University of Alberta Faculty of Law Blog

Book Review

God's Joust, God's Justice
John Witte, Jr.

Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006

 498 Pages

 

Witte, a professor at Emory University, offers an intriguing account of the role of religious life shaping our legal heritage, and makes a case of its continued relevance in tracing our history and its role both in continuing our particular historical circumstances, as well as an argument for its necessity in interdisciplinary legal studies. 

The book is a compilation of previously published articles that have been moulded together, so one can expect less of an exhaustive argument, but rather illustrative “snippets” that highlight and emphasize issues that align more with both his methodological approach and traditional American preoccupations, viz. human rights, constitutionalism and American founding, and understandings of family before and after Roe v. Wade. As such, for the purposes of contextualization, it does bear the marks of a distinct tradition and most notably in its debt to his mentor Harold Berman.

 

Overview of approach:

 

“For me, history is more than a series of tricks that we play on the dead, or that the dead play on us. History is more than simply an accidental chronology of first one thing happening, and then another. For me, history is also a source of revelation, a collection of wisdom...The challenge of the Christian historian is to search within the wisdom of the ages for some indication of the eternal wisdom of God. It is to try to seek God’s revelation and judgment over time without presuming the power of divine judgment. It is to try to discern God’s justice within God’s joust” (4).

 

Witte puts forth what he calls “the binocular of law and religion” which is to say that, in the Western tradition, the historical vision is one part law, one part religion that interact and bounce off each other, and the means that informs the major currents of change has been dialectic: “Every legal tradition has known both theocracy and totalitarianism – the excessive sacralisation and the excessive secularization of law.  But the dominant reality in the West is that law and religion stand not in monistic unity, nor in dualistic antinomy, but in dialectic harmony” (5). The modes of cross-fertilization include, but are not limited to:

Conceptual overlap – eg, sin and crime, covenant and contract, righteousness and justice

Formal overlap – eg, liturgy and ritual, habits of tradition and precedent, shared sources of authority and power

Methodological overlap – analogous hermeneutic interpretation, casuistic and rhetorical methods of argument and instruction, systematic methods of organizing doctrine

Professional relationship – both have officials

Institutional interaction – political and ecclesiastical officials and institutions (5)

 

As he notes, the goal of the “binocular” is to avoid the monocular view of looking to history with law or religion alone, for the purposes of:

Grand civilizational pictures – in which he follows Berman by identifying a distinctly Western tradition with its distinct watershed moments, particularly Rome and its conversion under Constantine, the Papal Revolution, the Protestant Revolution, The Enlightenment, and Post-WWII.

Narrower denominational pictures – in which emphasis is placed on mainly Protestant interactions and influences post-Reformation

Discrete doctrinal pictures of law and religion in Western history – revealing origins and trajectories of issues as they have played out and influence our understanding, with an emphasis on human rights and the family (6)

 

 The merits of the approach is an illuminating perspective that casts light on panoramic glimpses of history and ways of conceiving unifying threads that persist and continue to inform. It situates itself comfortably and contents itself as being detached from other scholarly investigations of the past. The student of history will find the approach most problematic, especially since it refuses to engage itself with defences from competing interpretations and problems. One issue comes notably to mind, that law and religion are not defended from the critiques that would displace them as foundational, nor an outline of the basis of granting them similar status in historical investigation, which would require deeper theorization. Thus, the reader is left with an interesting approach, but which presses no compulsion in acceptance. However, one suspects a combination of textual approachability, time, faith, and perhaps other unarticulated theological underpinning grounds the apparent complacency.

 

So much for me trying to sound academic. Bottom line: interesting book, controversial issues, moderated tone.

 

Coolest name for Supreme Court Justice

Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar is my nomination. Readers: chime in with your nominations.