For 20 years now, this blog has maintained the distinction between a “blog” and a “post.”
From March 30, 2012, “Healing and the justice of God“:
What does it mean, according to this writer, to say “God is just”? It means that God “will never let guilt go unpunished.” That’s not a description of justice. It’s a description of vengeance. Those are not the same thing.
Note that this definition of justice prohibits mercy and grace. God “can never let sin go unpunished,” he writes — the emphasis there is original, stressing God’s incapacity for grace. That’s a weird leap, but it’s the logical conclusion of defining justice as merely inescapable punishment.
There are three big problems (at least) with thinking of justice in this way. The first is that it suggests that grace, mercy, pardon and forgiveness cannot satisfy justice and are not a part of justice. It suggests that grace, mercy, pardon and forgiveness violate justice. God’s bodkin that’s a bad place to be.
The second problem with defining justice as inexorable punishment is that it reduces justice from an end to a means. Punishment can never be an end unto itself, it always serves some larger purpose, some desired end. Punishment that serves no larger end or purpose cannot mean anything, and meaningless punishment is merely torment. The end that legitimate punishment serves is justice — justice in this sense meaning not simply the rough justice of fairness, but the justice of wholeness, of reconciliation and restoration.
The third problem with this definition of justice is that it is wholly negative. Justice cannot only be concerned with punishing wrongdoers, it must also be concerned with compensating and restoring those who have been wronged. The writer of this essay is preoccupied with the injustice of this fallen world, seeing here a world full of sinners deserving punishment. But because this world is, indeed, fallen and unjust, it is also a world full of people suffering unjustly, people being oppressed, exploited, abused, misused, cheated, injured and violated. That, too, requires the correction of justice — not inescapable punishment, but healing, compensation, reparation and restoration.
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