VERDICT
1983
Essay 6
The
Scandal of God's Justice
Part 1
Robert
D. Brinsmead
1983
·
The
Linguistic Superiority,
The Importance and the Meaning
of the Word "Justice".
·
Resolving
an Apparent
Anomaly in God's justice.
"For my thoughts are
not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways", declares the Lord. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways
higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." --Isa 55:8,9. Perhaps nothing
illustrates this passage of Scripture better than the biblical concept of
justice.
The justice of God is so
contrary to man's idea of justice that God's justice
repeatedly takes man by surprise. God's justice is so amazing that it often
leaves even his own people profoundly embarrassed and offended. Luther
acknowledged that he could not understand Paul's gospel at first because he did
not understand what the apostle meant when he said that the gospel revealed
God's justice (Rom.
The Reformer's concept of
Gods justice was so influenced by Latin or Western thought that he could not
understand why God's justice should cause him to sing and shout for joy. The
Reformation was born when Luther began to understand the surprisingly kind face
of God's justice. In the subsequent four hundred years Protestantism did little
to develop Luther's path finding concept of God's justice.
Traditional Protestant
theology was controlled more by Western views of Justice than by the Justice
which God revealed in the gospel of his Son. Rather than allowing God's justice
to radically redefine our understanding of justice, we have generally distorted
the Bible with our own ideas.
In this investigation into
the meaning of justice, we are not concerned with theological side issues. We
are striking at the heart of the theological systems of Western Christianity.
Such questions as the character of God, the meaning of the atonement and the
nature of Christian ethics hinge on the biblical concept of justice.
The Linguistic Superiority,
The Importance and the
Meaning of the Word "Justice".
The English language has the
word group righteous, righteousness and right-wise, and another word group
just, justification and justify. The first group is derived from the
Anglo-Saxon, while the second is from the Latin. The word righteousness is
generally reserved for church and "God-talk". Justice is used to
discuss concrete social and political issues on earth.
These linguistic
differences tend to obscure the fact that the Bible does not use one word for
righteousness and another for justice. And furthermore, neither do most other
languages today. The Old Testament has one word-sadaq-for
righteousness and justice. New Testament Greek also has one word dikaiosune. Thus,"justice is
righteousness and righteousness is justice".
The Roman Catholic Douay Version of the Bible generally translates the Old
Testament sadaq and the New Testament dikaiosune as "justice," while the Protestant
King James Version usually translates them as "righteousness".
The word justice never
appears in the King James Version of the New Testament, while the word
righteousness is seldom found in the Douay Version.
Catholic dictionaries of
the Bible generally prefer to discuss sadaq and dikaiosune under the heading of "justice", while
Protestant dictionaries prefer "righteousness".
For the following reasons,
we suggest that the word justice is preferable to the word righteousness when
translating from the biblical Hebrew and Greek:
1. Righteousness has become
too "churchy" and other-worldly. Justice is a word which ordinary
people understand and use in their concrete earthly existence. The Bible speaks
in the language of the common people rather than in the esoteric vocabulary of
the scholar.
2. Righteousness tends to
convey a heavenly piety which misses the earthy, robust call for concrete
social ethics found in the Old Testament prophets.
3. When the word justice is
substituted for righteousness, familiar texts often have more impact. Some
become quite startling. For example, the psalmist's appeal for forgiveness on
the ground of God's justice (Ps. 51:14) seems to contradict our association of
God's justice with giving a person what he deserves. The word justice tends to
be more shocking than righteousness-but the shock is often needed to bring the
Bible to life.
4. When we use the word
justice rather than righteousness, we are not so apt to miss the obvious fact
that the biblical words justify and justification are
simply grammatical variations of the word justice. As A. E. McCrath
has said, "The concept of justification is inextricably linked with that
of justice, both linguistically and theologically".
5. In the Hebrew, for
example, justify is simply the verbal form of the word sadaq
(justice), i.e., it means doing justice or having justice done to or for an
object. The Importance of Justice (sadaq) is arguably
the most important Old Testament word which describes the character and
activity of God (see 2 Chron. 12:6: Neh. 9:8: Ps. 7:9: 103:17: 111:3; Jer
9:24; Dan. 9:14: Zeph. 3:5; Zech. 8:8). It is also
the most apt single word which distinguishes God's people from the rest of
mankind. There is absolutely no concept in the Old Testament with so central a
significance for all the relationships of human life as that of [sadaq-justice]
6. Righteousness [justice] .. is for the Hebrews the
fundamental character of God.
