first principles.Footnote ¹⁹

Althusius rested his case on the contents of the natural law most firmly on the confluence between the Commandments of the Decalogue and the moral teachings of various classical traditions. For him, the Decalogue was the clearest and most comprehensive confirmation and codification of the natural law, of every person's inner natural inclinations to piety and justice, to faith and order, to love of God and love of neighbour. As such, ‘the Decalogue has been prescribed for all people to the extent that it agrees with and explains the common law of nature for all peoples’.

On several occasions, Althusius worked through each of the Commandments to show their enduring natural law teachings. His formulation in the 1614 Politics reads thus:

These moral teachings of the Decalogue are echoed and elaborated elsewhere in the Bible – particularly in the Gospel's repeated explications of the spirit of the Decalogue, and in the many moral lessons set out by the Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles. These enduring moral laws of the Bible must lie at the foundation of the positive law of any modern Christian polity.

But not all biblical law should be taken as natural law, nor considered mandatory or even useful for our day. Many of the Mosaic laws recorded in the Pentateuch are simply the positive laws of the ancient Jewish people. Many of the legal actions and admonitions of the patriarchs, judges and kings of ancient Israel are simply evidence of one positive law system in action. In particular, the Mosaic ‘ceremonial’ laws and customs respecting diet, dress, sacrifice, ritual, levitical life, temple rules and more, even though authored by God, were specific to the time and place of this ancient wandering tribal people.Footnote ²² Christ explicitly rejected the letter of this Mosaic ceremonial law in favour of its general moral spirit. Remember his statement about the complex laws of the Sabbath: ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath’ (Mark 2:23–28; Luke 6:1–5). Mosaic ceremonial laws, let alone the later rabbinic accretions upon them, have no place in modern communities – save as an illustration of how one legally sophisticated ancient community exercised its natural inclinations and obligations to religious worship and ritual life. While a modern Christian magistrate would do well to develop a comparable set of ceremonial laws tailored to the needs of the local community, and perhaps even emulate some of the ancient biblical prototypes, he cannot simply ‘impose these Jewish positive laws, which by their nature are changeable and obsolete’. That would be to ‘destroy the Christian liberty’ that Christ gave us and to ‘entangle himself and others in a yoke of slavery’.Footnote ²³

More useful in our day, for Christian and non-Christian polities alike, are the ‘juridical laws’ of Moses. These are the many detailed laws and procedures set out in the Bible to govern crime and tort, marriage and family, property and commerce, procedure and evidence and more. These provisions are more useful and probative because they give more specific content, context and coherence to the Decalogue and other statements of natural law. ‘[T]he moral commandments of the Decalogue are general’, Althusius wrote. ‘They have no certain, special, and fixed punishment attached to them’, let alone procedural mechanisms for how they should be justly and equitably interpreted and applied. The juridical law of Moses ‘makes more specific determinations, which it relates to the circumstances of the act’. So, while the natural law commands ‘that evildoers ought to be punished’, it ‘proposes nothing concerning the punishment’, save the bald commandment, ‘thou shalt not kill’, which does not seem to be just in all circumstances. The juridical law ‘works out specifically that adulterers, murderers and the like are to be punished by death, unless the punishment should be mitigated on account of other circumstances. The Mosaic law has various punishments for these crimes’, and prescribes a number of useful procedures to weigh the evidence of the crime and to determine a just punishment.Footnote ²⁴ Similarly, the Mosaic juridical law offers a number of useful legal rules and procedures for the acquisition, use and maintenance of public and private property, for the litigation and settlement of private disputes, and for the proper interactions between husband and wife, parent and child, master and servant, creditor and debtor, seller and buyer. None of these juridical positive laws of Moses should be considered binding upon modern Christians just because they happen to be in the Bible. But, insofar as they are parts and products of the natural law, these juridical laws are edifying for our day, and can be appropriated as apt in the construction of modern positive laws.Footnote ²⁵

What underscored the natural validity and modern utility of the juridical laws of Moses was that they often had parallels in other legal systems, most notably in classical Roman law. Althusius wrote that ‘virtually all Europeans still use’ the classical Roman law because its detailed laws have also proved to be ‘both right and useful’. Of course, some ancient Roman law provisions betrayed the natural law more than illustrated it. Think of the many old laws celebrating the pagan imperial cult, the domestic laws that permitted infanticide, concubinage and prostitution, the commercial laws that countenanced exploitation of orphans, captives and slaves, to give just a few examples. Such laws that openly contradict the Decalogue and other natural law principles cannot be viewed as binding on anyone – as the early apostles and Church Fathers made clear in their calls for legal reforms of Roman society. But the classical Roman law texts also hold numerous more enlightened legal teachings, many parallel to those in Mosaic juridical law, that are ‘consistent with the natural law and that cater to public utility and the common good’. Some of these Roman laws had also been adopted and adapted into the canon laws of the mediaeval Church and the civil laws of early modern European nations. When these ancient Roman law texts and their later legal adaptations are interpreted and applied ‘naturally, equitably, and justly’, they, too, can be taken as reflections and illustrations of the natural law in action.Footnote ²⁶

