{"id":2260,"date":"2011-09-06T12:09:30","date_gmt":"2011-09-06T19:09:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=2260"},"modified":"2011-09-06T12:09:30","modified_gmt":"2011-09-06T19:09:30","slug":"what-is-justice-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2011\/09\/06\/what-is-justice-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Justice, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part 2 of\u00a0 my series on Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Justice in Love is up on Jesus Creed<\/a>.\u00a0 Head on over and join in the conversation.\u00a0 Below is the post.<\/p>\n

In my first post, I highlighted some of the major themes in Wolterstorff\u2019s recent books: \u00a0Justice:\u00a0 Rights and Wrongs<\/em>, and Justice in Love<\/em>.\u00a0 Wolterstorff seeks to ground human rights in the claim that each and every human being has worth because God loves each and every human being with the \u201clove of attachment.\u201d\u00a0 In this post, I want to jump ahead to the final two chapters of Justice in Love<\/em> to confront a fundamental issue that lurks underneath Wolterstorff\u2019s entire project.\u00a0 Those chapters are entitled \u201cThe Justice of God\u2019s Generosity in Romans<\/em>\u201d and \u201cWhat is Justification and What is Just?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

For now, what do you think of Wolterstorff\u2019s treatment of the nature of God\u2019s justice in Romans?\u00a0 Is Luther\u2019s treatment of Romans in On the Bondage of the Will<\/em> correct, or does Luther overstate or mis-state the case?\u00a0 I\u2019m particularly interested to hear from readers who are knowledgeable about the New Perspective on Paul:\u00a0 does Wolterstorff properly frame these two chapters in terms that are consistent with the NPP?<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I was a child, we used to sing the tune \u201cJesus loves the little children, all the children of the world.\u00a0 Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.\u00a0 Jesus loves the little children of the world.<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 Today we might blush a bit at the racial and colonialist undertones of this song, but we might want to affirm its basic message:\u00a0 Jesus loves all<\/em> the children of the world.\u00a0 God loves everyone<\/em>.\u00a0 As children, we also memorized John 3:16 (in the King James, of course!):\u00a0 \u201cFor God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but shall have eternal life.\u201d<\/em> God loves the whole world<\/em>.\u00a0 \u00a0Jesus died for everyone <\/em>and God\u2019s gift of life is available to everyone<\/em>.\u00a0 Wolterstorff\u2019s basic notion that God loves everyone seems manifestly attested to in popular evangelical piety and in scripture.<\/p>\n

There were no Sunday School ditties, however, referring to Paul\u2019s dense and tangled argument in Romans 1-11. \u00a0The famous passage in Romans 9:13-22 must give us pause as we think about \u201cjustice\u201d:<\/p>\n

Just as it is written, \u201cJACOB I LOVED, BUT ESAU I HATED.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! For He says to Moses, \u201cI WILL HAVE MERCY ON WHOM I HAVE MERCY, AND I WILL HAVE COMPASSION ON WHOM I HAVE COMPASSION.\u201d So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, \u201cFOR THIS VERY PURPOSE I RAISED YOU UP, TO DEMONSTRATE MY POWER IN YOU, AND THAT MY NAME MIGHT BE PROCLAIMED THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE EARTH.\u201d So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.<\/em><\/p>\n

You will say to me then, \u201cWhy does He still find fault? For who resists His will?\u201d On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, \u201cWhy did you make me like this,\u201d will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Obviously, this is a massively difficult passage for any Christian perspective on human rights and justice.\u00a0 God hates<\/em> some people?\u00a0 God creates some people for destruction?\u00a0 In what sense can a person God creates for \u201ccommon use,\u201d a person whom God \u201chates,\u201d have \u201chuman rights\u201d \u2013 particularly rights grounded in God\u2019s love<\/em>?\u00a0 For many theologians and ethicists in the Reformed traditions, Romans 1-11 demonstrates that there is, in fact, no such thing as \u201chuman rights\u201d and no such thing as any \u201cnatural\u201d sense of ethics or justice.<\/p>\n

In his treatise \u201cOn the Bondage of the Will<\/a>,\u201d Martin Luther responded to Catholic theologian Desiderius Erasmus<\/a>\u2019 claim that Luther\u2019s theology destroyed the concept of human free will.\u00a0 Exactly, Luther responded:\u00a0 we do not have free will because God foreknows everything, including the fact of each person\u2019s salvation or reprobation.\u00a0 This is not a problem for \u201cjustice,\u201d Luther said, because<\/p>\n

