Christian Law Research Articles

Notes About the Commemoration of the Powerful Menin the Medieval Art in Macedonia

Rulers’ portraits as symbols of the institution of monarchy were used on coins, legal acts and seals, as a guarantee of authenticity and legal effectiveness. They are usually the highest category of propaganda images. Each civilization has the praxis of representing to a certain extent real or “beatified” image or portrait of the emperor. By adding various symbols of power, like crowns, caps, beard, throne, supendium, chariot, and number of the animals driving it, we are directly observing the image of the most powerful representatives of people, nations, states, empires, era, usually blessed by or alike god(s). Roman emperors preferred to be represented in sculpture, and the copy of the ruling emperor was placed in every city of the Empire. It was roman art and sculpture where actually the portrait was invented in the 2nd century B.C. Sometimes Emperor’s portrait in Byzantium had the status of replacing the real presence of the sovereign. The early portraits of byzantine emperors in monumental art are preserved in St. Vitale in Ravena, where the emperor Justinian I and his wife with ecclesiastical and court dignitaries attend the liturgy.[2], from 1034–1042; the portrait of John II Komnenos and the empress Irene from the beginning of the 12th C.[4] Negr?u says in churches, the images of the rulers expressed the relation of monarchs with God, who gave them the power of monarchy in exchange to undertake the defense of Christian law. The images are addressed to the masses with the purpose to present monarchs as generous donors, as well as ubiquitous authorities.”[6]

Jews in early Christian law. Byzantium and the Latin West, 6th–11th centuries. Edited by John Tolan , Nicholas De Lange , Laurence Foschia and Capucine Nemo-Pekelman . (Religion and Law in Medieval Christian and Muslim Societies, 2.) Pp. 379. Turnhout: Brepols, 2014. €70 (paper). 978 2 503 55052 7

Jews in early Christian law. Byzantium and the Latin West, 6th–11th centuries. Edited by John Tolan , Nicholas De Lange , Laurence Foschia and Capucine Nemo-Pekelman . (Religion and Law in Medieval Christian and Muslim Societies, 2.) Pp. 379. Turnhout: Brepols, 2014. €70 (paper). 978 2 503 55052 7

The regulation of Christian churches: Ecclesiology, law and polity

This article examines the internal regulation of religious organisations in terms of their law, order or polity. It offers a systematic comparative analysis of how different Christian traditions structure and regulate themselves. The resultant legal frameworks are expressive of the institutional self-understanding of particular churches and, as such, are a form of applied ecclesiology. The paper draws upon two ongoing research studies: the Colloquium of Anglican and Roman Catholic Canon Lawyers and the Christian Law Panel of Experts, the latter having submitted a detailed submission to the World Council of Churches’ Faith and Order Commission giving a legal critique of its recent document ‘Towards a Common Vision’. Through a detailed methodical and comparative analysis of the various structural and regulatory formulae adopted by the different branches of the Christian family, profound similarities are discernible that are redolent with deeper theological significance. This research represents an emergent platform capable of being utilised within the ecumenical endeavour to give traction in the movement towards greater visible unity in the 21st century.

Blasphemy and Protection of the Faith: Legal Perspectives from the Middle Ages

ABSTRACTJewish, Christian, and Muslim legal traditions have all attempted to define and prohibit blasphemy: insult or verbal attack against their religion, against its rites and symbols, against God and his human representatives. Such laws could be internal (prohibiting blasphemy by members of the faith group) or external (prohibiting insult by those outside the faith). This article will first briefly trace the former, looking at how Jewish, Christian, and Muslim legal traditions from Antiquity and the Middle Ages define and prohibit blasphemy. The second part of the article will then focus on the second issue, looking at how Christian and Muslim legal traditions attempted to prohibit insults to the faith by adherents of other religions. We shall look, for example, at various Christian laws dealing with what was perceived as Jewish mockery of Christian ritual and sacred objects: from mock crucifixions allegedly practiced by Jews as part of Purim celebrations in the fifth-century Roman Empire to Jews who supposedly derided the Eucharist during thirteenth-century Corpus Christi processions. We shall in parallel examine prohibitions in Muslim legal texts (including the so-called Pact of ʿ‘Umar) of dhimmīs insulting the Prophet Muhammad or the Qur'an. This comparison will show that, while blasphemy was illegal and could be harshly sanctioned and there were lines that religious minorities must not cross, these lines were often not clearly delimited, and became the object of conflict and negotiation.

Nation and Family: Personal Law, Cultural Pluralism, and Gendered Citizenship in India. By Narendra Subramanian. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2014. 377 pp. $65 paper.

