I recently listened to a couple of audios dealing with Christianity and law. I found them at a website named Redeeming Reason. Here they are:
Charles Emmerich – The Law from a Christian Perspective
Albert Alschuler – Oliver Wendell Holmes and the Secularization of American Law
I’m presently reading a very good article by Os Guinness on Religious Liberty and the Rebuilding of the Public Philosophy, entitled, A World Safe for Diversity. I’m sorry I can’t give the link at this time; I downloaded it, printed it out and forgot what website I got it from. Anyway, here are some good quotes from the article:
“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.” (Benjamin Franklin)
“We have no government armed with powers capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale through a net” (John Adams)
“Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks – no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.” (James Madison)
Whatever may be the merits of shifting to a parliamentary form of government I hope we Filipinos don’t forget that no matter how good a governmental system is it won’t be a panacea for society’s ills. In the final analysis we have to reckon with ourselves – whether or not we are a virtuous, disciplined and godly people. “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people.”
I will be gone for more than a week – duty calls! The difficult thing is deciding what books to take with me. I’m thinking of either Karl Barth’ Church Dogmatics (vol. 1) or John Owen’s Communion with God – and of course a copy of the Labor Code of the Philippines! Anyway, here’s something from Spurgeon before I hibernate:
“Rest assured that there is nothing new in theology except that which is false; and that the facts of theology are to-day what they were eighteen hundred years ago.”
– Charles Spurgeon, An All Round Ministry (Banner of Truth Trust, reprinted 1994) p. 10
Ever wonder where the saying, “Hate the sin, love the sinner” came from?
“It is clear, then, that the man who does not live according to man but according to God must be a lover of the good and therefore a hater of evil; since no man is wicked by nature but is wicked only by some defect, a man who lives according to God owes it to the wicked men that his hatred be perfect, so that, neither hating the man because of his corruption nor loving the corruption because of the man, he should hate the sin but love the sinner. For, once the corruption has been cured, then all that is left should be loved and nothing remains to be hated.”
Augustine, City of God (Image Books, 1958) p. 304
