(This is Part 1 of an essay I’m working on.)<\/p>\n
The courtroom is a powerful symbol in our popular culture.\u00a0 The phrase \u201cthe verdict is in\u2026\u201d appears in settings ranging from advertising comparisons of different kinds of shampoo to opinion polls on political issues to arguments for and against God.\u00a0 As a practicing lawyer, law professor, and theology student, I find this use of courtroom metaphors fascinating and sometimes troubling.\u00a0 In particular, I worry that the popularity of courtroom apologetics, particularly in the conversation over faith and science, belies some deep theological and philosophical misconceptions, and that these theological and philosophical misconceptions can hinder both our joy in seeking God\u2019s truth and our faithfulness in witnessing to that truth in the world.<\/p>\n
Let me begin with a story.<\/p>\n
Some years ago I appeared in the U.S. Federal District Court for the District of New Jersey for a routine settlement conference in a contract dispute.\u00a0 Both of the parties to the suit were small businesses.\u00a0 My client had entered into a service contract with the plaintiff.\u00a0 The plaintiff, according to my client, did not deliver all the services under the contract, and my client withheld payment.\u00a0 The plaintiff alleged that it had, in fact, performed as required by the contract and that payment was due.\u00a0 The amount at stake was about $250,000 \u2013 small potatoes for a Federal lawsuit, but significant to these small businesses.\u00a0 State and Federal courts around the U.S. handle many thousands of similar cases every year.<\/p>\n
In most Federal civil trial courts, settlement conferences are conducted by a Magistrate Judge.\u00a0 Typically the Judge meets with counsel and the parties together in chambers to review the case.\u00a0 Often the Judge will then meet with each party separately to conduct a kind of shuttle diplomacy.\u00a0 Sometimes, while the Judge meets with one party in chambers, the other party waits in the empty courtroom, with subdued lighting, heavy drapery, and the great seal of the court positioned over the Judge\u2019s bench.\u00a0 There is an aspect of theatrical performance to this process.\u00a0 The Judge tries to impress on the litigants the risks of litigation and the potential weaknesses in their respective cases in order to resolve the case and clear his or her docket.\u00a0 Experienced counsel is wise to this game put tacitly participates in the ritual.\u00a0 Trials are risky and clients sometimes harbor grossly unrealistic expectations about the results a trial might produce.<\/p>\n
In the contract dispute I mentioned, the owner of the company I represented was shrewd businessman.\u00a0 He and I both thought we had a good chance of winning at trial.\u00a0 However, given the risks and costs, we were willing to offer about half of the claimed payment due in settlement.\u00a0 We communicated this to the Judge during our private meeting, and the Judge agreed that this was a wise course of action.\u00a0 The Judge had us leave chambers and called in the other party.\u00a0 For an experienced litigator, this represents the moment when a case starts to move and settlement seems likely.<\/p>\n
The owner of the plaintiff corporation, however, was not so objective.\u00a0 For him, this litigation was about JUSTICE (he tended to speak about this in all caps).\u00a0 He rejected our offer and insisted that he would take the case to trial and achieve justice, even if it took until his dying breath.<\/p>\n
The Judge dismissed the plaintiff and called me and my client back into chambers.\u00a0 He communicated to us the plaintiff\u2019s position, and added the following astute judicial commentary:\u00a0 \u201cWhat a F—ing idiot!\u201d \u00a0\u00a0Some months later, after some costly and time-consuming discovery and motion practice, the case finally settled, at a value close to what we originally had offered.\u00a0 Perhaps the plaintiff\u2019s accountants realized the costs of justice.<\/p>\n
I recount this story at the outset of this series because it illustrates the reality of the legal process.\u00a0 In the popular imagination, the court room is the place in which lies are exposed and truth revealed.\u00a0 Our iconic cultural moment for the judicial process is Tom Cruise cross-examining Jack Nicholson until Nicholson finally cracks and shouts \u201cYou want the truth?\u00a0 You can\u2019t handle<\/i> the truth!\u201d before admitting Cruise was right about everything all along.\u00a0 The reality is that the judicial process is not set up to find the exhaustive and final truth of a matter.\u00a0 It is set up to resolve disputes as pragmatically and efficiently as possible so that the business of society can keep moving on.<\/p>\n
