Janet Halley*<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the David Kennedy Festschrift May 30, 2023
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve been to the church of David\u2019s and his brother John\u2019s youths twice, for the funerals of their parents. I\u2019ve also been to their childhood home, with family and friends gathering after those convenings. I\u2019m calling these remarks \u201cFirst Church\u201d because it is about David\u2019s first, but not his only church. Indeed, I\u2019m interested in that church not only for itself but also because it was the precursor of all the subsequent churches David has founded or led: the Graduate Program at HLS under his directorship, the NAIL (aka New Approaches to International Law), BIARI (aka the Brown International Advanced Research Institute), the Watson Institute at Brown, and now the IGLP (aka the Institute for Global Law and Policy). I will try to show that the First Church was more than a precursor; it was in many ways the model for David\u2019s amazingly generous adult career in intellectual and social organizing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are some very striking features of the church of David\u2019s growing up. David\u2019s parents along with a whole bunch of other couples bought a big plot of land for a new church, Northminster Presbyterian Church, in a brand-new suburb of Detroit. His parents also bought a plot for their new suburban home, directly abutting the church\u2019s land. They converted that piece of the earth from farmland to suburb, but a weird suburb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Experientially, the Church and the plot on which the Kennedys built their home were one continuous property. You walk out of the backyard of David and John\u2019s childhood home right into the parking lot of the church. The church itself was like a common living room. It was an immersive environment, some kind of mix between a village, a commune, and the most normal suburbia you could imagine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When you go into the sanctuary, you are in for another surprise, especially if you were raised low Episcopalian as I was, and have studied Protestant and Catholic religious poetry, including liturgy, for years as I have. To prepare everyone for this I need to dip a little into main- line Christian doctrine. In that worldview, humans tumbled into sin with the Fall of Adam and Eve, and got the chance to tumble back out of it through God\u2019s sacrifice of his only son, Jesus Christ, in a horrible death by crucifixion\u2014literally nailed to a cross\u2014in between two thieves crucified on either side of him. This special death expiated all (or, depending on where you land on hi\/low, some) of human sin. What God and Jesus did was the act of a savior. It depended on the dual humanity and divinity of Christ. And the efficacy of it all was sealed when, three days after his human death, the human\/divine Christ rose again from the dead and, not long after that, ascended into heaven. The death and<\/em> resurrection of Jesus Christ are central to the salvation story of main-line Christian doctrine. It\u2019s a package deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When you see a cross at the center front of a Christian church or chapel, which is where it will always appear, even though it may also appear elsewhere, it refers to this decisive turning point in God\u2019s relationship to human beings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But in the sanctuary of David\u2019s parent\u2019s church\u2014David\u2019s first church, a beautiful, serene, modernist space\u2014at the front, are three crosses.<\/em> The deaths of the thieves are remembered every day in this space, as \u201cof a piece\u201d with the death of Jesus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In my Words tonight, I want to make this shocking deviation a little more lucid, by exploring the mimeographed (and then photocopied) sermons of Mackay \u201cMac\u201d Taylor, the Pastor of David\u2019s church during his growing up years. David lent me his collection of Mac\u2019s sermons so that I could prepare this talk. Most of the sermons are undated; all the dates we do find are from the late \u201980s and early \u201990s, by which time David was well launched on his professional career. But there is a set of four sermons, on the Wisdom books of the Bible, that had to have been completed in very first year or two of the 1970s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There are several signs that these were of particular importance to David. First, David was still living at home when they were written and probably delivered. He may have heard them, in church, in roughly his senior year of high