{"title":"Hugo Grotius and the God of International Society","authors":"W. Bain","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198859901.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198859901.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter presents Hugo Grotius as a theorist of immanent order. Uncovering the theological presuppositions of Grotius’s thought suggests that the claims of the ‘Grotian tradition’ of international society are substantially incorrect. Grotius is neither the far-sighted jurist nor the pioneer of modernity that he is typically made out to be. Investigating his conception of God as both rational and free informs a hierarchical and interconnected pattern of order that is luminous to reason, consistent with the theory of immanent order. The chapter argues that, despite being credited with secularizing natural law, Grotius’s thinking about law and rights is accommodated within God’s rational plan of the universe. This leads to two further claims. First, Grotius’s thought is less modern and less secular than it is typically portrayed by theorists of international order. Second, his thought exemplifies one of two poles (the other is represented by Hobbes) between which modern theories of international order oscillate. However, the theory of immanent of order survives mainly as a rhetoric that is set against what is done in the name of will and artifice.","PeriodicalId":124845,"journal":{"name":"Political Theology of International Order","volume":"119 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129263365","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}