Nation and Family: Personal Law, Cultural Pluralism, and Gendered Citizenship in India. By Narendra Subramanian. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2014. 377 pp. $65 paper.Nation and Family points to the need to examine carefully the ways in which conceptions of nation inform attempts to regulate family life through law and policy in plural societies. It addresses questions about plurality of personal laws and the patterns and pace of family law reform in independent India. One of the principal arguments Subramanian makes is that the extent and direction of personal law reform is determined by specific interactions between discourses of nation and community and the coalition-building ambitions of the political elites. In India this resulted in what he describes as modest yet reforms as compared to changes in other multicultural nations such as Turkey, Tunisia, and Indonesia that he surveys in Chapter 2. Subramanian presents an interesting introductory account of the various combinations of conceptions of postcolonial nations, responses to colonial institutions and discourses, desires for both the indigenous and the in several postcolonial nations, and the different forms of multiculturalism and family law these combinations have produced. This broad comparative overview is a significant contribution that serves as an invitation for more in depth comparative research in this field.In chapters that follow Subramanian traces the changes in particular aspects of family law in India, first in law, and then in Muslim and Christian laws. Subramanian argues that reforms in the latter two started late and have been slower, primarily because policy makers, majority of whom were Hindus, regarded culture as being more dynamic. They also failed to recognize the impetus for social change within minority communities and relied instead almost exclusively on Hindu concerns and initiatives in order to understand and reduce the existing inequalities (p. 277). In case of Muslims, there was also a misreading of the community's desire for a distinct personal law as a resistance to any change in the family law, with serious implications for gender equality. Subramanian also sheds light on the ways in which the policy makers' ignorance of the nature of reform the Muslim mobilizers were seeking coupled with their reliance on stereotypes of Christian communities being more open to modern values led to the different approaches to Muslim and Christian personal law reforms in the country, which in turn resulted in more marginalization of Muslims than of Christians.While Nation and Family focuses primarily on the role of policy makers in legal reform, it also offers interesting comments on legal elites, especially on the tendency of judges trained in a particular tradition to rely on colonial personal law while interpreting statutes, unlike religious elites who are often committed to reform agendas that are also based on what Subramanian refers to as precolonial traditions (page 37). …

Jews in Early Christian Law: Byzantium and the Latin West, 6th–11th Centuries Edited by John Tolan, Nicholas de Lange, Laurence Foschia and Capucine Nemo-Pekelman Brepols, Turnhout, 2014, Religion and Law in Medieval Christian and Muslim Societies 2, 379 pp (paperback €70) ISBN: 978-2-503-55052-7

Jews in Early Christian Law: Byzantium and the Latin West, 6th–11th Centuries Edited by John Tolan, Nicholas de Lange, Laurence Foschia and Capucine Nemo-Pekelman Brepols, Turnhout, 2014, Religion and Law in Medieval Christian and Muslim Societies 2, 379 pp (paperback €70) ISBN: 978-2-503-55052-7

Book Review: Foreigners and Their Food: Constructing Otherness in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Law, written by David Freidenreich

Book Review: Foreigners and Their Food: Constructing Otherness in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Law, written by David Freidenreich

Space Enough for a Christian Law School

Space Enough for a Christian Law School

The Ecumenical Value of Comparative Church Law: Towards the Category of Christian Law

This study explores juridical aspects of the ecclesiology presented in the World Council of Churches' Faith and Order Commission Paper,The Church: Towards a Common Vision(2013). It does so in the context of systems of church law, order and polity in eight church families worldwide: Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, Reformed, Presbyterian and Baptist.Common Visiondoes not explicitly consider church law, order and polity or its role in ecumenism. However, many themes treated inCommon Visionsurface in church regulatory systems. This study examines how these instruments articulate the ecclesiology found inCommon Vision(which as such, de facto, offers juridical as well as theological principles), translate these into norms of conduct and, in turn, generate unity in common action across the church families. Juridical similarities indicate that the churches share common principles and that their existence suggests the category ‘Christian law’. While dogmas may divide the churches of global Christianity, the profound similarities between their norms of conduct reveal that the laws of the faithful, whatever their various denominational affiliations, link Christians through common forms of action. For this reason, comparative church law should have a greater profile in ecumenism today.1

Secular Judges and Christian Law

Norman Doe's bookChristian Lawcompares and contrasts the internal regulations of churches and seeks to identify principles common to churches across the denominational spectrum. This response to Doe's work reviews the religious questions that have come before the House of Lords and Supreme Court since 2004 and seeks to identify the principles governing the secular courts' approach to religious questions. The relationship between those principles and the principles outlined inChristian Lawis far from clear. While an understanding of the rules of particular religious bodies is sometimes necessary for secular judges deciding civil rights in a religious context, in most cases the courts are not concerned with the conformity of religious beliefs with religious laws, but simply with protecting the freedom to hold and manifest those beliefs.

