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INTRODUCTION
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2 JUSTICE AND THE COMMON GOOD
issues that are also pertinent to the current ecological crisis that
demanded equally urgent attention. They include the depletion of the
world’s natural resources, the wanton pollution of the environment
and the on-going debate on the possible ramifications of genetically
modified (GM) crops. Be that as it may, Tan acknowledges that
Kwa’s paper provides a ‘needed corrective’ by pointing out the fact
that Christians need to do more to care for God’s creation. Turning
next to Goetz’s paper, Tan appreciates the philosophical and
historical discussion it provides on the concept of human rights. He
also appreciates the fact that Goetz does not discuss this concept in
the abstract but provides many concrete examples of how human
rights and dignity are violated in our world, including human
trafficking and modern slavery.
These papers and responses have generated a very lively
discussion at the conference. It is hoped that their publication
in the Ethos Engagement Series would extend the discussion of
this important issue of justice and the common good to the wider
Christian community in Singapore and beyond.
Roland Chia
Theological and Research Advisor
Ethos Institute for Public Christianity
One
Introduction
I n his book Know and Tell the Gospel, the Australian evangelist
John Chapman describes a striking encounter:
Biblical Overview
Many Christians are familiar with ‘big-picture’, biblical-theological
readings of Scripture, in which the entire Bible is treated as a single
narrative stretching ‘from creation to new creation’.2 Such readings
focus on themes that run through Old and New Testaments and
link the different books of the Bible.
A typical account, focusing on the themes of sin and salvation,
might run as follows. God created the world, and everything in
it. The first man and woman were called to rule over the world in
obedience to God, but they disobeyed God and as a result sin spread
throughout the creation. In response to this God chose Abraham
and his descendants, and gave them the calling of bringing blessing
to all the nations of the world. Abraham’s family became the nation
Israel. God delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt and called them to
be his people, giving them the land of Canaan as their inheritance.
In due time God gave Israel kings, who were called to lead
the people in faithfulness to God. Israel’s kings led them astray,
however, and Israel after many centuries in the land went into exile.
But that was not the end: God brought his people back from exile in
Babylon; Jerusalem was again inhabited, and worship again offered
in a rebuilt temple. Israel’s prophets spoke in glowing terms of the
future that awaited Israel the other side of exile: of the return of all
the twelve tribes; how the nations would look in amazement at all
that God did for Israel. But for centuries the promised blessing did
not come.
Then God sent his son Jesus, born of the line of David. Jesus
succeeded where Israel had failed. Through Jesus’ death on the
Justice and the Common Good 7
In the Book of Joshua, the Israelites enter the land. The land
is fairly distributed between all the tribes, each tribe and family
in Israel having its share, a point underscored at length by the
territorial descriptions in Joshua 13-21. There were laws to ensure
that families should never lose their share of the land: the Jubilee
laws; the laws regarding levirate marriage (Leviticus 25:8-46;
Deuteronomy 25:5-10). The aim was to prevent the land over time
falling into the hands of fewer and fewer people, because such
economic imbalances would lead to imbalances of power and hence
to injustice within Israel.
Moving on, the books of Samuel describe the two sides of the
Israelite monarchy, represented by Israel’s first two kings. Saul
turns aside from God, abuses his power and brings disaster upon
Israel. By contrast David establishes God’s rule over the land of
Israel (symbolised by the bringing of the ark up to Zion) and, as part
of that, appoints officials whose task is to administer ‘justice and
equity’ within Israel (2 Samuel 8:15-18). The Psalms take up the
theme of Israel’s king upholding justice:
Israel’s kings often fell short of this ideal. In 1 and 2 Kings we read
of how bloodshed and the violation of rights marked the reigns of
kings such as Ahab of Israel and Manasseh of Judah (1 Kings 17-22;
2 Kings 22). Ahab and Manasseh are condemned as idolaters, and
also for their injustice, the two being obviously linked: a clear theme
of Kings is that wrong ideas about God lead to wrong treatment of
humans made in God’s image.
This brings us to the prophetic attack on injustice in Israel: Amos
and his call for justice to run down ‘like waters, and righteousness
like an ever-flowing stream’ (Amos 5:24) and Isaiah’s attack on the
worship offered by those who perpetrate injustice: ‘When you come
to appear before me, who asked this from your hand?... learn to do
good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for
Justice and the Common Good 9
the widow’ (Isaiah 1:12, 17). In line with this, the prophets’ visions
of a restored Israel include the banishing of injustice from God’s
creation. Thus in Isaiah 11 we read of a future king from David’s
line, of whom it is said (verse 4), ‘with righteousness he shall judge
the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.’
Justice and injustice are major themes in the Psalms. In
many psalms the speaker pleads with God to uphold their cause, or
expresses anger at the conduct of the wicked:
Some of the later psalms anticipate the time when God will establish
justice in the earth: ‘Let the heavens be glad, and the earth rejoice...
for he is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world with
righteousness, and the peoples with his truth’ (Psalm 96:11-13).
The wisdom books come in here: Proverbs and its concern with
right living (Proverbs 1:3); Job’s complaint that God has not treated
him fairly (Job 9:22-24; 27:1-2); Ecclesiastes and its complaint that
life ‘under the sun’ is marked by injustice and unpredictability
(Ecclesiastes 4:1-3; 9:11-12).
Justice is a central theme in the Old Testament: the Old
Testament writers celebrate justice as something precious and
healing, and lament the absence of justice as something that brings
a blight upon the land (Hosea 4:1-3).
Do things change when we come to the New Testament? In
brief, no: justice remains a major concern in the New Testament. As
the Christian philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff puts it:
Particular Texts
In this next section I want to focus on two sets of texts from the Old
Testament, texts which Christians tend to neglect these days. I aim
not simply to set out the content of these texts, but to give some
sense of the impact which it seems these texts are meant to have
on us.
Moses’ hope is that when Israel follows the teaching, the nations will
look at Israel, will be impressed at what they see (‘this great nation
is a wise and discerning people’), and will draw the conclusion that
Israel’s God is a great and wise God. One of the roles of Israel’s
priests was to represent God to Israel. In Deuteronomy 4 the priestly
model is applied to Israel as a whole: when the Israelites follow
the teaching they will display God’s glory to the nations. They will
be, precisely a kingdom of priests, bearing witness to the nations
regarding the character—the justice—of their God.16
These texts in Exodus and Deuteronomy, then, set out Israel’s
calling. It is a calling firmly centred around the practice of justice.
Justice in Proverbs
Proverbs is perhaps not much read today. It is a challenging book
to study, particularly in cc. 10-30, which consist mainly of one-verse
sayings on a variety of subjects, presented without any apparent
attempt to arrange the sayings topically. Rather than studying
Proverbs in depth, we tend to raid it when we want a biblical insight
on a particular issue, or so that we can decorate our words with
a neat biblical ‘sound-byte’. But we should take Proverbs more
seriously. It is given to us as ‘wisdom for God’s people’: if you fear
the Lord,17 the book tells us, if you are committed to the God of
Israel, here is teaching for you to reflect on, teaching that touches
on many areas of life.
Proverbs introduces itself in the following terms (1:1-3):
Yet more blunt and clear is Isaiah 61:8: ‘I the Lord love justice.’22 On
this Wolterstorff comments:
every human being shall flourish, that each and every shall
experience what the Old Testament writers call shalom.
Injustice is perforce the impairment of shalom. That is
why God loves justice. God desires the flourishing of each
and every one of God’s creatures; justice is indispensible
to that. Love and justice are not pitted against each other
but intertwined.23
Or again: