Niels Hemmingsen - On the Law of Nature: A Demonstrative Method

On the Law of Nature

A Demonstrative Method

Niels Hemmingsen

Translated and edited by E. J. Hutchinson

Introduction by E. J. Hutchinson and Korey D. Maas

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Images in this edition are reproduced under the no copyrightnoncommercial use license and appear courtesy of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Mnchen: Niels Hemmingsen, De lege naturae apodictica methodus (Vitebergae: Crato, 1564), call number: 940490 Ph.pr. 629, urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb00032962-5; Niels Hemmingsen, De lege naturae apodictica methodus (Witebergae: Rhaw, 1562), call number: 940489 Ph.pr. 628, urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb10191732-4.

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Interior composition by Judy Schafer and Peter Ho

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Amicis et fratribus meis ex parte irenica, quae factio nulla est:
et discipulis Philippi Melanthonis per totum orbem terrarum.

As this project draws to a close, there are several people to whom I owe a debt of gratitude. Peter Escalante and Jordan Ballor were the first to impress upon me the importance of Niels Hemmingsen, and Jordan encouraged the translation of this text. If he hadnt, you wouldnt be holding it in your hands. Drew McGinnis at the Acton Institute was consummately competent throughout the editorial process and provided sure-handed guidance throughout the late stages of the project. Wim Decock provided a number of valuable comments on the translation. As I worked on the translation and tried to refine my ideas about what Hemmingsen was up to, several audiences gave valuable feedback on presentations related to this treatise. I wish to express my thanks to those at Lutheranism and the Classics in Ft. Wayne; the Convivium Irenicum in Landrum, South Carolina; the Classical Association of the Middle West and South in Williamsburg; the Society for Classical Studies in New Orleans; and the Sixteenth International Conference of the International Society for Neo-Latin Studies in Vienna. Jonathan Tomes and Michael Lynch helped me track down citations. David DeMarco, too, was a sleuth extraordinaire of Quellenforschung . The staff of Mossey Library at Hillsdale College was invaluable in scaring up hard-to-find books and articles. A generous sabbatical from teaching enabled me to bring this work to completion. Throughout, colleagues at Hillsdale helped me immenselyparticularly Korey Maas, with whom I wrote the introduction, and Stephen Naumann, who helped me with some thorny early modern German. I would be remiss if I did not mention the Junius Institute. Without the resources that the institute has made available at the Post-Reformation Digital Library (prdl.org), this undertaking would have been impossible.

On a personal note, I wish to thank my wife, Allison, and our children, Ezra, Isabelle, Silas, Vivian, and Agnes, for their support and good humor. To be honest, I dont think Ive talked to them about Hemmingsen nearly as much as I could have. So perhaps they should thank me? (Really, thoughif youre readingthank you.)

Finally, I wish to express profound gratitude for the intellectual friendship and conversation of those friends and colleagues who carry on the irenic spirit of the Philippist tradition. You know who you are, and it is to you that this book is dedicatedfittingly, on the anniversary of Melanchthons birth.

E. J. Hutchinson
16 February 2018

Niels Hemmingsen and the Development of Lutheran Natural Law Teaching *

E. J. Hutchinson

Korey D. Maas

Because the Danish Protestant theologian and philosopher Niels Hemmingsen (15131600) 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 century

Those who do find in Hemmingsen an important precursor to the modern natural law theories of the Enlightenment will point to the conclusion of On the Law of Nature , where Hemmingsen explains the intention of his work as an attempt to see how far reason is able to progress without the prophetic and apostolic word. Thus, it is claimed, the result is an ethics that no longer depend(s) on super
natural authority;

Natural Law and the Lutheran Reformation

Neither the position of H ffding and Pound nor that of Rommen sketched above is correct, and in fact they present the reader with a false dichotomy: either Hemmingsen must have a purely secular conception of the law of nature or a purely theological one. The confusion is accounted for by inattention to method, which will be taken up more expansively below: in a work of philosophy, Hemmingsen proceeds philosophically, that is, via the findings of reason. In a work of theology (for example, the Enchiridion theologicum of 1557), he proceeds theologically. But the conclusions about ethics are in either case the same, because both reason and revelation have God as their author. His use of the Decalogue in On the Law of Nature is intended to make just that point.

The confusion about Hemmingsens place in the history of natural law is, moreover, rooted in what continues to be a broader confusion concerning natural law in the thought of the Lutheran Reformers, of whom Hemmingsen was indeed a most significant representative throughout the second half of the sixteenth century. Born in relatively humble circumstances on the Danish isle of Lolland and receiving his early humanist education at Roskilde and Lund,

Hemmingsen is best interpreted, then, as firmly situated within this Melanchthonian context, and it is certainly how he was understood by his contemporaries. As works such as his Enchiridion theologicum (1557), Evangeliepostil (1561), and Pastor (1562) were taken up throughout Protestant Europe as popular textbooks (of doctrine and ethics, homiletics, and pastoral theology, respectively), he came to be known as the Praeceptor Daniae (Teacher of Denmark)a conscious echo by his contemporaries of Melanchthons own Praeceptor Germaniae honorific. His De methodis libri duo (1555), an influential work on philosophical and theological method, has similarly been described as a treatise on Melanchthonian epistemology.