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JUSTIFICATION AND JUSTICE

IN A THEOLOGY OF GRACE
KATHRYN TANNER

The issue is not to discover gratuitousness and forget the demands of justice,
but to situate justice within the framework of God's gratuitous love." "God
makes the ethical demand that every believer practice justice, but this demand
is not in any way inconsistent with the free and unmerited initiative of God.
On the contrary, it acquires its full scope and vitality only when located within
this gratuitousness.1
It is noteworthy that all the commentators [on Romans] . . . lay out and
juxtapose heterogeneous elements: judicial justice and grace; punishment and
fidelity to promises; expiation and mercy. But can the properly juridical
subsist simply alongside the moment of mercy, without undergoing a transformation .. .?2
A BIBLICAL THEOLOGY OF JUSTIFICATION?

his essay on justification is an exercise in biblical theology of a


certain sort. "Biblical theology" can mean many different things.
Almost any theology is biblical in the broadest sense in that it is
concerned with what the Bible says and makes reference to it whenever
possible in support of its own positions. In its more restricted senses,
however, "biblical theology" may mean, first of all, the theology to be
found in a biblical text or texts. Historical-critical investigation of the Bible
uncovers this theology, say, by analyzing the theological intent behind a
particular redaction of oral or textual materials in a biblical book. According to a second restricted sense, "biblical theology" means the interpreter's
constructive efforts to fill out and develop conceptually the germ of
theological ideas or the evocative symbols, images, and stories, present in
biblical texts. Biblical theology amounts here to commentary on the Bible
Kathryn Tanner is Associate Professor of Theology at The Divinity School of the
University of Chicago. Her most recent book is Theories of Culture (1997).
Gustavo Gutierrez, On Job (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 1987), 88,90.
2
Paul Ricoeur, The Conflict ofInterpretations (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University
Press, 1974), 372.

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that takes the theological ends of greater conceptual articulation and


coherence for its goals. While the theological construction that this
enterprise involves is admittedly the work of the interpreter and is not
attributed to the Bible itself, the whole raison d'tre of the enterprise
continues to lie in its claim to be biblical. The point of the enterprise is
simply to make greater sense of what the Bible itself is saying in a less
clearly articulated and systematic way. In a third restricted sense, biblical
theology involves altering or modifying Christian theological traditions in
light of the Bible.
This kind of biblical theology is distinguished from the second in that the
theological traditions at issue cannot claim simply to be the product of
efforts to give conceptually full explications of biblical ideas, images, or
narratives. While no doubt referring back to the Bible and perhaps taking
their start from biblically based ideas, images, and stories, these theological traditions have their own integrity and relative autonomy from the
Bible as responses to later theological challenges posed to or within the
Christian churches over the course of their history. For example, although a
biblical critic, say, might argue that the way ancient Mesopotamian stories
of creation are modified in Genesis points in its direction, the Christian
theological tradition that insists upon creation ex nihilo can hardly claim to
be the result of a simple effort to explicate the cosmogony of Genesis 1-3.
A Christian theology of creation ex nihilo was decisively shaped by efforts
in the early church to distinguish a Christian outlook on creation from
Manichaeism and from certain Neo-Platonic or Gnostic emanationist
schemes. Its raison d'tre lies as much there as it does in any effort simply
to be true to what Genesis suggests in a more conceptually precise and
systematic fashion.
It is similar with Christian theological traditions that concern justification. While inevitably involving commentary on Romans or Galatians,
they are decisively influenced by later theological problematics in ways
that prohibit a claim to be simply reflective of Paul's own concerns in those
texts. These later problematics surround, say, Pelagianism or semiPelagianism (for example, they have to do with controversies surrounding
issues of merit and God's free grace), or they may be prompted by worries
about the terror or despair evoked in some Christians by late medieval
monastic and penitential practices, and the like. Theological problematics
like these are clearly different from Paul's concerns in speaking about
justification by faith or by works under the law, concerns that have to do
with the exclusiveness of God's covenant relations. Paul is interested in
showing the way in which God's covenants extend beyond the Jews, and
how God nevertheless remains faithful to the covenant promises made to
them.3

