Abstract
In early modern Germany Christian Thomasius’ lectures and publications on the relationship of the secular prince to his territorial church were considered provocative and extreme by many of his contemporaries. It is often argued that one of the reasons for the notoriety of Thomasius’ views was his use of a secular natural law in defining this relationship. It is the use of secular argument to define the status of the church that is often regarded as one of the main ‘enlightened’ characteristics of Thomasius’ philosophy. Natural jurisprudence is, of course, an important part of Thomasius’ thought. It is my contention, however, that his conception of the relationship between prince and church is also based on theological arguments, which have so far received relatively little attention in secondary literature. It is even possible, I will argue, to emphasise theology rather than secular thought in explaining Thomasius’ ideas on the question of church and state.1
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Notes
Some of the most recent important publications on Thomasius are F. Grunert, Normbegründung und politische Legitimität (Tübingen, 2000);
T. J. Hochstrasser, Natural Law Theories in the Early Enlightenment (Cambridge, 2000);
I. Hunter, Rival Enlightenments: Civil and Metaphysical Philosophy in early Modern Germany (Cambridge, 2001);
P. Schröder, ‘Thomas Hobbes, Christian Thomasius and the Seventeenth-Century Debate on the Church and State’, History of European Ideas, 23, 2–4 (1997), 59–79;
and Christian Thomasius, ed. Friedrich Vollhardt (Tübingen, 1997);
cf. also J. B. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 159–66.
Cf., for example, C. Link, Herrschaftsordnung und bürgerliche Freiheit (Vienna/Cologne/Graz, 1979), pp. 254 and 260; K. Schlaich, ‘Der rationale Territorialismus. Die Kirche unter dem staatsrechtlichen Absolutismus um die Wende vom 17. zum 18. Jahrhundert’, pp. 320–1, in Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Kanonistische Abteilung 85 (1968), pp. 269–340; Schröder, ‘Thomas Hobbes’, which emphasises the contribution by Thomasius to secular political theory.
See also Ian Hunter’s ‘Secret Theology and Philosophical Priestcraft’, Journal of the History of Ideas 61 (2000), 595–616, in which he argues that Thomasius wanted to remove religion from political theory to prevent religious disagreement from leading to political conflict.
On religious toleration and the peace treaties of Westphalia, cf. J. Whaley, ‘A Tolerant Society? Religious Toleration in the Holy Roman Empire, 1648–1806’, in O. P. Grell and R. Porter (eds), Toleration in Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 175–95.
On the peace treaties of Westphalia the standard work still is F. Dickmann, Der Westfälische Friede (Münster, 1959).
On priestcraft in England, see M. Goldie, ‘The Civil Religion of James Harrington’, in A. Pagden, The Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 197–222, esp. p. 212.
On Thomasius’ disputes with the orthodox theologians in Leipzig, cf. R. Lieberwirth, ‘Christian Thomasius (1655–1728)’, in G. Jerouschek and A. Sames (eds), Aufklärung und Erneuerung (Hanau/ Halle, 1994);
and F. Grunert, ‘Zur aufgeklärten Kritik am theokratischen Absolutismus’, in F. Vollhardt (ed.), Christian Thomasius (Tübingen, 1997).
W. Schneiders, Naturrecht und Liebesethik (Hildesheim, 1971), p. 212.
On Lutheran ecclesiology in the seventeenth century, cf. M. Heckel, Staat und Kirche nach den Lehren der evangelischen Juristen in der ersten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1968).
H. Schneider, ‘Der radikale Pietismus im 17. Jahrhundert’, in M. Brecht, Geschichte des Pietismus vom siebzehnten bis zum frühen achtzenhnten Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1993), pp. 400–1.
V. Press, Kriege und Krisen (Munich, 1991), p. 355.
T. Reinking (1590–1664), whom Thomasius described as a ‘papist scribbler’ (‘papenzender Scribent’, cf. C. Link, ‘Dietrich Reinkingk’, in M. Stolleis, Staatsdenker der frühen Neuzeit [Munich, 1995], p. 82) wrote that ‘distinctae res sunt ecclesia et respublica’ (De Regimine seculari et ecclesiastico [Basel, 1622], lib. III, cl. II, cap. II, §29).
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Ahnert, T. (2002). The Prince and the Church in the Thought of Christian Thomasius. In: Hunter, I., Saunders, D. (eds) Natural Law and Civil Sovereignty. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403919533_7
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