7. Justice is the heart of
biblical theology. It is central to the message of the Bible. Our understanding
of God's justice will therefore affect our view of the atonement, the last
things, the church and the nature of Christian existence. If we radically
change our concept of justice--and that is the purpose of this essay we must
radically change our concept of the atonement, the church and Christian life.
The Basic Meaning of justice, while the biblical concept of justice has many
facets, we intend to isolate the basic meaning of the Old Testament word sadaq. Most scholars today warn against reading the Western
idea of justice back into the Old Testament word sadaq.
The equation of Hebrew and Western understandings of justice is frequently
implicit in theological works: however, this assumption is utterly untenable,
and is to be rejected.
8. Righteousness [justice]
as it is understood in the OT is a thoroughly Hebraic concept, foreign to the
Western mind and at variance with the common under-standing of the term.
9. A TWENTIETH-CENTURY
reader encountering the word righteousness [justice] in Semitic texts must
always be careful to adjust his thought and not to place this term in the
categories to which our word righteousness has accustomed us.
10. There seems to be a
consensus among Old Testament scholars that sadaq has
two basic meanings (which are two aspects of one idea): 1. Sadaq has to do with relationships. Most scholars now
follow von Rad, who says that sadaq
"is out and out a term denoting relationship,"
11. i.e..
loyalty to a relationship. Thus, E. R. Achtemeier says: Righteousness [justice] is in the OT the fulfillment
of the demands of a relationship, whether that relationship be
with men or with God. Each man is set within a multitude of relationships: king
with people, judge with complainants. priests with
worshipers, common man with family, tribesman with community, community with
resident alien and poor, all with God. And each of these relationships brings
with it specific demands, the fulfillment of which constitutes righteousness.
The demands may differ from relationship to relationship: righteousness in one
situation may be unrighteousness in another. Further, there is no norm of
righteousness outside the relationship itself. When God or man fulfils the
conditions imposed upon him by a relationship he is, in OT terms, righteous.
12. When a party
fulfils the demands of a relationship, that party conforms to what ought to be.
Then a state of sadaq (justice) exists. Thus, sadaq "concerns the 'right order of things' -- i.e.
the correct ordering of the world according to the divine intention."
13. Thus, some scholars say
that justice is conformity to the created order of things. When even weights
and measurements are true to what they ought to be, they are said to be sadaq, i.e., just (Lev. 19:36: Esek.
45:10). When sacrifices are what they ought to be, they also are said to be sadaq (Ps.4:
As far as the Bible is
concerned, the special revelation of God takes place in history. History is the
stuff of revelation. God is revealed by his mighty acts in history. The Old
Testament is a record of God's mighty acts. The most dominant event in
The mighty act of the
Exodus showed who God was and what he was like in the past, in the present and
for the future. In the Old Testament the true worship of God--i.e., giving God
his worth consists in reciting or rehearsing the mighty acts of God, especially
recounting what God did in the Exodus. Thus:
Shout with joy to God, all
the earth! Sing to the glory of his name; offer him glory and praise! Say to
God, "How awesome are your deeds! So great is your power that your enemies
cringe before you. All the earth bows down to you; they sing praise to you,
they sing praise to your name." Selah Come and see what God has done, how
awesome his works in man's behalf! He turned the sea into dry land, they passed
through the river on foot -- come, let us rejoice in him. -Ps 66:1-6.
The biblical word which
most adequately and most frequently sums up God's mighty acts is the word sadaq (justice). In these acts God's justice is published
for all to see.
My mouth will tell of your
righteousness [sadaq -justice], of your salvation all
day long though I know not its measure I will come and proclaim your mighty
acts. O Sovereign Lord; I will proclaim your righteousness [sadaq-justice],
yours alone. Since my youth, O God, you have taught me, and to this day I
declare your marvelous deeds. Ps.71:15-17.
Great is the Lord and most
worthy of praise: his greatness no one can fathom. One generation will commend
your works to another; they will tell of your mighty acts. They will speak of
the glorious splendor of your majesty, and I will meditate on your wonderful
works. They will tell of the power of your awesome works, and I will proclaim
your great deeds they will celebrate your abundant goodness and joyfully sing
of your righteousness [sadaq-justice]. Ps. 145:37:
see also Judges
As one reviews these and
many other passages which witness to the justice of God in his mighty acts, one
fact is made prominent by its remarkable repetitiveness:
God's justice is associated
with his acts of salvation and deliverance, and with his deeds of mercy and
forgiveness.
Justice = Salvation.