Adopted and Illegitimate Child Under Indian Christian Law: Revisiting Inheritance Rights

The Indian Succession Act 1925 (ISA 1925) is based on common law principles and driven only by the principle of consanguinity; it does not provide for adoptive relationships or grant rights to illegitimate children thereby denying inheritance rights to both adopted and illegitimate children. The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2000 (JJ Act 2000) was passed with the object of providing for proper care, protection and treatment of juveniles in conflict with the law and children in need of care and protection with the ultimate aim of their rehabilitation. Adoption, as one of many other modes of rehabilitation under the JJ Act 2000, and as affirmed by the Supreme Court in the Shabnam Hashmi case, reflect legislative and judicial support for making adoption a secular act and independent of the religion of the person adopting. Though the JJ Act 2000 grants the right to all Indian citizens, including Christians and Muslims, to adopt and confers the same rights as biological children have on the adopted child, it lacks clarity as to the application of succession law with respect to adopted children receiving inheritance rights in property. The question remains open as to the applicability of the ISA 1925 in respect of devolution of inheritance rights on children adopted by Christian parents under the JJ Act 2000 particularly when ISA 1925, which regulates the Christian law of succession, denies inheritance rights to an adopted child.

Icelandic Church Law in the Vernacular 1275–1550

Icelandic Church Law in the Vernacular 1275–1550 Lára Magnúsardóttir Around the year 1480 an Icelandic bishop, Ólafur Rögnvaldsson in the Hólar diocese (1460–1495), dealt with a serious case of incest.1 Hearsay regarding the situation had come to the attention of the bishop during a visit to the area. This prompted an inquest. The result was that a man, Bjarni Ólason, confessed to having had sexual relations with his daughter Randíður, while she was between the ages of 12 and 14. Due to the severity of the crime, Bjarni was taken into the custody of the bishop. Since the case demanded outlawry the king and Church would divide his property between them. Therefore, procedures of this church court case required the involvement of the king’s sheriff and lay courts since the king’s share was distributed to relevant lay parties.2 Later, the legality of the methods used by the bishop to secure Bjarni’s confession was challenged in an effort to upset the judgment. How are the relatively extensive, and quite detailed Icelandic sources of these cases that were dealt with by the highest ecclesiastical courts in the country to be [End Page 127] interpreted? What were the motives of the clerical judges, the status of the laymen in face of the law by which they were judged, and what is the importance of the courts’ process? These questions will not be answered without knowing the law and the institutions that represented them and the historical context in which they were made. Church court cases from the fifteenth century During the time Bjarni’s case played out, the same bishop was dealing with lay church-owners over who should bear the costs of episcopal visitations.3 The bishop wrote to his archbishop for advice.4 The church courts were indeed quite busy in the late 15th century. Members of a large extended family who were all after shares of the same huge inheritance waged a war against one other in various courts of law; if one of the heirs could prove that another whose claim to inheritance preceded theirs was not rightfully the heir, that individual would come a step closer to the fortune.5 One method was to challenge the legitimacy of his parents’ marriage on grounds of consanguinity which if proven rendered the offspring illegitimate and not proper heirs. Although the line of succession was set forth in the secular law,6 the Church courts could interpose their rules as to who was [End Page 128] qualified to be in that line. In order to move oneself further up the list, reference to both the temporal and spiritual law was needed. Some couples, who were known to be related by the fourth degree, tried to secure their marital status by appealing directly to the Pope for an exception. When exceptions were granted, and possibly accepted by the king, it was still possible for adversaries to contest an inheritance claim by pointing out that although the Pope had legitimized the marriage, he had not said anything about the legitimacy of any children that had been born beforehand.7 There are numerous examples of such cases in the sources as well as similar ones that contain much little known information. These legal sources provide rich information not only about the people who were the subjects of prosecutions but also about the individuals who provided the gossip upon which grievances were based in the first place. These latter actively participated in legal cases as did lay and spiritual authorities from the highest to the lowest stations. Doubts about Church Authority Research on cases that were dealt with by Iceland’s church courts in the late medieval period has been unsystematic and rare. Therefore, the significance of court cases such as those touched on above has not been fully realized. One generally acknowledged fact is that in the fifteenth century the two offices of bishops in Iceland, as other Church offices, rested on a law book from 1275, the New Christian Law or Árni’s Christian Law, upon which bishops’ rulings and court procedures were likewise based.8 Lay authority equally...

The Christian Laws in Paul: Reading the Apostle with Early Greek Interpreters. By MIKAEL SUNDKVIST.

