Paul’s argumentation in the Book of Romans
is a lesson in law and logic.
Find out why in this week’s Truth in Two (2 min video + full text + an Afterword).
Dr. Mark Eckel is Executive Director of the Center for Biblical Integration at Liberty University. Support MarkEckel.com (here). Find the MarkEckel.com YouTube Channel (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website) and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video).
Pictures: Josh Collingwood, Snappy Goat
FULL TEXT
Perhaps you’ve seen his coffee cup reels on Instagram. Nick Freitas is a state delegate from Virginia and can be heard opining about politics, fatherhood, farming, and universal wisdom about any number of subjects. Discussing the reels Freitas does on Instagram I recently remarked, “Someone could teach a course on logic by watching these brief video arguments.
I was thinking of the coffee cup wisdom of Nick Freitas as I was reading Paul’s books of Romans and Galatians. Someone studying law, argumentation, communication or apologetics could learn a great deal about logic from Paul’s flow of though. Indeed, the book of Romans has been used in law schools as a primer on courtroom argumentation. You can find a link to the idea at the end of this Truth in Two. Here is but one of dozens of sept-by-step thinking in Paul’s writing. In Romans ten we hear the importance of evangelism, preaching, and salvation. Paul writes,
“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”
Notice Paul’s declaration: if you call on the name of the Lord you will be saved. He then explains what belief that salvation is based on, how that belief is heard, and how hearing happens through preaching. If you want to learn how to think with coherent consistency, read Paul. You won’t find any coffee cups in Romans but you will discover the universal wisdom from the Only Wise God, in His Word. For the Comenius Institute, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, Executive Director of the Center for Biblical Integration at Liberty University, personally seeking truth wherever it’s found.
AFTERWORD
For example, here is a document from Harvard Law School using the book of Romans as an example of “Christianity’s contribution to law and legal ideas.” Christian law schools, it is no surprise, greet the teaching of Romans 13:1-7, for instance, with acceptance, appropriating the text for the purposes of interpreting American law. Nor would it be surprising to find a place like Brigham Young University demonstrate the connection between Roman law and the Second (New) Testament. There has been quite a bit of discussion as to unreferenced statements about American law schools using the book of Romans as a whole as a teaching model from Udo Middleman and Leland Ryken. There are many rabbit trails to follow on that discussion board.
However, one of the greatest contributions to American law from its first American edition in 1771, indeed the four volume set was the standard for law schools from its inception, is the famed Blackstone Commentaries. It is necessary to understand that Blackstone himself was a student of The Scriptures, The Book which most influenced him in his contribution to common law. The Declaration of Independence, much less the rest of American jurisprudence, was significantly influenced by the biblical foundations laid by Blackstone. The teaching of the book of Romans on law, its source, human conscience, and individual freedom resounds throughout the Commentaries; his oft quoted line marks early U.S. jurisprudence,
“Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these.”
American law, at its earliest stages, reflects tenets found in Paul’s epistle to the Romans. As a case in point, Antonin Scalia, in a lecture to a Catholic university said that Paul’s book to the Romans lays a “moral claim to our obedience” as Christians in the practice of law.
[On a side note, Yale Divinity School has a Romans Bible study. I found the articles there to be beneficial.]