Deliver me in your [sadaq-justice].Ps. 31:1
My mouth will tell of your sadaq [justice], of your salvation all day long. Ps 71:15.
I am bringing my sadaq [justice] near; ...and my salvation will not be
delayed. Isa 46:13.
My sadaq
[justice] draws near speedily, my salvation is on the way, and my arm will
bring justice [sadaq] to the nations. Isa. 51:5
For
he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of sadaq [justice].
-Isa. 61:10.
In 1 Samuel 12:7-12 God's
justice plainly means his saving deeds in the deliverance of
Justice = Deliverance of
the Oppressed Perhaps the justice of God is most prominent in those passages of
Scripture which speak of delivering the oppressed. For example:
The Lord reigns forever; he
has established his throne for judgment. He will judge the world in
righteousness; he will govern the peoples with justice. The Lord is a refuge
for the oppressed. A stronghold in times of trouble.
Ps 9:7-9
The Lord is King for ever
and ever; the nations will perish from his land. You hear, O Lord, the desire
of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry, defending
the fatherless and the oppressed, in order that man, who is of the earth may
terrify no more. Ps. 10:16-18
You rescue the poor from
those too strong for them, the poor and needy from those who rob them."
-Ps 35:10.
The Lord works sadaq [justice] and mishpat
[judgment] for all the oppressed Ps 103:6. He upholds the cause of the
oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free, the Lord
gives sight to the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down, the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the
alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of
the wicked. Ps 146:79.
The Old Testament never
tires of reciting God's deed in delivering the oppressed Hebrew slaves from
If we may anticipate the
New Testament gospel here, we would simply indicate that the resurrection is
the preeminent event which proves that Gods justice works deliverance for all
that are oppressed. Jesus was the most oppressed man who ever lived. The
oppression of every son and daughter of Adam was summed up in him. But God's
justice raised him from the dead in the real exodus of human history. (Luke
9:31)
Resolving an
Apparent Anomaly
in God's justice.
In Western thinking it is
difficult to see that deeds of salvation and deliverance toward sinful people
could be called an exercise of God's justice. We can readily understand that the
overwhelming kindness toward undeserving people could be called
"mercy," but to call it "justice" seems very strange. The
consistency of biblical thought, however, will become clear if we relate God's
saving acts to the basic meaning of sadaq.
Fundamentally, justice
means faithfulness to a relationship, or being true to what God intended one to
be. When justice is applied to God, it therefore means:
1. God is faithful to his
covenant promise. God's covenant is not a conditional contract bilaterally concluded
by two parties. It is a unilateral commitment or promise on Gods part to act
toward his chosen covenant partner with overwhelming kindness and generosity.
From the beginning God has
had a purpose of grace toward mankind (2 Tim. 1:9). He has had a commitment to fulfill
this gracious purpose at any cost to himself. Thus, when God exercises his
saving mercy toward sinful people, he is simply fulfilling his covenant
promise.
Justice is God faithfully
carrying out just what divine love had pledged to do. He is faithful in all he
does.
The Lord loves sadaq [justice] Ps. 33:4, 5.
Will their [
It is not as though God's word
had failed --Rom 9:6.
In these and many other
passages Gods faithfulness to his covenant promise and his justice are equated.
In both the OT and Paul, therefore, the primary meaning of divine justice is
Gods merciful fidelity to His promises of eschatological salvation for His
people despite His people's sins. The justice of God meant His fidelity to His
covenantal promises.
2. Justice is the ordering
of things according to the divine intention. Part of this "right order of
things" is violated by the very existence of the poor and needy and
especially of the oppressed: therefore, if sadaq
[justice] is to be established God must deliver these unfortunates from their
plight; for this reason, God's justice comes to be associated with God's
liberating acts of salvation.
God's justice is even
biased in favor of the poor and oppressed. This does not imply any unjust
partiality. Justice would teach us that people who have suffered special
deprivation should have special attention.
A mother of a large family
was once asked which of her children she loved the most. She replied, "The
one who is sick, until he is well: the one who is away, until he is home; the
one who is disaffected, until he is reconciled. This is how it is with God's
justice.
3. Another way to show that
Gods justice is equated with his saving mercy is to show that justice is God's
being true to himself. From the beginning God pledged himself to be
overwhelmingly kind to undeserving people. He would be this because his love
called him that way. Wherever human misery and need would
exist, even though self-inflicted.
