Judicial Law

Definition and Meaning

Judicial law is a theological term for the civil and criminal regulations within the Old Testament law that ancient Israel needed in order to live as a nation. It is also called civil law. It is one branch of the threefold division of the law. The other two branches are the moral law, which sets forth the unchanging duties owed to God and neighbor (represented above all by the Ten Commandments), and the ceremonial law, which consists of regulations for worship such as sacrifices, purity, and feasts.

Judicial law includes penalties for murder and bodily injury as well as regulations concerning land and property, inheritance, and marriage. Commonly cited examples are the cities of refuge, the kinsman-redeemer, and the Year of Jubilee. Levirate marriage is another example. Under this regulation, if a man died without children, his brother was to marry the widow and raise up offspring to carry on the deceased brother's line (Deuteronomy 25:5-10).

Biblical and Historical Background

Scripture itself does not divide or label the law in this way. The distinction was developed in the course of explaining which parts of the Old Testament law remain binding on Christians.

• The medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas is known to have treated the law under the headings of moral, ceremonial, and judicial precepts.
• The Reformer John Calvin used the same distinction in the Institutes of the Christian Religion.
• Chapter 19 of the Westminster Confession of Faith confesses that God gave judicial laws to Israel as a body politic. It holds that these laws expired together with the state of that people and do not now oblige any further than the general equity thereof may require.
• The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England and the Methodist Articles of Religion likewise state that the civil precepts of the law of Moses need not of necessity be received in any commonwealth. The Methodist Articles of Religion were drawn up on the basis of the Thirty-Nine Articles.

The distinction has also met with objections. Some theologians consider the threefold division to have little basis in the text. They argue that the law should be viewed as a single whole and read in light of the fact that this whole has been fulfilled in Christ. Others have argued in the opposite direction. Twentieth-century American theonomy contended that even the penal sanctions of the judicial law should be applied by present-day states, a position that provoked controversy within the Reformed tradition.

Practice in the Korean Church

Presbyterian: Most Korean Presbyterian denominations adopt the Westminster Confession of Faith as their doctrinal standard, so the distinction is widely used in seminary education and preaching. It frequently appears in explanations of Old Testament regulations that the church no longer observes, such as levirate marriage. It is also used in discussions of the tithing controversy, the Sabbath and the Lord's Day, and the contemporary application of the regulations in Leviticus, where the question is framed by asking whether a given regulation belongs to the moral law or to the judicial or ceremonial law.

Methodist and Anglican: These traditions accept a similar distinction within the confessional heritage described above.

Baptist and Pentecostal: These traditions tend to be less bound by denominational confessions of faith. Depending on the theologian or pastor, some use the distinction, while others adopt a Christ-centered reading of the law as a whole. The Second London Baptist Confession of 1689, which belongs to the Baptist tradition, contains an article to the same effect as the Westminster Confession.

The same term is also used in a different sense. The Doctrines and Discipline of the Korean Methodist Church contains a "judicial law" that defines offenses within the church (violations of church law) and trial procedures. These provisions concern church discipline and are distinct from the division of the law discussed in this article.