Meyer, Alfred W.

English

Valparaiso University

Valparaiso University Law Review Volume 22 Number 3 Spring 1988 pp.663-668 Spring 1988 Symposium: Mission of a church-Related Law School - The Lutheran Tradition Alfred W. Meyer Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr  Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Alfred W. Meyer, Symposium: Mission of a church-Related Law School - The Lutheran Tradition, 22 Val. U. L. Rev. 663 (1988). Available at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol22/iss3/8 This Symposium is brought to you for free and open access by the Valparaiso University Law School at ValpoScholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Valparaiso University Law Review by an authorized administrator of ValpoScholar. For more information, please contact a ValpoScholar staff member at scholar@valpo.edu. SYMPOSIUMMission of a Church-RelatedLaw SchoolTHE LUTHERAN TRADITIONALFRED W. MEYER*The law school halls are alive with the sound of - religion? Yes, thesubject has emerged from the closets of poorly attended and infrequentlyheld symposia on "law and religion." Holmes told us that "the law dealswith all of life" so it is not surprising that the renaissance of religious dis-course in our contemporary culture has invaded our legal communities. Re-ligious issues pervade both our appellate court reports and the legal litera-ture. Former Chief Justice Burger was even moved to complain that toomuch of the Supreme Court's time was devoted to religious issues.' Al-though the topic of this symposium does not warrant an attempt to accountfor this phenomenon, one should observe its ancient and honorable lineage:"Ever since its birth in ancient Greece, legal philosophy has freed itselffrom theology only with difficulty." And for those of us who have chosento affiliate with church-related law schools, we may chorus: "Thank God forthe difficulty."The planners of this occasion have invited participants from four reli-gious traditions to address the significance of church-relatedness in legaleducation in the hope that we may bring to bear our distinctive perspectiveson the subject. As we do so, however, it would be a mistake to assume thatthe resurgence of religious issues in the courts and the literature has beenaccompanied by an increase in number or significance of church-related law* Louis and Anna Seegers Professor of Law, Valparaiso University School of Law.1. E.g., Marshall, Introduction, Religion and the Law Symposium, 19 CONN. L. REV.697 (1986).2. Note, Critical Legal Studies as an Anti-Positive Phenomenon, 72 VA. L. REV. 983,984 (1986) (emphasis added).663Meyer: Symposium:  Mission of a church-Related Law School - The LutheranProduced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 1988664 VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 22schools. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rex Lee, the foundingdean of the Brigham Young University Law School, reported in 1985 themainstream view that there is no role for the religious law school in Ameri-can Legal Education - that "the optimistic pronouncements made at thebeginnings of a church-affiliated law school about teaching the laws of Godand the laws of man have seldom, if ever, withstood the test of time" andthat the law schools of prominence are "invariably those that have longsince ceased to take their religious moorings seriously."3 The Lee quotationunderscores the fear which prompted Valparaiso University's legendarypresident, Dr. O.P. Kretzmann, to warn that the danger which confrontedValparaiso is that it might become just another Princeton. Rex Lee con-ducted a survey of deans at the thirty law schools with religious affiliationsto determine the significance of their church-relatedness. Not more thanthree or four could point to any statements of mission from which adminis-tration, faculty, or students drew any sense of special character or purpose.Several of the law schools had simply been inherited by religious universi-ties "without fanfare" and of the others, only a handful were begun withany explicit recognition of their religious connections.4 Lest you associateRex Lee with the views of his respondents, I should emphasize that he ar-gued that the religiously affiliated law school has "a unique opportunity toenrich the perspectives and the quality of American legal education."5 Inhis view, what is good and moral in our profession has religious roots in thesecond of the two great commandments: to love one's neighbor as oneself.The response to this command will distinguish the church-related schoolfrom others and will enable it to educate better (more moral, more ethical)lawyers.6 I have not found this an enduring and satisfying rationale. I canstate my difficulty rather simply. Love of God and love of neighbor are thetwo great commandments. The first, love of God, requires the second. Butthe second, love of neighbor, does not require the first. The noble pagan andthe secular humanist bear compelling historical and contemporary witnessto the truth of this proposition. One suspects, contrary to the adage, thatthere may even have been atheists in fox holes. One is sure, however, thatthere were and are non-religious persons marching side by side with Jewsand Christians in the causes of racial and economic justice.The appeal to religion for moral rectitude in the practice of law is nota high visibility issue in legal education. But