| Popis: |
The term ‘law’ does not admit of easy or universal definition. In its broadest sense, law consists of all the written and unwritten norms that govern human conduct – moral commandments, state statutes, church canons, family rules, commercial habits, communal customs, and others. It includes the process of formulating and enforcing these norms through legislation, adjudication, and administration by those with legal authority. It also involves actualizing these norms through obedience, negotiation, litigation, criticism, resistance, and other legal activities by those who are subject to those norms (Berman 1993). Law in this broad sense is pervasive in our lives. It covers everything from the ‘laws written on the heart’ (Rom 2:14) to local rules about parking or food packing. A parent’s order to children to ‘stop fighting!’ is as much a legal command as a state’s criminal prohibition on assault and battery. Law is at work in Abraham’s bargaining with God over the pending destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 18:16–33) as much as in the modern world’s treaty negotiations about nuclear weapons. Law governs the covenant forged between Yahweh and Israel as well as the contract formed between husband and wife. Laws of all sorts are ever present – encouraging and directing, prescribing and prohibiting, supporting and facilitating, rewarding and punishing, ordering and nudging our conduct, relationships, and institutions. This article focuses more narrowly on the formal laws and procedures of states and churches – political and ecclesiastical authorities, as they were called in the pre-modern Western tradition. Most Western states today are dedicated to the rule of law and have written or unwritten constitutions that define the powers and provinces of political authorities and the rights and duties of their political subjects. Most nations make formal distinctions among the executive, legislative, and judicial powers of government and functions of law. Most distinguish among bodies of public, private, penal, and procedural law. Most recognize multiple sources of law: constitutions, treaties, statutes, regulations, judicial precedents, customary practices, and more. Of increasing importance to many nations today are public, private, and penal international laws. Also, important today are the enumerated rights and liberties set out in national and international declarations, covenants, charters, concordats, constitutions, and statutes. Churches, too, have law at their backbone, balancing their spiritual and structural dimensions. Each church depends upon rules, regulations, and procedures to maintain its order, organization, and orthodoxy; clergy, polity, and property; worship, liturgy, and sacraments; discipline, missions, and diaconal work; charity, education, and catechesis; publications, foundations, and religious life; and its property, governance, and interactions with the state and other social institutions. Church laws, of course, vary greatly in form and function over time and across the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant communities around the world. Some church laws are written, others are customary. Some are codified, others more loosely collected. Some are mandatory, others probative or facilitative. Some are universal canons; others are local and variant rules. Some are drawn from the Bible; others go back to ancient Roman law and the Talmud. Some church laws deal with the essentials of the faith, others with the adiaphora. Some are internally created by the church’s own government; others are externally imposed or induced by the state. Some church laws are declared by ecclesiastical hierarchies; others are democratically selected. Some churches maintain elaborate tribunals and formal procedures, while others use informal and conversational methods of enforcement. For all this variety, however, church law is a common and necessary feature of church life (Doe 2015; 2021). |
