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Juries and Theology

Posted Tuesday, June 26, 2007 by Charlie Trimm
Categories: Culture and Theology
I got summoned for jury duty this morning, and as I was sitting there I started thinking about commen sense. (By the way, there were not any cases for the specific group I was in, so I was only there two hours.) They said we should decide using our own commen sense. This is also a technical term that I have been reading a lot about recently, specifically Scottish common sense realism. This viewpoint had a great effect on the church in the last two centuries and affects how we do theology and how we read the Bible. But as I was pondering common sense, it seems that a postmodern culture is drifting away from common sense: they recognize that everyone has an angle and a viewpoint. Therefore, common sense actually isn't all that common. So will the whole idea of a jury go away? In my thinking postmodernism doesn't mix real well with a jury system. Of course, postmodernism doesn't mesh real well with a justice system at all.