Our blog offers short, accessible, reflections on important and urgent issues for Christian lawyers, and anyone else involved in law. Here you’ll find quick, stimulating reads created to help and encourage you as you practise your legal vocation – and, indeed, as you live all of life – as a follower of Christ.
The responses of evangelical churches and organisations to allegations of abuse have been vitiated by five factors: wrong expectations, wrong priorities, a wrong reading of biblical stories, a wrong approach to sin and crime, and a wrong view of love and justice.
Contemporary Western society suppresses the concepts of honour and shame, although they re-surface in its media in a theatre of the grotesque. Honour reinforces good behaviour through appeals to a shared morality, while shame penalises bad behaviour through disgrace and exposure. The Bible offers a different social vision, in which honour is respected through discretion, and where shame and disgrace can be dealt with through confession, reconciliation and restoration into the community.
The church and its members are not to be concerned about their reputation for their own sake or as an end in itself. But, they should seek to protect their reputation where the honour of God is at stake, provided doing so is consistent with the countercultural values of the gospel.
Exploring Lon L. Fuller’s critique of Nazi law, David McIlroy examines the debate between legal positivists and natural law theorists on whether the Nazi regime truly adhered to the rule of law or systematically abandoned it.
Explore how Karl Barth’s resistance to tyranny and his vision for law and government offer timeless lessons for Christian lawyers and leaders seeking to integrate faith and justice.
Abraham Kuyper’s insights into law and society remain as relevant today as they were in his time. In the blog post David McIlroy explores some of Kuyper’s most important ideas, highlighting how his theological convictions shaped his vision for law, politics, and the social order.
This article explores John Calvin’s integration of theology, law, and social justice, emphasizing his view that secular rulers, guided by the Law of Moses and natural law, should uphold moral standards, social welfare, and religious protection, and discusses how Calvin’s ideas influenced the development of democratic thought and the relationship between Church and State.
Learn how Luther’s ideas continue to shape Christian views on law, vocation, and the balance between faith and legal responsibility.
Discover how Thomas Aquinas’s view of law as an expression of love and justice offers profound insights for Christian lawyers. Learn how faith and reason work together in shaping a just society.
For Augustine, natural law is a critical, objective, standard against which any legal system can be measured. Augustine saw justice as essential to law. Rules only amount to laws if they make a plausible claim to be morally in order. Rules which do not make such a claim are not laws.
The post discusses a 2024 conference at Kylemore Abbey where scholars explored Irish Christian perspectives on the common law, highlighting Richard O’Sullivan’s view that the common law embodies Christian values which promote human flourishing, natural law, and resistance to totalitarianism.
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