our journals are full of attacksand counter-attacks involving a movement called Critical Legal Studies.The CRITs propose a deconstruction of the legal system which they see asmasking political choices under the guise of applying legal rules. It is a3. Lee, The Role of the Religious Law School, 30 VILL. L. REV. 1175 (1985).4. Id. at 1177.5. Id, at 1175.6. Id. at 1185.Valparaiso University Law Review, Vol. 22, No. 3 [1988], Art. 8https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol22/iss3/8THE LUTHERAN TRADITIONguise because the rules are indeterminate to the extent that they can bemanipulated to produce results according to the arbitrary whim of the de-ciders. The battlegrounds are our most prestigious law schools with curricu-lar, appointment, and tenure decisions at stake. Opponents argue that theCRITs are legal nihilists who, to the extent that they deny the "idea" oflaw, forfeit their entitlement to positions on a law faculty. All of this (whichcannot even be fairly summarized here) would not be germane to today'ssymposium if the debate employed the ordinary legal discourse of reasonedargumentation. But in the essay which fired the opening salvo, Dean PaulCarrington of the Duke Law School employed the language of profession,belief, faith, and hope: "The law . . . is a mere hope that people who applythe lash of power will seek to obey the law's command. Let us not be mod-est: it is an act of considerable courage to maintain belief in such ahope. . . .We love law not because reason requires it, but because ourcommitment to our discipline serves the needs of the public to whom, andfor whom, we are responsible." 7 Carrington did not ground this leap of faithin an expressly religious tradition. Rather, he was appealing to that civilreligion of which we hear so much in the public addresses in this year of thebicentennial celebration of our Constitution: inalienable rights, popular sov-ereignty, consent of the governed, constitutionalism, separation of powers,limited government, ordered liberty, etc. Explicit in the opposition of theCRITs is the appeal to values which transcend our capacity to supportthem with traditional "legal" arguments. If faith, hope, and charity havebecome members in good standing in the word of legal education, the sceneis set for continuing dialogue between the secular and the religious. What isespecially ironic is the claim by one of the CRIT founders, Roberto Ungerof the Harvard Law School, that his position is distinctively Christian. Incorrespondence with a reviewer of his book, Knowledge and Politics, hewrote:It is a Christian book because it affirms that mankind can pro-gress toward the ideal (beatitude) in history but that they can-not achieve it in history. The union of immanence and transcen-dence, the synthesis of the mode in which universals andparticulars are merged and the mode in which they are sepa-rated, cannot be fully realized in the world. This perspective isin turn associated with the Christian conception of man as em-bodied and transcending spirit that is drawn directly from thetheology of incarnation and grace and which constitutes the coreof the doctrine of the self I defend.'Now, if someone had read that to me and asked me to name the author, Iwould have replied "Martin Luther." If I am right in identifying Roberto7. Carrington, Of Law and the River, 34 J. LEGAL EDUC. 222, 226-28 (1984).8. Kronman, Book Review, 61 MINN. L. REV. 167, 203 (1976).19881Meyer: Symposium:  Mission of a church-Related Law School - The LutheranProduced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 1988666 VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 22Unger's thought with Luther's, it is not surprising that a participant on arecent radio quiz show could not answer the question: "Who was thefounder of the Lutheran church?" The participant had obviously misas-sociated Luther as the founder of the Critical Legal Studies movement. Incase you have not noticed, I call your attention to the fact that I am nowaddressing my responsibility to discuss the significance of Lutheranism tolegal education.Luther's two kingdom theology of law and love is an obvious candidatefor examination of the significance of a Lutheran perspective on legal edu-cation - so obvious in fact that one of our panelists, Tom Shaffer, sub-jected it to critical scrutiny in the 1983 Seegers Lectures on this campus.'We are indebted to him for raising our consciousness as to how the twokingdom theology might result in a two-ethic approach in our private andpublic lives. In the legal profession, the villain would be the adversary ethicand what Shaffer would see as the lesser morality of that ethic.'0 Shafferwas either too charitable or too worried about his personal safety to blameLuther for what he arguably conceded may be a misreading of what mosttheologians would describe as a complex and a highly controversial topic.Oh, for a return to those days of one's youth when both theology and lifewere much simpler. I could really identify with that Sunday School instruc-tion which said that we Lutherans had the right idea in the belief thatfaith, not works, was the essential ingredient in the life of a Christian. Andwe all smiled when someone quoted Luther as saying, "Sin Boldly." I sus-pect that even then I would have thought that Jim Bakker's recent behaviorwas carrying this command too far. But that simplistic approach of faith,not works, carried over into