3
For the connection Paul makes between a putative justification by works and the
restriction of God's covenant relations to the Jews, see Rom 2:17; 3:27-9. For Paul's worries
about God's continued faithfulness to the covenant with Israel in light of justification by
faith, see, for example, Romans 9-11. The contrast between Paul's concerns and later

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Doing biblical theology on the basis of Christian theological traditions
with this sort of relative autonomy from the Bible would mean using the
Bible to shed new light on them, using the Bible to alter the way in which
the distinctive concerns of these theological traditions are addressed.
Historical-critical investigation of the Bible is important for this task;
historical criticism can free biblical texts from immediate assimilation to
the concerns of later Christian theological traditions and thereby enable
those traditions to be questioned anew by the Bible.
This essay sketches in very broad strokes a biblical theology in this third
sense for Christian theological traditions that concern justification. Avoiding Catholic and Protestant polemics, one could say, most generally, that
justification in later Christian theology concerns God's free and unconditional initiative of saving grace in Jesus Christ, which has as its ultimate, if
not immediately obvious, consequence the transformation of human life
for the better, in virtue of a changed relationship with God and/or in virtue
of altered human dispositions and capacities. To do biblical theology on the
basis of this Christian tradition of talk about justification is to provide a
certain slant on the content of the terms of the account (which especially in
my very general formulation of this tradition seem otherwise virtually

"The second modification promoted by biblical theology has to


do with the way mercy and justice are woven together in
Christian theologies of justification. "

empty or almost completely formal)a certain slant, that is, on the


character and manner of divine initiative and the nature of human transformation.
More specificallyto rehearse now some of my conclusionstwo
general modifications will be made to the usual content of these terms in
Christian theologies of justification. First, the terms of the usual account
will take on a more clearly corporate reference; the relation between God
and humans and the nature of human transformation will be defined in a
more clearly corporate fashion. In the usual account in Christian theological traditions, the free and unconditional character of divine initiative is
established with reference to every individual's prior capacities or incapacities. Moreover, the effect ofthat initiative on human life concerns a change
in the individual's standing before God (in the classic Reformation case) or
a change in individual psychology (for example, the infusion of new
capacities for love). The usual account is often a story of human enablement by God that, though it might ultimately issue in changed relations in
human society, proceeds by way of a new individual psychologytrust,
Christian ones are very clearly drawn in James Dunn and Alan Suggate, The Justice of God
(Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1993), 25-9.

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gratitude, and love for God liberate the individual for genuinely good
deeds towards others. A biblical theology of justification will, I contend,
modify this kind of individual focus.
The second modification promoted by biblical theology has to do with
the way mercy and justice are woven together in Christian theologies of
justification. Mercy and justice will no longer be merely juxtaposed but
will instead be brought to bear on one another to produce a radically altered
sense of both but especially a radically altered sense of justice. The relation
of mercy and justice is at issue at two points in Christian accounts of
justification. First, how is God's justification of usan act of mercy since
it is free, unmerited and undeservedto be understood in light of God's
righteousness and justice? Second, how is God's justification of us, which
is a show of mercy, to be related to our own putative justice and righteousness
now that we are God's children in Christ? In the usual Christian accounts,
mercy and justice often merely alternate. For example, God's mercy in
Jesus Christ replaces the wrath of God under the law, which follows a strict
canon of justice (Luther). Or, mercy and justice are commonly kept
separate: God's mercy enables us in some sense to keep the law, to be just,
but God's mercy does not substantially modify the nature of that law or
justice; it seems a mere condition of its fulfillment (Calvinism). Here, too,
on these questions of the relation between mercy and justice, I contend
biblical theology makes a difference.
JUSTICE, RIGHTEOUSNESS, AND JUSTIFICATION IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

