Why Lawyers Must Be Theologians
“He that will be a good lawyer must first be a divine.” So insisted Richard Baxter, friend of our namesake, Matthew Hale. In Evangelical circles, Baxter is certainly the more well-known of the two. Baxter’s instruction does not merely pertain to devotional or scholastic curiosity of the kind that all Christians should entertain. It is no less than that to be sure, but it is more—an imperative especially applied to lawyers. He does not, for example, make the same demands of physicians and school masters in his Christian Directory. All professions must be oriented to the public good in some sense and, ultimately, to the glory of God. But lawyers require more. They must be bona fide theologians, Baxter says. It is a shame to their vocation to be ignorant of languages, history, and “other needful parts of learning.” He wants lawyers to be generalists, true humanists in a way. The neglect of theology, however, is more heinous than neglect of other categories of knowledge, however. Law needs theology, as I’ve argued before. Why?
I like to think that I went to seminary and law school for a reason, but it was sadly not because I had the foresight to grasp what Baxter taught.
As Baxter explains, lawyers must understand “the whole frame of polity,” and each part thereof “in its due relation to the rest” to understand what law is and does. Lawyers must know laws in genere before they can know them in specie. Further, they must know universals before particulars, viz., the laws of God before human laws. (This is surely why Baxter begins his Holy Commonwealth with consideration of the universal kingdom of Christ before he treats particular, earthly kingdoms.)
Before they can understand and “practice” law, lawyers must know “what government is, and what a community, and what a politic society is.” If they don’t they “will hardly know what a commonwealth or church is.” Knowing these things is not reducible to awareness of their existence; it is understanding of their nature and end. No one is qualified to interpret and adjudicate constitutions, says Baxter, who does not understand what the constitution is for and, in turn, what government itself is for. Pressing further, government, order and law, cannot be known apart from the “divine dominium et imperium,” the foundation of all creation. Again, particular instantiations of society, government, and law are unintelligible absent knowledge of their essence and of universals. And this knowledge comes not through laws themselves, at least not explicitly or directly (though it should be traceable).
Hence, “a good lawyer must first be a divine.” He must know God to know man. Atheists necessarily cannot be good lawyers; they are mere “fools in all their independent broken studies.” They study parts with tunnel vision and construct only fanciful coherences. Inevitably, they will corrupt law for they are only acquainted with one, narrow example of it and without foundation for its animation and direction and purpose. So, a lawyer must first and foremost be a theologian, a divine. God himself must occupy “the chieftest place” in the lawyer’s education. “Divine polity is the end of human polity,” God himself, the supreme good, is the end of all perfect political communities, as Aristotle taught. If you’re going to do politics and law properly it might be useful then to know something about the ultimate aim.
To my knowledge, the only law schools that take this at all seriously are Liberty and Campbell law schools. Both include some kind of Christian jurisprudence class in 1L requirements. The rest, Baxter would say, are simply making no attempt to educate good lawyers. Maybe we really do need to return to the 18th century apprentice model, but that is for another time.
As it turns out, Baxter’s instruction cuts both ways. Lawyers must be theologians. Theologians need not be lawyers, exactly, but they require similar competencies for their own profession. Baxter explains earlier in the Directory,
“The doctrine of Politics, especially of the Nature of Government and Laws in General, is of great use to all that will ever understand the Nature of God’s Government and Laws, that is, of Religion. Though there be no necessity of knowing the Government and Laws of the Land or of other Countries, and further than is necessary to our obedience or our outward concernments, yet so much of Government and Laws as Nature and Scripture make common to all particular forms and Countries, must be known by him that will understand Morality or Divinity, or will ever study the Laws of the Land. And it is a preposterous course, and the way of Ignorance and error, for a Divine to study God’s Laws, and a Lawyer man’s Laws, before either of them know, in general what a Law, or what Government is, as nature notifieth it to us.”
I’m not sure which is worse off today: the theological knowledge of the lawyer or the political knowledge of the theologian. It’s probably a close call. For those aspiring to either station in life, take heed of Baxter’s instructions and act accordingly. Your polity and church will be better off for it.
