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Ecclesiastical Law and the Law of God in Scripture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 July 2008

Anthony Bash
Anthony Bash
Affiliation:
Curate, Holy Trinity Church, HullThe Bishop of Hull's Chaplain to the Legal Profession in Hull
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The Ecclesiastical Law Society is rightly promoting afresh the study of ecclesiastical law. In the case of the Church of England, the sources of ecclesiastical law are three-fold: case-law, statutes (and Measures made thereunder) and the Canons of the Church of England. These are the formal sources for identifying and expounding (Anglican) ecclesiastical law. The sources qua sources may not be the subject of debate; the debate may only be as to the interpretation of the contents of the sources and whether the sources should be amended. This approach to determining the substantive content of ecclesiastical law reflects the positivist approach to law, such as Bentham, Austin and Hart have set out.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ecclesiastical Law Journal , Volume 5 , Issue 22 , January 1998 , pp. 7 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical Law Society 1998

References

2 See the Preface in Bursell, R. D. H.. Liturgy, Order and the Law (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996).Google Scholar

3 For a description of classical and modified positivism, see McCoubrey, H. and White, N. D., Textbook on Jurisprudence (2nd ed.), (Blackstone Press, London, 1993).Google Scholar

4 Summa Theologica. 1a2ae. 92.114.

5 ibid., 1a2ae. 96. 4. For this discussion of Thomist naturalism. 1 am indebted to McCoubrey, H., The Obligation to Obey in Legal Theory (Dartmouth Publishing, Aldershot, 1997).Google Scholar

6 Sanders, E. P., Paul and Palestinian Judaism (SCM, London, 1977). p. 420.Google Scholar

7 ibid. p. 180 (Sanders' emphasis).

8 The term was coined by Sanders: see, for example. Paul and Palestinian Judaism, p. 422.,

9 For discussion about the word ethos and its relationship to nomos in the writings of St Luke and his contemporaries, see Wilson, S. G., Luke and the Law (CUP, Cambridge, 1983), pp. 3–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Other words or phrases are used, such as ‘living oracles’(Acts 7:38). ‘the word of God’ (Heb 4:12) and ‘Scripture’(2 Tim 3:16).

11 SCM, London, 1985.

12 Pp. 267–269.

13 Hooker, M. D., The Gospel According to St Mark (A. & C. Black, London, 1991), pp. 24f.Google Scholar

14 Mohrlang, R., Matthew and Paul (CVP, Cambridge, 1984), p. 19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Esler, P. F., Community and Gospel in Luke-Acts (CUP, Cambridge, 1987), pp. 128f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Wilson, S. G., Luke and the Law, pp. 104, 106.Google Scholar

17 For an excellent review of the history of scholarly research on Paul and the law, see Roetzel, C. J.. ‘Paul and the Law: Whence and Whither?’ CR:BS 3 (1995) 249–275Google Scholar. For a review of work published 1977–1987, see Moo, D., ‘Paul and the Law in the Last Ten Years’. Scot. Journ. of Theol. 40 (1987) 287–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 The observation which is generally made is that though St Paul was a coherent thinker, he was not a systematic thinker. It is also widely observed that his thinking, like his letters, is ‘occasional’, that is, written to address the specific situation which occasioned the letter.

19 Summed up in the command to love (Rom 13:9f., Gal 5:14).

20 Despite St Luke's presentation of St Paul as someone living faithfully according to the law (e.g. Acts 21:24). St Paul clearly regarded himself as ‘outside’ the law and not ‘under the law’—though with the baffling qualification ‘I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law’ (1 Cor 9:20f.).

21 See also 2 Cor 3:7. 11. 13: Gal 2:19. 3:19–25.

22 Räisänen, H. in Paul and the Law(J. C. B. Mohr, [Paul Siebeck], Tübingen, 1983)Google Scholar argues that St Paul's view of the law is a mass of contradictions and contains even deliberate distortions at times (p. 188). Other scholars recognise that there are some contradictions in St Paul's thought about the law but do not go so far as Räisänen. Hübner, H. in Law in Paul's Thought (T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1984)Google Scholar identifies a development in St Paul's thought which accounts for many of the supposed contradictions.

23 Two proposed solutions are that (i) implicit in the thought of St Paul is the idea of pluriformity in the Church as to law observance, that is, that only Jewish Christians were to keep all the commandments of the law: (ii) St Paul's concern in writing about the law was to regulate—and preserve—relations between Jew and Gentile in the churches.

24 Sanders, E. P. has described this verse as ‘one of the most amazing sentences [St Paul] ever wrote’: Paul, the Law and the Jewish People (Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1983), p. 161.Google Scholar

25 The question is put sharply by Trypho in Justin's Dialogue {9–31) who accused Christians of being inconsistent in their use of the Old Testament.

26 The author of the letter to the Hebrews does seem to do so. The writer clearly accepts and argues from the continuing authority of the Old Testament and the Old Testament law, yet also asserts that the first (Mosaic) covenant of sacrifices has been abolished and superseded by the covenant made in Christ through the cross.

27 For a description of the scope of the word ‘law’ as used in the Old Testament, see Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, ed. Harris, R. L. (Moody Press, Chicago, 1980), Vol. I. pp. 403ff.Google Scholar, s. v. tòrà (law, teaching).

28 That is, meat from animals not slaughtered by pouring out their blood in conformity with Jewish practice.

29 The words are repeated in Acts 21:25. In both cases, the Western text omits the words ‘and from whatever has been strangled’. Some regard the omission as implying that ‘blood’ refers to homicide, rather than to Jewish dietary laws. If this reading of the text is correct, the Apostles’ prohibition is almost identical to the requirement of Jewish law for Gentiles in the pre-New Testament period. In other words, the First Ecumenical Council simply restated the traditional Jewish position on Gentiles and the law. For further discussion of this requirement, see Tomson, P. J.. Paul and the Jewish Law (Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 1990), p. 50.Google Scholar

30 A possible example might arise if there were imposed on clergy an obligation to re-marry in church persons who had been previously married and either or both of whom had committed adultery.