Christianity has had a decisive influence on the training of Western law and legal systems. One of the most prominent American jurists of the last century, Harold J. Berman, author of the well-known work 'Law and Revolution', went so far as to state categorically that "Western legal science is a secular theology, which is often meaningless because its theological presuppositions are no longer accepted". Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz had already made this clear centuries earlier when he justified himself for having applied his model division of theology to jurisprudence because, he wrote, "the similarity between these two disciplines is striking".

This is indeed the case. Many ideas, concepts and values have, at the same time, a profound juridical and theological meaning. It is enough to think of words such as law, justice, marriage, covenant, satisfaction, oath, freedom, dignity, obedience, solidarity, authority, tradition, redemption, punishment, person, but also intercession, grace, confession and sacrament, the latter concepts being juridical rather than theological. Because of this common denominator, it is sometimes difficult to determine whether the origin of a concept is jurisprudential or theological. Christianity and law, in the West, have gone hand in hand after their first embrace at the beginning of the Christian era: lex Romana, lex Christiana. Although somewhat more distanced, Christianity and law continued together during the long process of secularization of modernity initiated with the Protestant Reformation, since this process, in part (only in part), has its roots in the famous parable of Jesus: "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's".

The prestigious publishing house of Oxford University Press has just published, with its characteristic elegance, a treatise of nearly a thousand pages ('The Oxford Handbook of Christianity and Law'), which I have had the honor of coordinating together with my colleague John Witte Jr. of Emory University in Atlanta. In it, more than sixty experts from around the world, from very different geographical and religious backgrounds, but mostly Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox Christians, have analyzed historically, geographically, conceptually and thematically the fruitful and mutual interaction between Christianity and law. Taken together, the chapters show that Christianity and law have influenced each other in a perennial and permanent way throughout time and in all cultures, most particularly in what we call the West.

Some contributions of Christianity to law are original while others shed new light on existing concepts or ideas (e.g. the idea of justice or property). Some contributions are theological (e.g., care for the created universe, of which we are only stewards), others more spiritual (e.g., sense of forgiveness, compassion and mercy), others more moral (e.g., religious freedom and human rights), others historical (e.g., the division of Europe into sovereign states), others anthropological (e.g., the centrality of the human person), others structural (e.g., the separation of Europe into sovereign states), still others anthropological (e.g., the separation of the human person). The centrality of the human person), structural ones (e.g. separation of Church and State, the principle of subsidiarity) and social ones (e.g. the social function of private property), but all of them were and continue to be decisive for the development of law and secular legal systems.

accredited specialization Special mention should be made of the great contribution of the so-called Second Scholasticism, particularly that of the School of Salamanca, which shed light on issues that also affect our times, such as the globalization of interdependence, colonialism, the exercise of power, human rights, cosmopolitanism, just war, Eurocentrism or the rules of the market.

The impact of Protestantism on Western legal culture was also colossal. The foundations of modern democratic ideas and theories, the founding ideals of religious freedom and political equality, the principle of federation, the emergence of the idea of the modern welfare state, the defense of procedural guarantees and rights, the translation of the moral duties of the Decalogue into individual rights, the doctrine of constitutional resistance against tyranny, or the idea of a written constitution as a sort of political pact owe much to the Protestant Reformation.

As well sample John Witte Jr., certain basic theological postulates of Protestantism have had important legal consequences, such as, for example, the fact that the political community is constituted by a covenant between the rulers and the people before God, whose content is shown by the divine and natural laws and specifically the Decalogue; or the fact that Church and State must be institutionally separate but united in their purpose and function, and, therefore, also in the defense of the rights and liberties of the people, including organized constitutional resistance.

Perhaps this explains why Luther changed his negative view of law - which led him to burn books from Canon Law and to call jurists bad Christians, according to the saying of the time (Juristen böse Christen!) - to become a defender of law as a necessary instrument of social order and justice. It is wise to rectify.

In our secular and global era, Christianity must continue to illuminate the law, protecting and reinforcing its meta-legal foundations, but without exploiting or despoiling the autonomous structure of legal systems. There is no single model of Christian legal order that Christianity must promote to fulfill its mission statement. The Christian influence affects rather the spiritual dimension of law, the spirit of law, although some contributions may have concrete practical implications (e.g., dignity). For its part, secular law must continue to enlighten Christianity by providing a refined juridical technique in the resolution of conflicts and by promoting the defense of human rights.

The relationship between Christianity and law is not a mere accidental product of human history, but has a metahistorical significance and a permanent value for mankind. The famous German constitutionalist Ernst Wolfgang Böckenförde stated that "the secularized liberal state rests on presuppositions (Voraussetzungen) which it cannot itself guarantee." These presuppositions, whether one likes it or not, have much to do with Christianity. For this reason, one can speak, in the West, of a necessary future relationship between Christianity and law. At this stage of human evolution, entering a so-called post-Christian era would be as risky as starting a post-legal era. Experiments with soda pop!