the culture of our forbearers, a culture whichturned inward upon itself resisting involvement in government and commu-nity affairs except, of course, in those communities where all or mostly allwere Lutheran. Valparaiso University, under its Lutheran auspices, beganin this setting. But before recounting some of that history, it is essential torefer to an earlier period.The Reformation roots provided an auspicious beginning for Lutheran-ism and education. Basic to Luther's philosophy was the freedom of investi-gation. The disciplines of theology, philosophy, and science had to be pur-sued with integrities of their own. Here the theology of the two kingdomscould be understood in the conviction that God is the creator and Lord ofthe earthly as well as the heavenly kingdom - an understanding that iscrucial in the support of our modern concept of academic freedom. But thehistory of Lutheranism and its educational institutions in this country didnot remain true to its heritage. Our immigrant forefathers insulated them-9. Shaffer, The Legal Ethics of the Two Kingdoms, 17 VAL. U.L. REV. 3 (1983).10. Id. at 15-16.Valparaiso University Law Review, Vol. 22, No. 3 [1988], Art. 8https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol22/iss3/8THE LUTHERAN TRADITIONselves and their colleges from the mainstream of the developing state uni-versities and those private institutions which were becoming increasinglysecularized. The speeches at the inauguration of Valparaiso University'sfirst Lutheran president in 1925 were preoccupied with the concerns of har-monizing science and religion, protecting Christian character from a god-less world, creating a safe place for Lutheran sons and daughters, etc.,' Butslightly more than a decade later, a rescue was effected at the inaugurationof another Valparaiso President. Vice President Baepler recorded the occa-sion as follows:Dr. O.P. Kretzmann's inaugural address in 1940 completely re-pudiated this negative approach to Christian education whichled, as he said, to vicious obscurantism. He broke with sectarian,fundamentalistic language and topics. There is not a single ref-erence to the Bible, save for a final mention of Valpo's mottofrom a Psalm. The name "Lutheran" does not appear once. Yetthe entire address is an expression of the dramatic, biblical vi-sion of the world. For him the reality of God and the fact of theatonement are forever relevant to that struggle for the heart andsoul and mind of man which is the theme of human history andin which a church-related university is destined to find its iden-tity and mission. And the church-related university must be:"the most catholic and universal and democratic institution inthe modern world."12The history of the relation between Valparaiso University and its con-servatively oriented church has been one of tension. But, except for someoccasional headaches, the tension has been constructive. Each has impor-tant things to say to the other and not always in words that the other willlike. The university must pursue its calling wherever the search for truthleads, mindful, however, of the relativity of its successes and failures on thisside of history. The church must issue its call for repentance and forgive-ness mindful of the need for the university to be sufficiently independent ofit to be responsive to it. Lutherans may recall and rejoice that these notionsare a part of their heritage in a Reformation which was born in a univer-sity. What about the law school? As an integral part of the university, itsrelationship to the church may not require particularization. Perhaps, how-ever, several points bear emphasis. Just as our undergraduate colleaguesneed to welcome to their midst the non-Christian scholar to prevent anyreturn to the stifling parochialism of the past, we in the law schools need to11. Baepler, The Ecumenical Alternative, in THE SPLENDID HERITAGE, PROCEEDINGSOF THE GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY SYMPOSIUM AND CONVOCATIONS CELEBRATING VALPARAISO'SFIFTY YEARS AS A LUTHERAN UNIVERSITY 19, 20 (1976).12. Id. at 20-21.1988]Meyer: Symposium:  Mission of a church-Related Law School - The LutheranProduced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 1988668 VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 22welcome diversity as moral and legal ideas are tested in the crucible ofacademic debate. Loving one's neighbor as oneself can be a unifying themefor a normative discipline as long as we realize that we are bound to comeup short in that peace which the world cannot give. Lifting high the crosscan make it all seem worthwhile. We need a community to remind us ofthis. As one of those communities, the university where religion is takenseriously provides a hospitable environment for a law school to take lawseriously.Valparaiso University Law Review, Vol. 22, No. 3 [1988], Art. 8https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol22/iss3/8

Symposium:  Mission of a church-Related Law School - The Lutheran Tradition

ValpoScholar

Valparaiso University Law Review 
Volume 22 
Number 3 Spring 1988 pp.663-668 
Spring 1988 
Symposium: Mission of a church-Related Law School - The 
Lutheran Tradition 
Alfred W. Meyer 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr 
 Part of the Law Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Alfred W. Meyer, Symposium: Mission of a church-Related Law School - The Lutheran Tradition, 22 Val. U. 
