There Is a Wideness in God's Justice

Abstract

There Is a Wideness in God's Justice Daniel Philpott A Christian inquiring into the meaning of justice cannot elude the classical definition: the firm and constant will to render another his due.1 In the thirteenth century, Saint Thomas Aquinas retrieved this definition from Roman law and developed it with a combination of profundity, rigor, and common sense that would imprint it on the Christian tradition for ensuing centuries.2 As recently as 1994, the Catechism of the Catholic Church espoused the definition.3 Broader still, core features of justice in constitutional liberal democracies take the form of justice as due. Rights, which have an elephantine presence in these regimes as well as in international law, are claims to what is due. Retribution, another common feature of justice in these settings, is giving a criminal her due. Equality, fairness, respect, and liberty also shape the meaning of justice in law and politics in modern liberal democracies. Despite due's venerable record, however, it does not exhaust the Christian tradition's teachings about justice, especially those found in the Bible. [End Page 1147] From the standpoint of biblical justice, justice as due is unduly truncated. Biblical justice includes qualities of flourishing and relationship that stand outside justice as due. Today's defenders of justice as due commonly hold that rights are integral to justice while virtues like generosity, love, care, mercy, and compassion exceed justice; that retribution, which is justice, contrasts with mercy, which exceeds, tempers, or compromises justice; that justice pertains to exterior action, not interior motives; that justice is public whereas other virtues are private. Biblical justice does not bear these dichotomies. It is far wider. It does not dispense with but rather incorporates rights and retribution, but also exceeds these principles. Comprehensiveness and holism are its hallmarks. The justice found in the Bible I call the justice of right relationship. In this article, my aim is to define it, identify its crucial qualities, and compare it with the justice of rendering another her due. I pursue these aims in two parallel parts, corresponding to two valences of justice, which, following philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff, I refer to as "primary justice," meaning a condition or state of affairs, and "rectifying justice," a response to past wrongdoing.4 In each of these parts, for each valence of justice, I explain what the justice of due means and then argue that the justice of the Bible enfolds this meaning but also contains a wider set of obligations, resulting in a more holistic concept. While the Bible is the main source for the justice of right relationship, natural law and sacred Tradition help to explain it. The thought of Aquinas is particularly important for the argument. Not only did he define, extensively discuss, and secure enduring clout for justice as due, but he also drew capaciously from the Bible and sometimes invoked a justice that appears wider than and stands in tension with justice as due. I close the essay by adumbrating some political and social implications of Biblical justice in a world dominated by due. Justice as a State of Right Relationship What is most worth stressing about biblical justice, and what most distinguishes it from the justice of rendering what is due, is its comprehensive quality. Justice in the Bible describes multiple dimensions of right relationship that add up to all dimensions of right relationship: God's actions toward humans; obligations that humans have toward God; obligations between individual humans; obligations of individual humans toward society; obligations of society, especially as performed by judges and kings, toward humans; humans' obligations toward the natural world; and the [End Page 1148] character of a human soul that is rightly ordered toward its relationships with other humans and with God. Relationship means that two or more persons—including groups and entire societies—are linked together through principles, duties, virtues, and bonds that define how they ought to interact with one another.5 Let us focus first on primary justice, that is, the sense in which the justice of right relationship is a state of affairs. The Bible's Wide Justice The case that justice in the Bible means comprehensive right relationship begins...