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A Magnum Opus - Discussed: Faith, Freedom, and Family: New Studies in Law and Religion. By John Witte, Jr. Edited by Norman Doe and Gary S. Hauk. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021. Pp. 791. €99.00 (paper); €99.00 (digital). ISBN: 9783161608766.

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Discussed: Faith, Freedom, and Family: New Studies in Law and Religion. By John Witte, Jr. Edited by Norman Doe and Gary S. Hauk. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021. Pp. 791. €99.00 (paper); €99.00 (digital). ISBN: 9783161608766.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2022

Michael Welker
Michael Welker*
Affiliation:
Senior Professor and Director of the Research Center International and Interdisciplinary Theology, University of Heidelberg
*
Email: mw@uni-hd.de
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Abstract

Over the first two decades of the twenty-first century, John Witte, Jr. has not only carefully documented but also creatively promoted in many ways three very important developments: (1) the almost revolutionary worldwide reawakening of cooperation in the fields of law and religion after the termination of their long, fruitful history of cooperation in the mid-1800s; (2) the efforts to strengthen a justice-oriented legal culture in democratic societies and the legal, academic, and political appreciation of human rights (also in disputes with human rights skeptics); and (3) the reconciliation of traditional values and new needs for freedom in the ethos and law of marriage and family.

Keywords

law and religionfaithfreedomfamily
Type
Book Review Symposium: John Witte, Jr.: The Past, Present and Future of a Law and Religion Trailblazer
Information
Journal of Law and Religion , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , January 2023 , pp. 108 - 117
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University

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References

1 Michael Welker, “God’s Justice and Righteousness,” in Responsibility and the Enhancement of Life: Essays in Honor of William Schweiker, ed. Günter Thomas and Heike Springhart (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2017), 179–90. Some of these thoughts are taken up in my Gifford Lectures: Welker, Michael, God’s Image: An Anthropology of the Spirit. The 2019/2020 Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh, trans. Stott, Douglas W. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2021), 53–58 Google Scholar.

2 Joseph Ratzinger, “Was die Welt zusammenhält. Vorpolitische moralische Grundlagen eines freiheitlichen Staates” [What holds the world together. Pre-political moral foundations of a free state], in Jürgen Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger, Dialektik der Säkularisierung. Über Vernunft und Religion [Dialectics of secularization. About reason and religion] (Freiburg: Herder, 2005), 39–60, 50.

3 Ratzinger, “Was die Welt zusammenhält,” 51.

4 Welker, Michael, “Habermas and Ratzinger on the Future of Religion,” Scottish Journal of Theology 63, no. 4 (2010): 456–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Corpus Iuris Civilis. Die Institutionen [The body of civil law. The institutes], ed. Okko Behrens et al., 3rd ed. (Heidelberg: Müller, 2007), 2.

6 Corpus Iuris Civilis, 2.

7 Corpus Iuris Civilis, 2.

8 Paolo Prodi, Eine Geschichte der Gerechtigkeit. Vom Recht Gottes zum modernen Rechtsstaat [A story of justice. From the law of God to the modern constitutional state] (Munich: Beck, 2003).

9 Martin Luther, Römervorlesung (Hs.) 1515/16 [Lecture on the book of Romans, 1515/16], vol. 56 of D. Martin Luthers Werke: kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimarer Ausgabe), ed. Georg Bebermeyer (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1938), 355 (“De lege naturae multa fabulamur.”).

10 See my critical reflections on Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), and Leonardo Boff, Traum von einer neuen Erde—Bilanz eines theologischen Lebens [Dream of a new Earth—Assessment of a theological life] (Münster: LIT, 2019): Michael Welker, “Der Geist der Freiheit und die Freiheit des Geistes” [The spirit of freedom and the freedom of spirit], in Theologie im Gespräch. Jürgen Moltmann zum 95. Geburtstag [Theology in discussion. Jürgen Moltmann on his 95th birthday] ( Frankfurt: Gemeinschaftswerk der Evangelischen Publizistik, 2022), 7–12.