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The Christian difference to the legal order is not to be found in any religious test or requirement of conformity, but in the Christian character of legal institutions. Stahl accomplishes this by making institutions rather than actions the cornerstone of law. Law is a general rule, not a specific command; and institutions, not persons, are its primary object. Persons operate within the framework established by law, but that law is an external, objective framework, not an internal, subjective one. The right of the person and the rights of persons are established and defended precisely by this objectively Christian order. Therefore, what is Christian about this legal order is the principles, the law-ideas, upon which it is based, not the level of faith of those living within it. This Christian orientation also demands a respect for the inheritance of the nation, conservation of its received institutions and laws. Law is rooted in custom and tradition, supplemented through legislation. The courts are bound to the law as the expression of the historical people, not ephemeral public opinion. The major error of modern legal philosophy is its natural-rights orientation, which makes law and the state into the creatures of individual choice, in which individuals through a social contract choose to leave the "state of nature" and form a government and a set of laws under which to be ruled. This whole approach is oblivious to the fact that human social order, being an inheritance, is a higher order transcending individual choice.Modern legal philosophy compounds its error by making natural law into a directly applicable legal standard, or alternatively by abandoning the law to the play of interests, cutting off any influence from higher principles. For its part, natural law lacks objectivity, universal recognition, and publicity in the sense that it can be known by everyone ahead of time; it therefore cannot be enforced by the state. In fact, to do so is to establish opinion and thus injustice as law. God's divine order is the archetype of law, but it is not directly applicable as law. In fact, God commands that the law as it stands is to be obeyed, regardless of its correspondence to the higher principles of law. Human freedom under God is the freedom to crystallize and make concrete those God-revealed principles of law as a positive legal order. In this second edition of Principles of Law, there is no difference in content as compared with the first, but the text has been corrected where necessary and improved where appropriate.

The Enlightenment of the 18th century ushered in a new order of the ages, one in which man displaced God as the central focus of both thought and practice. This has had consequences. For one thing, man has taken up the supposedly vacated role of Providence. How has he done it? Not least by gaining an increasing mastery over nature, a mastery enabled by technology. The tools provided by technology have undeniably brought great blessing, but they have also brought new and unprecedented problems. Such powerful tools have given mankind opportunities for good but also for evil, and he has taken advantage of both.In this series of articles written and published over a period of 50 years, Egbert Schuurman elucidates this complex and difficult relationship. Technology has generated a material culture capable of providing undreamed-of wealth and welfare but likewise has brought labor displacement, environmental damage, weaponry of devastating destructive capacity, and possibilities of societal control only dreamed of by history's tyrants. Schuurman expands on all of these consequences, and he does so from a unique perspective, that of the once-dominant but since-displaced perspective of Christianity. In doing so, he demonstrates not only that there are opportunities as well as difficulties involved in the ever-expanding dominance of technology, but also that Christianity can provide the framework for properly assessing and implementing the responsible application of technology. But for this to happen, the sorcerer's apprentice needs to recognize his utter dependence on his Creator and Redeemer.

Philosophical Foundations is an introduction to the philosophy of law, but it also furnishes the foundations for a Christian philosophy. In this ethically discombobulated time, it provides us with the metaphysical and ethical tools to slash our way through the wilderness of ideologies and power-craving opinions which threaten to overwhelm civilization. Indeed, a solid metaphysical and ethical framework is the crying need of our age and the indispensable presupposition for the various arts and sciences that make up the encyclopedia ("circle of learning"). The most basic datum such a framework can provide is very simply the either/or of a personal God from Whom all things originated or an ultimate reality that is impersonal. That is the starting point for inquiry. And it cannot be the case that the decision for an impersonal ultimate reality is a requirement for science. Functional atheism can be no requirement for participation either in academia or in public life and policymaking. Is science truly science that ignores the most basic fact of existence - the existence of God? It cannot be so. "If there were a God and He created the world, should that not be accepted because it is unscientific? If reason really did not carry the world in itself and could not find the world out by itself, would it nevertheless have to remove the world from itself, because that alone would be scientific? One might just as well require on the basis of science that man should not be born but rather should exist from eternity; or that man should feed himself from himself without food; or that the eye should see of itself, without objects and their impressions from outside. Scientificness demands that you be gods, but the fact is that you are only human - do you have to comply with scientificness?.... Is it the trick to explain the world without God, in and for itself, regardless of whether the explanation is sufficient - is this the essence and the glory of the scientific character? It is no subjection of science to authority if one expects of it that its knowledge should correspond to the object. No natural scientist will want to avoid the fact that his teaching must pass the test of the phenomena of nature - and yet the philosopher should have the privilege of his teaching merely being seen as logically consistent in order to be considered true, even if contradicted by all the facts, even if it leaves the great object it is supposed to solve untouched!"The proof of the pudding is in the eating, for the Christian worldview is the only key that unlocks the riddle of life, the only explanation of the otherwise unfathomable reality in which we live.