The biblical evidence I use to modify a Christian theology of justification comes from the Old Testament. Although Christian theological traditions concerning justification refer most often to the New Testament
(especially Paul and James), attention to the Old Testament makes sense
for the enterprise of biblical theology as I imagine it. Historical-critical
scholarship finds that New Testament uses of justification/righteousness/
justice language often take their setting from the Old Testament. Those
background notions from the Old Testament that are not simply repudiated
in the New Testament use of comparable terms serve to pull New
Testament texts away from the reading they are usually given in later
Christian theology.
One could try to reconstruct a New Testament theology, say, Paul's
theology in Romans and Galatians, in order to use it to throw new light on
later Christian theologies of justification appealing to New Testament texts.
To the same end one can, however, turn directly, as I do here, to the Old
Testament background for the use of justification, righteousness, and
justice language in the New Testament. Because it was so often overlooked
in later theological reflection on New Testament themes, that background
helps make clear the way that New Testament understandings of justification differ from later Christian ones. Besides having the advantage of going
straight to one source of such differences, this tactic has the added
advantage of allowing the concerns of later Christian theologies to retain
their integrity even while subjecting them to modification in light of the

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Bible. That is, unlike what the use of the biblical theology of Paul to
modify later Christian theologies might suggestthat those theologies
become more biblical by becoming more like Paul's own theology, by
sharing more of Paul's theological concernsmy procedure allows later
Christian theologies to retain their own concerns while modifying them
from within, so to speak, by making the use of their central terms
(justification, righteousness, and justice) more biblical. One looks back to
the Bible for illumination from the standpoint of someone properly
working within post-biblical theologies of justification that are designed to
respond to later histories of controversy.
Three features of the use of justice andrighteousnessterminology in the
Old Testament seem important for my purposes, as influences on the New
Testament that have been unduly neglected in later theological treatments
of justification.4 First, justice and righteousness are understood in the
context of relationship. Second, they are not often opposed to mercy. And
third, human justice and righteousness are often supposed to be modeled
on, or to correspond to, God's own justice and righteousness. I will now
explore these three features, on the way towards developing their import
for a Christian theology of justification in the next section.
The first feature of the use of justice and righteousness language in the
Old Testament that I mentioned is an appropriate place to start since it
helps makes sense of the other two. It is now quite common for biblical
scholars to maintain that justice and righteousness in the Old Testament
should be understood in the context of relationshipspecifically, the
special context of covenant relations that Yahweh sets up with Israel.5
Thus, both Yahweh and the people of Israel are righteous to the extent that
they remain faithful to the covenant that Yahweh freely institutes and
faithfully maintain the rights and responsibilities that such a relationship
entails. To justify someone is to restore that person to his or her proper or
rightful place within the relationship, and thereby it involves the restora
tion or reconstitution of the relationship itself. Justice is that way of life,
that body of ordinances or directives, set down by Yahweh, by which Israel
is to exhibit its faithfulness to the covenant. Being true to the covenant, in
other words, requires Israel to do justice by meeting the expectations and

My argument bypasses discussion of exactly how this Old Testament background


changes one's understanding of the New. For my purposes all I need to presume is the simple
fact that this Old Testament background is an important influence on Christian understand
ings of justification as one begins to find them in the New Testament. For arguments
demonstrating that the Old Testament features I mention form the background of New
Testament use of comparable terms and are not repudiated there, see J. A. Ziesler, The
Meaning of Righteousness in Paul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972); and
John Reumann, Righteousness in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982).
following, for example, Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology (New York: Harper
and Row, 1962); and Elizabeth Achtemeier, "Righteousness in the Old Testament,'' in The
Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, ed. G. . Buttrick (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon
Press, 1962), 4: 80-5. For a recent statement of this opinion, see Hemchand Gossai, Justice,
Righteousness and the Social Critique of the Eighth Century Prophets (New York: Peter
Lang, 1993).

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and Justice in a Theology of Grace

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demands of the relationship that Yahweh establishes with it. To pronounce