school.1<\/a><\/sup> Plus, they come with a handwritten note, probably from Mac, saying that he\u2019s sending four sermons, that he hopes David would be coming to church anyway, and that he hopes David will keep his Bible nearby as they are all based in the Bible. So we know that Mac and David interacted over these sermons even if David was not present in church for their delivery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I will read the all the sermons in search of signs that could help me understand two things: the three crosses, and the ways in which David\u2019s first church has reappeared in his later churches. The Wisdom sermons as a set will have a very dramatic contribution, but so do the others individually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One feature of these sermons, very similar to the geographical space of the church and the abutting home of David\u2019s family, is that they are BOTH COMPLETELY NORMAL AND COMPLETELY NOT NORMAL. Thus most of the sermons are pretty main-line Christ-the-savior material. But in a sermon on his impending retirement, Mac described his \u201cnatural, inborn crankiness, [his]\u2026 tendency to move against the flow.\u201d2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n In one cranky move, a HUGE departure from main-line Christ-the-savior doctrine, Mac denied the literal, physical resurrection of Christ:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, I\u2019m convinced the early Church took metaphores [sic] and, unable to endure the tension, the ambiguity, turned these metaphors into facts, e.g., the Resurrection. I believe the disciples and those with whom Jesus had had a posative [sic] impact, experienced the death of Jesus and found that his way of living and loving lived on, powerfully, in their lives; that Jesus hadn\u2019t \u201cdied\u201d for them but continued to live in them. The early church then took this testimony and turned it into \u201cfact.\u201d That Jesus physically rose from the dead, and so was alive, and made it an article of faith to affirm that fact.3<\/a><\/sup> <\/p>\n\n\n\n (By \u201carticle of faith,\u201d Mac means that the early church said that Christians have <\/em>to believe it.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n Lest we suppose that this cranky reflection was aberrational in the doctrinal environment of Northminster Church during David\u2019s youth, consider this story, one that David has often told me because it captures so much about his parents\u2019 way of life. David was in the Boy Scouts, studying for the God and Country badge with Mac. Mac had David and the other boys in the class memorize the Apostles Creed\u2014a recitation of the things that, in many Christian traditions, Christians have <\/em>to believe. Anxious about its astounding contents, David recited it to his parents, asking if they really believed<\/em> these things, and got these increasingly exasperated responses: <\/p>\n\n\n\n David: <\/em>\u201c\u2018I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Creator of Heaven and Earth.\u2019 Do you believe <\/em>that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n David\u2019s mother: <\/em>\u201cWell, I\u2019ve always thought that God is love<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n David: <\/em>\u201c\u2018And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.\u2019 What about that?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n David\u2019s father: <\/em>\u201cThere\u2019s now a lot of archaeological evidence suggesting such a person really did exist.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n David: <\/em>\u201cOk, but, \u2018He descended into hell. The third day He arose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty\u2026.\u2019 Really?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n David\u2019s mother, irritated<\/em>: \u201cDavid, it\u2019s a metaphor<\/em>.\u201d4<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n Note that Mac frames his demystification of Christ\u2019s resurrection not as a relief from the unrelenting Pauline pressure to \u201cbelieve\u201d the wildly excessive story of God\u2019s torture-sacrifice of his only son and his physical resurrection of him to seal our salvation, nor as an evasion of the Creed\u2019s limpid statement of all the things that, to be a Christian, one must believe\u2014but as a return to the \u201ctension, the ambiguity\u201d that the people who followed Jesus and survived him were \u201cunable to endure.\u201d I think something like it reappears again and again in David\u2019s later churches: the willingness to think otherwise and to endure what results: the tension, the ambiguity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These two anecdotes also presage something important in the hunger of many of us who have participated in Critical Legal Studies over the years, something that can be captured in the point that the three crosses at Northminster are metaphor,<\/em> not a representation.