Law (theology)

“ Theology herself has largely based this doctrine upon revelation; and, in discussing it, has tended more and more to substitute conventional ideas of criminal law for a priori principles of reason. But the very notion that this glorious universe, with planets and winds, and laughing sky and ocean, should have been conceived and had its beams and rafters laid in technicalities of criminality, is incredible to our modern imagination. It weakens a religion to hear it argued upon such a basis. ”

“ The law is only the revelation of the constitutive principles of being, the declaration of what must be, so long as man is man and God is God. It says in effect: “Be like God, or you cannot be truly man.” ”

“ What right has this consequence of reality to be personalized and made the ruler and source of reality? Law is only the fixed mode in which reality works. Law therefore can explain nothing. Only God, from whom reality springs, can explain reality.” In other words, law is never an agent but always a method—the method of God, or rather of Christ who is the only Revealer of God. Christ's life in the flesh is the clearest manifestation of him who is the principle of law in the physical and moral universe. Christ is the Reason of God in expression. ”

“ There is a law irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world upon which all blessings are predicated; and when we obtain any blessing from God it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated. ”

“ As creation does not exclude miracles, so law does not exclude grace (Rom. 8:3—“what the law could not do ... God” did) .
Murphy, Scientific Bases, 303-327, esp. 315—“To impersonal law, it is indifferent whether its subjects obey or not. But God desires, not the punishment, but the destruction, of sin.” Campbell, Atonement, Introd., 28—“There are two regions of the divine self-manifestation, one the reign of law, the other the kingdom of God.” C. H. M.: “Law is the transcript of the mind of God as to what man ought to be. But God is not merely law, but love. ”

“ Canon law may be taken to include theology, or may be limited to the law of the organization and functions of the Church taken in a large sense as inclusive of the laity in their relations to the religion of Christ. ”

“ And he was thus brought into close sympathy with the realism of the Fathers, who felt that all that is valuable in theology must radiate from the recognition of Almighty power in the renovation of society, and displayed, not according to our human notions of law and progress and free-will, but supernaturally and mysteriously, according to his sovereign will, which is above law, since God is the author of law. ”

“ They argue: (a) the teaching of scripture and of the Church supposes that all just laws oblige in conscience; (b) the lawgiver holds the place of God, and hence one cannot offend against the law of man without offending God; (c) human law, being only a reaffirmation or determination of the higher law, obliges in conscience like the law on which it is based; (d) directions of a superior that do not oblige under sin are counsels rather than laws. ”

“ Do you not know that the Law is like a body, like a living organism, and that if you break one commandment you break the whole Law ? That if you transgress the will of God in one particular point you sin against God ? ”

“ Our most illustrious preachers gave a wonderful majesty to their discourses by following the example of the Master, and giving prominence to the law, its precepts, and its threatenings. They repeated the two great maxims, that the law is a transcript of the divine perfections, and that a man who does not love the law does not love the gospel; for the law, as well as the gospel, is a mirror reflecting the true character of God. This peril leads to another, that of underrating the evil of sin, the extent of it, the demerit of it. ”

“ These same principles, have formed the basis of all law, where their brilliancy has been reflected upon the understanding, or their benign influence operated upon the hearts of the children of men. Upon these principles, in all countries denominated christian, are predicated the civil laws and the penal code. The christian world have, therefore, affixed to them their seal of approbation, and as did the God of the Universe when he beheld the world emerge from chaos in obedience to his behest, unhesitatingly, they have pronounced them good. ”

“ Against certain theological positions, perhaps of great weight, and theological evidence, comes, not only the doctrine of theological opponents, but the objection that they are bad law. The interpretation which, it may be, we have assumed all our lives, and which we know to be that of Fathers and divines, is suddenly pronounced not to be legal. ”

“ But what about the answer of the Lord to the rich young man? What about the commandment to be perfect? Does not the doctrine of justification by faith alone, without the deeds of the Law, abolish the holy and good Law of God? ”

“ The Bible leads us on to that sense of sin, in the presence of this "Law," which no lower thought of law can quicken. The Bible wakens in the breast of man an ethical passion for the ideal and eternal law, which, apart from early Buddhism, has no parallel in history. The Bible reveals these ethical ideals as no mere alluring visions, but as the substantial realities of being. The Bible thus inspires a buoyancy and exhilaration which feed the fresh forces of all noble life. The Bible leads this sense of Law into that awful vision wherein "Conscious Law is King of kings." God speaks in a man. ”

“ Indeed, just for the reason that not only is it not necessary to justification, but also cannot effect it, it is the more necessary to teach and urge it. 12. In order that man, who is proud and trusts in his own powers, may be instructed that he cannot be justified by the Law. 18. Whatever reveals sin, wrath, or death exercises the office of the Law, whether it be in the Old or in the New Testament. 19. For to reveal sin is nothing else, nor can it be anything else, than the Law or an effect and the peculiar power of the Law. 20. Law and revelation of sin or of wrath are convertible terms. ”

“ But although the divine will as revealed in the Scriptures, is a perfect rule or law for all mankind, and although human laws ought to conform to the divine law, yet it would be impossible to govern the people of a state by that law alone. The divine law is broad, and comprehends rules to teach men their whole duty ”