It is no secret that Western civilization is under siege. Outside the gates, the world demands a share of the wealth as well as the power that the West enjoys. Inside the gates, the Western way of life is challenged by those who demand fundamental change in the direction of social justice.Upon closer inspection, Western civilization evinces a divergence within itself. It proves to comprise two blocs, with opposing agendas and opposing ideologies. The one bloc is located within the Anglo-American orbit, the other within the orbit of Continental Europe.This explains the drive toward European Union. The EU gives formal shape to this ideological coherence among the Continental European nations.By the same token, it explains the drive toward "Brexit" in the United Kingdom, the UK being part of the Anglo-American orbit.This perspective opens the door to understanding the dynamic of global politics. Far from being a case of the "West versus the Rest," the global political dynamic is driven by this divergence within Western civilization itself. The drive toward global governance, universal jurisdiction, the normalization of the sexual revolution, the climate change agenda, are all expressions, not of the rest of the world, but of the West, and within the West, of the Continental European bloc.This also explains why the USA inevitably stands in the way of the Continental European agenda. Its tradition, its ideology, is fundamentally other, and the two cannot be reconciled.And it explains unrelenting anti-Americanism even in the USA itself, propagated by media, academia, even political parties. The ideological split runs right through American society, weakening it from within. For the one tradition is home-grown, the other is imported.How are we to explain the divergence? Where did these two opposing orientations come from? What more can be said about their conflict, and what will be the result of it?These are the questions raised in A Common Law. Published on the 20th anniversary of the first edition, this second edition includes the first edition in its entirety, and supplements it with running commentary as well as additional material bringing the issues forward to the situation post-2016.

Individualism as a broad social phenomenon began to make itself felt in the 18th century, with the advent of social contract and natural rights theories. What is less well-known is that individualism also began to permeate the church at this time, providing a transmission belt enabling those esoteric theories to gain broad traction. The vehicle for this was revivalism. In this sprightly work, Frederic de Rougemont (1801-1876) provides a critique of the revivalist phenomenon and the intellectual underpinnings provided to it by the famed publicist Alexandre Vinet. The argumentation is both doctrinally sound and polemically persuasive. The spirit of the continental Reformed church wafts through it, a spirit of magisterial authority and institutional solidity such as is lacking in so much of today's church. Colin Wright has masterfully rendered the original French. Its 152 pages are well worth a close reading.

Originally available only in typewritten manuscript, Pierre Marcel's two-volume analysis of the philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd has now been made available to the reading public in a magnificent English translation by Colin Wright. The first volume provides a detailed analysis of Dooyeweerd's critique of theoretical thought. Dooyeweerd analyzed the very basis of thought itself, its presuppositions; and then also the consequences of those presuppositions. The entire range of historical philosophy is taken into account, as are all the schools that manifested themselves up until the time of his writing.The second volume provides an analysis of Dooyeweerd's positive philosophy based on explicit presuppositions, those of Christianity. Dooyeweerd analyzes reality in the light of the framework of laws of thought embedded in the mind and in extant reality. The result is an audacious synthesis that provides a foundation for justified reason.Marcel constructively criticizes both these areas of Dooyeweerd's achievement in the two volumes now presented. They will occupy the top shelf of the works dedicated to the analysis and continuation of the great Dutchman's philosophical magnum opus.

Originally available only in typewritten manuscript, Pierre Marcel's two-volume analysis of the philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd has now been made available to the reading public in a magnificent English translation by Colin Wright. The first volume provides a detailed analysis of Dooyeweerd's critique of theoretical thought. Dooyeweerd analyzed the very basis of thought itself, its presuppositions; and then also the consequences of those presuppositions. The entire range of historical philosophy is taken into account, as are all the schools that manifested themselves up until the time of his writing.The second volume provides an analysis of Dooyeweerd's positive philosophy based on explicit presuppositions, those of Christianity. Dooyeweerd analyzes reality in the light of the framework of laws of thought embedded in the mind and in extant reality. The result is an audacious synthesis that presents a foundation for justified reason.Marcel constructively criticizes both these areas of Dooyeweerd's achievement in the two volumes now presented. They will undoubtedly occupy the top shelf of the works dedicated to the analysis and continuation of the great Dutchman's philosophical magnum opus.