ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to solve the problem of reconciling Jean Bodin's religious vision with his reputedly naturalistic and secular thinking on politics and history. It emerges that it was a misconception to contrast, or even to separate, his religious and secular thought for even in Bodin's most apparently secular writings such as those on politics and economics there is a religious aura permeating the whole work. "Natural" and "divine" refer more to the modes in which Bodin's religious sense organises itself; history, politics, law and economics are natural disciplines, whereas theology is a divine discipline. There is no opposition in Bodin between nature and religion for nature is part of religion. Bodin originally Judaised in order to achieve a universal vera religio but by the time of the Paradoxe and Heptaplomeres his religious vision had become so thoroughly Judaised that it entailed the destruction of the fundamentals of Christian doctrine.
