This volume identifies and elaborates on the significance and functions of the various actors involved in the development of family law in the Middle East. Besides the importance of family law regulations for each individual, family law has become the battleground of political and social contestation. Divided into four parts, the collection presents a general overview and analysis of the development of family law in the region and provides insights into the broader context of family law reform, before offering examples of legal development realised by codification drawn from a selection of Gulf states, Iran, and Egypt. It then goes on to present a thorough analysis of the role of the judiciary in the process of lawmaking, before discussing ways the parties themselves may have shaped and do shape the law. Including contributions from leading authors of Middle Eastern law, this timely volume brings together many isolated aspects of legal development and offers a comprehensive picture on this topical subject. It will be of interest to scholars and academics of family law and religion.
Christians often struggle to understand the role of God's law in their lives. They may distort the law, turning it into a checklist to try to earn God's favor, or they may live as though the law doesn't apply to them. In this booklet, Dr. R.C. Sproul explains the purpose of the moral law and how it applies to Christians today. As he walks through each of the Ten Commandments, we see that the law doesn't merely expose our sin; it also reveals the character of a holy and gracious God and shows us how to live lives that are pleasing to Him. The Crucial Questions booklet series by Dr. R.C. Sproul offers succinct answers to important questions often asked by Christians and thoughtful inquirers.
Brian S. Rosner seeks to build bridges between old and new perspectives on Paul with this biblical-theological account of the apostle's complex relationship with Jewish law. Rosner argues that Paul reevaluates the Law of Moses, including its repudiation as legal code, its replacement by other things, and its reappropriation as prophecy and wisdom.
Overwhelmed? Need a day off... a break? Maybe it's time to learn the truth about the Sabbath. Everyone, it seems, lives his or her life at a breakneck pace, constantly rushing here and there to get everything done. Technological advances that once promised more leisure time now seem only to push us further behind, making it ever more difficult to catch up. So we frantically scramble. We feel out of touch—out of touch with our spouse, out of touch with our families, out of touch with the world around us and, perhaps most of all, out of touch with God. Is there a way to get back in touch? In the Bible, God gives us a solution written within the Ten Commandments. It's a commandment that gives us time for a welcome, refreshing rest from our weekly labors, a time during which we must no longer be absorbed in our ordinary daily cares and concerns—a time for spiritual rejuvenation. Inside the ebook, "Sunset to Sunset: God's Sabbath Rest", you will read why God commanded a day of rest and the purpose for it. You will discover the answers to which day is the Sabbath, why the Sabbath is relevant for all of us today and why this day of rest makes sense in today's world. Join us for a journey through the Bible to discover the importance of God's Sabbath rest. Chapters in this ebook: -- The Sabbath: In the Beginning -- When Is the Sabbath Day to Be Kept? -- Which Day Is the Sabbath? -- Names for Saturday in Many Languages Prove Which Day Is the True Sabbath -- Jesus Christ and the Sabbath -- Just What is Legalism? -- Was the Sabbath Changed in the New Testament? -- Was Sunday the New Testament Day of Worship? -- Was God's Law Abolished in the New Testament? -- Why is the Sabbath Commandment Not Repeated in the New Testament? -- Surprising Admissions About the Sabbath and Sunday -- "There Remains a Sabbath-Rest for the People of God" -- A Sign of God's People -- God's Sabbath in Today's World -- The Sabbath in the Age to Come -- What is True Worship? -- Our Appointment With God -- A Test for You? Inside this Bible Study Aid ebook: "God, Creator of the Sabbath, determines when the day begins and ends, and it was observed from sunset to sunset throughout the Bible. His Sabbath begins Friday evening at sunset and ends Saturday evening at sunset." "Jesus Himself clearly denied that He intended to change or abolish the Sabbath or any part of God’s law. “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets,” He said. “I did not come to destroy but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17)." "Many who argue that the Sabbath was abolished in the New Testament point to the apostle Paul’s writings to justify their view. But is this opinion correct? They commonly cite three passages to support that claim—Romans 14:5-6, Colossians 2:16-17 and Galatians 4:9-10." "Here we see God’s true intent for the Sabbath: It is part of a proper, loving relationship with Him. It is a matter of honoring God."
An incisive look at how evangelical Christians shaped—and were shaped by—the American criminal justice system. America incarcerates on a massive scale. Despite recent reforms, the United States locks up large numbers of people—disproportionately poor and nonwhite—for long periods and offers little opportunity for restoration. Aaron Griffith reveals a key component in the origins of American mass incarceration: evangelical Christianity. Evangelicals in the postwar era made crime concern a major religious issue and found new platforms for shaping public life through punitive politics. Religious leaders like Billy Graham and David Wilkerson mobilized fears of lawbreaking and concern for offenders to sharpen appeals for Christian conversion, setting the stage for evangelicals who began advocating tough-on-crime politics in the 1960s. Building on religious campaigns for public safety earlier in the twentieth century, some preachers and politicians pushed for “law and order,” urging support for harsh sentences and expanded policing. Other evangelicals saw crime as a missionary opportunity, launching innovative ministries that reshaped the practice of religion in prisons. From the 1980s on, evangelicals were instrumental in popularizing criminal justice reform, making it a central cause in the compassionate conservative movement. At every stage in their work, evangelicals framed their efforts as colorblind, which only masked racial inequality in incarceration and delayed real change. Today evangelicals play an ambiguous role in reform, pressing for reduced imprisonment while backing law-and-order politicians. God’s Law and Order shows that we cannot understand the criminal justice system without accounting for evangelicalism’s impact on its historical development.
