Theory, Identity, Vocation: Three Models of Christian Legal Scholarship
Theory, Identity, Vocation: Three Models of Christian Legal Scholarship
William S. Brewbaker, (March 2008). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1116262
Recognizably Christian scholarship is becoming more commonplace in the American legal academy, yet little systematic attention has been given to fundamental questions of approach. This article highlights moments of continuity and discontinuity between Christian legal scholarship and its secular counterparts. Contrary to the expectations generated by contemporary political debate, the distinctive contribution of Christian legal scholarship is not primarily to provide ammunition for political programs of the right or the left, but to situate law and human legal practices within a larger story about the world.
This article develops three models of Christian legal scholarship - theory, identity and vocation. I employ these models - each with its own set of strengths and weaknesses - to argue that failure to address foundational questions about knowing and learning undermines much of the potential distinctiveness of Christian scholarship because that scholarship remains unconsciously subject to modern/postmodern assumptions.
Specifically, Christian legal scholars have sometimes acted as if they believed that human beings could attain godlike knowledge, assuming a posture of transcendence over and above the world rather than of participation within it. This tendency is exhibited primarily in the theory model . . .