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God, Justice and Society: Aspects of Law and Legality in the Bible . Jonathan Burnside. Oxford University Press USA, New York, 2011, xl + 542 pp (hardback £60.00) ISBN: 978-0-19-975921-7

fulfilment as a human being means, and then to resolve hard questions about the access and distribution of the social goods sustaining individual fulfilment’ (p 148). The fourth chapter looks in greater detail at legal authority, the purposes of law and the complementarity of judicial and legislative functions; the fifth discusses (in a slightly more rudimentary way) authority within and beyond the state, outlining the beginnings of a theory of international law based on natural law principles. No brief summary can do justice to the sheer detail of Porter’s highly original text. The arguments, analysis and qualifications pile up relentlessly and wordily. That is perhaps the book’s strength – and its weakness. It is not an easy read, though it unquestionably grapples with themes of great importance and contemporary relevance. Natural law may rightly appeal to universal justice, equality, human dignity, rights and responsibilities; giving effect to those requires a society to answer questions about what is good for human beings. That in turn poses the more profound (theological) question: what does it mean to be human? One leaves Porter’s book with an overwhelming sense that law matters, that the very authority of God underlies it, that the historic Christian contribution to Western jurisprudence has been profound and that even those of us who are mere minor functionaries in the system are indeed privileged to be ‘ministers of the law’.