This was the method that Althusius used to work out an elaborate system of public, private, criminal and procedural law for his day. He started with the natural law principles of Scripture and tradition. He then cited the elaboration of these principles in the precepts and procedures of various legal systems, with an eye to discovering and demonstrating what they held in common. He combed very carefully through biblical law and classical Roman law. He rummaged more freely and selectively through mediaeval and early modern civil law, canon law, feudal law, manorial law and urban law. His method was not always so neat or cogent. Sometimes he repeated his discussion of the same natural law principle or precept in different chapters and books, with each discussion somewhat different from the last. Sometimes he just dumped into one long string citation all kinds of passages whose intersection with each other, let alone integration with the natural law principle in question, was not obvious. Sometimes he would pluck out one ancient passage as normative, even when many other passages in the same source qualified or contradicted the one that he singled out. Sometimes he would arbitrarily pick a provision from Mosaic, civil or canon law and declare it to be a provision of the common law of nations, without showing its analogues in other legal systems. There was more a priori reasoning at work in Althusius' theory than he let on. But, these caveats aside, his demonstrative method of argument produced an astonishingly comprehensive and complex jurisprudence.

AN ILLUSTRATION OF NATURAL RIGHTS

Althusius used this demonstrative method to work out a detailed account of all manner of legal subjects – conscience and commandment, contracts and covenants, procedure and evidence, advocacy and appeal, marriage and family, corporations and associations, business and commerce, torts and crimes, property and poverty, rights and liberties, privileges and immunities, federalism and constitutionalism, and more.

As an example, I will illustrate how he used this method to develop one legal subject – the ‘freedom and rights of the body’ (libertas et iura corporis). Both in his Politics and in his Theory of Justice, Althusius presented this as a natural right, anchored in the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’, and its echoes in a number of Greek and Roman legal and philosophical texts.Footnote ²⁷ In his Theory of Justice, he went on to ‘demonstrate’ what this bodily freedom entailed, with his most thorough discussion coming in two chapters on ‘freedom and its characteristics’. These chapters were wedged between long chapters on the legal power of a master over his slaves and of a paterfamilias over his household. Althusius seemed to position his freedom discussion to underscore the natural limits that even a master and father had to respect, despite the repeated admonitions of natural, biblical, and Roman law alike that these authorities should be ‘honoured, respected and obeyed’.

Althusius' opening passage on the right to bodily freedom reads thus:

Althusius cited six texts from Justinian's Corpus iuris civilis to support this proposition. He started with a text from the Institutes, which gave an expansive definition of the rights of ‘freedmen’ in ancient Rome: ‘Freedom, from which the expression freedmen is derived, is the natural ability to do anything one wishes, unless it is prohibited by force or by law.’Footnote ²⁹ He next cited a text from the Digest that gave the same definition of liberty, but now without restricting it to ‘freedmen’ and condemning slavery as ‘an institution of the ius gentium, whereby someone, contrary to nature, is made subject to the ownership of another’.Footnote ³⁰ A couple of sentences later, Althusius lifted up several other Roman law texts that countenanced the emancipation of slaves, servants, captives and children, and expanded the category and liberties of ‘freedmen’ and free-born citizens.Footnote ³¹ The upshot of these texts was the claim that freedom is a natural and native quality of all men, and those who are not free should be made free so as far as possible. As he later put it: ‘Today, all freedmen have become completely free.’Footnote ³² But, lest the reader think that Roman law countenanced outright hedonism in its call for ‘freedom of each to do whatever he wishes’ up to the limits of the law, Althusius pointed to two other texts from the Digest that counselled virtuous exercise of freedom: ‘Not everything which is lawful is honourable.’ And with respect to freedom of the body in marriage: ‘In such unions, one must always consider not only what is lawful but what is honourable.’Footnote ³³

