Reviews
“People make books, and books make people!” — Kyobo Bookstore. “God made the law, and the law makes people!” — The Bible. To live as a human being in this world, one must obey its laws. How much more should Christians know and follow the law of God's kingdom if they are to live holy lives as God's children on earth? Yet the term “legalism” has distorted the spirit of the law, leading us to live in a Christian culture that treats the law as taboo, even something forbidden. What a waste of so
New perspectives and first attempts always attract interest, but they can also provoke resistance. This is especially true of the Old Testament, where attention is so focused on God's authority that other perspectives can be hard to accept. The title initially struck me as provocative or unconventional: a phrase beginning “In the beginning” would normally be followed by “God,” but here it is followed by “human rights.” Yet as I read carefully, I saw that God's words in the Old Testament are not
Min Gyeong-gu: In the beginning, there were human rights.
This is the first work of popular scholarship to examine the message of human rights protection found in Old Testament law. The author, a biblical scholar, firmly answers, “No!” to the widespread misconception that the law is a tool of oppression and an obstacle that blocks grace. Instead, the author shows that the law God gave is a command to respect human rights by loving others. The author argues that the widespread forgetfulness of the law in Korean churches has led to forgetfulness of the human rights the Bible upholds, and urges readers to honor and uphold the spirit of the law, which has long gone unexamined. The book invites readers into a vision of the law that protects freedom, loving-kindness, and justice, and leads further toward grace.
Korean title: 태초에 인권이 있었다
Korean author: 민경구
Korean publisher: IVP
ISBN-13: 9788932822587
Reviews
“People make books, and books make people!” — Kyobo Bookstore. “God made the law, and the law makes people!” — The Bible. To live as a human being in this world, one must obey its laws. How much more should Christians know and follow the law of God's kingdom if they are to live holy lives as God's children on earth? Yet the term “legalism” has distorted the spirit of the law, leading us to live in a Christian culture that treats the law as taboo, even something forbidden. What a waste of so
New perspectives and first attempts always attract interest, but they can also provoke resistance. This is especially true of the Old Testament, where attention is so focused on God's authority that other perspectives can be hard to accept. The title initially struck me as provocative or unconventional: a phrase beginning “In the beginning” would normally be followed by “God,” but here it is followed by “human rights.” Yet as I read carefully, I saw that God's words in the Old Testament are not
