by I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about the connection between justice, judgment and love in Christian theology. This post is particular to Christian theology, but I’m very interested to hear from my non-Christian colleagues about how they see the themes of justice and judgment in relation to their faith traditions.
When I was in litigation practice, I always felt a bit of awe when I received an order from a Judge, even regarding something mundane like the exchange of documents in a civil case. That piece of paper represented the power and authority of the United States government compelling some person or corporation to behave a certain way, on pain of sanctions for contempt of court. When is the exercise of such authority legitimate and just? This is perhaps the most important question any legal system must address.
In my little corner of Christianity, American evangelicalism, we tend to focus quite a bit on God’s final judgment — the ultimate eschatological question of “who’s in and who’s out” of heaven. I’m worried that this typical faith narrative of ours lacks much meaningful representation of how justice, judgment, and love relate to each other or to God’s character. As I see it, the problem with this narrative isn’t that God judges; it’s that the god who is depicted as judge seems to lack any sense of justice or any attribute of love. Here is a god not unlike the gods of ancient mythology — arbitrary, distant, angry, petty, bent on destruction.
It seems to me that our Evangelical god sometimes isn’t really the Triune God revealed in Jesus Christ. As my theologian friend Scot McKnight notes in his book A Community Called Atonement, “[j]ustice . . . cannot be reduced to revenge or retribution. Instead, it is the redemptive grace of God at work in God’s community of faith that preemptively strikes with grace, love, peace, and forgiveness to restore others to selves, and to restore selves to others.” God’s justice portrayed in the Christian scriptures is a justice of restoration. It is not arbitrary, but rather flows from the relational character of the Triune God, which is a relationship of perfect fellowship and love.
A United States federal district court judge’s orders are legitimate because and to the extent that they are constructed within the communal framework of our constitutional social contract. God’s judgments are legitimate because they are the extension of the communal life of God into the world He created to share in that life. But if God is love, why would his justice ever exclude anyone from enjoying the benefits of the restored community?
I think Hans Boersma, in his rich book Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross, offers a helpful (and very Augustinian) response:
Just as divine hospitality requires at least some violence to make it flourish, so also God’s love requires that he become angry when his love is violated. For God not to get angry when he is rejected by people made in his image (and redeemed in Christ) would demonstrate indifference, not love. . . . Love, it seems, requires passionate anger toward anything that would endanger the relationship of love.
Justice motivated by love requires a sort of “violence.” If God is to restore the community of peace, He must melt away that which opposes peace, just as the refiner melts away that which corrupts the strength and beauty of the metal. “For he [God] is like a refiner’s fire” (Mal. 3:2).
But how does this particularly Christian and Trinitarian understanding of justice, judgment and love translate into theories of culture and of positive law? We Christians obviously have a dark history of presuming license to employ physical violence against others — particularly our Jewish neighbors, but also fellow Christians with whom we disagree on matters of faith and practice — in order to establish what we think God’s community of peace should look like on this earth. Indeed, St. Augustine’s tract against the Donatists itself represents the temptation to appropriate the mechanisms of state violence in the service of a specific Christian view of the peaceable kingdom.
On this point I envy my Catholic friends who can point to Balthasar and the nouvelle theologie behind the Second Vatican Council for a rich contemporary understanding of justice, judgment, and pluralism. I don’t think the usual evangelical default to Kuyper and “common grace” helps very much. In fact, for Christian scholars of the law and culture in the evangelical tradition, I think developing a meaningful theology of justice and judgment in a pluralistic world is one of our most pressing tasks.
Great post. My biggest struggle as a child (and still, to a lesser extent, today) was maintaining a positive image of God — much less an image that I could love with all my heart, soul, and mind — when the Final Judgment seemed so doggone unjust. I like the image you offer of “melting away that which opposes peace,” though I’m not sure if it’s easy to apply to all the Old Testament portrayals of God’s judgment.
Restoration is the core of Eastern Christian atonement. There is an interesting tract that has made the internet circles for some time. It is not wholly accurate, and I must admit it bears some hostility toward the West that it neither apologies for, nor properly supports. However, for me and many others it provides a corrective measure after living under the yoke of Anselm of Canterbury for so long.
http://www.stnectariospress.com/parish/river_of_fire.htm
As with many things, I think Dallas Willard is very helpful with the notion of Hell. This is from an interview in the just published edition of Conversations:
“[Hell] is God’s best for some people. It’s the best God can do for those who don’t like
Him. The worst would be to make them be with Him. Now, what that means is separation from God because people in hell want to be away from God, and He lets them.
“Hell is not something God enjoys. He is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to everlasting life. That is His wish. God is not trying to keep people out of heaven; he is trying to get them in, and I believe that He will admit anyone who, in His
judgment, can stand it…”
For the full interview, dealing mostly with the issue of the atonement, see: http://conversationsjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/DallasWillardInterview.pdf
Bob — thanks, that’s a neat interview. His concept is very much like the Eastern Orthodox idea and also like C.S. Lewis’s. I also really, really wanted to resonate with Willard’s idea of “Christian pluralism” in “Knowing Christ Today.” What Willard basically seems to be suggesting is that people can incline themselves towards God — whether they know God specifically as the Triune God revealed in Christ or not — and that God will save all such people who want to be with him. This is similar to Balthasar and Post-Vatican-II Catholic soteriology. Obviously, however, this is inconsistent with the Reformed soteriology that underlies most contemporary Evangelical theology. It’s synergistic — or so it seems to me. I’m not sure how it squares with the classical, Augustinian view of sin and judgment.
Speaking of Dallas Willard’s “Knowing Christ Today,” here is a quote:
“What this Christian pluralism says is that, because God is who Jesus Christ shows him to be, any person who in God’s eyes it seems right for him to accept certainly will be accepted by him. That acceptance will in every case be an act of mercy. This is a faith in God that excludes boasting of any kind – especially religious boasting – and places everyone on an even footing before God’s mercy (Rom. 3:27–31).
“Christian pluralism thus concedes that people of “other” religions or no religion at all may be “right with God.” But from within the resources of its knowledge it insists that, if that is so in a given case, it will not be because the individuals concerned merely profess the beliefs and sustain the practices thought to be essential to recognized members of their particular religious culture – including Christians. It will not be because of their religion. Rather, it will be because their lives are centered on that same love that is expressed in the person and teachings of Jesus and of his people at their best. It will be because God is love.” (181-2)
I heard John Stott say something similar in the mid-70s. Stott said that if others are saved, it will be because they have expressed faith in God, to the best of their knowledge. I prefer these to the notion that only those who consent to certain intellectual truths will be saved. These seem to me to be consistent with Jesus’ teaching about there being “other sheep” that you do not know. It can be reconciled with Jesus’ teaching that “no one comes to the Father but by me” in that it is Jesus’ atoning work that saves all who are saved (whether they know him or not).