Theory: Big T or little t?

Rob's post about Paul Griffith's typically very interesting Orwell piece and its possible relevance to our search for a Christian legal theory raises the question of what we mean by theory. Having some sort of "theory" about what one does strikes me as inescapable -- it is the interpretative framework with which we understand the world and organize our actions. What Griffiths (reading Orwell) and Rob are talking about as problematic is what I would call "Theory" with a capital T, a type of theory which in its abstraction and rigidity becomes fundamentally non-human or even anti-human. It ceases to be about the human person at all, and becomes increasingly self referential and self justifying. Think of Pol Pot, the emblematic "Theorist" of the post-Nazi era. Christian "theory", in contrast, always should remain tied to the irreducible dignity of the human person; in that sense it is anti-"Theory." But it is still "theory", in the sense that we are charged with figuring out what the implications of that irreducible dignity means for law and society; it serves as our starting point for a human person-centered understandinmg of the purposes and character of law and critical analysis of legal structures expressive of "Theory." Christian/Catholic theory is thus both theoretical and anti-Theory, inevitably constrained by the belief that each human person embodies the divine.

-Mark