Religion & Law

Today is the last meeting of my seminar in Catholic Social Thought.  We are reading and discussing (then) Cardinal Ratzinger's "Values in a Time of Upheaval".  Early in the book, he observes that Jewish (and then the Christian) understanding of history represented a break with the more static, or cyclical models of the past (or of some other traditions). This observation makes me wonder, "what is the significance of the Christian understanding of 'history' for the legal enterprise, and / or for 'Catholic Legal Theory?'"  To ask this is not to say, "what has been the actual history of Christian legal institutions, or Christian thinking about law?"  Nor is to suggest simply that laws and legal institutions should be (and inevitably will be) shaped by, and will reflect, history context.  It is to ask, given what Christians believe history *is*, are there implications for the law-thing?