The rules of evidence and procedure that govern trials \u2013 in the very, very small percentage of cases that ever go to trial \u2013 reflect this pragmatic orientation.\u00a0 Trials do not go on forever, the parties cannot call every conceivable witness or offer every possible scrap of evidence, and the standards of judgment are flexible.\u00a0 In civil cases, the standard of proof typically is \u201ca preponderance of evidence\u201d \u2013 meaning that the scales must tip only ever so slightly to one side or the other.\u00a0 Mistakes of law are often reviewable by appellate courts de novo<\/i> \u2013 from the beginning, with fresh eyes \u2013 but alleged mistakes of fact are usually reviewable only for an abuse of discretion \u2013 a standard that is rarely met.\u00a0 And very seldom does a witness utterly crumble under cross examination and admit the other side is completely right.\u00a0 In fact, in most cases that don\u2019t settle early on, the \u201cright\u201d outcome generally is ambiguous.\u00a0 Both parties usually can make out a viable case under the existing law and available facts.<\/p>\n
I think all of this makes the courtroom an inapt metaphor for Christian apologetics.\u00a0 We imagine some sort of Tom Cruise meets Jack Nicholson moment in which the world crumbles on the stand and acknowledges that we Christians are right about everything after all.\u00a0 Real court rooms don\u2019t work that way, and neither does real, authentic witness to the Gospel.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just a matter of making the courtroom appear overly dramatic.\u00a0 In litigation, the court is a neutral authority capable of making a binding decision about the merits of the dispute.\u00a0 The settlement conference procedure I mentioned above tends to work in most cases because the parties come to realize that the process, at least as applied to their specific case, isn\u2019t about \u201cjustice\u201d in any absolute sense at all.\u00a0 The process is about resolving disputes and moving on.\u00a0 It\u2019s entirely possible that the court might reach an unfavorable conclusion simply because of the inherent constraints intentionally built into the process.\u00a0 In the broadest sense, the parties agree to a social contract in which the court, whether it turns out to be right or wrong, has authority to decide the case.\u00a0 And the realization that the court could get it wrong, or simply that the process might drag on for long time and cost substantial legal fees, almost always eventually moves the parties to compromise.<\/p>\n
We who are part of the Kingdom inaugurated by Jesus, however, could never enter into any such social contract concerning the truth of the Gospel.\u00a0 As far as we\u2019re concerned, there is no neutral third party, no judicial body, capable of adjudicating the claim that Jesus is Lord and that his peaceable Kingdom has come through his death and resurrection.\u00a0 To submit the Lordship of Christ before any such judicial bar would constitute blasphemy.\u00a0 We do not seek or even demand a verdict from anyone about this.\u00a0 Rather, we proclaim that it is so, and announce that it judges all other presumptive authorities.<\/p>\n
Yet, we do publicly<\/i> proclaim<\/i> that it is so.\u00a0 A public proclamation is always a form of apologia<\/i>.\u00a0 It is a giving of reasons why we as the Church seek to live and worship in certain ways.\u00a0 And it is an effort to describe as fully and richly as possible all the implications of what we proclaim.\u00a0 Not the least of those implications is that the God who created the world created it good, that He imbued creation with His own beauty and reason, and that of all His creatures His love for humans is particularly shown in our share of that reason.\u00a0 So our public proclamation, our apologia<\/i> for this good news, includes our effort to express the coherence, explanatory power, aesthetics, and moral force \u2013 the fullness of reason<\/i> \u2013 inherent in it.<\/p>\n
Notice the priority in this order.\u00a0 It is not that reason establishes the validity of the proclamation.\u00a0 It is that the proclamation establishes the validity of reason.\u00a0 The Gospel does not make sense in the light of reason.\u00a0 Reason only finally makes sense in the light of the Gospel.<\/p>\n
This sense of priority suggests an order of truth:\u00a0 God, theology, proclamation, reason, and apologia<\/i>.\u00a0 From a Christian perspective, the first order of truth must always be God<\/i>, and the second order must be theology<\/i>.\u00a0 Since God is in essence ineffable, our primary mode of speech <\/i>about God\u2019s truth must be theology.\u00a0 Proclamation, reason, and apologia <\/i>follow from theology.\u00a0 Theology was once the \u201cqueen of the sciences.\u201d\u00a0 For Christians, theology must yet hold this title.\u00a0 In my next post, I\u2019ll begin to unpack this claim by exploring the relationship between faith and philosophy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(This is Part 1 of an essay I’m working on.) The courtroom is a powerful symbol in our popular culture.\u00a0 The phrase \u201cthe verdict is in\u2026\u201d appears in settings ranging from advertising comparisons of different kinds of shampoo to opinion polls on political issues to arguments for and against God.\u00a0 As a practicing lawyer, law […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[71,50,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmos","category-science-and-religion","category-theology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-Ek","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2500\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}