The Relevance of Biblical Justice to Industry

Abstract

Justice, according to Aristotle, is giving to every man his own. But what is a man's own, and how is it to be determined relative to what belongs to other men? We call fair distribution between persons by the name of justice, and in doing so we acknowledge that justice stands over and between men as something prior to and outside a man's will or even the State's will. The moment we invoke ‘justice’, we in fact appeal to a supreme Being as the source of justice. Either God disposes of the world, determines the order of His creatures, and endows them with the qualities necessary to that order, or justice is based on power, and the expression of justice is the edict of the State. Either there is a Supreme Lawgiver who is the source of Jus or right and therefore of law, or there is no objective right but only the will of the powerful. Hugo Grotius agrees with the Stoics in deriving Jus from Jove.