Das Gewissensrecht in der reformierten Tradition: Johannes a. Van der Meulen (1635 -1702) und sein Tractatus theologico-juridicus (The Law of Conscience in the Reformed Tradition: Johannes A. Van der Meulen (1635-1702) and His Theological-Juridical Treatise)

No. 2013-05

How to reconcile the law of the land and the law of conscience, certainly when you are deciding cases in real life as a judge? In order to answer that question, the Dutch Calvinist judge Johannes Van der Meulen wrote a theological-juridical treatise in which he tried to solve concrete cases both from the point of view of divine and statutory law. This paper will show how Van der Meulen proceeded in trying to reconcile faith, morality and law by concentrating on his solution of three random cases: 1. the power of custom to excuse sin and justify immoral behavior; 2. the bindingness of statutory form requirements in conscience; 3. the moral quality of the legal permission for citizens to kill a criminal who has been been banned from the community. In fact, Van der Meulen admitted that his project resembled the attempt made by the Catholic theologians and jurists of the so-called School of Salamanca to reconcile the Christian faith with the realities of life on earth. Yet, true to his Puritan origins, he claimed that his solutions derived from the Bible rather than pagan and ‚Papist‘ philosophy and law. However, this article will reveal that Van der Meulen remained much more heavily indebted to the traditions of the ius commune and Spanish scholasticism than his programmatic statements about the need to return to the Bible suggest.