judgment is to act to sustain the justice that this relationship requires, and
therefore it is a way of upholding the relationship itself in its proper
character.
Once justice and righteousness are seen in the context of relationship and
not defined in a narrowly juridical way to mean rigid conformity to laws or
norms, it becomes easier to see how acts of mercy can be compatible with
righteousness and justice and not necessarily exceptions to or attenuations
of them. This is the second feature of righteousness and justice language in
the Old Testamentthe compatibility of these terms with mercy.
To do what the law requires and punish its violators is incompatible with
mercy towards them; to give a strict return in accordance with what one
deserves is incompatible with gracious largesse. But if righteousness is
faithfulness to covenant relations, it can be expressed appropriately in acts
of mercy. Yahweh does not break off relations with those who would make
the covenant void by violating justicethose who oppress the widow and
orphan. Yahweh does not break relations with them as they deserve
Yahweh is merciful. But in being merciful in this way, Yahweh remains
righteous in the sense of faithful to the covenant, faithful to God's own
intent to be the God of Israel. Such acts of faithfulness on Yahweh's part
are, indeed, continuous in character with the acts by which*Yahweh
initially sets up covenant relations with Israel. At those times, too, God's
initiatives towards Israel were undeserved; Yahweh did not set up those
relations because of this people's special worthiness for them (see Deut
7:6-8; 9:5-6; 10:14-15). God's righteousness was, then, from the very
beginning an act of mercy, something that was not owed.
God's judgment, moreover, even in its harshest expression as a sentence
of punishment, can exhibit this same sort of mercy, this same refusal by
God to break off the covenant with its violators as they deserve:
I will establish his line for ever and his throne as the days of the heavens. If his
children forsake my law and do not walk according to my ordinances, if they
violate my statutes and do not keep my commandments, then I will punish
their transgressions with the rod and their iniquity with scourges; but I will not
remove from him my steadfast love, or be false to my faithfulness. I will not
violate my covenant.... Once for all I have sworn by my holiness; I will not
lie to David. His line shall endure for ever.... (Ps 89:29-36)
God's wrath in the context of God's continued faithfulness to the covenant
is then understood as a way of trying to turn Israel back to its covenant
responsibilities, and/or a way of eradicating those acts and persons who
stand in the way of Israel's own continued faithfulness (see, for example,
Prov 3:12; Jer 31:2-4; Job 5:17-18).
Therefore the Lord says, the Lord of Hosts, the Mighty One of Israel: "Ah, I
will vent my wrath on my enemies, and avenge myself on my foes. I will turn
my hand against you and will smelt away your dross as with lye and remove
your alloy. And I will restore your judges as at thefirst,and your counselors as
at the beginning. Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness, the
faithful city." (Isa 1:24-26).

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Furthermore, God's judgment in favor of oppressed persons, while it
may seem simply to be restoring them to what they are due according to
God's ordinances or justice, is at the same time the institution of relations
of mercy. God executes justice for the poor, the prisoner, and the slave, by
canceling their debts; they no longer have to give back what they owe. The
land and freedoms that were taken from them because of a failure to pay
are to be returned to them; the obligations to hand over property or one's
person that accrue because of one's poverty are canceled. This, indeed, is
the highest form of justice that the covenant with Yahweh demands: the
social relations to be instituted on Jubilee years, social relations of mercy in
which one forfeits what one is owed and gets back what one no longer
deserves, what one no longer has a title to, in virtue of debts incurred.6
Now the third characteristic of the use of righteousness and justice
language in the Old Testament should make sense: the correspondence
between Israel's righteousness and justice and God's. The people of God
are to act towards other human beings as God acts towards themwith a
comparable sort of righteousness and justice. For example, God opposed
their oppression by Pharaoh, and raised them up to a new life in fellowship
with their God; so Israel is to oppose oppression in its midst and become a
society in which special care is given to the dispossessedthe stranger,
widow, and orphan. Running through these familiar prescriptions from the
Old Testament, we now see a subtler kind of structural correspondence
between the activity of justice and righteousness on the part of both
Yahweh and Israel. The odd way that mercy and justice are to be brought
together in Israel imitates the odd way that mercy and justice are brought
together in Yahweh's own dealings with Israel. The peculiar justice that
faithfulness to the covenant requires of God's peoplethe peculiar justice
in which giving each person his or her due involves the merciful gift of
what is undeserved and the failure to get a return on what one gives
corresponds to the character of God's own free faithfulness to a covenant
with Israel. Israel is required by faithfulness to its covenant with Yahweh to
break social codes based on a law of do ut des; Israel is required, that is, to
break social codes based on the premise "I give on the condition that you
will give me back" or the expectation that "I will receive what is due me,
what is appropriate to my own effort and expenditure." In much the same
way, Yahweh, without any obligation to do so, established in the beginning
a special covenant with people who in themselves exhibited no special
worthiness for such treatment. And in much the same way now, too,
Yahweh, without any obligation to do so, continues to maintain covenant
relations, works to restore their proper character, and to fulfill their
promise, even in cases where Israel seems to fall away from its own
responsibilities as God's covenant partner.

