Shorter Reviews

In thIs book, Joshua Ralston proposes a comparative approach to political theology to understand better how human law-making could become a witness to God’s promised rule. An extended season of dialogue with many Muslim interlocutors in a variety of locations has prompted this project, which asks about the capacity of the gospel to inform Christian approaches to law, politics, and social systems that deliver real-world justice. Ralston notices that for Muslims, divine law (sharī’a) and legal reasoning (fiqh) are primary religious concerns, in contrast to the scant attention Christian theologians have generally paid to matters of jurisprudence. He also knows that a number of Muslim intellectuals, past and present, have criticized the Christian tradition for privatizing religion and ceding responsibility for public law to secular actors. The comparative methods of Catholic theologian David Burrell suggest a way to engage with multiple religious traditions on a subject of mutual concern (in his case, theological reflection on the doctrine of creation by Christians, Muslims, and Jews). In Karl Barth’s critique of natural law, Ralston finds crucial support for his quest to bring the whole of life, including systems of law, under the influence of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ. He is not arguing here for theocracy but for public law to demonstrate “provisional and indirect witness” to the eschatological vision of God (p. 255).