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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 July 2008
Is there an ethical dimension to the practice of ecclesiastical law? The Law Society and the Bar Council prescribe professional standards of conduct, as do certain statutes. Adhering to statutory and professional standards is important for maintaining good order in the administration of the law and the legal system. But are there wider duties and responsibilities that involve more than accountability to God, who expresses his presence and identity in the ecclesial communities that ecclesiastical lawyers serve?
1 The sermon was preached on 9 March 2003 at Beverley Minister, before the High Sheriff, Mr R Antony Byass, who chose the readings on which the reflections in this paper are based.Google Scholar
2 See e.g. Hooker, M D, The Gospel According to St Mark (London: A & C Black, 1991), p. 44.Google Scholar
3 Matt 4: 1–11, Mark 1: 12, 13 and Luke 4: 11–13. Other examples in the Gospels of temptations that Jesus faced are in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matt 26: 36–46, Mark 14: 32–42 and Luke 22: 40–46; see also Heb 5: 7ff which probably alludes to these passages). The Gospel of John does not have an account of the temptations of Jesus.Google Scholar
4 The union of the divine and human natures in the one person, Jesus Christ, is called ‘the hypostatic union’. This notion was definitively expressed by Cyril of Alexandria and incorporated into the statement of the catholic faith (called ‘the Definition of Chalcedon’) made after Cyril's death by the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451.Google Scholar
5 There are examples in the New Testament of those who discharged their ministries inappropriately: see e.g. Acts 8: 9–24, and 2 Cor 11: 12–15.Google Scholar
6 Etymologically, the word means ‘play actor’ and came to refer to someone who dissembled.Google Scholar
7 Exod 20: 1–17 and Deut 5: 1–21. For a useful introduction to the Ten Commandments, see Nielson, E, The Ten Commandments in New Perspective: A Traditio-Historical Approach (London: SCM, 1968)Google Scholar and ‘Ten Commandments’ by Collins, R F in The Anchor Bible Dictionary VI 383–387 (New York: Doubleday, 1992).Google Scholar Important academic study of the Ten Commandments has been carried out by Bernard S Jackson (for a list of his publications, see www.legaltheory.demon.co.uk/lib_biblioBSJI.html) and by Phillips, Anthony (see Essays on Biblical Law, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002).Google Scholar
8 Strictly speaking, the Ten Commandments are not laws for, though they are rules or norms that prescribe a course of conduct, they do not stipulate a sanction for default. On the debate about the place of sanctions in the definition of law, see Lord Lloyd of Hampstead and Freeeman, M D ALloyd's Introduction to Jurisprudence, 5th edn (London: Stevens & Sons, 1985), pp 264ff.Google Scholar Both law (strictly defined) and other rules that prescribe a course of conduct (such as may be found in commands, ethical systems, codes of conduct, exhortations, and so on) are normative and so related.
9 Following A Alt's essay translated as ‘The Origins of Israelite Law’ in Essays in Old Testament History and Religion pp 81–132 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1966),Google Scholar theologians refer to commands expressed as imperatives (‘Thou shalt…’) as ‘apodictic’ and commands based on case law or examples (‘If… then …’) as ‘casuistic’. The Ten Commandments are apodictic law.
10 It is interesting to note that in the Book of Common Prayer (1662) only the words ‘I am the Lord your God’ from this sentence appear in the statement of the Ten Commandments in the service of Holy Communion.Google Scholar
11 This, incidentally, also takes us to the heart of one of jurisprudence's central problems, namely, that in logic one cannot infer or derive a normative statement from a factual one. Appeal to the moral imperatives of a divine being does not solve the problem: it simple bypasses it.Google Scholar
12 It is now widely accepted that Judaism was not a religion of works (pace Martin Luther, for example) by which one sought to earn acceptance by God. Rather than keeping the law to gain acceptance into God's covenant, the Jews kept the law in grateful response to the covenant God had already made with them. The question is popularly expressed this way: did the Jews keep the law to ‘get in’ to the covenant or to ‘stay in’ the covenant? The latter is now the widely accepted view. This view of the law and obedience is called ‘covenantal nomism’. See e.g. Sanders, E P, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977),Google Scholar and Paul, the Law and the Jewish People (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983).Google Scholar For a brief exploration of the place of Old Testament law in the post-Old Testament period, see A Bash ‘Ecclesiastical Law and the Law of God in Scripture’, 5 Ecc LJ 7–13 (1998).
13 John, 3: 16, here given in amplified and elaborated form.Google Scholar
14 Exod 32: 1ff.Google Scholar
15 Matt, 23: 2.Google Scholar
16 Matt, 23: 13–36.Google Scholar
17 A paraphrase of Matt 7: 20.Google Scholar
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