Man-made Laws & Doctrines

Summary

Coherence Academy videos and a companion text weigh man-made legal and theological systems against claims of fixed, divine order: an Israeli capital-punishment bill against Islamic adl, Augustine's inherited-guilt doctrine against biblical counter-texts, competing New Testament salvation streams, and CEDAW's Article 5 against Quran-fixed gender roles.

What it argues

1. Majority rule vs adlPolitics

   The Living for Islam article invokes Mill and Tocqueville's tyranny of the majority against majority-rule law. It sets this against Islamic adl, a Quran-commanded, impartial justice owed even to enemies. Adl is framed as a fixed, non-negotiable amana, unlike law said to shift with politics or public mood. The article treats divinely fixed justice as the needed anchor against law it calls negotiable.

2. Israeli bill's mechanicsLaw & rulings

   The article says a Knesset bill lets military courts hang Palestinians convicted of terrorism within 90 days with no appeal. Jewish Israelis in the same area face no equivalent law; B'Tselem reports a 96% conviction rate in military courts. Human Rights Watch is cited saying the bill speeds executions with less oversight; the article contrasts this with Sharia's caution over doubt and evidence. The article presents the bill as majority-rule law producing an outcome it calls unjust.

3. Inherited guilt challengedLaw & rulings

   A video argues Augustine's doctrine rests on mistranslating Romans 5:12 in the Latin Vulgate. It says the doctrine contradicts Matthew 19:14, Ezekiel 18:20 and Proverbs 17:15. It traces penal substitution to Anselm's 11th-century feudal-debt model rather than earlier scripture. The video argues the doctrine's biblical and historical foundations do not hold up.

4. Two New Testament streamsSociety

   A video finds personal accountability (Matthew, James, Revelation, judgment by deeds) running alongside substitutionary atonement (Paul, Hebrews, ransom, propitiation). Both streams are said to be fully present in the New Testament, in tension rather than resolved. Orthodox, Catholic, Reformed and Anabaptist traditions weight them differently; Sanders, Dunn and Wright treat substitution as one stream among several. The video says the New Testament itself holds two unresolved views of salvation.

5. Alternatives without a substituteSociety

   Orthodox, Jewish, Islamic (fitra) and Pelagian views, plus the Quran's 'no bearer of burdens' verse, are said to keep personal accountability without an innocent substitute. David and Nineveh are cited as forgiven through repentance alone, without a blood substitute. The video closes on Genesis 18:25's question about whether the judge of all the earth does what is just. The video presents repentance-based forgiveness as a recurring alternative to substitution.

6. CEDAW and gender rolesSociety

   The text says CEDAW was adopted in Muslim-majority states through government complicity, using Article 5 to reshape family and cultural patterns. It argues this erodes motherhood as women's primary role and promotes paid work as the measure of success. It says this weakens male qiwāmah and family stability, contrasting this with gender roles it says the Quran fixes without need for external validation. The text frames CEDAW as an external system displacing gender roles it holds to be divinely fixed.

Open questions

• Whether justice under law should rest on majority consent or a fixed, externally derived principle is posed by the first video as unresolved.
• The New Testament canon does not resolve the tension between accountability-by-deeds and substitutionary atonement, per the second video.
• The third video frames its closing question, whether justice requires an innocent substitute or a sincere return to right conduct, as open reflection rather than settled conclusion.
• The meaning of the Greek word litron (ransom) in Mark 10 and Matthew 20 is described as subject to centuries of continuing theological debate.