L. Rev. 663 (1988). 
Available at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol22/iss3/8 
This Symposium is brought to you for free and open 
access by the Valparaiso University Law School at 
ValpoScholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in 
Valparaiso University Law Review by an authorized 
administrator of ValpoScholar. For more information, 
please contact a ValpoScholar staff member at 
scholar@valpo.edu. 
SYMPOSIUM
Mission of a Church-Related
Law School
THE LUTHERAN TRADITION
ALFRED W. MEYER*
The law school halls are alive with the sound of - religion? Yes, the
subject has emerged from the closets of poorly attended and infrequently
held symposia on "law and religion." Holmes told us that "the law deals
with all of life" so it is not surprising that the renaissance of religious dis-
course in our contemporary culture has invaded our legal communities. Re-
ligious issues pervade both our appellate court reports and the legal litera-
ture. Former Chief Justice Burger was even moved to complain that too
much of the Supreme Court's time was devoted to religious issues.' Al-
though the topic of this symposium does not warrant an attempt to account
for this phenomenon, one should observe its ancient and honorable lineage:
"Ever since its birth in ancient Greece, legal philosophy has freed itself
from theology only with difficulty." And for those of us who have chosen
to affiliate with church-related law schools, we may chorus: "Thank God for
the difficulty."
The planners of this occasion have invited participants from four reli-
gious traditions to address the significance of church-relatedness in legal
education in the hope that we may bring to bear our distinctive perspectives
on the subject. As we do so, however, it would be a mistake to assume that
the resurgence of religious issues in the courts and the literature has been
accompanied by an increase in number or significance of church-related law
* Louis and Anna Seegers Professor of Law, Valparaiso University School of Law.
1. E.g., Marshall, Introduction, Religion and the Law Symposium, 19 CONN. L. REV.
697 (1986).
2. Note, Critical Legal Studies as an Anti-Positive Phenomenon, 72 VA. L. REV. 983,
984 (1986) (emphasis added).
663
Meyer: Symposium:  Mission of a church-Related Law School - The Lutheran
Produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 1988
664 VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 22
schools. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rex Lee, the founding
dean of the Brigham Young University Law School, reported in 1985 the
mainstream view that there is no role for the religious law school in Ameri-
can Legal Education - that "the optimistic pronouncements made at the
beginnings of a church-affiliated law school about teaching the laws of God
and the laws of man have seldom, if ever, withstood the test of time" and
that the law schools of prominence are "invariably those that have long
since ceased to take their religious moorings seriously."3 The Lee quotation
underscores the fear which prompted Valparaiso University's legendary
president, Dr. O.P. Kretzmann, to warn that the danger which confronted
Valparaiso is that it might become just another Princeton. Rex Lee con-
ducted a survey of deans at the thirty law schools with religious affiliations
to determine the significance of their church-relatedness. Not more than
three or four could point to any statements of mission from which adminis-
tration, faculty, or students drew any sense of special character or purpose.
Several of the law schools had simply been inherited by religious universi-
ties "without fanfare" and of the others, only a handful were begun with
any explicit recognition of their religious connections.4 Lest you associate
Rex Lee with the views of his respondents, I should emphasize that he ar-
gued that the religiously affiliated law school has "a unique opportunity to
enrich the perspectives and the quality of American legal education."5 In
his view, what is good and moral in our profession has religious roots in the
second of the two great commandments: to love one's neighbor as oneself.
The response to this command will distinguish the church-related school
from others and will enable it to educate better (more moral, more ethical)
lawyers.6 I have not found this an enduring and satisfying rationale. I can
state my difficulty rather simply. Love of God and love of neighbor are the
two great commandments. The first, love of God, requires the second. But
the second, love of neighbor, does not require the first. The noble pagan and
the secular humanist bear compelling historical and contemporary witness
to the truth of this proposition. One suspects, contrary to the adage, that
there may even have been atheists in fox holes. One is sure, however, that
there were and are non-religious persons marching side by side with Jews
and Christians in the causes of racial and economic justice.
The appeal to religion for moral rectitude in the practice of law is not
a high visibility issue in legal education. But our journals are full of attacks
and counter-attacks involving a movement called Critical Legal Studies.
