Abstract

Indeed, today it has become increasingly clear-as it was in prior centuries-that religion and law are two universal solvents of human living, two interlocking sources and systems of values and beliefs that have existed in all axial civilizations. Law and religion, Justice Harry Blackmun once wrote, enter into that important calculus of how a man should live and how a society should run. To be sure, the spheres and sciences of law and religion have, on occasion, both converged and contradicted each other Every religious tradition has known both theonomism and antinomianism the excessive legalization and the excessive spiritualization of religion.