God's Joust, God's Justice: Law and Religion in the Western Tradition

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Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2006 M10 31 - 498 pages
There are three things that people will die for -- their faith, their freedom, and their family. This volume focuses on all three, including the interactions among them, in the Western tradition and today. Retrieving and reconstructing a wealth of material from the earliest Hebrew and Greek texts of the West to the latest machinations of the Supreme Court, John Witte explores the legal and theological foundations of authority and liberty, equality and dignity, rights and duties, marriage and family, crime and punishment, and similar topics. God's Joust, God's Justice is a lucid scholarly introduction to the burgeoning field of law and religion and a learned historical inquiry into the weightier matters of the law.

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Contents

Gods Joust Gods Justice
1
A Short History of Western Rights
31
Human Dignity Liberty
49
Catholic
63
The Clash of Eastern
114
Puritan Contributions
143
That Serpentine Wall of Separation Between
207
vii
214
An Apt and Cheerful Conversation on Marriage
295
The Goods and Goals of Marriage
322
Marriage As Contract
364
The Perils of Clerical Celibacy
386
The Sin and Crime
398
The Vocation of the Child
423
The Challenges of Christian Jurisprudence
450
The Cathedral of the Law
466

From Establishment
243
A Protestant Source
263

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About the author (2006)

John Witte Jr. is Jonas Robitscher Professor of Law and Ethics and director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. A specialist in legal history, marriage, and religious liberty, he has authored numerous books.

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