6
See Moshe Weinfeld, Social Justice in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East
(Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress, 1995) for this sort of account of the social relations
implied by justice.

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IMPLICATIONS FOR A CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY OF JUSTIFICATION

What happens when one takes these uses of justice and righteousness
language in the Old Testament and interjects them within later Christian
traditions of talk about justification? Theological creativity is required for
this. My account of what happens is therefore simply one interpretation
but a cogent one, I think.
(1) Justification as the Continuation of God's Free Faithfulness to the
Covenant. First, one can set one's understanding of God's righteousness
and mercy in Christ in the context of covenant relations. The free grace of
God in Christ can be talked about as a continuation of the unobligated
faithfulness to relations with human beings that the Old Testament discusses as God'srighteousness.God is shown to be righteous in this sense,
in Christ. In Christ, God justifies God's putative covenant partners by
restoring them to the rightful place which they seem otherwise to have
forfeited through violation of God's directives; in Christ, God continues to
claim God's people as God's own despite acts on their side that seem to
make such a status void. As a natural consequence of their restitution as
God's faithful covenant partners, they should now keep the law, that is, do
justice in the sense discussed earlier. Doing justice in this sense is how
covenant faithfulness is expressed in human social relations.
In Christ, however, the same sort of divine faithfulness that the Old
Testament discusses is manifest in a new way. In Christ God maintains the
covenant, heals and reinstates it, by stepping in to perform and undergo
what human beings should by rights do as God's people and suffer
themselves as violators and victims of a broken covenant. God in Christ
does what human beings should dobe God's people and follow God's
strange directives in which mercy and justice are reconciled. Christ in his
life and death suffers the ultimate distress that comes from separation from
God, the rejection and death that should come byrightsto human beings as
the natural consequences of their having voided their relationship with
God, the creator and provider of all good gifts.7 In raising Christ, God takes
the place of human impotence and vindicates the innocents wronged by
those who violate God's Torah, knowingly or unknowinglyJews and
Gentiles alike.
Though God's acts in Christ display the same character of free faithfulness to the covenant discussed in the Old Testament, their operations, so to
speak, are different. Here in Christ, God does not merely work by loving
inducements and corrective judgments to bring human beings back to their
proper place in covenant relations with God and so restore themefforts
that never seemfinallyto bring Israel back to faithfulness, human faithful7
Here I am rendering the idea of divine punishment metaphorical as Riceour does in his
Conflict of Interpretations, 371: "if sin... is the expression of... separation, then the wrath
of God can be another symbol of the same separation, experienced as threat and active
destruction... punishment is nothing more than the sin itself... it is not what a punitive will
makes someone undergo as the price of a rebel will . . . punishment for sin is sin itself as
punishment, namely, the separation itself"which the Old Testament often discusses in
terms of suffering and death.