<\/em> We believe in law in that we know it\u2019s there, we know it\u2019s important, we want to understand its every intricacy. We insist that our students learn it. We serve as lawyers for clients, even as judges; we consult with legislators on law and policy; we administer rules in daily life. And yet, we are also alienated from law and its account of itself; see the emperor pacing along with no clothes; understand it as its own mythos, fiction, language, and image. You can see why a young man who grew up inspired by Mac and admonished by David\u2019s parents would find Duncan\u2019s teaching and example to be the next logical progression in his intellectual and moral life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Even more than Mac\u2019s cranky speculation about the bereaved followers of Jesus, his sermons on the Wisdom books of the Bible constitute an immense departure from main-line Christ-the-savior material. He listed those books as Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, a few Psalms, and some bits of the Historical books Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, and Jeremiah.5<\/a><\/sup> Mac describes the wisdom tradition as a Christian tradition<\/em>, an alternative understanding of Jesus that does not hinge on the cross. The cross is one of the \u201cmighty deeds of God\u201d, \u201cworld changing awesome events,\u201d \u201cdynamic, intrusive acts that \u2026 interrupted the normal flow of history with a decisive change.\u201d6<\/a><\/sup> Think Exodus, think the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. But Wisdom is a \u201cTheology of Continuity.\u201d7<\/a><\/sup> It\u2019s for when God is not dramatically present. Mac unfolds the consequences of this temporality stepwise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n First, the goal is not eschatological, a second coming, or heaven; rather \u201cthe goal of human meaning and existence is li[f]e;\u201d \u201c[i]t\u2019s here and now;\u201d \u201cwisdom affirms that any talk of the will of God which doesn\u2019t lead to life for the community here and now is idolatry.\u201d8<\/a><\/sup> I think we have here a very important clue to the three crosses: singling out the cross of the Jesus-Christ-death-and-resurrection narrative, leaving out the death of the thieves, is idolatry<\/em>. The community must take on the everyday suffering undergone by the thieves, the injustice they did as well as the injustice done to them, just as much as the epochal death of Jesus, or it worships an idol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Second, \u201clife\u2019s authority is to be found in our common experience.\u201d Figuring out good and evil can\u2019t be delegated to \u201cthe President, Church, legislation, minister.\u201d \u201cWe need to be discerning and patient in discovering what it means to be us.\u201d9<\/a><\/sup> We have a job: \u201cour wanting others to make our decisions, tell us what to do\u201d is \u201cmoral failure.\u201d10<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n As a result, Wisdom affirms \u201cthat man has primary responsibility for his destiny.\u201d11<\/a><\/sup> This God does not send a savior; he trusts <\/em>human beings to decide. \u201cWisdom claims that people are able to choose wisely and decide responsibly; we don\u2019t have to be wicked or foolish; we have an option. It urges us to see our strength and to function courageously. Further, wisdom affirms that we must choose in each situation.\u201d12<\/a><\/sup> \u201cA human future is possible only when we exercise human responsibility.\u201d13<\/a><\/sup> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, Wisdom \u201creverenced creation and believed that God intended it to be enjoyed.\u201d14<\/a><\/sup> This is a very important turn away from Original Sin and some Christian traditions committed to the resentment of the body and its pleasures. Creation is a gift we should revel in when we can. \u201c[O]ne of the essential marks of a person was his coming to terms with the opportunities and responsibilities of his social and natural world.\u201d15<\/a><\/sup> \u201cOf course there is risk in it, but God took such risk, and if we\u2019re willing to risk and make mistakes, wouldn\u2019t we rather overlive then underlive?\u201d16<\/a><\/sup> One thing for sure: Mac here ratified David\u2019s tendency to overlive! An example: I think everyone here can remember being mad at David for promising to be in three places at one time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n None of this cancels the main-line Jesus-Christ-as-Savior truth that Mac expounds elsewhere. Instead, \u201cJesus may be presented not only as<\/em> a savior from sin, but also as<\/em> fulfillment of the summons to Adam in Genesis.