THE ORDERS OF NATURE AND GRACE: THOMISTIC CONCEPTS IN THE MORAL THOUGHT OF FRANCISCUS JUNIUS (1545–1602)

The driving question of this project pertains to how Franciscus Junius (1545–1602) retained, refined, or rejected Thomas Aquinas’s (c. 1225–74) moral concepts. European scholars in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have frequently expressed interests in the life and thought of Junius, particularly in his role as an irenic reformer of church and state. Unfortunately, however, only two monographic works were published on Junius’s theology in the twenty-first century to date, and the lacuna concerning the Thomistic substratum of Junius’s theology has only been filled by short essays. In such context, this extended, focused, and specialized study of Thomistic concepts in Junius’s thought will be the first English monograph on Junius’s theology in more than 40 years, and it will be the first monograph on Junius’s use of Thomistic moral concepts to date. Therefore, on a broad level, this project investigates the reception of Thomistic ideas in the early modern Reformed tradition. On a narrow level, this project contributes to a historical study of Junius’s moral theology itself. To be specific, the term “moral” here refers to the ways in which Junius understood the order of human actions, rather than to the specific issues pertaining to good and bad actions, or virtues and vices. In this sense, the term is employed to capture the ways in which law, order, and action are intertwined in his thought, and thus the theme of law will be considered in relation to the order, structure, and pattern of human actions. To the main question, therefore, through six body chapters, the argument will be made that the Thomistic ideas in Junius’s moral thought were refined, revised, and reorganized according to the Reformed conceptions of nature and grace, which reflected distinct accounts of the orders of human action and divine action. As a result, it will be demonstrated that, in Junius’s moral thought, as it was in Aquinas’s, law was conceptually connected to "actio," "revelatio," "ordo," "ratio," and "relatio" in a realist framework, and all of these concepts in turn explained various layers of "perfectio."