Beyond the Abyss 7

Traditional Christian thinking has a fundamental belief in retributive justice at work in its concepts about grace, forgiveness, and even love. Let’s be clear here:

The sacrificial system required, for God to forgive, a sacrifice that cost the person something and someone had to pay; both satisfaction and substitutionary atonement theories conceptualize God’s grace, God’s love, and God’s forgiveness occurring through and in and after the death of the Son.

Sharon Baker is calling into question whether this is the best understanding of justice and forgiveness in the Bible.

She points this out: retributive justice does not require forgiveness, and if forgiveness later occurs, it is meaningless because the offense has already been set right through the retributive measures.

Is the failure here to see that God absorbs the punishment and it is we who are forgiven? Or do you think this is a failure at all?

Do you think the pervasive biblical concept of forgiveness includes a making things right through retribution first?

Over against retributive justice, Baker calls us to see a restorative justice at work in the Bible. This in her book: Razing Hell: Rethinking Everything You’ve Been Taught About God’s Wrath and Judgment.

Resorative justice means reconciliation, peace, etc. What is restorative justice in the Bible? She sketches seven themes:

1. Justice as nonviolence: Isa 5:7; 59:3-4.

2. Justice as righteousness: Prov 8:20.

3. Justice as mercy: Mic 6:8.

4. Justice as redemptive: Isa 1:27

5. Justice as a Great Light: Isa 59:9-11

6. Justice as satisfaction: Prov 21:3; Isa 42:1-3

7. Justice as seen in Jesus: Matt 5:43-48

Problems for me: it seems this is rooted in a search for English words in an English translation; I can’t see that she’s talking about mishpat or tsedeq or dikaiosune. Odd for me that she can discuss seven themes and not talk about Torah at all, for justice requires a standard and I can’t quite tell what she thinks that standard is. These themes are important, but they are only themes and not a full sketch of the various word groups in the Bible.

She doesn’t think we can hold on to a traditional view of hell and believe in restorative justice.

Baker surprised me when she then turns to the experiencing of restorative justice because it requires repentance and redemption. The encounter with God, wherein the holiness of God is experienced, is inherent to justice as she sees it — and I have to admit this gets very, very close to retributive justice.

It means coming face-to-face with the shameful depravity of personal sin by coming face-to-face with the one who has the right and the power to punish but who instead loves and forgives. Love and forgiveness instead of anger and punishment bring repentance and redemption, and in this manner, justice is served.

I’m convinced a phenomenology of her sense of “encounter” with God is well-nigh a retributive theory of justice leading to a restorative justice. Maybe I’m wrong, but it sure looks like that to me.