A Calvinist Perspective on Faith in Legal Scholarship

Journal of Legal Education

Volumn 47, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 19-26

  Caudill, David S ^a  

^a WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 0031507874     PISSN: 00222208     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (23)

1. For a brief introduction to this particular neo-Calvinist movement, see Bernard Zylstra, Introduction, in L. Kalsbeek, Contours of a Christian Philosophy: An Introduction to Herman Dooyeweerd's Thought, eds. Bernard &Josina Zystra, 14 (Toronto, 1975).
2. Kuyper asserted that Calvinism is a worldview, with implications for all of life, and not merely a theological doctrine. See Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids, 1931) (1898).
3. Dooyeweerd's major work in Christian philosophy is the four-volume A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, trans. David H. Freeman & William S. Young (Philadelphia, 1953). For a summary of Dooyeweerd's views in this work and others, see David Caudill, Disclosing Tilt: A Partial Defense of Critical Legal Studies and a Comparative Introduction to the Philosophy of the Law-Idea, 72 Iowa L. Rev. 287 (1987). The "Philosophy of the Law-Idea" is Dooyeweerd's term (Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee) for his theoretical framework.
4. Skillen's latest book, Recharging the American Experiment: Principled Pluralism for Genuine Civic Community (Grand Rapids, 1994), reflects the influence of Kuyper in its argument for structural, as well as confessional, pluralism. "Structural" refers to various arenas of communal life (e.g., family, schools) of which the state is only one limited example, a notion referred to as "sphere sovereignty" in Kuyperian literature. Skillen is also a student of Dooyeweerd. See Herman Dooyeweerd's Contribution to the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, J. Am. Sci. Affiliation, Mar. 1979, at 21.
5. Skillen's latest book, Recharging the American Experiment: Principled Pluralism for Genuine Civic Community (Grand Rapids, 1994), reflects the influence of Kuyper in its argument for structural, as well as confessional, pluralism. "Structural" refers to various arenas of communal life (e.g., family, schools) of which the state is only one limited example, a notion referred to as "sphere sovereignty" in Kuyperian literature. Skillen is also a student of Dooyeweerd. See Herman Dooyeweerd's Contribution to the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, J. Am. Sci. Affiliation, Mar. 1979, at 21.
6. [Calvin] firmly believed that the terrors of political life could be politically controlled [; thus] he became an activist and ecclesiastical politician. . . . [He] engaged in a sharp polemic against the Anabaptists, whose goal was not so much the reconstruction as the dissolution of the political world. . . . Calvinism was thus anchored in thisworldly endeavor. . . . Michael Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics 28 (Cambridge, Mass., 1965).
7. Ed. Linda Zagzebski (Notre Dame, 1993). The chapter by Hugo Meynell, "Faith, Foundationalism, and Nicholas Wolterstorff," is a critique of Nicholas Wolterstorff, Reason Within the Bounds of Religion (Grand Rapids, 1976).
8. The Catholic critique of neo-Calvinism is in fact a response to Herman Dooyeweerd's criticism of Roman Catholic philosophy for its exaltation of human reason, which Dooyeweerd viewed as a compromise or synthesis between Greek and biblical worldviews. See Dooyeweerd, Roots of Western Culture: Pagan, Secular, and Christian Options, trans. John Kraay, 115-32 (Toronto, 1979).
9. I am troubled by the fact that, as it seems to me, no belief is so cognitively bizarre or morally frightful that it could not be defended on the basis of the kind of account that Wolterstorff advances. He strenuously denies - though he admits that the claim is often made - that "anything goes" can validly be inferred from his anti-foundationalist position. But I am not convinced. . . . [On] Wolterstorffs view, no set of "control beliefs" has foundations any more reliable than any other. Meynell, supra note 6, at 80-81. I think there is an assumption, in the above criticism, that the categories of "bizarre" and "frightful" are matters of reason; Wolterstorff, on the other hand, recognizes the social, historical, and discursive "foundations" upon which such judgments rest.
10. See David Caudill, Pluralism and the Quality of Religious Discourse in Law and Politics, 6 U. Fla. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 135, 145-55 (1994), for a critique of Lawrence Solum's notions, following Rawls, of public reason and common sense.
11. See id. at 142 (citing). M. Balkin, Ideological Drift and the Struggle over Meaning, 25 Conn. L. Rev. 869, 879 (1993)).
12. See id. at 162-66.
13. Ongeloof en revolutie (Leiden, 1847); see David Caudill, The French Revolution as Phantom of the Opera, 9 J.L. & Religion 243 (1991) (reviewing Groen van Prinsterer's Lectures on Unbelief and Revolution, trans. & ed. Harry van Dyke (Jordan Station, Ont., 1989)).
14. Kuyper, supra note 2, at 20, 72, 117.
15. See 2 Dooyeweerd, supra note 3, at 55-163; see also Skillen, supra note 4, at 22.
16. See, e.g., 2 Dooyeweerd, supra note 3, at 200.
17. See Dooyeweerd, supra note 7, at 15.
18. See Caudill, supra note 3, at 345-48.
19. Wolterstorff, supra note 6, at 74-75.
20. Polly Young-Eisendrath, You're Not What I Expected: Learning to Love the Opposite Sex 13-15 (New York, 1993). I know that in my own legal and interdisciplinary publications, I do not like to start off by saying who I am, for fear of bias before I ever get to make my arguments; I try to build a case that is not limited to who I am, almost as if I believe in scientific objectivity, which I do not. See, e.g., Caudill, supra note 3; Lacan and Legal Language: Meanings in the Gaps, Gaps in the Meanings, 3 Law & Critique 169 (1992); The Politics of Legal Doctrine: A Case Study of Texas Land-Use Planning Under the Shadow of Lucas, 5 Hofstra Prop. L.J. 11 (1992) (with Wm. T. Bray & Jack Owen); Caudill, supra note 9.
21. Wolterstorff, supra note 6, at 79.
22. The [process] tradition must be understood primarily as the embodiment of an attitude concerning the importance of rationality within a democracy. Process jurisprudence is . . . in essence, an attempt by lawyers to turn into theory the faith which they hold in common with other American intellectuals. Neil Duxbury, Faith in Reason: The Process Tradition in American Jurisprudence, 15 Cardozo L. Rev. 601, 703 (1993).
23. See Kuyper, supra note 2, at 13-16.