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ness seemingly ever being followed by rejection of the covenant (see the
repetition of confessional and intercessory prayers for forgiveness in Exod
32:11-14; Deut 9:25-29; 1 Kings 8:46-53; Dan 9:3-19; Ezra 9:6-15). In
Christ, God takes the initiative to intercede for human beings, and so
justifies them, actually setting them back in their proper place as God's
faithful covenant partners, despite themselves.
The clear impression of gracious divine faithfulness, of God's free
mercy, that is part of the Old Testament understanding of God's righteousness is heightened here by God's own doing of everything that human
beings are obligated to do as partners in the covenant. The covenant's
remaining in force therefore no longer appears conditional in any way on
human performance. Human failing not only does not put God's faithfulness in doubt; it fundamentally cannot even alter human standing in the
covenant. Despite the fact of human failing, in virtue of God's saving
initiatives in Christ, human beings are yet God's people. There is no
mistaking, then, that the covenant is a pure covenant of mercy, as much
after being set up by God, as it was before, when out of simple love God
chose Israel. It is a covenant of grace not simply because God keeps the
covenant in force by dint of sheer persistenceever calling, cajoling and
threatening human beings with the dreadful consequences of separation
from God, awaiting human beings return to faithfulness and suffering
disappointment anew. It is a covenant of grace even more because God
keeps the covenant in force through God's own fulfillment of human
responsibility in the man Jesus Christ.
A number of conclusions can be drawn from this heightened impression
of unconditional covenant in Christ, conclusions that address the concerns
of post-biblical Christian theologies of justification to combat works
righteousness and yet maintain the importance of good works in human
life. Because this is an unconditional covenant of grace, set up and
maintained as it is in all respects by God, human faithfulness to it is
essentially just belief in such an unconditional act of divine faithfulness
and mercy. Human beings do their part to keep the covenant in force, not
by doing anything but simply by believing in what God does for them
despite themselves. Works of the law that correspond to God's own
initiatives with respect to human community are still, however, the way
faithfulness to the covenant, even in the form of belief in God's unconditional mercy, isexhibited in the course of human life.8
8
In the discussion here of the importance of works, I am limiting myself to the question of
moral directives. However, conforming to directives that, unlike moral ones, distinguish one
social group from another (e.g., Jews from Gentiles) may also be an appropriate way to
express faithfulness to the covenant. Although presumably moral directives that correspond
to God's own free graciousness would be shared, covenant faithfulness would then be
expressed in different ways by different social groups; different covenant directives would
exist for Jews and Gentiles respectively. Conforming to non-moral directives would only,
however, be an appropriate expression of faithfulness to the extent it was not used to claim
exclusive rights as God's people and to boast of one's advantage over other groups before
God. Such claims would suggest that God's covenant relations with human beings are
conditional, dependent for their validity on human ability to perform certain actions. It

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Because the covenant is unconditional, conforming to divine directives


is clearly not a condition of God's maintaining it. But such directives are
still what God asks human beings who are faithful to the covenant to
perform. Following these directives remains an appropriate expression of
faithfulnessthe appropriate response to God who as covenant partner
unconditionally gives all. Actions that conform to God's law are therefore
not done in the expectation that they are a condition of God's faithfulness;
they are done instead in grateful recognition of God's free giving, a free
giving that includes the gift of these very directives for human life that are
being followed. Actions in conformity with divine directives are, moreover, what God's merciful initiatives in Christ should enable: If those
initiatives actually heal the covenant by setting human beings into their
proper place in relation to God, human beings should be able to perform
the works appropriate to it. God's enablement of human beings is, indeed,
what the transition from divine persistence to divine performance in Christ
is all about. The covenant is not just to be kept up on God's side, but it is to
be fulfilled even on the side of its generally unreliable human subjects.
Finally, because works of human faithfulness are merely the appropriate
response to divine faithfulness and not its condition, the further goods that
accrue to human partners in covenant with Godsay, eternal lifeare not
rewards merited by those who, in their capacity as faithful partners in the
covenant, perform the justice to which covenant with God calls them. The
further goods that God supplies are not payments for the services that
human beings render as God requires but genuine gifts in that they are
simply the further consequences of God's unconditional faithfulness to the
covenant, further consequences of that steadfast love of God that the Old
Testament proclaims and that is now manifest anew in Christ.9
(2) The Reconciliation of Justice with Mercy in Christ. As in the Old
Testament so now in God's action in Christ, God's righteousness and
should be said, however, that any directiveseven moral ones to which any number of
different social groups can conformare susceptible to the same dangers. In the case of
moral requirements, too, one might claim that God shows greater covenant faithfulness to the
community of saints than to sinners.
9
Contrary to the way, say, Deuteronomy 11 is often read, I am therefore assuming here that
God's fulfillment of God's promises need not be understood as a do ut des proposition. In
other words, the covenant need not be understood as establishing relations between God and
Israel in which Yahweh agrees to give what Yahweh promises on the condition that Israel
keep the law. If the covenant remains in force, God will keep God's promises; this is simply
what God's faithfulness to the covenant entails and has nothing to do with rewards for
services rendered. The threatened failure to receive what God promises should Israel not
keep the law (in Deut 11) has to do, therefore, with the worry that the covenant will be
broken and no longer remain in force should Israel stray from the law. Or, secondarily, it
concerns the human potential to block the life-enhancing consequences of covenantthe
blocking of God's gifts or blessingsby a human refusal to act in ways that properly reflect a
covenant that remains in force. The latter concern may remain in Christian theologies of
justification that recognize, even after Christ, an interim time short of final eschatological
fulfillment.
For more on the complicated question of the relation between conditional and unconditional aspects of covenant in the Old Testament, see Jon Levenson, Sinai and Zion (San
Francisco: Harper, 1985); and Walter Brueggemann, Old Testament Theology (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1992), 1-44.