In this second volume, Dr. Cook provides a series of articles that are part of his morning meditations on Scripture. Meditation, in the biblical sense, is an intentional filling of the mind with divine viewpoint; specifically, God’s Word. The purpose is to saturate our thinking with Scripture so that it will permeate all aspects of our reasoning and guide us into God’s will. These articles touch on subjects such as soteriology, grace, worship, righteous living, and character studies of people such as Saul and David. The overall intent of the book is to inform and inspire believers to live righteously before God.
The confidence, courage, and resolve in many of the greatest Bible heroes and world-changers are the result of a single, powerful, biblical principle. It's a principle woven into the very foundation of creation that, when applied, has the power to calm chaos, overcome obstacles, and win every battle. The secret? Activating the power of God's spoken Word.
This volume identifies and elaborates on the significance and functions of the various actors involved in the development of family law in the Middle East. Besides the importance of family law regulations for each individual, family law has become the battleground of political and social contestation. Divided into four parts, the collection presents a general overview and analysis of the development of family law in the region and provides insights into the broader context of family law reform, before offering examples of legal development realised by codification drawn from a selection of Gulf states, Iran, and Egypt. It then goes on to present a thorough analysis of the role of the judiciary in the process of lawmaking, before discussing ways the parties themselves may have shaped and do shape the law. Including contributions from leading authors of Middle Eastern law, this timely volume brings together many isolated aspects of legal development and offers a comprehensive picture on this topical subject. It will be of interest to scholars and academics of family law and religion.
How ancient thinkers grappled with competing conceptions of divine law In the thousand years before the rise of Islam, two radically diverse conceptions of what it means to say that a law is divine confronted one another with a force that reverberates to the present. What's Divine about Divine Law? untangles the classical and biblical roots of the Western idea of divine law and shows how early adherents to biblical tradition—Hellenistic Jewish writers such as Philo, the community at Qumran, Paul, and the talmudic rabbis—struggled to make sense of this conflicting legacy. Christine Hayes shows that for the ancient Greeks, divine law was divine by virtue of its inherent qualities of intrinsic rationality, truth, universality, and immutability, while for the biblical authors, divine law was divine because it was grounded in revelation with no presumption of rationality, conformity to truth, universality, or immutability. Hayes describes the collision of these opposing conceptions in the Hellenistic period, and details competing attempts to resolve the resulting cognitive dissonance. She shows how Second Temple and Hellenistic Jewish writers, from the author of 1 Enoch to Philo of Alexandria, were engaged in a common project of bridging the gulf between classical and biblical notions of divine law, while Paul, in his letters to the early Christian church, sought to widen it. Hayes then delves into the literature of classical rabbinic Judaism to reveal how the talmudic rabbis took a third and scandalous path, insisting on a construction of divine law intentionally at odds with the Greco-Roman and Pauline conceptions that would come to dominate the Christianized West. A stunning achievement in intellectual history, What's Divine about Divine Law? sheds critical light on an ancient debate that would shape foundational Western thought, and that continues to inform contemporary views about the nature and purpose of law and the nature and authority of Scripture.
A fresh look at the earliest Christian movement reveals what made the new faith so compelling...and what we need to change today to make it so again. Once upon a time there was a version of the Christian faith that was practically irresistible. After all, what could be more so than the gospel that Jesus ushered in? Why, then, isn't it the same with Christianity today? Author and pastor Andy Stanley is deeply concerned with the present-day church and its future. He believes that many of the solutions to our issues can be found by investigating our roots. In Irresistible, Andy chronicles what made the early Jesus Movement so compelling, resilient, and irresistible by answering these questions: What did first-century Christians know that we don't—about God's Word, about their lives, about love? What did they do that we're not doing? What makes Christianity so resistible in today's culture? What needs to change in order to repeat the growth our faith had at its beginning? Many people who leave or disparage the faith cite reasons that have less to do with Jesus than with the conduct of his followers. It's time to hit pause and consider the faith modeled by our first-century brothers and sisters who had no official Bible, no status, and little chance of survival. It's time to embrace the version of faith that initiated—against all human odds—a chain of events resulting in the most significant and extensive cultural transformation the world has ever seen. This is a version of Christianity we must remember and re-embrace if we want to be salt and light in an increasingly savorless and dark world.