\u201d17<\/a><\/sup> Both<\/em> are true (\u201c\u2026 the tension, the ambiguity \u2026\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n I see another key here to the three crosses: They emphasize the humanity of Jesus. Mac on that: \u201cIn Jesus we can see what mature humanity means, and in whose humanity we may now share. Jesus\u2019 humanity consisted in his ability to order and bring into being his social and natural environment for the sake of a healthy community. And therein lies the task of our humanity.\u201d18<\/a><\/sup> The three crosses are about Jesus\u2019s humanity that he had in common with the thieves. The humanity they share has a purpose, moreover: a healthy community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The third Wisdom sermon, \u201c\u2019Wisdom in Contemporary Theology,\u201d reads to me as an uncanny prefiguration of some of the most recurrent modes of ethical thought I have observed at work in David\u2019s later churches. Watch in what follows for precursors of ideas we\u2019ve shared under the rubrics of legal realism, the Weberian ethic of responsibility, consequentialist, outcomes-oriented, \u201cdon\u2019t enchant your tools\u201d approach to law, distributional analysis, decisionism, and the recurrent appetite for now-seeking genealogies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWisdom continually acknowledges the accountability of people\u2014that we must answer for and live with our choices.\u201d19<\/a><\/sup> Borrowing from theologian Joseph F. Fetcher\u2019s book Situation Ethics<\/em>, published in 1966,20<\/a><\/sup> Mac argues that ethical decision-making is not deciding, as between the established principle and the unruly situation, which of them prevails. Instead, the situation provides the context that will produce the outcome, and it is with our eyes on that, that we should\u2014more, that we need <\/em> to\u2014decide. And this is a temporal process: \u201cIn a context where past order doesn\u2019t seem to work, we may and must create an order as we go, decision by decision.\u201d21<\/a><\/sup> <\/p>\n\n\n\n The law itself is an ongoing project of situated ethical wrangling. Mac argues that the Wisdom tradition \u201cis remarkably free of dogmatic assertions which claim ultimate authority. Rather, they are presented with a kind of functional claim that for now this is the way it is, or seems to be.\u201d22<\/a><\/sup> Note the phenomenological turn at the end of that phrase. Thus the Ten Commandments\u2014the most dogmatic assertions of them all\u2014emerged not from \u201ca mysterious finger on a holy mountain, but out of the communities [sic] long experience. It was later that saxred [sic] authority was attached to them.\u201d23<\/a><\/sup> Sacred ethics could emerge in the secular space, but it could command only provisionally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And what is the measure by which we decide? \u201cSuch ethics are a radically pragmatic approach to life. Then, the measure for these experience[-]tested norms is the goal\u2014the creation of a functioning, caring community.\u201d24<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n Wisdom ethics are thus neither deontological nor relativist and certainly not nihilist\u2014<\/em>but, as so often in CLS, one must, occasionally, point this out. \u201cWisdom \u2026 never falls into the trap of opposing the situation to principles. It says people are responsible and in each new situation a new decision must be made. It never suggests that all things are equally acceptable. Our ethical freedom and our ethical responsibility take place in a world which is \u2018given.\u2019 And our experience determines the boundaries of the \u2018givenness.\u2019\u201d25<\/a><\/sup> <\/p>\n\n\n\n I have one last note on the three crosses now. The Gospel of Luke firmly involves the thieves in the savior narrative: <\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him [Jesus] and saying, \u201cAre you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!\u201d But the other rebuked him, saying, \u201cDo you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserved for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.\u201d Then he said, \u201cJesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.\u201d He replied, \u201cTruly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.