In this Ph.D. thesis, Mikael Sundkvist elicits the help of Greek Church Fathers to determine the meaning of four elusive passages in Paul—Gal. 6:2, 1 Cor. 9:21, and Rom. 3:27 and 8:2—which he groups together as the ‘Christian laws’. Though not every section ultimately proves valuable in advancing beyond contemporary exegetical impasses, Sundkvist’s overview does produce compelling readings for each of these difficult texts, providing validation for his methodology as potentially constructive for modern exegesis. In Part I, Sundkvist introduces the problem of contemporary division on the meaning of Paul’s ‘Christian laws’, and offers an apology for reading the apostle alongside his early Greek interpreters: as Paul himself was a Hellenistic Jew, his subsequent readers often shared similar cultural and conceptual worlds, and faced similar challenges from Jews regarding non-observance of the Law. Turning to methodology, Sundkvist makes a case for examining early exegesis as a heuristic tool, as interests like historical background are shared by early readers—particularly Antiochenes—and moderns alike.

Flirting with Aggressive Secularism: Canada Confronts its Christian Law School

Flirting with Aggressive Secularism: Canada Confronts its Christian Law School

The Ascent of Christian Law: Patristic and Byzantine Formulations of A New Civilization. By John A.McGuckin. Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2012. Pp. 279. Paper, $24.00.

Religious Studies ReviewVolume 39, Issue 4 p. 274-274 History of Christianity (Early) The Ascent of Christian Law: Patristic and Byzantine Formulations of A New Civilization. By John A. McGuckin. Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2012. Pp. 279. Paper, $24.00. John Taylor Carr, John Taylor Carr Boston CollegeSearch for more papers by this author John Taylor Carr, John Taylor Carr Boston CollegeSearch for more papers by this author First published: 09 December 2013 https://doi.org/10.1111/rsr.12085_3Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume39, Issue4December 2013Pages 274-274 RelatedInformation

On The Trinity Western University Controversy: An Argument for a Christian Law School in Canada

Over the past number of months, the proposed new law school at Trinity Western University (TWU) has come under signifi cant attack, including by many whom I count as academic colleagues within the Canadian Association of Law Teachers and by many within the Canadian law school community more generally. Th ese attacks have had the unique eff ect of subjecting TWU’s law school to a diff erent approval process than has been used for any other Canadian law school, with a dual-committee structure to apply additional scrutiny to it.2 Some have put their attacks explicitly in longer forms,3 and many others have signed petitions against TWU.

Middle Eastern Law

This article maps Middle Eastern law in some of the thousand plateaus where it operates/operated: Mesopotamian law, Roman provincial law, Islamic law, and post-colonial law, with layers within each, such as Elephantine law in Egypt and Jewish and Christian law in Islam's classical age, as well as new worlds of law, such as Byzantine and Ethiopian law, in which scholarship about interaction with other layers of Middle Eastern law is either inexistent or just starting. The focus is directed as much as possible to the extant documentation in the legal record that most affects people's lives: court decisions. For the modern period, we survey, from the point of view of the legal practitioner, lawyer, or judge, the various bodies of case law and codes in the everyday practice of the Middle East lawyer. A legal family analogous to the common or civil law traditions, Middle Eastern law has emerged as a coherent and active discipline that is increasingly a subject of inquiry for historians, social scientists, and others outside of the legal profession. This article presents the field for more sustained attention from lawyers, judges, and law professors.

A Legal History Course for a Christian Legal Education

This very short essay explains the role of a general legal history course in the curriculum of a Christian law school.

On the Trinity Western University Controversy: An Argument for a Christian Law School in Canada

An application by Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia to open a Christian law school in Canada has faced controversy and criticism that has challenged the right of the school to exist, largely because of a provision in its community covenant on sexuality issues. In this text, I challenge the critics. To do so, I contextualize matters by presenting a number of arguments for the value of a Christian law school in Canada and showing that some of the critics have not engaged fully with what such a law school might be like. Then, I put an argument that the usual reconciliation of rights model supports allowing a Christian law school to operate even when it implicitly excludes some from attending. I also argue that there may properly be challenges put to the school on its policy within Christian traditions, although that fact does not take away from its right to operate on its own interpretation of its religious traditions. The paper is a slightly refined text of a presentation delivered as part of a panel on “New Law Schools” at the Canadian Association of Law Teachers (CALT) Annual Meeting in Victoria, British Columbia on June 4, 2013.

Foreigners and Their Food: Constructing Otherness in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Law. By David M. Freidenreich

Foreigners and Their Food: Constructing Otherness in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Law. By David M. Freidenreich