God would be irrevocably
committed to the wretched. As Paul said, “He will remain faithful, for he
cannot disown himself. (2 Tim. 2:13). God's justice may therefore be defined as
Gods acting for the sake of his name which is a biblical way of saying that God
remains God. John Piper cites such passages as Psalm 143:1, 2: Isaiah 43:25:
44:23; 46:13; 48:9-11 and Daniel 9:7. 13-19 to show that God's justice is his
absolute faithfulness always to act for his own name's sake and for the
preservation and display of his glory."
Contrasting God's Concept
of Justice and the Western Concept of Justice we are now ready to contrast the
biblical concept of justice and the Western or Latin concept of justice. This
will demonstrate the truth in E. R. Achtemeier's
claim that the biblical view of justice is "foreign to the Western mind
and at variance with the common understanding of the term."
1. It Is Not Distributive
Justice. The Latin concept of justice was called justitia
distributiva (distributive justice). This meant
giving every man exactly what he deserves or merits. This became the standard
Western idea of justice. It influenced the way the Western church read the
Bible and interpreted many of the great doctrines of the Christian faith.
The justice of God's mighty
acts, however, is not based on either the merits or demerits of people. If that
were true, God's acts could not be called acts of justice. God's justice is
based on his being true to what he has promised in his gracious covenant. If
God is to be just, he must be true to his commitment to help and to save
wretched, undeserving people.
This biblical idea of
justice, first presented in the Old Testament, is beautiful and powerful in its
utter simplicity. Nevertheless, Western theology insists that justice must
somehow be related to what man deserves (distributive justice).
In order to preserve this
supposed justice of God, Western theology has had to resort to legal
manipulation in an act of atonement in which God is forced to respect the
principle of distributive justice.
Or even worse, God becomes
a celestial Shylock so passionately committed to the principle of distributive
justice that he must have his pound of flesh (this is called (satisfying God's
justice") before he can forgive.
2. It Is Not Justice in
Tension with Mercy. In Western theology justice is the opposite of mercy. The
classical Latin theory of the atonement--generally regarded as orthodox in the
Western church-is based on a supposed tension between justice and mercy. It is
said that this tension between justice and mercy was overcome by Christ, who
reconciled the prerogatives of both by his death on the cross.
But it is not difficult to
show from the Old Testament that sadaq often has the
meaning of mercy A.E. McGrath, for example, shows that the translators of the
Septuagint were repeatedly forced to use the Greek word eleemosune
(mercy) to translate the Hebrew word sadaq. When the
Bible was translated into Latin, this became misericordia-meaning
mercy. Because the force of the original Hebrew was lost, there was a tendency
to set justice and mercy in opposition. McGrath says: It is clear that a
considerable misunderstanding of the Old Testament text could result at this
point, perhaps resulting in the setting up of a tension between God's misericordia [mercy] and iustitia
[justice] where no such tension is warranted by the text itself. In light of
this evidence, we need to rethink the traditional ideas about the cross
"satisfying God's justice." The great emphasis in the New Testament
is on fulfilling his ancient promise concerning mercy and salvation. There is
no tension between justice and mercy here. God satisfied justice by doing for
poor, lost, sinful humanity everything he had planned from the beginning.
3. It Is Not Primarily a
Punitive justice. Justice which is distributive (i.e., giving to every man his
due) and which is the opposite of mercy inevitably becomes equated with God's
act of punishing men for their sins. If forgiveness is extended to them, it is
only because the punishment fell on
What fell on Christ is
called "justice" (according to the traditional interpretation of
Romans
Later, Luther came to see
from the Old Testament evidence that God's justice is primarily saving and
liberating. McGrath states that "the Hebrew [sadaq]
cannot bear the sense 'to punish' or 'to condemn'.
E. R Achtemeier
says: Yahweh's righteousness is never solely an act of condemnation or punishment
There is no verse in the OT in which Yahweh'S
righteousness is equated with his vengeance on the sinner, and not even Isa 5:16 or 10:22 should be understood in such a manner.
Because his righteousness
is his restoration of the right to him from whom it has been taken, it at the
same time includes punishment of the evildoer; but the punishment is an
integral part of the restoration. Only because Yahweh saves does he condemn.
His righteousness is first and foremost saving. He is a "righteous God and
a Savior".
While same scholars argue
(on the basis of such texts as 1 Kings 8:32; 2 Chronicles 12:6: Isaiah 5:13-17:
10:22; Lamentations 1:8 and Daniel 9:13-19) that God's sadaq
can sometimes be equated with God's vengeance on the sinner, it is still true that
God's sadaq generally has the positive meaning of
deliverance, help and salvation.