\u201d26<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n Both thieves were full of sin, but one was saved because he believed that Jesus was innocent, crucified unjustly, and certain to enter into his heavenly kingdom. It\u2019s almost the entire savior narrative in one tiny vignette. But looking at the thieves through the eyes of situation ethics, we can pick up a completely different thread. They aren\u2019t thieves; they are men who stole. Ok, so: stealing is usually morally bad. But not always. Depending on how morally bad property rights are, the moral character of a particular theft might shift. It needs to be assessed in its situation. We owe the thieves, as members of the community, at least that much. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking back over it all, notice how recurrently community is both the method and the goal. I am pulling out now to reflect on the insistence we see in David\u2019s track through our lives that, if one loses the First Church through the simple process of growing up and going away from home, a Second Church must be formed, and if the Second Church is reassigned to her-who-shall-not-be-named, a third church must arise. In an undated sermon titled \u201cFollowing the Lure of Wholeness in Self and Community,\u201d Mac observed that \u201cSigmund Freud wrote that the two indispensable needs of all people are love and work.\u201d Lately, though, I would add another need of ours\u2014a need I think is universal\u2014and that is significant, meaningful community.27<\/a><\/sup> We certainly see that third need in David\u2019s repeated formation of new churches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Community can be the site of intense discomfort and even pain and still be both the method and the goal. In \u201cAspects of the Inner Journey,\u201d preached April 8, 1990, Mac envisioned a vital community with a dark side:<\/p>\n\n\n\n But imagine a strange kind of community where commitment is not tentative \u2026 a community where we are actually free to act and speak \u2026 one where we can take risks that we couldn\u2019t take in other situations, including the risk of feeling feelings we have always kept out of sight. A community where we could afford to express negative reactions and know we could work at resolutions because our words would not cut us off from one another. Imagine being able to express anger, one result being not having to live with it because we\u2019ve swallowed it. Imagine a community where we could take the risk of telling another what stands between us, because we know there will be other times when we will be together to continue its resolution, and that everything does not hinge on what may happen or not happen in this moment.28<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n But do we ever really know that? Let\u2019s be careful here: Mac is asking us to imagine<\/em> a community where huge risks could be run because huge guarantees were in place. Where differences, even blockages and anger, could enable resolution because no one would trash the scene or schism. He was not claiming that Northminster was<\/em> such a community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How good are we<\/em> at the dark sides? To think about this problem, I re-read David\u2019s \u201cWhen Renewal Repeats: Thinking against the Box,\u201d the version that appears in Left Legalism\/Left Critique.<\/em> The last section is an elegy for the NAIL, but also accounts for David\u2019s decision to end it. Until this reading I\u2019ve never seen something\u2014and I edited it for LL\/LC\u2014that just jumps off the page at me now: that his willingness to terminate the NAIL stands in glaring contrast to the rest of the essay\u2019s account of the endlessly repeated renewals of international law as a field as it absorbs and neutralizes generation after generation of critique and challenge. You wonder, what if people had had the guts to end it? Instead, David wrote, he moved to \u201cretire the moniker NAIL\u201d because \u201cthis particular formula had run out its string, that the factoid NAIL was about to overtake whatever interesting work we were doing.\u201d29<\/a><\/sup> To preserve the interestingness <\/em>of the work, its accumulating function as a brand had to be dissolved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So the NAIL had to go, and the congregation had to carry on not knowing whether anything further would arise, ever. We did; that\u2019s when I arrived, and I can testify that we were all busy as bees. Then came the third church, those short years of brutal struggle to find a home in Brown University and its Watson Institute and the BIARI ligature between the Graduate Program diaspora and what was to become the IGLP. And once David had freed himself of Brown, a fourth church, the IGLP. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s just amazing how generous and relentless David has been in creating these scenes that have meant so much to everyone here and to many others besides. I don\u2019t need to, but I nevertheless will remind everyone of how precious and precarious they are. Northminster\u2019s founding generation have not only been out of church governance for many years but have probably either died or gone into care by now; nothing about the physical or even the social church required that Mac\u2019s distinctive questing mind be resurrected in subsequent pastors. My argument tonight is not that David carried on the ideas of his first church and taught them to us. Rather, I think he rang changes on them as he figured out how to perceive and assess international law, law and development, the evolution of American legal thought (and other pressing matters, like Monica Lewinski) in a recurrent process of building and rebuilding community with others, who found them in their own minds, but differently, <\/em>and were drawn together to work on them some more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We are very grateful to you David, and for myself, I\u2019m also very grateful to Mac.<\/p>\n\n\n\n *Janet Halley is the Eli Goldstson Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Janet Halley* For the David Kennedy Festschrift May 30, 2023 I\u2019ve been to the church of David\u2019s and his brother […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":218,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"[{\"id\":\"b0917372-5942-4b47-9bab-f9372d607c69\",\"content\":\"\\u00a0\\u00a0\\u00a0The wisdom sermons are formally different from the other sermons, which appear as single texts from each Sunday and are all marked up with cues for their delivery to a live congregation. Instead, the 4-sermon wisdom series is typed up as a single integrated sequence. Whereas the other sermons are 5 pages max, the wisdom sequence is paginated from page 1 to page 25. There are no marks to help with live recital. It\\u2019s a little booklet made up to preserve a distinct series of sermons that was important enough to Mac that he went to the trouble.\\u00a0
Internal and external evidence helps us to date them, moreover. In the first sermon, \u201cWisdom: A Theology of Continuity,\u201d Mac relates that a number of theologians \u201care claiming,\u201d \u201clately,\u201d that the Wisdom tradition can be found in the Historical books of the Bible. \u201cWisdom: A Theology of Continuity,\u201d Wisdom Sermons, p. 1. One of these theologians, Gerhard von Rad, died on October, 1971. Rolf Reindtorff, \u201cGerhard von Rad\u2019s Contribution to Biblical Studies,\u201d 1 Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies, <\/em>352-56, 351 (1973). Mac might not have learned of this event till sometime later, but once he did, he would not have spoken of von Rad as currently doing Biblical scholarship. So the first Wisdom sermon has to date earlier than the date, sometime not too long after the beginning of November 1971, when Mac learned that von Rad had died. David confirms that the Wisdom sermons were written and delivered in the early 1970s. David left home for college in the late summer\/early fall of 1972.\u00a0
\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
Internal and external evidence helps us to date them, moreover. In the first sermon, \\u201cWisdom: A Theology of Continuity,\\u201d Mac relates that a number of theologians \\u201care claiming,\\u201d \\u201clately,\\u201d that the Wisdom tradition can be found in the Historical books of the Bible. \\u201cWisdom: A Theology of Continuity,\\u201d Wisdom Sermons, p. 1. One of these theologians, Gerhard von Rad, died on October, 1971. Rolf Reindtorff, \\u201cGerhard von Rad\\u2019s Contribution to Biblical Studies,\\u201d 1 Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies, <\\\/em>352-56, 351 (1973). Mac might not have learned of this event till sometime later, but once he did, he would not have spoken of von Rad as currently doing Biblical scholarship. So the first Wisdom sermon has to date earlier than the date, sometime not too long after the beginning of November 1971, when Mac learned that von Rad had died. David confirms that the Wisdom sermons were written and delivered in the early 1970s. David left home for college in the late summer\\\/early fall of 1972.\\u00a0
\"},{\"id\":\"1d6971d8-838c-4557-8c88-69b56514e4e4\",\"content\":\"\\u201cDealing with the Dragons,\\u201d, September 27, 1992, p. 1.\"},{\"id\":\"f827a734-e4e1-457b-bff2-0237d84e6d2e\",\"content\":\"\\u201cMoving toward Spiritual Wholeness,\\u201d Nov. 15, 1992, pp. 1-2.\\u00a0\\u00a0
\"},{\"id\":\"e51d96dd-c20b-4252-b3bf-284f92912cf6\",\"content\":\"David Kennedy, email to the author, 2\\\/7\\\/26 (on file with the author).\"},{\"id\":\"0380cb35-465d-4484-8d0d-e2ceb25a5f22\",\"content\":\"\\u00a0\\u201cWisdom: A Theology of Continuity, Wisdom Sermons,, p. 1.\"},{\"id\":\"b78c19cc-4e0e-4836-b070-c0618a59c4a7\",\"content\":\"\\u00a0Id.