If [God\u2019s] justice were such as could be adjudged just by human reckoning, it clearly would not be Divine; it would in no way differ from human justice. But inasmuch as He is the one true God, wholly incomprehensible and inaccessible to man\u2019s understanding, it is reasonable, indeed inevitable, that His justice also should be incomprehensible; as Paul cries, saying: \u201cO the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is not a stretch to suggest that Luther\u2019s rejection of the Catholic view of human freedom and natural justice lay at the heart of the Protestant Reformation. <\/strong> It also is not a stretch to suggest that this remains a fundamental dividing point not only between the Reformed and Catholic and Orthodox traditions, but also among evangelicals today.<\/p>\n

Wolterstorff dives boldly into this historical debate.\u00a0 He suggests that his \u201cinterpretation of Paul will be along the lines of \u2018the new Paul\u2019 initiated by Stendahl and Sanders.\u201d\u00a0 (JIL<\/em>, p. 247).\u00a0 Romans, he says, \u201ccan be seen as a meditation on the theological significance of Jesus\u2019 actions [in showing \u201cno partiality\u201d to non-Jews] and Peter\u2019s vision [in Acts 10, in which table fellowship is opened to gentiles].\u201d\u00a0 Paul\u2019s central argument in Romans 1-11 is that God is substantively<\/em> just in extending covenant blessings to the Gentiles because those blessings are extended on the same basis upon which they were made available to the Jews:\u00a0\u00a0 faith.<\/p>\n

This line of thought obviously diverges significantly from Luther\u2019s.\u00a0 Wolterstorff suggests that the substantive principle of God\u2019s justice is, indeed, discernible and is made known in the course of Paul\u2019s argument.\u00a0 For Wolterstorff, Romans 1-11 is not about the unknowability of God\u2019s justice.\u00a0 Rather, it is a theodicy in which Paul argues that God impartially offers justification to Jew and Gentile alike.<\/p>\n

But what about Paul\u2019s theme of election?\u00a0 Wolterstorff argues that Paul is<\/p>\n

not talking about who shares in the final redemption; he\u2019s talking about the pattern of God\u2019s action in history to bring about redemption.\u00a0 He\u2019s not talking about who God ultimately justifies; he\u2019s talking about the fact that God chooses certain persons for a special role in the story line of redemption.\u00a0 He\u2019s not talking about divine strategy; he\u2019s talking about divine tactics.\u00a0 He\u2019s not talking about who God declares justified on the great day of final judgment; he\u2019s talking about who belongs here and now to \u201cthe children of God,\u201d to \u201cthe children of the promise.\u201d\u00a0 (JIL, pp. 267-68).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wolterstorff subsequently unpacks what he takes as the purpose and meaning of \u201cfaith\u201d in relation to justification and justice.\u00a0 He also tackles the nature of the atonement and its relation to justice.\u00a0 These are enormous topics in themselves, so I\u2019ll leave them for later posts.<\/p>\n

For now, what do you think of Wolterstorff\u2019s treatment of the nature of God\u2019s justice in Romans?\u00a0 Is Luther\u2019s treatment of Romans in On the Bondage of the Will<\/em> correct, or does Luther overstate or mis-state the case?\u00a0 I\u2019m particularly interested to hear from readers who are knowledgeable about the New Perspective on Paul:\u00a0 does Wolterstorff properly frame these two chapters in terms that are consistent with the NPP?<\/strong><\/p>\n

For my part, I\u2019m not a Biblical scholar or a Paul scholar.\u00a0 I can\u2019t (and don\u2019t want to try to) speak with authority on how to interpret this incredibly difficult text.\u00a0 Yet, I\u2019ve read Romans 9-11 dozens of times in recent months, trying to reflect on this very issue of God\u2019s justice.\u00a0 To me, the interpretive key for Romans 9 must be Romans 11.\u00a0 But I\u2019ll refrain for the moment from offering more of my thoughts.\u00a0\u00a0 Who is right \u2013 Luther, or Erasmus and Wolterstorff?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part 2 of\u00a0 my series on Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Justice in Love is up on Jesus Creed.\u00a0 Head on over and join in the conversation.\u00a0 Below is the post. In my first post, I highlighted some of the major themes in Wolterstorff\u2019s recent books: \u00a0Justice:\u00a0 Rights and Wrongs, and Justice in Love.\u00a0 Wolterstorff seeks to ground […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-As","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2260\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}