[Hi Kristine - I thought I’d double post this one, in case some people read this thread only - post any replies to the other thread if you have one]
Kristine
You clearly take your husband’s deep consideration of these areas very seriously, which shows the measure of love you must have for him. They are very detailed views, and betray a great deal of time and effort in their formulation. However, one thing that concerns me a little is the aparent rigidity of his views regarding the validity of laws of the commonwealth of australia, as opposed to laws of the states. If your husband holds the view that the laws of the commonwealth government are invalid for the reasons you have expressed on his behalf, then could I query what his views are on laws of the states? The usual rejections of commonwealth laws (and there have been a few challenges run in the high court along similar grounds (all unsuccessful)) tend not to similarly challenge the laws of the former colonies, which were adoptions of or even mere maintanance of the then in force laws of the United Kingdom (for ease of reference I’ll call it English statute law, using your husband’s denotation of the phrase).
Accordingly, Australia (as a nation) ended up with either the old English statute law [assuming your husband;s objections to be correct] or has the state statute law (assuming he allows validity to the state statute laws).
Either way, we end up at the position that the common law (the formal term for the “law” referred to by your husband) is the background substratum to Australian/state law. The common law was, and still is to a large extent, derived from the courts set up in opposition to the ecclesiastical (or church) courts of the first third of the last millenia in the United Kingdom. While the common law does reflect largey biblical principles it does not import biblical principles into it. The ecclesiastical courts were the courts of church law, and the common law courts imported their principles by parity of reasoning from majority community view which then was a predominanty christian (of some description, leaving aside the whole reformation debate and similar theological dramas occuring then contemporaneously) position.
One of the more spectacular examples of common law is the case of Donahue v Stevenson (the snail in the bottle case), which the judge expressly said in his judgment was based upon musings upon the golden law, ie, do unto others. That piece of common law has spawned the massive tort law damages debacles besetting the american system (which country, by the way, suffers the same fate with the validity of its federal laws as do we with our commonwealth as they are sourced from the same stream). But I digress.
While the common law echoes biblical principles in this matter they are not of themselves biblcal laws (as were the laws applied in the ecclesiastical courts). This is one issue I see with your husband’s theories regarding the dichomoty between “statute law” and “the law”.
The second issue I have is with his analysis of contractual principles. For the most part, it is consistent with what Carter Harland Lindgren teach in their veritbale tome Contract Law, save for an absence of the doctrine of privity of contract. The parties to a marriage certificate do not contract with the commonwealth government, they contract before the commonwealth government - very different propositions. The former is with a party, the second is with a witness. The commonwealth government merely witnesses the marriage act, not becomes a party to it.
But even that aside, your questioning of these issues is encouraging to me, as God does not want mindless automatons blindly following the teachings of a “Church” [in its broad sense RIW and EHWB so don’t hijack this answer] but responsible creatures who willingly and thoughtfully consider his character and the demands being his creatures places upon us. I just have a small concern that you are missing the forest for the trees - the minutiae of your husband’s positions is telling in its depth, and it seems to miss some of the overarching principles of legal philosophy, in particular, that laws are simply the rules a society agrees to live by and enforce amongst itself - nothing more sinister than that. Could I ask you to ponder Mark Short’s answer, and focus instead on Jesus, who he is and what he teaches. If English is a problem, then sidestep those arguments by learning koine greek (it’s not that hard, honestly - just many many hours of diligent learning which your husband has demonstrated in his notes referred to to date by you) and hebrew (which I will confess is damned difficult and I gave up during the first semester of it!). Hear Jesus when he so tellingly calls himself YHWH in the phrase ego ami, hear him when he offers salvation to all who call on his name and his name alone, and hear the forgiveness and redemption he freely offers to all who trust in him and him alone for their salvation. Treasure the irreducible and inalienable position those who trust in him have as co-heirs with the Son. All else is as ecclesiastes says emptiness and a chasing after the wind.