The CRITs propose a deconstruction of the legal system which they see as
masking political choices under the guise of applying legal rules. It is a
3. Lee, The Role of the Religious Law School, 30 VILL. L. REV. 1175 (1985).
4. Id. at 1177.
5. Id, at 1175.
6. Id. at 1185.
Valparaiso University Law Review, Vol. 22, No. 3 [1988], Art. 8
https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol22/iss3/8
THE LUTHERAN TRADITION
guise because the rules are indeterminate to the extent that they can be
manipulated to produce results according to the arbitrary whim of the de-
ciders. The battlegrounds are our most prestigious law schools with curricu-
lar, appointment, and tenure decisions at stake. Opponents argue that the
CRITs are legal nihilists who, to the extent that they deny the "idea" of
law, forfeit their entitlement to positions on a law faculty. All of this (which
cannot even be fairly summarized here) would not be germane to today's
symposium if the debate employed the ordinary legal discourse of reasoned
argumentation. But in the essay which fired the opening salvo, Dean Paul
Carrington of the Duke Law School employed the language of profession,
belief, faith, and hope: "The law . . . is a mere hope that people who apply
the lash of power will seek to obey the law's command. Let us not be mod-
est: it is an act of considerable courage to maintain belief in such a
hope. . . .We love law not because reason requires it, but because our
commitment to our discipline serves the needs of the public to whom, and
for whom, we are responsible." 7 Carrington did not ground this leap of faith
in an expressly religious tradition. Rather, he was appealing to that civil
religion of which we hear so much in the public addresses in this year of the
bicentennial celebration of our Constitution: inalienable rights, popular sov-
ereignty, consent of the governed, constitutionalism, separation of powers,
limited government, ordered liberty, etc. Explicit in the opposition of the
CRITs is the appeal to values which transcend our capacity to support
them with traditional "legal" arguments. If faith, hope, and charity have
become members in good standing in the word of legal education, the scene
is set for continuing dialogue between the secular and the religious. What is
especially ironic is the claim by one of the CRIT founders, Roberto Unger
of the Harvard Law School, that his position is distinctively Christian. In
correspondence with a reviewer of his book, Knowledge and Politics, he
wrote:
It is a Christian book because it affirms that mankind can pro-
gress toward the ideal (beatitude) in history but that they can-
not achieve it in history. The union of immanence and transcen-
dence, the synthesis of the mode in which universals and
particulars are merged and the mode in which they are sepa-
rated, cannot be fully realized in the world. This perspective is
in turn associated with the Christian conception of man as em-
bodied and transcending spirit that is drawn directly from the
theology of incarnation and grace and which constitutes the core
of the doctrine of the self I defend.'
Now, if someone had read that to me and asked me to name the author, I
would have replied "Martin Luther." If I am right in identifying Roberto
7. Carrington, Of Law and the River, 34 J. LEGAL EDUC. 222, 226-28 (1984).
8. Kronman, Book Review, 61 MINN. L. REV. 167, 203 (1976).
19881
Meyer: Symposium:  Mission of a church-Related Law School - The Lutheran
Produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 1988
666 VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 22
Unger's thought with Luther's, it is not surprising that a participant on a
recent radio quiz show could not answer the question: "Who was the
founder of the Lutheran church?" The participant had obviously misas-
sociated Luther as the founder of the Critical Legal Studies movement. In
case you have not noticed, I call your attention to the fact that I am now
addressing my responsibility to discuss the significance of Lutheranism to
legal education.
Luther's two kingdom theology of law and love is an obvious candidate
for examination of the significance of a Lutheran perspective on legal edu-
cation - so obvious in fact that one of our panelists, Tom Shaffer, sub-
jected it to critical scrutiny in the 1983 Seegers Lectures on this campus.'
We are indebted to him for raising our consciousness as to how the two
kingdom theology might result in a two-ethic approach in our private and
public lives. In the legal profession, the villain would be the adversary ethic
and what Shaffer would see as the lesser morality of that ethic.'0 Shaffer
was either too charitable or too worried about his personal safety to blame
Luther for what he arguably conceded may be a misreading of what most
theologians would describe as a complex and a highly controversial topic.
