12 - State, Church, Toleration, Reconciliation

Summary

The chapter presents the two late religio-political works of Pufendorf in his role as lay theologian Pufendorf, Of the Nature and Qualification of Religion in Reference to Civil Society (1687), and The Divine Feudal Law; or, Covenants with Mankind (1695). Both tracts consider the changes in religion and politics since the revocation of the tolerance edict of Nantes in 1685 and the acceptance of Huguenots in Protestant Brandenburg-Prussia. Pufendorf’s defence of Protestant positions and severe criticism of French expansionism and Papal supremacy are explained with reference to the respective political and ecclesial theological contexts that had developed since around 1600 (1). Pufendorf’s first tract argues for political toleration of more than one Christian confession and public worship in the state. This is possible because political sovereignty, based on natural law, and religious autonomy, based on the purely religious ends of churches, can and should coexist (2). The biblical reasoning behind this is intensified in the second tract, which argues for mutual appreciation and reconciliation of the Lutheran and Reformed (Calvinist) confessions. Here Pufendorf integrates his concept of natural law into a new, strictly biblical covenantal theology correlating God’s promises and men’s free obedience (3).