11: David Jennings

David combines, as few do, superb legal analysis with equally superb theological thinking. When Karl Bath, who stands alongside the Apostle Paul, Maximus the Confessor, Aquinas, and Calvin, came to America in 1962 he met William Stringfellow. Stingfellow was a lawyer like Calvin and David. Barth said Stringfellow was the finest theological mind in America. If the great theologian were to come today and was fortunate enough to meet David he would laud him as well. 

My own thinking is always enlarged by the conversations we have had over the years moving in areas I have only occasionally considered. What is the purpose of law, not just how it functions technically as a profession but the why of law? Why is justice important? Similarly what gift does business bring to our common life? What is the inner dynamic of the businessperson, the way one must engage in a full range of considerations to accomplish stated purposes and live or die based on one’s judgment, decisions, and relationships? Does the Conservative tradition still exist within our political parties? And, is capitalism, as some have recently argued, at the end of its tether? While it may be a stretch for some, certainly not for David, how does the Christian understanding of the Incarnation and the Trinity shift thinking on these practical questions and move them beyond the usual theological reduction imposed by ideology on both the right and left. Finally, there is the question of stewardship and philanthropy. What has motivated David and others to devote half their time and all their skill and energy to seeing that artists and others with cultural vision may flourish?

Welcome to our conversation.