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A Christian View of Justice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
Extract
It should be of supreme interest to anyone who is trying to come to a true Christian understanding of justice to discover as far as possible the attitude of Jesus to matters of justice. There are a number of gospel passages which suggest that he was not at all interested in the concept of justice as fairness. In his teaching there are strong indications that, with God, people do not get what they deserve, that one’s recompense does not bear any relation to one’s effort or merit. It is indicated moreover that such a rejection of justice as fairness should be adopted by men in their dealings with one another because that is the way God deals with men. I am not putting it this way merely to shock. I think that a critique of justice as strict fairness is explicit in the teachings of Jesus and that we must pay attention to it if we are to arrive at the notion of justice which his teachings do uphold, in continuity with the rest of Scripture.
Some of the sayings which suggest Jesus’s indifference to strict fairness are these: The parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matt. 20:1-16a); The parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15: 11-32); the refusal of Jesus to divide the inheritance between two brothers (Luke 12:13-15); the sayings in the sermon on the mount, Matt. 5:44 (par. Luke 6:32-36), about loving your enemies, “so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven, for he makes his sun to rise on the good and the evil and sends rain on the just and the unjust.”
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- Copyright © 1978 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Perhaps asking them whether their giving the evil‐eye treatment to the late‐comers was really a just consequence of his own generosity; so Green in The Gospel According to Matthew, ad loc,
2 See Green ibid.
3 D. Dertett, Law in the New Testament, p. 89. The chapter gives an illuminating discussion of this parable,
4 However, the reference to the “mammon of injustice” in Luke 16:9 and 11 and Jesus's warnings against serving mammon indicate that in his eyes–in common perhaps with other rabbis of his time‐great riches were always under suspicion of having been gained by injustice. Derrett (op. cit. Chap. 4) thinks that the “mammon of injustice” in the parable of the unjust steward indicates that the master's wealth had been gained by usury, forbidden by law between Jews.
5 This is a commonplace of historians, whether they are discussing the legitimacy of kings, the title to landed property, the right of colonial rule, the creation of the working class.
6 See P. R. Ackroyd on Samaria in Archaeology and Old Testament Study, ed. Thomas, D. Winton, Oxford 1967Google Scholar.
7 SeeR. de Vaux on Tirzah, ibid. P. 376.
8 Ibid. p. 378.
9 See H. W. Wolff and J. L. Mays in the commentaries on Amos, ad loc.
10 L. Kohler, Hebrew Man, p. 156.
11 J. L. Mays, Amos, on 5. 7‐11.
12 G von Rad, Old Testament Theology, vol I, p. 373.
13 Much more evidence to support this important conclusion may be found in Miranda, J. P., Marx and the Bible, SCM Press. 1977Google Scholar.
14 Ex. 22:21; 23:9; Deut. 24:17‐22; 27:19.
15 Noth, M., Leviticus, SCM Press, 1965 p. 185Google Scholar.
16 Tob.4:7ff and 12:9; Sir. 7:10 and 12:3.