Book Review

Hugo Grotius, Meletius sive De iis quae inter christianos conveniunt epistola, Critical edition with translation, commentary and introduction by Guillaume H.M. Posthumus Meyjes. E.J. Brill, Leiden/New York/København/Köln 1988. xix + 191 pp., f 85,--

Anyone who has done work on Grotius, has sooner or later been faced with problems of meaning and understanding which seemed irresolvable within the framework of the available Grotian texts. In order to arrive at an understanding of a concrete piece of text, one has often had to resort to a variety of in- terpretative devices. Thus one has tried to construct the meaning of a passus within a history of relevant concepts and ideas, or within an interpretative scheme based on conceived developments in Grotius' thought, whether or not with reference to the concrete historical and/or biographical situation within which his works developed. In many cases there was no other way of establish- ing the meaning of a text. Unfortunately this often led to major differences of interpretation, due to the different views and methods of scholars. A new, previously unknown text by Grotius therefore arouses curiosity. It can even cause an amount of excitement when it appears to involve a text of some importance. The Meletius, discovered in 1984, is such a text. It derives its importance from the fact that it is the first complete tract of a 'theological' nature written by Grotius. Some excitement about the find is not out of place, because the text actually offers an important contribution to a better under- standing of later texts. We owe the discovery of the Meletius to a Dutch theologian working in the field of irenicist thought, Professor Guillaume PosthumusMeyjes,who has now published an admirable critical edition of the text and provided it with an introduction, translation and commentary. By searching through the papers of the Remonstrant collection at the Amsterdam University Library, Posthumus Meyjes followed - more unconsciously than consciously - a clue provided by Molhuysen in his introduction to volume one of Grotius' Briefwisseling. In the

97 correspondence itself there are several places where mention is made of the Meletius and where its contents are discussed. (The most relevant of these letters are collected in an appendix to the present edition of the tract.) Mol- huysen suggested that this otherwise unknown tract might be found, as Post- humus Meyjes actually did, in the papers of the Remonstrant collection. The Meletius takes the form of a letter addressed to Grotius' friend Johan Boreel. Boreel had introduced Grotius to the views of the sixteenth century of and acting patriarch of , Meletius Pegas (1549-1601). The patriarch had always emphasized the things which Christians had in common with each other and which he deemed more universal and momentous than those which separated them. It is precisely this view which Grotius is trying to expound and elaborate upon in his tract. Grotius divides his argument in four basic parts: in the first he establishes the existence of God and his attributes in order to ascertain the existence of religion; in the second he establishes what are the ends of religion, which he posits as deo fruire in soul and body, this ultimately being possible only in the afterlife and after the bodily resurrection; in the third part Grotius describes the fundamental dogmatics (Grotius calls them 'decreta') of Christian religion as regards God's trinitarian being, Creation, the fall into evil, the remission of sins and the divine redemption in Christ; and in the fourth part Grotius describes the fundamental christian duties concerning God, mankind, society and oneself. The point Grotius tries to make is that the essential teachings of are (at least in the light of revelation) self-evident truths on which there can be no disagreement amongst sincere Christians. Only hence does it become pos- sible to highlight the moral precepts incumbent on Christians. Christians tend to divert their attention away from virtuous behaviour if they concentrate on dogmatic differences which are of no importance because they do not concern the essentials of Christianity. In fact, Grotius asserts that when Christians do so divert their attention to points of a dogmatic nature which are unnecessary for salvation, their behaviour becomes far from virtuous. As Posthumus Meyjes formulates the principle behind this point succinctly in his introduction: Grotius wants to impress upon his readers that practice outweighs theory, or at least it ought to do so. Both this general principle and its particular application in the Meletius, is programmatic for much - if not most - of his later work. This is certainly the case for his apologetic work De veritate religionis christianae and the later works on the unity of the christian churches. But much is also adumbrated which we find in, for instance, De iure belli ac pacis. Thus the ultimate injunctions in De iure belli to those involved in acts of war, the celebrated, monita et temper- amenta, are adumbrated in the position which Grotius takes in several places in

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