Walsh on Marius Victorinus (!) at Mirror of Justice

Last but not least . . . Kevin Walsh on "Marius Victorinus at MOJ."  He opens with Judge Noonan's rule for dealing with religious-freedom scholarship and scholars, namely, that they and we are all situated persons with genealogies, histories, commitments, goals, etc.  So . . . Kevin blogs.  How is blogging -- at Mirror of Justice in particular -- relevant to "professing law"?

Kevin then did a close analysis of MOJ's opening post and "mission statement" and emphasized (drawing on, among other things, Ratzinger's Introduction to Christianity) the "Marian strand" of that mission.    And, he asked, why might it be important to a group of Christian law professors that St. Augustine was moved and inspired by the fact (see Confessions) that the philosopher Marius Victorinus became a Christian?  For us, as for Victorinus, the "idea alone" is not enough; he (and we) need the Church, which is not just an organizing principle for ideas.  And, maybe it matters to people -- those who read what we write or learn from us in classes -- that we participate (and are known to participate) in a community and that we "reflect some light into the dark places of this world."

Kevin closed with a nice remembrance of Dan Markel who -- in Will Baude's words -- "made you a little more fearless when he took your ideas seriously."  We can do that for each other (and he used his own area of federal jurisdiction as a possible example of where this can happen).