Oh, for a return to those days of one's youth when both theology and life
were much simpler. I could really identify with that Sunday School instruc-
tion which said that we Lutherans had the right idea in the belief that
faith, not works, was the essential ingredient in the life of a Christian. And
we all smiled when someone quoted Luther as saying, "Sin Boldly." I sus-
pect that even then I would have thought that Jim Bakker's recent behavior
was carrying this command too far. But that simplistic approach of faith,
not works, carried over into the culture of our forbearers, a culture which
turned inward upon itself resisting involvement in government and commu-
nity affairs except, of course, in those communities where all or mostly all
were Lutheran. Valparaiso University, under its Lutheran auspices, began
in this setting. But before recounting some of that history, it is essential to
refer to an earlier period.
The Reformation roots provided an auspicious beginning for Lutheran-
ism and education. Basic to Luther's philosophy was the freedom of investi-
gation. The disciplines of theology, philosophy, and science had to be pur-
sued with integrities of their own. Here the theology of the two kingdoms
could be understood in the conviction that God is the creator and Lord of
the earthly as well as the heavenly kingdom - an understanding that is
crucial in the support of our modern concept of academic freedom. But the
history of Lutheranism and its educational institutions in this country did
not remain true to its heritage. Our immigrant forefathers insulated them-
9. Shaffer, The Legal Ethics of the Two Kingdoms, 17 VAL. U.L. REV. 3 (1983).
10. Id. at 15-16.
Valparaiso University Law Review, Vol. 22, No. 3 [1988], Art. 8
https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol22/iss3/8
THE LUTHERAN TRADITION
selves and their colleges from the mainstream of the developing state uni-
versities and those private institutions which were becoming increasingly
secularized. The speeches at the inauguration of Valparaiso University's
first Lutheran president in 1925 were preoccupied with the concerns of har-
monizing science and religion, protecting Christian character from a god-
less world, creating a safe place for Lutheran sons and daughters, etc.,' But
slightly more than a decade later, a rescue was effected at the inauguration
of another Valparaiso President. Vice President Baepler recorded the occa-
sion as follows:
Dr. O.P. Kretzmann's inaugural address in 1940 completely re-
pudiated this negative approach to Christian education which
led, as he said, to vicious obscurantism. He broke with sectarian,
fundamentalistic language and topics. There is not a single ref-
erence to the Bible, save for a final mention of Valpo's motto
from a Psalm. The name "Lutheran" does not appear once. Yet
the entire address is an expression of the dramatic, biblical vi-
sion of the world. For him the reality of God and the fact of the
atonement are forever relevant to that struggle for the heart and
soul and mind of man which is the theme of human history and
in which a church-related university is destined to find its iden-
tity and mission. And the church-related university must be:
"the most catholic and universal and democratic institution in
the modern world."12
The history of the relation between Valparaiso University and its con-
servatively oriented church has been one of tension. But, except for some
occasional headaches, the tension has been constructive. Each has impor-
tant things to say to the other and not always in words that the other will
like. The university must pursue its calling wherever the search for truth
leads, mindful, however, of the relativity of its successes and failures on this
side of history. The church must issue its call for repentance and forgive-
ness mindful of the need for the university to be sufficiently independent of
it to be responsive to it. Lutherans may recall and rejoice that these notions
are a part of their heritage in a Reformation which was born in a univer-
sity. What about the law school? As an integral part of the university, its
relationship to the church may not require particularization. Perhaps, how-
ever, several points bear emphasis. Just as our undergraduate colleagues
need to welcome to their midst the non-Christian scholar to prevent any
return to the stifling parochialism of the past, we in the law schools need to
11. Baepler, The Ecumenical Alternative, in THE SPLENDID HERITAGE, PROCEEDINGS
OF THE GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY SYMPOSIUM AND CONVOCATIONS CELEBRATING VALPARAISO'S
FIFTY YEARS AS A LUTHERAN UNIVERSITY 19, 20 (1976).
12. Id. at 20-21.
1988]
Meyer: Symposium:  Mission of a church-Related Law School - The Lutheran
Produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 1988
668 VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 22
welcome diversity as moral and legal ideas are tested in the crucible of
academic debate. Loving one's neighbor as oneself can be a unifying theme
for a normative discipline as long as we realize that we are bound to come
up short in that peace which the world cannot give. Lifting high the cross
can make it all seem worthwhile. We need a community to remind us of
this. As one of those communities, the university where religion is taken
seriously provides a hospitable environment for a law school to take law
seriously.
Valparaiso University Law Review, Vol. 22, No. 3 [1988], Art. 8
https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol22/iss3/8


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