My slow but enjoyable trip through "Law and the Bible: Justice, Mercy and Legal Institutions" (InterVarsity Press 2013) has reached Chapter 6: Crying Out for Justice: Civil Law and the Prophets co-written by law professor Barbara Armacost and theologian Peter Enns. (For earlier stops along the journey go here, here, here, here, and here.)
This chapter is more confounding than any other so far. On the one hand, it contains unnecessary "critical apparatus" and misunderstands the biblical notion of justice. Yet on the other, it does a fine job of situating the messages of the prophets in the context of God's covenant with Israel (not any modern state) while at the same time identifying broad themes of justice that are relevant to the civil law as well as contemporary lawyers. That Chapter 6 takes half again as many pages as any preceding chapter suggests more vigorous editing would have been useful.
Starting with the positives, Armacost and Enns correctly observe that "the original prophetic message was directed toward Israel as a nation, with the primary purpose of calling the whole people of Israel back to its covenantal obligations." Given the specific, redemptive-historical situation of the prophets, "it would be improper to read the prophetic literature as containing promises or judgments applicable to current national or world circumstances." Nonetheless, the authors are quick to note that there are consequences for modern nations that fail to implement justice, Without adverting to the concept of natural law, it is clear that natural law is the foundation for the conclusion that "when our institutions mirror eternal principles, they will do a better job of restraining sin and furthering human flourishing."
Armacost and Enns do a fine job of relating the moral urgency of the prophets' calls on the political leaders of their day to the contemporary practice of law. Obviously, men and women practicing law today are "not prophets in the same sense as the Old Testament prophets." But just as clearly the education, training, as well as the social and political status of modern lawyers "creates the potential to do a huge amount of good in the cause of justice." Modern lawyers, especially those who are in Christ, are (or at least should be) more than legal technicians. No matter how often it seems otherwise, justice is not a cipher for politics. And it is justice--not simply material advancement--that should be the formal cause of what lawyers do.
The rest of the story.
The criticisms that follow should not be understood to negate the positive observations made above. They are, however, significant enough to warrant comment. Previously I expressed appreciation for the judicious use of non-evangelical resources by Roger and Leslie Alford in their mining of the Wisdom literature for nuggets of insight into law and justice. The first half of Chapter 6, however, contains several unnecessary digressions along with footnotes to sources not available in English. These asides add little to the conclusions ultimately drawn but their presence is not helpful for the audience of a non-academic text and their elimination would have saved space.
There are also several "shout outs" to organizations and institutions of particular interest to the authors. For example, International Justice Mission gets substantial play for its work to rectify injustice but other Christian NGOs doing the same work (such as Freedom Firm and Justice Ventures International) are ignored. Similarly, one might be led to think that Pepperdine Law School's Global Justice Program is unique among religiously-affiliated law schools but Regent Law School's Center for Global Justice, Human Rights, and the Rule of Law is active both domestically and internationally to address a variety of situations where existing legal institutions regularly fail to provide justice to the poor and oppressed.
Finally, and most significantly, I believe the authors' understanding of "justice" as proffered in the Prophets is incorrect. Our disagreement is not idiosyncratic. In other words, other scholars--especially theologians--agree with Armacost and Enns that
Drawing on the work of Nicholas Wolterstorff, I developed the argument that rights precede right order at length in posts from India that can be read here, here, here, and other places as well. I also utilized the notion of human rights grounded in worth (i.e., being created in the image of God) in my article Looking for Bedrock: Accounting for Human Rights (download here). Nonetheless, my strong dissent should not be taken as the final word; the authors of Chapter 6 are free to disagree. Yet I would have expected to see a sentence or two or at least a footnote acknowledging that their understanding of Prophets' use of justice is not universally accepted.
This chapter is more confounding than any other so far. On the one hand, it contains unnecessary "critical apparatus" and misunderstands the biblical notion of justice. Yet on the other, it does a fine job of situating the messages of the prophets in the context of God's covenant with Israel (not any modern state) while at the same time identifying broad themes of justice that are relevant to the civil law as well as contemporary lawyers. That Chapter 6 takes half again as many pages as any preceding chapter suggests more vigorous editing would have been useful.
Starting with the positives, Armacost and Enns correctly observe that "the original prophetic message was directed toward Israel as a nation, with the primary purpose of calling the whole people of Israel back to its covenantal obligations." Given the specific, redemptive-historical situation of the prophets, "it would be improper to read the prophetic literature as containing promises or judgments applicable to current national or world circumstances." Nonetheless, the authors are quick to note that there are consequences for modern nations that fail to implement justice, Without adverting to the concept of natural law, it is clear that natural law is the foundation for the conclusion that "when our institutions mirror eternal principles, they will do a better job of restraining sin and furthering human flourishing."
Armacost and Enns do a fine job of relating the moral urgency of the prophets' calls on the political leaders of their day to the contemporary practice of law. Obviously, men and women practicing law today are "not prophets in the same sense as the Old Testament prophets." But just as clearly the education, training, as well as the social and political status of modern lawyers "creates the potential to do a huge amount of good in the cause of justice." Modern lawyers, especially those who are in Christ, are (or at least should be) more than legal technicians. No matter how often it seems otherwise, justice is not a cipher for politics. And it is justice--not simply material advancement--that should be the formal cause of what lawyers do.
The rest of the story.
The criticisms that follow should not be understood to negate the positive observations made above. They are, however, significant enough to warrant comment. Previously I expressed appreciation for the judicious use of non-evangelical resources by Roger and Leslie Alford in their mining of the Wisdom literature for nuggets of insight into law and justice. The first half of Chapter 6, however, contains several unnecessary digressions along with footnotes to sources not available in English. These asides add little to the conclusions ultimately drawn but their presence is not helpful for the audience of a non-academic text and their elimination would have saved space.
There are also several "shout outs" to organizations and institutions of particular interest to the authors. For example, International Justice Mission gets substantial play for its work to rectify injustice but other Christian NGOs doing the same work (such as Freedom Firm and Justice Ventures International) are ignored. Similarly, one might be led to think that Pepperdine Law School's Global Justice Program is unique among religiously-affiliated law schools but Regent Law School's Center for Global Justice, Human Rights, and the Rule of Law is active both domestically and internationally to address a variety of situations where existing legal institutions regularly fail to provide justice to the poor and oppressed.
Finally, and most significantly, I believe the authors' understanding of "justice" as proffered in the Prophets is incorrect. Our disagreement is not idiosyncratic. In other words, other scholars--especially theologians--agree with Armacost and Enns that
Justice in the biblical sense is fundamentally relational. It describes the duties owed in particular social relationships, particularly by those in positions of leadership, authority and power over vulnerable groups who cannot protect their own interests. (Emphasis added.)Justice, according to the authors of Chapter 6, is about relationships and interests and not rights. Right order instead of subjective rights. This is backwards: rights (and their correlative duties) precede or, better, determine, right order. In other words, we cannot know what order is right unless and until we know what are the rights of the persons involved. For example, the apparently relational orderliness of same-sex couples does not determine that they have the right to have that order declared marriage.
Drawing on the work of Nicholas Wolterstorff, I developed the argument that rights precede right order at length in posts from India that can be read here, here, here, and other places as well. I also utilized the notion of human rights grounded in worth (i.e., being created in the image of God) in my article Looking for Bedrock: Accounting for Human Rights (download here). Nonetheless, my strong dissent should not be taken as the final word; the authors of Chapter 6 are free to disagree. Yet I would have expected to see a sentence or two or at least a footnote acknowledging that their understanding of Prophets' use of justice is not universally accepted.
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