U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Bishop Robert Barron recently discussed the similarity between liberal textual interpretations of the Bible and the U.S. Constitution during an episode of Barron’s podcast that aired earlier this week.

Barrett, who was appointed by President Donald Trump to serve on the high court in 2020, also issued a warning regarding free speech in the United Kingdom and echoed the constitutional reasoning of her mentor, the late Justice Antonin Scalia, about why she voted to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Barron, who serves as bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Winona-Rochester in Minnesota, noted during his interview with Barrett that “there are very interesting overlaps” between both biblical and legal hermeneutics, which he defined as “the philosophy of interpretation.”

He noted that the father of hermeneutics is Friedrich Schleiermacher, a 19th-century Protestant German theologian who attempted to reconcile Christianity with the criticisms of the Enlightenment.

Barron traced some of the present-day battles over textual criticism at all levels to his influence, noting that Schleiermacher believed “the point of the interpreter is to know the mind of the author better than he knew his own mind.” He offered the examples of how hermeneutics informed interpretation of the Bible, as well as other literature.

From Christian Post