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execution of judgment and justice, on the one hand, are reconciled with
God's mercy and free grace, on the other, without, however, mitigating the
character of either side. Instead, both righteousness and mercy are given
their proper senses; they are redefined, by exploring what God's righteousness must mean if it is expressed in a merciful way and what God's mercy
must mean if it is expressed in a just way.
Thus, in the Old Testament, God's patience with Israel is an expression
of God's righteousness, of God's own faithfulness to the covenant broken
by Israel. God, moreover, is patient with Israel for the sake of justice, so
that Israel might regain its rightful place as God's people and conform to
justice in relation to God and in human affairs. Conversely, God's renewed
demand that Israel be righteous and perform justice is an expression of
God's gracious and merciful refusal to consider the covenant broken
because of human apostasy. God's chastisement is also an expression of
such a merciful God's refusal to void the covenant to the extent it is
designed to bring Israel back to righteousness and justice and does not
finally lead to Israel's destruction.
Although God is said to covenant also with Gentiles in Christ, God's
actions in Christ can be interpreted according to these same patterns of
relating God'srighteousnessand mercy in the Old Testament. Thus, justice
is done in a merciful way when God's own Son suffers the consequences of
separation from God that should properly be born by human beings. Justice
is done in a merciful way when Christ takes on the human faults put to
death on the cross, when Christ, rather than human beings, bears for us the
death of sin, sin that must be eradicated in some way or other if justice is to
be restored. Opposition to God perishes on the cross to restore justice, but
mercifully, without the perishing of the human beings who oppose God.
Conversely, the merciful and gracious acts of God in which Christ takes
our place are done in a just way. In Christ, all that we owe and deserve by
rights is indeed donejust not by us. Moreover, the merciful and gracious
acts by which God in Christ performs what we owe and suffers what is our
due are acts for the sake of a restored human righteousness and justice. A
mercy without justice would not restore the covenant but leave the
unreliable partners of God as they are.
Putting this all together in order to define righteousness, justice, and
mercy anew, we can say, on the one hand, that God's righteousness and
justice mean the merciful effort to maintain the rights and reinstitute the
responsibilities of those parties who seem to have forfeited the one and
abnegated the other. God'srighteousnessand justice, in short, involve gifts
of what is not due. God's mercy, on the other hand, does not meanin
either the Old Testament or now after God acts in Christthat God simply
ignores or overlooks human fault. Such a form of mercy would be
incompatible with justice. Justification in a Christian sense should not
therefore be reduced to mere forgiveness (as it is in many Protestant
theologies). God's mercy means primarily that God works to eradicate
human fault and restore the relations violated by it.

Justification and Justice in a Theology of Grace

521

(3) Human community in Imitation of God's Action in Christ. Finally,


what about the human beings who are justified, restored to their rightful
place as God's people and enabled thereby to act accordingly? How might
one discuss the character of their actions in terms of the account being
given here of justification?
First, the typical Christian emphasis on proper dispositions is displaced.
It is common for Christian theologians to say that Christ enables us to
perform the works of the law gladly, spontaneously, and joyfully, out of
selfless love of God and neighbor, without concern for reward or for the
benefits that might accrue to one thereby, without worry about failure and
consequent loss of divine favor. While this sort of focus on dispositions
need not drop out, the account of justification I am giving does not
encourage it.
First of all, this focus on dispositions is prompted by a particular
treatment of the problem that Christ's coming is supposed to address. The
focus on Christian dispositions is, that is, the flip side of a treatment of the
problem of sin in terms of improper dispositions, a treatment of sin that is
not highlighted in the theology of justification given in this paper. In the

"The justice of Christian action is radically reconceived as


mercy when it is brought into correspondence with the
character of God's gracious initiatives towards us; just social
relations take on a character not often affirmed in Christian
accounts of justification's effects on human life."