“ What title of distinction is given the law of God?
“If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, ye do well: but if ye have respect of persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors.” James 2:8, 9.
2. By what law is the knowledge of sin?
“I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.” Rom. 7:7.
Note.—The law which says, “Thou shalt not covet,” is the ten commandments. 3. By what are all men to be finally judged? ”

“ God is unchangeable, so are also his laws, in all their forms, and in all their applications, and being Himself the essence of law, the giver of law, the sustainer of law, all of those laws are eternal in all their operations, in all bodies and matter, and throughout all space. It would be impossible for Him to violate law, because in so doing He would strike at His own dignity, power, principles, glory, exaltation and existence. ”

“ The Law had said, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength;’ and could men have lived by law, ‘which is the strength of sin,’ verily righteousness and life would have been by that law. ”

“ Natural religion, after it has given us its best discoveries and directions, lays and leaves us under this further obligation, that whatever divine revelation shall be made to us at any time, with sufficient evidence to prove it divine, we accept it, and submit to it. This law those transgress who, when God speaketh to us by his Son, refuse him that speaketh; and therefore it is sin. ”

“ How can they lose any right or authority they have or can have by having the divine law, under which they hold, infallibly declared and applied? It is singular, my old schoolfellow, that so acute, subtle, and so able a lawyer as I know you to be, should have the misfortune, as a theologian, to object to the very thing [Pg 603] you really wish to maintain, and which can alone save you from the evils you seek to avoid. ”

“ If you say that the motions which issue in the phenomena of the universe are regulated by a law which was once for all willed by the god of the Christian interpretation of religion, I ask why the law should be credited to the willing of this god rather than to that of the god of Jewish, Mohammedan or Buddhistic interpretation. ”

“ The Law is the expression of God's nature; it is only by the Law being written in the heart that man can become a partaker of God's nature; that His name can be sanctified in him. And it is this participation in the nature of God, this sanctification of God's name, which forms the foundation of: "I will be their God, and they shall be my people." ”

“ We Christians, then, who have come to the knowledge of the law which is by nature “king of all things,” and which is the same with the law of God, endeavour to regulate our lives by its prescriptions, having bidden a long farewell to those of an unholy kind. ”

“ Is this the original and necessary relation which law sustains to the will and affections of an accountable creature? Must the pure and holy law of God, from the very nature of things, be a weariness and a curse? God forbid. But sin that it might appear sin, working death in the sinner by that which is good,—that sin by the commandment might become, might be seen to be, exceeding sinful. The law is like a chemical test. It eats into sin enough to show what sin is, and there stops. ”

“ God alone is the lawgiver or lawmaker, and his revealed word is the law—the law for the human reason and will, and which binds all men in thought, word, and deed. We want no church, as the supreme judge of the law, to tell us this, for it is a dictamen of reason itself. It is the revealed word of God, which again is only his will, the will of the supreme Lawgiver—that is the law under which the church is constituted, and which she guards, interprets, and declares, whenever a question of law arises. She does not make the law ”

“ The customs of God's people and the institutions of our ancestors are to be considered as laws. And those who throw contempt on the customs of the Church ought to be punished as those who disobey the law of God. ”

“ We can only say that the more we study Scripture, and the more we ponder the law question in the light of the New Testament, the more amazed we are at the manner in which some persist in contending for the opinion that Christians are under the law, whether for life, for righteousness, for holiness, or for any object whatsoever. ”

“ Then these said, 'Rua talked sense in those days.' I saw there were two laws in the world—one, God's, the other, man's; the law that came from the Spirit, and the law that comes from man's mind. But it is God's law that should direct man. ”

“ For as the wise are wise by their wisdom, and those observant of law are so by the law; so also those who belong to Christ the King are kings, and those that are Christ’s Christians. Then, in continuation, he adds clearly, “What is right will turn out to be lawful, law being in its nature right reason, and not found in writings or elsewhere.” ”

“ The law was added because of transgressions, till this fulness of time, or this complete dispensation, should come. But when the seed came, and a fuller discovery of divine grace in the promise was made, then the law, as given by Moses, was to cease; that covenant, being found faulty, was to give place to another, and a better, Heb. viii. 7, 8. And though the law, considered as the law of nature, is always in force, and still continues to be of use to convince men of sin and to restrain them from it, yet we are now no longer under the bondage and terror of that legal covenant. ”

“ God hath in that Book, and by His behest, decreed as lawful whatsoever He hath pleased to decree, and hath, through the power of His sovereign might, forbidden whatsoever He elected to forbid. To this testifieth the text of that Book. Will ye not bear witness? Men, however, have wittingly broken His law. Is such a behavior to be attributed to God, or to their proper selves? Be fair in your judgment. Every good thing is of God, and every evil thing is from yourselves. Will ye not comprehend? This same truth hath been revealed in all the Scriptures, if ye be of them that understand. ”

“ And then let us prove, by a holy, happy, gracious walk and conversation, that grace can do what law never could. Let our practical ways from day to day, in the midst of the scenes, circumstances, relationships, and associations in which we are called to live, be the most convincing reply to all who contend for the law as a rule of life. ”

“ For the entire doctrine of the adversaries is, in part, derived from human reason, and is, in part, a doctrine of the Law, not of the Gospel. For they teach two modes of justification, of which the one has been derived from reason and the other from the Law, not from the Gospel, or the promise concerning Christ. ”