Yet deliverance of the
oppressed implies destruction of the oppressor. As Stendahl declares: When God's judgment falls, it is mercy
to those wronged and doom for those who have done wrong or perpetuated and
profited from the wrong of others.
4. It Is Not
a justice Which Is Primarily Associated with Gloom and Doom. Distributive
justice--justice which is the opposite of mercy, justice primarily concerned
with the punishment of sinners inevitably has overtones of gloom and doom. The
faithful may sing of mercy, but even angels are supposed to tremble at the
thought of justice. In the tradition of the Western church, justice and
judgment primarily carry the connotations of gloom and doom. In the Bible,
however, the justice of God is something to sing and shout about.
The people of the Old
Testament often exult in songs of unrestrained joy as they experience or
anticipate the manifestation of God's justice (Judges 5:11: Ps. 96:10-13:
97:6-12; 98; 99). The Old Testament especially associates justice with the
coming reign of God.
In the Bible the
If we read his parables and
teaching this way, we will be forcefully impressed that God's justice is indeed
an overwhelming surprise which completely overturns our human concepts of
justice.
Unless
otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the New
international Version
1.
See Martin Luther. "Preface to the Complete Edition of Luther's Latin
Writings:
2.
See Sidney Rooy. "Righteousness,
and Justice." Evangelical Review of Theology 6.no. 2 (Oct. 1982): 260-65
3.
The English language distinguishes between "justice' and 'righteousness'
in the world one speaks about justice, and in the church one speaks about
righteousness. Rut Hebrew, Greek, and Latin do not offer that distinction"
(Krister Stendahl. judgment
and Mercy in Alexander J. McKelway and E David
Willis, eds., The Context of Contemporary Theology: Essays in Honor of Paul Lebmann [Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1974], p 149)
4.
Rooy. "Righteousness and Justice." p 265
5.
A.E. McGrath, Justice and Justification: Sematic and
Juristic Aspects of the Christian Doctrine of Justification. "Scottish
Journal of Theology 35, no. 5 (1982): 404-5
6.
Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology vol I. The Theology of Israel's Historical Traditions, tr.
D.M.G. Stalker (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1962), p70.
7.
Alan Richardson. An introduction to the Theology of the New Testment (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers. 1958).
P 79.
8.
McGrath, "Justice and Justification," p. 405.
9.
E.R. Achtemeier, "Righteousness in the OT,"
George Arthur Buttrick, ed., The
Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962), 4:80.
10.
H. Cazelles, quoted in Lester J. Kuyper,
"Righteousness and Salvation." Scottish Journal of
Theology 30. No 3(1977): 233.
11.
12.
Achtemeier, "Righteousness in the OT," p
80. See also George Eldon Ladd, who defines sadaq as
"faithfulness to a relationship" (George Eldon Ladd, A Theology of
the New Testament [
13.
McGrath, "Justice and Justification," p 407.
14.
A.E. McGrath states, "Justice is essentially a theological concept, reflexing the rectitude of the created order" (ibid, p
415). Graeme Goldsworthy declares, "The order of creation is the paradigm
of righteousness, not as a static or abstract idea, but as a dynamic relational
structure of reality determined by the sovereign Creator." (Graeme Goldsworthy, "The Old Testament and Christian
Existence." Verdict 3, no 1 [Mar. 1980]:31)
15.
Art. "justice of God," New Catholic
Encyclopedia (Palatine, 111.: Publishers Guide, 1966), 8:74.
16.
Art. "Justice of Men," New Catholic Encylopedia,
8:75.
17. Mc Grath,
"justice and Justification," p 407.
18.
See John Piper, "The Demonstration of the Righteousness of God in Romans
19.
Achtemeier, "Righteousness in the OT," p.
80.
20.
The famous Greek version of the Old Testament (c.200 B.C.) was called the
Septuagint or LXX because tradition suggests that is was the work of seventy
Jewish translators.
21.
See Ps. 24:5; 33:5; 35:24; 103:6; Isa. 56:1; Dan.
9:24.
22.
McGrath, "Justice and Justification," p. 412. McGrath presents the
following table to demonstrate that the Septuagint translators employed two
main terms to translate sadaq: dikaiosune
and eleemosune, the choice depending upon the
apparent meaning of sadaq in the passage concerned
(p. 410):
23.
Ibid., p. 411.
24.
Achtemeier, "Righteousness in the OT," p
83.
25.
Stendahl, "Judgment and Mercy," p 150
Copyright © 1983-2008 Robert D. Brinsmead