The court's opinion arrives in the morning mail. The judgement against your client is affirmed. Well, you win some and you lose some. You call your client on the phone and give him the bad news. “What's the next step?” he says. There is no next step, you tell him, and he must comply with the court's judgment. He says, “What if I don't?” You say, “You must.” He says he won't.

If one works at it, one should be able to give pretty good legal advice. The difficulty, it has always seemed to me, is how to give the legal advice, especially if unpalatable, in such a way that the client does not lose his enthusiasm for your valued services. So—you gingerly explain to your client about a sheriffs levy of execution, about penalties and interest, garnishment and foreclosure; and—when the client remains obstinate, you explain about contempt of court and incarceration.

In addressing this subject I shall be concerning myself with certain aspects of the vocation of the lawyer and of the theologian. I say certain aspects advisedly. Undoubtedly, a thorough study of the various relationships and comparisons between religion and law could not be satisfactorily dealt with in anything short of a multi-volume treatise. What follows is a hodge-podge of some law-and-religion features and issues which I have selected primarily for what I hope to be their interest to members of the clergy. I shall be dealing with: (1) some general aspects of the relationship between law and religion; (2) the law's definition of religion; (3) fundamental law and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms; and (4) legal and scriptural interpretation.

Before embarking on this course, I should mention that the resort to scripture in the various vicissitudes of life is, of course, commonplace and that the resourceful mind is capable of finding useful precedents in the most unlikely parts of the Bible. Sometimes precedents drawn from the Bible may have cogent negative effect. It appears that the famous 18th century English judge, Lord Mansfield, paid little attention to religious holidays. During one sittings of his court at the end of Lent he proposed that the court would sit on Good Friday. An account of what happened is as follows: “Sergeant Davy [one of the counsel in the case] … bowed in acceptance of the proposition. ‘If your lordship pleases; but your lordship will be the first judge that has done so since Pontius Pilate.’ The court adjourned until Saturday.”

In this paper, I seek to draw out the meanings of both law and religion and to reflect on their relationship to each other. Both law and religion belong to the humanities, and an examination of a few of the ways in which they cut across each other might conceivably contribute to a better understanding of the human predicament in general.

I shall begin by inquiring into the historical roots and development of law and religion. I shall then examine analytically some important issues involving their intersections—questions which cut across history and seem perennial. Obviously, given space limitations, much of the discussion can only suggest.

Two thousand years ago a Jewish lawyer demanded a definition of the term “neighbor.” … Whether the tale of the Samaritan answered his perplexities we cannot say. But he would surely have been astonished had he been informed that there were two answers to his question, one if he was asking as a lawyer, another if he was asking as a layman. To him, neighbor was neighbor and duty, duty. Perhaps this ancient lawyer's tale has a moral for law and lawyers today.

Ethical discussions of divorce have usually taken up the question of whether or when two spouses may divorce and remarry. They have focussed on the dissolution of the marital bond. Almost no attention has been given to the ethical issues involved in negotiating a divorce or maintaining the parental bond in divorce.

Emerging efforts to maintain parental bonds in divorce rest on many diverse considerations. Let us begin with the social changes demanding this concern and then move to some religious, ethical, and legal responses to this challenge.

The ABA Model Rules clearly recognize a professional and moral dilemma. While indicating that a “lawyer's responsibilities as an officer of the legal system, a representative of clients and a public citizen are usually harmonious,” the Model Rules also recognize that

While the professional and moral dilemma of the practicing lawyer is one aspect of the problem, the other aspect is the response of legal educators to this dilemma. The Model Rules note that the resolution of conflict calls for the “sensitive exercise of professional and moral judgment ….” For the most part legal educators attempt to instill professional judgment in their students but ignore the equally important goal of enhancing the moral judgment of their students.

Professor Harold Berman has described the relationship between law and religion as an interaction, stating: “The principal affirmation is that law and religion are two different but interrelated aspects of social experience—in all societies, but especially in Western society, and still more especially in American society today. Despite the tensions between them, one cannot flourish without the other.” Berman illustrates his thesis largely by demonstrating that much of Western legal thought and many institutions find their source and origin in medieval European Christian civilization.

In another essay I have suggested that biblical religion has influenced many of the legal concepts and human values protected in the American constitution. In this essay I wish to suggest that the secular phenomena of ancient Near Eastern law played a significant role in the shaping of biblical religion. This is done principally by a review of the literature on the central biblical category of covenant. I also wish to suggest that American constitutional law continues to influence religious concepts and institutions today.

Biblical translation is partly science and partly the ex parte efforts of translators subtly to support their various theologies. Genesis 3:15 is a case in point. The Revised Standard Version (Protestant) translates it as:

I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your seed and her seed;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.

Protestant tradition sees Jesus as the ultimate “he” in 3:15c. The Catholic tradition elevates Mary to equal status here and, indeed, visitors to Catholic churches can often find statuary depicting Mary treading upon a serpent.

Understandably, Jewish tradition has no use for either of these ideas. The new Jewish Publication Society translation (1962) has “they” and “their” for “he” and “his.” Because the three parties to this polite dispute have a heavy theological stake in their own interpretation, none of them has paid much attention to the rare and curious term 'eyvah that characterizes the relationship between Jesus or Mary, humanity and serpentkind.

This article focuses on the historical struggle for the realization of human rights in Poland. A focus on historical struggle indicates some congruence with a Marxist concern for “praxis,” although some of the struggle described opposes given forms of Marxist practices. I shall use philosophical and theological categories in the analysis of the struggle, while seeking to avoid an abstract understanding of human rights. An abstract approach to human rights in terms of natural law or an unmediated ontological relation between God and persons may ground their “inalienable” character, but contribute little insight into their social actualization.

The social reality of Poland is as rich a context for seeking to understand the role of the church in the struggle for human rights as one could hope to find. The role of the Roman Catholic Church in sustaining Polish identity and dignity during its partitions by Austria, Germany, and Russia from 1773 to 1917 provides the foundation for the struggle we shall analyze during the post-World War II period from 1945 to the present. The church's participation in its Communist-governed society during the last four decades, however, shall require our full attention. We shall allude to the earlier history only to help understand the contemporary social power of the Polish church.