Casting himself as the anti-Clarence Thomas - the US Supreme Court judge famous for saying almost nothing during hearings - Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng attempted to clarify statements he made during his keynote speech last week at Stellenbosch University.
Jurists usually let their judgments do the talking. The head of South Africa's judiciary would have been better served by letting his comments about the need to stem fornication, adultery, theft and corruption by infusing the law with religion fade slowly from our collective memory - after the customary guffaws and choking on breakfasts.
Instead, he provided further contradictions and raised more questions about whether he has the imagination and circumspection to be the foremost jurist in a secular country that has a constitution that is constantly being interpreted and imagined towards an egalitarian, progressive future.
By all accounts, Mogoeng is a (bureaucratic) doer, not a (constitutional) dreamer.
He is someone well suited to making the judiciary efficient and accessible - and the signs are that he is already achieving this.
He has made it clear that his Christian faith does not affect his legal logic, and this is apparent in his lines of questioning and his rulings at the Constitutional Court thus far.
Yet, in his inability to grasp that his call contradicts the jurisprudence developed by the court that he heads, that religion should not influence law-making, Mogoeng is found seriously wanting.
In suggesting that "we can only become a better people if religion could be allowed to influence the laws that govern our everyday lives, starting with the constitution", he is making worrying suggestions about the future South Africa that he envisions.
A South Africa less vibrant, contradictory and effervescent because of the strictures of religions that our constitution acknowledges and respects, but refuses to bow down to.
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