A Perspective on Perspectivalism

Those who have slogged through my published works that make use of legal theory (check here, here, here, and here for examples) and my Contracts students can't help (I hope) to have observed that I make use of three perspectives (normative, situational, and existential) to highlight various aspects of the law of [fill in the blank], to relate those aspects of the law to each other, to avoid squeezing the round pegs of the law into square holes, and to provide a framework for unifying an understanding of the law in relation to its transcendent foundation and eschatological goal, the Triune God confessed in the Christian faith.

Some folks (particularly students; no one else has an officially sponsored forum to complain) have professed some difficulty in understanding exactly what I'm talking (or writing) about. Of course, I attribute challenges to comprehension to the current state of undergraduate education and not to the style or substance of what I write. Others may have different opinions.

No single source of my perspectival approach to the analysis and critique of the law is greater than John Frame and, in particular, his Doctrine of the Knowledge of God. I have never met Frame and have corresponded with no more than an email but I have found his "multiperspectival" approach to be quite useful.

In any event, just today I came across a very short piece on the internet written by Frame titled "What Is Tri-Perspectivalism?" You can read it here. It's a bit theological; it certainly doesn't address its application to the law. But I believe it can prove helpful to the beginner and interesting to the curious.