The Sacred Origins of the Rule of Law

Kevin Yang

Professor Magana

Political Science 136

5/5/2014

The Sacred Origins of the Rule of Law

As we are trying to understand the sacred origins of law, one must understand why people need it at the first place. As F.E. Peters explained in his book about God’s creation from a monotheist perspective, the beginning of mankind started with “an omnipotent creation from nothing” (Peters 1). According to this theory, the relationship between mankind and God is creation and creator, which represents a difference in class, whereas the creator is superior than the creation. However, when man was created, the free will gave him the power to choose between good and evil unlike God who is always good, or described in Peters’ book the “otherness” (129), and the first sacred law was given to Adam who was also the first man on earth, “And the LORD God Commanded the man, you are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die” (Gen. 2: 16 - 17). From Peters’ book, where the author generalized the story from both the Bible and the Quran stated it ended up with Adam and his wife Eve fell into the temptation from Satan, and ate the forbidden fruit, whereas the “original sin” came into men and caused men to have sinful nature- or the tendency to do evil (2). Judging from this story alone, the purpose of having the law is to know the differences between good and evil, whereas the Word of God is the good, and anything else is evil. Because men are corruptible, therefore, laws were established to prevent them from doing evil. Later on, as the story of Abraham and Moses..

In order to understand the sacred origins of the law, one also must understand why the law from God is sacred. First of all, the scriptures stated the superior power of God. As Peters pointed out in his book, both three monotheists faiths including Christianity, Muslim, and Jewish communities...