The Image of Christ in Grotius’s De Veritate Religionis Christianae: Some Thoughts on Grotius’s Socinianism

Abstract

An attempt is made to show, by means of an analysis of the way in which Grotius deals with the figure of Christ in De Veritate, and by a comparison of his account in that work with the ones in his earlier works Meletius and De Satisfactione Christi, that the accusations of Socinianism, raised against him by his adversaries, were by no means unjustified. In fact, the dogmas of the Trinity and of the dual nature of Christ play no role in De Veritate and the presentation of the figure of Christ is very similar to that of Socinus. At the end of the paper I also try to explain why Grotius felt increasingly strongly drawn towards Socinianism.