Response to Matthew Levering’s “Christians and Natural Law”
Response to Matthew Levering’s “Christians and Natural Law”
Despite being members of two different faith communities, the authors of Chapters 1 and 2 have much in common with each other. Both try to answer Jews and Christians who see natural law to be in competition with the revealed law from which each of their respective faith communities takes its fundamental warrant. This Response also discusses how the Christian rejection of Marcion means that Judaism and Christianity base themselves on the same revelation: what has been written in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Like Levering, this Response sees natural law teaching within the Hebrew Bible, especially its teaching that all humans are created in the image of God, and that each tradition emphasizes that the “Golden Rule” as the most basic norm for humans to respect each other's rights, each other's dignity. In this way, the authors of Chapters 1 and 2 attempt to counter the secularist view that human rights need no religious grounding, but only political protection.
Keywords: Jews, Christians, dignity, Golden Rule, Maimonides, Marcion, natural law
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