common Christian account, even when the problem that Christ addresses is
identified, as it is in this paper, with a failure to keep the covenant, that
failure is usually defined as imperfect obedience on the part of each
individual to divine directives, an imperfect obedience ultimately tied to
dispositions. In order to defend the importance of Christ, the theologian
needs to deny the possibility of perfect obedience under the law, a denial
that leads the theologian ultimately to impugn the character of every
individual's dispositions apart from faith in Christ: Someone might be able
to perform the law perfectly but never with the right attitudes; no one then
can ever really be righteous or innocent under the law. In my account,
however, human failing need not be pushed to these extremespushed, in
particular, in this direction of definition in terms of individual dispositionsin order to show a need for Christ. God's saving initiatives in
Christ, like all God's actions for the sake of a broken covenant, serve to
remedy a failure of community, the failure to maintain the sort of just social
relations that faithfulness to the covenant requires. Such initiatives may
therefore be necessary even if the social relations that God demands are a
temporary achievement in some times and places and even if failed social

522

Theology Today
relations include both genuinely righteous efforts on the part of some
individuals and innocent wronged parties.
The second reason my account of Christian responsibility does not focus
on individual dispositions has to do with the fact that those responsibilities
are to be defined by a correspondence with God's saving activity in Christ.
This, one recalls, is the third characteristic of righteousness and justice
language in the Old Testamentnow transposed into a Christian context.
Such an account of Christian responsibility would naturally focus on the
human relations that Christians are to institute, focus on what Christians
are to do and specifically on the social consequences of those actions and
not on the dispositions or attitudes with which Christians are to do them.
Christian action is to correspond to God's action in Christ in virtue of its
relationality: Our relations with one another are to mirror the way God
relates to us in Christ.
It is not unusual for Christians to use a demand for correspondence with
the character of God's actions in defining Christian responsibility. For
example, in the Lord's prayer and the parable of the wicked servant in
Matthew 8:23-35, forgiving those in debt to you or those who trespass
against you mirrors God's forgiveness of your debts and trespasses. To take
the case of a single Christian theological text, according to Luther's treatise
on Christian freedom, we should come to the aid of the needy, just as we
were needy before God and God came to our aid. And again, according to
Luther in the same text, God gives freely to us out of therichesto be found
in Christ; so full of those riches we should give freely to others (2 Cor
9:6fif).10 Commonly, however, in Christian theology the social and extradispositional character of these responsibilities is not very well developed.
The graciousness of Christian action that corresponds to God's gracious
initiatives in Christ is defined attitudinally (for example, as giving selflessly without expecting a reward or without anxiety about the precariousness of one's own circumstances), and therefore change in social relations
is not explicitly prescribed along with it. But in the account I have given,
the mercy of God that we are to imitate is always for the sake of reinstating
justice; human graciousness and mercy can hardly therefore leave sinful
social relations as they stand (as acts of Christian charity so often do).
Moreover, the justice of Christian action is as radically reconceived as
mercy when it is brought into correspondence with the character of God's
gracious initiatives towards us; just social relations take on a character not
often affirmed in Christian accounts of justification's effects on human life.
The justice to be reinstated in human life can be properly executed only in
human acts of unconditioned mercy that imitate the way God in Christ
gives all that we do not deserve according to the usual codes of do ut des
justice.
Thus, Christians are obligated by the way God acts in Christ to execute
justice in a merciful fashion, to execute justice by reinstating the rights of
those who do not seems to merit such concern because of poverty,
10

Martin Luther, Christian Liberty; (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1957).

Justification and Justice in a Theology of Grace

523

disreputableness, or helplessness to plead their own cause. A justice


defined as faithfulness to those in need and expressed in liberality of giving
in this way replaces any concern about a justice that would apportion them
their just deserts according to their contributions to society or their abilities
to give a return or their power to make demands. Redefining justice in this
way, Christians work for a just society that corresponds to a covenant of
grace, a just society in which all such people get what they do not deserve,
in which they get something for nothing, in which they receive what they
are not owed, at least in the eyes of a hard-hearted human justice, a human
justice that is indeedunlike the usual biblical senses of justice
incompatible with mercy.

^ s
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