\"},{\"id\":\"c7ff619f-9ea3-4afc-a724-3cb7a5bf6cdb\",\"content\":\"\\u00a0Id.\"},{\"id\":\"db1966bf-9b7c-4b27-a4dd-f5cd2f0757c6\",\"content\":\"Id., p. 2.\"},{\"id\":\"aae7b2c3-8c30-45fa-8934-06d8478bffaa\",\"content\":\"Id.\"},{\"id\":\"7d1683e0-e8f6-4f85-b43e-8ed445a170f8\",\"content\":\"Id., p. 3.\"},{\"id\":\"6701a14a-c0ac-4795-992a-85617393f4d4\",\"content\":\"\\u00a0Id.\"},{\"id\":\"8b3ce654-6b8e-4e25-96ba-5a22084d6e57\",\"content\":\"Id.\"},{\"id\":\"bf712663-7d12-49e8-9b20-38af0b2daf5c\",\"content\":\"Id. p. 4.\"},{\"id\":\"66d5fd37-d04b-4bf4-937a-d9d256015a79\",\"content\":\"\\u00a0Id.\"},{\"id\":\"b3141300-4296-4e23-ae7b-0e1a6c892ae3\",\"content\":\"Id.\"},{\"id\":\"ac5929a4-534e-440c-bb8c-771c6132d05c\",\"content\":\"\\u00a0Id., p. 6.\"},{\"id\":\"328315f6-be03-4eec-9325-49a6cff1af31\",\"content\":\"\\u00a0Id., p. 5 (emphases added).\"},{\"id\":\"ec66e8f9-8188-4cde-b706-e5d230494469\",\"content\":\"Id., p. 5.\"},{\"id\":\"d9ee0f60-cb07-4bca-8f97-5a6f4363f5a4\",\"content\":\"\\u201c\\u2018Wisdom\\u2019 in Contemporary Theology,\\u201d Wisdom Sermons, p. 14.\"},{\"id\":\"26335390-00b0-4620-8c09-3c16e4868127\",\"content\":\"Joseph F. Fletcher, Situation Ethics<\\\/em> (1966).\"},{\"id\":\"aa0e13af-5440-416a-b6e7-bea3b8c7f6b6\",\"content\":\"\\u2018Wisdom\\u2019 in Contemporary Theology,\\u201d Wisdom Sermons, p. 15.\"},{\"id\":\"bc8e8d5e-0703-4fad-8189-545fe4ab851b\",\"content\":\"Id.\"},{\"id\":\"e1aec18d-22d7-4a7f-ab91-02d4deac9122\",\"content\":\"Id.\"},{\"id\":\"dcaa0e4f-6637-4230-a68a-585bc6581072\",\"content\":\"\\u00a0Id.\"},{\"id\":\"cd5655dc-08bc-47b3-bf39-61458e660cfb\",\"content\":\"Id., p. 16.\"},{\"id\":\"4f80ab93-a6c4-41e1-984e-b60cabed8198\",\"content\":\"\\u00a0Luke 23:39-43, The New Oxford Annotated Bible<\\\/em>, ed. Michael D. Coogan Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).\"},{\"id\":\"a4d08122-11f9-4d6b-b3d3-e0fe489e388e\",\"content\":\"\\u201cFollowing the Lure of Wholeness in Self and Community,\\u201d p. 5.\"},{\"id\":\"441fbe53-3ac1-4ed3-8d4c-75fd82f9fc1a\",\"content\":\"\\u201cAspects of the Inward Journey,\\u201d April 8, 1990, p. 6.\"},{\"id\":\"885bb2e9-d3d2-45a5-9c43-150f1fd574f2\",\"content\":\"David Kennedy, \\u201cWhen Renewal Repeats: Thinking against the Box,\\u201d in Left Legalism\\\/Left Critique<\\\/em>, ed. Wendy Brown and Janet Halley (Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 20020, p. 410.\"}]"},"categories":[205,436],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-content","category-professor-david-kennedy-tribute"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZu3S-2Vs","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/218"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}