ABSTRACT

Calvinist jurist Johannes Althusius (1557–1638) developed what he called a “universal” theory of law and politics for war-torn Europe. He called for written constitutions that not only separated the enumerated powers of cities, provinces, nations, and empires but also guaranteed the religious and civil rights and liberties of all subjects. All laws and constitutions had to respect the universal natural law and natural rights as set out in Christian and classical, biblical and rational teachings. Althusius sought ordered liberty and law-bound peace for the postrevolutionary Netherlands and for the Holy Roman Empire with its vast archipelago of 350 polities, each bent on preserving its own fragile rights and liberties, often at the cost of their neighbors. And he was writing for a Christian world that was rapidly extending itself into distant colonies across the oceans and trying to make peace with the vast Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and indigenous peoples of the global south and east. His theory of natural law and natural rights was an overt effort to produce a new concordance of discordant canons that transcended differences of creed, country, and custom.