Christ the Teacher: Reflections on the Vocation of a Christian Law Professor

Thanks to Rick Garnett for encouraging MOJers to offer their reflections on the recent Lumen Christi/Law Professors Christian Fellowship panel on “The Vocation of a Christian Law Professor.”  Thanks also to Bob Cochran and Mike Moreland for planning the event.

Barbara Armacost framed her remarks by responding to the claim put forth by some believers that if a Christian is engaged in the world (whether by providing famine relief to non-Christians in Africa, or by educating law students in the United States), and he or she fails to explicitly invite the person served to know Jesus as Lord and Savior, then the Christian has accomplished nothing.

She noted that in teaching law, inviting students to Christ can be a delicate matter that calls for sensitivity and prudence, perhaps especially where a secular law school is involved (though, I think, a similar sensitivity is needed in most religiously sponsored schools). 

But while the work of a Christian is not simply a vehicle for proselytization, it is always evangelical in nature – it shares the good news.  It reflects, as Barbara noted, the “Kingdom values” of justice and shalom.  As such, work that advances the good of individuals and the common good is never pointless.  The point is to contribute to the concrete human flourishing of persons in the here and now, and to witness to the eschaton.  Here Barbara quoted N.T. Wright from Surprised by Hope (p. 208) at length: “[W]hat you do for the Lord is not in vain.  You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that is about to roll over a cliff. . . . You are, strange as it may seem, almost as hard to believe as the resurrection itself – accomplishing something that will become in due course part of God’s new world.”

One’s actions, consistent with the Gospel, bear witness to the Kingdom, and make it present in time, anticipating the coming of the Kingdom in its fullness at the end of time, wherein Christ will be all in all.  These actions may seem pointless from the vantage point of the world according to its narrow rationality based on practicality, utility, and efficiency.  But that does not make them so.  Here one must, in humility and with hope, surrender one’s actions to the Lord, trusting in the providence of God that fruit will be borne of our efforts, perhaps in ways that will go unrecognized, but “fruit that will last” (John 15:16).

Rob Vischer offered that the question of the meaning the vocation of a Christian law professor must be answered within the larger question of the vocation of a Christian lawyer.  And here he gave two quite poignant examples from his own experience as a big firm litigator: one involved the death-bed deposition of a toxic tort victim, while the other involved consoling the constituent of a corporate client whose actions were at the center of a dispute.  In each case he found himself called to respond person-to-person and not simply lawyer-to-witness or lawyer-to-client.  What Rob’s talk made clear is that it is the vocation of every Christian lawyer and Christian law professor to live a life inspired by Jesus.

What I thought of in hearing these reflections is the story from Luke 2:41-52 that recounts how the Holy Family went up to Jerusalem for the celebration of Passover.  On their return, Mary and Joseph discover that Jesus was not in their party.  They returned to Jerusalem to search for him.  “After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers.”

This is a reminder that to fulfill his or her vocation as a law teacher one must sit at the knee of the Master.  To be a Christian and a teacher one must, in the first instance, see oneself as a student . . . a student of Christ’s.  Indeed, one must recognize “Christ the Teacher” (the name of the traditional Byzantine icon pictured above).  One must recognize Christ as the Teacher who holds the answers that your heart and mind long to know.  As such, we must be attentive students, confident that we can turn to a loving and patient teacher who listens, the supreme teacher – both the rabbi who reveals the word of God that is Himself, and the victim who teaches us how to love, bearing the agony of the Cross.  We need not wait for office hours.  He is always available in prayer, a teacher to whom we can always turn, in scripture and in the Eucharist.

Christ should inspire our lives and (as Marc DeGirolami reminded me in conversation) the work of our institutions.  Only in this way can Christian law professors and Christian law schools fulfill their mission in the world.