Alongside these classical Roman law texts, Althusius lined up a dozen biblical passages that made similar points. He contrasted the natural freedom that all should enjoy with the unnatural slavery imposed by enemies or family members. Ignoring the many other Old Testament passages on slavery, he pointed to Deuteronomy 20:11 as a warning against slavery and servitude: ‘If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labour and shall work for you.’ He also cited the Apocryphal book Sirach 33:20, which extended this call for freedom to the household: ‘Let neither son nor wife, neither brother nor friend, have power over you as long as you live.’ Again, to avoid the seeming hedonism of these passages, he pointed to several passages from St Paul that echoed the Roman law texts in their calls for prudence. He included 1 Corinthians 6:12: ‘Everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial’; and 1 Corinthians 8:9: ‘Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak.’ Althusius went on to describe the bodily freedom taught by the natural law as follows:

In support of these propositions, Althusius cited two dozen passages from the Corpus iuris civilis and from a modern commentary thereon by Antoine Favre. He included several sections in the Institutes and Digest on ‘the rights of persons’ (iura personae) in general, and the rights of ‘free-born persons’, ‘freedmen’ and ‘manumitted’ and ‘emancipated’ slaves, servants and children. He also included a number of passages on specific rights and freedoms respecting marriage and family life, the acquisition and use of property and business interests, and their alienation by contract, gift or testament. He again made clear, citing Justinian's Code, that the ‘status of freedman’, while highly coveted, does ‘not afford an exemption from civil duties’, nor release a person from his or her ‘natural obligations’.Footnote ³⁵

Althusius interleaved with these Roman law texts ten biblical passages that added further nuance and balance. For example, he supported the natural freedom ‘to make one's own law or to disregard it’ and to have ‘uninhibited use of one's body’ with a citation to the cautions of 1 Corinthians 7:4–6: ‘The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent.’ He added to the list Ephesians 5:29, which underscored Paul's teaching that one's body is to be preserved as a ‘temple of the Lord’: ‘After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the Church.’ Likewise, he supported the proposition that a person has the natural right to make use of his or her own or another's property with citations to Genesis 50:5–6 and Jeremiah 40:1–3, among others, which taught that all such property uses need to respect the basic natural law duties to love God, neighbour and self. The lesson in this cluster of passages was clear: freedom of the body and its support is a natural good, but it must be exercised with due moderation and respect for virtue and for the interests of others.

A few pages later in the Theory of Justice, Althusius returned to his exposition of freedom of the body, now with attention to the doctrine of self-defence and defence of others:

Embedded in this discussion were citations to nearly 100 texts from the Bible and Apocrypha, many of them specific provisions and examples of proper protection of one's life, liberty, property and family drawn from the Mosaic law of crime and tort and the glosses thereon by Christ and St Paul – although Althusius ducked the hard Gospel passages where Christ called his followers ‘to turn the other cheek’ (Matthew 5:39, Luke 6:29). Interwoven with these biblical passages were nearly 50 passages from the classical Roman law, particularly the lex Aquilia, and various glosses and commentaries on these Roman law texts by catholic and protestant jurists – Benedict Aretius, Julius Clarus, Diego Covarruvias, Andreas Gail, Joseph Mascardus, Jacob Menochius, Fernando Vásquez and Matthaeus Wesembecke.

And so Althusius went on – piling passage upon passage, proof text upon proof text to demonstrate the concordance that he saw between biblical and rational, classical and Christian, catholic and protestant forms and formulations of natural law principles. One can almost see him sitting in the library for many months on end, poring over huge piles of legal and theological texts and compiling massive lists of each and every passage that he could find that bore on a given topic. Once he completed his reading, he must have divided and subdivided these lists into ever more discrete categories, following his favourite Ramist techniques, and then inserted these lists of citations at apt points throughout his own text. It is an utterly fascinating and utterly exhausting display of erudition.

This was not just idle pedantry, however. Althusius was writing for a world that was wracked by the Inquisition and by religious warfare between and among protestants and catholics. He was writing for a fragile Netherlands that was still struggling to create a coherent nation-state after its bloody revolt from Spain. He was writing for a Holy Roman Empire, a vast archipelago of 350 polities, each bent on preserving its own fragile rights and liberties. His natural law theory was designed to produce a new concordance of discordant canons that transcended differences of creed, country and custom. This was a Calvinist theory in its origins but it was universal in its orientation and ambition.

Inevitably, Althusius' universal theory of law was a creature of his time, and his legal ken was conditioned by the sources at his disposal. Nevertheless, it is remarkable how fresh and vital his legal insights remain for our day. And it is tempting to try out Althusius' ‘demonstrative theory’ with a wider set of legal texts before us – not just texts from the classical, Jewish and Christian West, but from all the axial religions around the world, including Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism and more. This ‘demonstrative method’ might well show the world today that, despite our bitter culture wars and bloody military battles, there is great deal more confluence than conflict in our fundamental legal teachings and practices. Indeed, developing a new world concordance of discordant canons might well hold far greater promise for peace and order than negotiating yet another transient treaty or temporary truce.