Reconciliation, Justice, and Mercy

Pope Francis had this to say in a recent Sunday homily: "Only God's justice can save us! And God's justice revealed itself on the Cross. The Cross is God's judgment on all of us and on this world. But how does God judge us? By giving his life for us. Behold the supreme act of justice that defeated once and for all the Prince of this world. This supreme act of justice is also one of mercy."

Sensitive Western listeners might well have done a doubletake at the pope's suggestion that Jesus' death on the cross is an act of justice. Isn't justice a matter of what is due, owed, or a matter of rights? And was not Jesus' death on the cross a gift and not something that humanity was due or deserved? Pope Francis did not misspeak. Pope Benedict XVI said something quite similar in his Lenten message for 2010, when, in discussing the "justice of Christ," he asked, "what kind of justice is this where the just man dies for the guilty and the guilty receives in return the blessing due to the just one? Would this not mean that each one receives the contrary of his 'due'? In reality, here we discover divine justice, which is so profoundly different from its human counterpart."

Herein lies my disagreement with Miroslav Volf, whose review of my book, Just and Unjust Peace: An Ethic of Political Reconciliation, I strongly appreciated for its conscientious, fair, thorough, and accurate presentation of my arguments ["Reconciliation, Justice, and Mercy," September/October]. Volf then takes issue with my view that biblical justice incorporates forgiveness. Justice is only a matter of what is owed, he argues, while forgiveness is precisely a gift, something that is not owed.

I agree with Volf that justice is a matter of rights and of what is owed and that for-giveness is not something that a victim owes to a perpetrator but is rather a gift. In my view, however, biblical justice is not only a matter of rights, though it certainly includes them, but is wider than rights and also includes obligations to give others what they do not deserve—generosity, mercy, forgiveness. The best way to render biblical justice is "comprehensive right relationship," understood either as a state of affairs or as a restoration of relationship after it has been broken. In a Christian understanding, it is through grace and mercy that justice is transformed from being about rights alone to being something wider, deeper, and richer.

Such a justice is what the Book of Isaiah calls "saving justice," and is what the Gospel of Matthew invokes when it quotes Isaiah in identifying Jesus with the "servant who brings justice to victory" (Matt. 12:20). As N. T. Wright interprets in his book, Evil and the Justice of God, "God's justice is not simply a blind dispensing of rewards for the virtuous and punishments for the wicked … . God's justice is a saving, healing, restorative justice because the God to whom justice belongs is the Creator God who has yet to complete his original plan for creation and whose justice is designed not simply to restore balance to a world out of kilter but to bring to glorious completion and fruition the creation … that he made in the first place." Adapted to the political realm, such a justice, I argue in the book, carries great promise for restoring societies torn apart by massive injustices.

Daniel Philpott Professor of Political Science and Peace Studies
University of Notre Dame
South Bend, Indiana

Purgatory Is Hope

To this theologically untrained Christian, the lead article in the September/October Books & Culture [Stranger in a Strange Land, guest column by Kevin Timpe, "Purgatory Is Hope"] seems based on a highly questionable assumption—that time continues after death. By definition, purgatory takes time, long enough to either satisfy the enormous debt of our sin or to complete the sanctification process begun in life.

But what grounds has the author to think that the clock keeps ticking for dead people? Did Jesus really say to the thief on the cross, "Today you shall be in purgatory, but cheer up, someday you will be with me in paradise"?

Roland Chase
Newport, Rhode Island

What an irony that, at a time when leading Roman Catholic theologians are minimizing or abandoning the doctrine of purgatory, a Nazarene philosopher would make a vigorous apologetic for this belief and enthusiastically recommend a book that defends such speculative idea. The Catholic Encyclopedia acknowledges that "in the final analysis, the doctrine on purgatory is based on tradition, not Sacred Scripture" (1967; vol. xi, p. 1027). U.S. Catholic adds, "The church has relied on tradition to support a middle ground between heaven and hell" (March 1981, p. 7). In contrast, the Bible affirms, "Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment" (Heb. 9:27, NIV). Paul states that "We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed" (1 Cor.15:51-52; cf. 2 Cor. 3:18). Jesus himself assured us, "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am" (John 14:3). There is no biblical basis for the belief that after death, some humans will experience a state in which, through suffering, they will be purged from their sinful condition and only then be ready for eternal life with God.

Humberto M. Rasi
Loma Linda, California

Thank You

One of the writers in the November/December issue of Books & Culture is Sarah Hinlicky Wilson, assistant research professor at the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, France, and the editor of Lutheran Forum. Her first piece for the magazine, "SWF Seeks Marriage Partner," appeared in our July/August 2000 issue, when she was in seminary, and she's been back a number of times, on subjects ranging from the Reformation as a movie to the improbable life of the "ecumenical saint" Elisabeth Behr-Sigel; her most recent celebrates The Complete Peanuts. When I emailed proofs of that piece to her, Sarah sent back a couple of corrections, with a note added: "I just read in The Christian Century about the recent financial crisis of B&C and its narrow escape. A world without B&C—quelle horreur!"

It's true: the issue you are reading could have been our last. We're thankful that it isn't—thankful to all of those individuals and institutions whose pledges, large and small, gave us the funding we need for 2014, and thankful to all of our subscribers, those who have been with us for the long haul and those who've just joined. Our goal is to continue raising support, securing our future for the next five years, and we've made a good start on pledges for 2015-18.

Some of you may be in a position to help with that. All of you can help by continuing to subscribe to B&C, introducing the magazine to readers who might be interested, sharing articles, and generally spreading the word.

Maybe there's a friend who's mentioned Reza Aslan's Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, reviewed in this issue by Robert Gundry. Maybe your pastor would be interested in Mark Noll's account of two complementary treatments of global Christian history, both of them much wider in scope than traditional narratives. If you're in a book club, Alissa Wilkinson's review of Edwidge Danticat's Claire of the Sea Light and Susan VanZanten's piece on Chima-manda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah could help you decide whether either or both of these novels should be on your schedule. And maybe, just maybe, you know someone who would want to read Leslie Leyland Fields' essay-review "Are Christian Mothers Human?"

Again, thank you.

—John Wilson, Editor

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