The End of Law? Law, Theology, and Neuroscience. By David W. Opderbeck. Eugene: Cascade Books, 2021. Pp. 262. $46.00 (cloth); $31.00 (paper); $31.00 (digital). ISBN: 9781498223911.

Abstract

In his ambitious book, The End of Law? Law, Theology, and Neuroscience, David W. Opderbeck takes on the difficult question of the relationship between religion and science. He is particularly concerned with what he calls “neurolaw,” a term that refers to the attempt to reduce all legal phenomena to psychology (2–3). Reduction of the subtle art of legal judgment to psychological determinism is, for him, an exemplar of the goal of natural sciences, and it has resulted in materialist ontologies that dispense with transcendence (51). Relying on The Last Human: A Guide to Twenty-Two Species of Extinct Humans,1 Opderbeck argues that the anthropological record does not find evidence of an essence of human nature (107–17). Human beings, he believes, are defined by their cultural and social traits, which include language and law. To understand human nature, he argues, one must examine the sociocultural features of human groups. Reduction is impossible. He argues instead, following Steven Horst, for a “cognitive pluralism” in which reduction of each academic discipline constitutes its own domain of theories about how creatures survive and evolve (139–41).2 Science itself is a sociocultural phenomenon that, for Opderbeck, has no special or unique epistemological or metaphysical claim. In this way, he attempts to domesticate science by positioning it alongside other cultural forms, such as art, music, and theology. Opderbeck’s theological method seeks knowledge of the transcendent by examining the limits of knowledge ofmoral rectitude. This is not an apophatic theory, however, for he argues that theology seeks knowledge of the transcendent through sociocultural phenomena that arise from the struggle of a people to find a sense of moral righteousness (104). For him, neoAristotelianmetaphysics is the site for the development of Christian understanding, and thus, he believes, advances a recovery of Aristotle’s hylomorphism (substance and form) andmoral teleology (final causes). His claim appears to be that an Aristotelian hylomorphism is necessary to maintain a metaphysically teleological conception of the moral good (171–73).