The Truth of the Christian Religion with Jean Le Clerc's Notes and Additions. Hugo Grotius
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his prison cell in Loevestein Castle.
Supporting Oldenbarnevelt’s efforts to protect the Remonstrants, Grotius called for toleration of religious views diverging from strict Calvinism and opposed the convocation of the synod demanded by hard-line Calvinists. The call for toleration and religious freedom on the part of a religious group which stands in danger of being outlawed is not in itself surprising. In Grotius, however, this appeal was part of a broader, coherent religious vision which sought to overcome divisions among Christians on the basis of that very principle of sola Scriptura which had been one of the original leitmotifs of the Protestant Reformation. Following in particular the teaching of Franciscus Junius senior (1545–1602), Grotius embraced the doctrine of fundamental and nonfundamental articles of faith. All fundamental articles of faith necessary to salvation were clearly contained in Scripture.1 All issues not explicitly determined by Scripture, instead of being established as necessary dogmas by church
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authority, should be considered as adiafora: that is, as “indifferent” matters, or matters of opinion and free interpretation.
In this power struggle, Oldenbarnevelt’s party was routed. In July 1617, Prince Maurice of Orange declared himself firmly on the side of the counter-Remonstrants. In August 1618, he arrested Oldenbarnevelt and his associates on charges of high treason. Strict Calvinists likewise succeeded in their efforts to call a general synod of Reformed churches, which met in Dort (Dordrecht) from 13 November 1618 to 9 May 1619 and resulted in a comprehensive condemnation of Remonstrant doctrines. Oldenbarnevelt was beheaded on 13 May 1619; Grotius received a sentence of life imprisonment. After several months under arrest at The Hague, he settled into his prospective lifetime’s incarceration at Loevestein Castle, devoting himself to study and writing.
De Veritate Religionis Christianae
His time as a prisoner was extremely productive: he returned to the study of jurisprudence, meditated on moral philosophy (translating into Latin ethical excerpts from Greek poets and dramatists), and resumed his earlier writing on theology. It was at Loevestein that the first version of his work on the truth of the Christian religion was written in the form of a Dutch poem, Bewijs van den waren godsdienst (“Proof of the True Religion”).2 In March 1621, however, with the help of his wife, he escaped from prison. Eventually he reached Paris, where he began life in exile under the protection of friends and, in due course, of the French king.
The Bewijs van den waren godsdienst was published in 1622. In 1627 it was followed by the appearance in Leiden and Paris of a Latin book which, under the title Sensus librorum sex, quos pro veritate religionis Christianae Batavice scripsit Hugo Grotius, reworked and recast in prose the themes covered in the Dutch poem. This little book with the cumbersome title was the first edition of De Veritate Religionis Christianae, a work destined to become a world-famous treatise advocating the truth
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of the Christian religion.3 The second edition, bearing the simplified title De Veritate Religionis Christianae, was published in Leiden in 1629.
Written in a plain and direct language for his countrymen and “especially Seamen, that they might have an Opportunity to employ that Time which in long Voyages lies upon their Hands, and is usually thrown away,”4 this short work aimed to confirm to those who came into contact with pagans, Muslims, and Jews that the Christian religion was the true revealed religion. In addition to “fortifying” the beliefs of Grotius’s countrymen, the treatise was also intended for missionary purposes, namely for convincing non-Christians that “the Christian Religion recommends itself above all others” and “it self is most true and certain.”5
Grotius’s intention to target a readership of seamen was not as implausible as it might appear at first glance, if one recalls that the first version of Grotius’s apology was not only in the vernacular but also in verse, to add pleasure to the reading and to aid retention in the memory. Seamen were, of course, central to the Dutch Republic’s standing as the greatest commercial country of the age: it dominated the Baltic trade, which furnished western Europe with many of its basic staples, and through the Dutch East India Company, the Dutch had displaced the Portuguese in the more exotic and prestigious (if less profitable) trade with India and the Far East.
A work aimed both at fortifying the Christian faith of those who were increasingly confronted with alternative and often competing systems of beliefs, and at gaining converts to Christianity through peaceful means of persuasion, was highly topical not only for genuine religious reasons but also for the political, social, and economic stability of the United Provinces. That Grotius was encouraged to prepare a Latin version indicates that an international readership more educated than the average sailor also appreciated his agile compendium of arguments in support of the Christian religion.
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Originality and philosophical sophistication were not in fact Grotius’s main concern. It has rightly been observed that the arguments presented by Grotius can be traced quite closely to existing literature6 and tend to fall short of the argumentative rigor found in other classical theological and philosophical works. Grotius’s genius lay not in new or more philosophically sophisticated proofs (which would have been unintelligible to most readers, let alone the average sailor) but in selecting, organizing, and presenting in clear and compelling language arguments which could be easily followed and understood.
Like the original Dutch poem, De Veritate was divided into six books. The first three contained positive arguments for the truth of the Christian religion; the remaining three offered comparisons with paganism, Judaism, and Islam designed to display their inferiority. The key argumentative strategy was “to show the Reasonableness of believing and embracing the Christian Religion”7 based on three considerations: its agreement with the conclusions of natural reason concerning the existence of God and his attributes; the authenticity and reliability of Scripture; and the morally excellent teaching contained especially in the New Testament. Accordingly, the first book offered some of the traditional proofs of the existence of God; a discussion of his attributes; and a response to some classical objections to the existence of an omnipotent, completely good, and provident God in the face of so much evil in the world.
The second book turned from natural theology to the Christian revelation, defending the truth of the historical facts on which Christianity rested, that is, the life and scandalous death of Jesus of Nazareth. Such an ignominious death and the ensuing persecutions would normally have meant the end of a sect. Amazingly, Grotius argued, Christianity instead spread and was embraced by “very many” men “of good Judgment, and of no small Learning,” who acknowledged that reports of Jesus’s miracles were “true, and founded upon sufficient Testimony” and that “some of the Works of Christ were such as seem to declare God himself to be the Author of them.”8 After this class of arguments “drawn from Matters
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of Fact,” Grotius turned to “those which are drawn from the Nature of the Doctrine,”9 that is, to the moral superiority of its commandments.
The third book focused on philological and historical considerations aiming to establish the authenticity, reliability, and lack of significant corruption of biblical texts, with special regard to the New Testament.
In 1640 a new Latin edition of De Veritate appeared, in which Grotius had added a formidable apparatus of learned notes designed to support the main text’s arguments by referring to a vast array of ancient, patristic, medieval, and contemporary sources. Here the author’s exceptional humanistic erudition flooded the entire text of De Veritate. Although the arguments in the body of the work remained unchanged, Grotius’s convenient little book was thereby transformed into a treatise which even the most determined sailor who did not happen to be an accomplished humanist would have found difficult to digest.
Success and Polemics
With or without notes, De Veritate received a remarkably warm welcome throughout the international Christian community of almost all parties. As one of the early