Law and Love

We are currently in a series on 'Law and love, mercy and grace'. It has made me think about Professor Sir James Norman Dalrymple Anderson OBE QC FBA (29 September 1908 – 2 December 1994) who was a British lawyer, missionary, and Arabist. He wrote an influential book entitled "God's Law and God's Love". You can find it here: God's law and God's love : an essay in comparative religion, Internet Archive

The basis of Sir Norman's thinking is that: "God's law and God's love are the nature of Christian morality".  

The Muslim theologians, Ibn Sina and Al-Ghazali, also wrote about God's love and God's law. They note that the Qur'an uses various terms for God's love, such as rahmah (mercy) and raffah (kindness), in dictating that God's love is a fundamental aspect of His nature. These scholars and texts illustrate the complex interplay between God's law and His love in Islamic thought based on the Qur'an.  

Of course, there is much to be discussed about the meaning of Biblical and Qur'anic words that relate to love, mercy and grace, and this is what we are doing in our series. We are finding some important differences, but we are also finding that Muslims and Christians are in entire agreement that God's law is given to us through His love/mercy/grace. We are also agreed that, without His love/mercy/grace, we would be lost.