Journey Toward Justice 18

This chapter is titled 'Justice, Love, and Shalom'. I would this is like a footnote of the previous chapter! In this chapter Nick argues that if one is concerned about Shalom, one must be concerned about justice. The idea that justice is God's business and our business is to love is a wrong way of seeing things. Shalom or rather Peace is not just about absence of violence; it's about everything coming together to a right relation. Our human relation to God; our human relation to one another; our human relation with the physical world etc. But without justice, right relations cannot prevail. So if one must talk about Shalom one must talk about justice. 

Journey Toward Justice 17

This 17th chapter is titled 'Justice and Love'. This is a very important chapter, and here Nick makes some very key theological and philosophical points for his concept of justice. I won't be able to do justice to his chapter here; and so I would really urge readers to read it for herself. 

In the New Testament, Jesus gives the command when asked -- Love the Lord and also love your neighbour as yourself. Nick expands on the second part i.e love your neighbour as yourself. He does that by going back to the Old Testament text from which Jesus quoted his points. In the Old Testament where this point occurs (Lev. 19), Moses was giving a code of conduct for Israel to follow with regard to how to treat the 'other'. 'do not oppress your neighbour... be impartial to the poor..do not slander your neighbour... do not hate your brother...' kind of moral sanction is found in this passage. And Moses concludes, so to speak, by saying love your neighbour as yourself. Meaning, just as you are concerned for your own well-being, be concerned for the well-being of your neighbour. That is what it means to love your neighbour. Being just in your conduct with the neighbour is to love the neighbour!

But the question emerges: Can I love those who are really evil? Can I love a serial killer? Or work for his well-being? Nick's answer to this question is really illuminating. This is an area that I have wondered on how to address the question. And Nick's work is really helpful. Since this is a very important point, I would urge the reader to go through the book. 

Journey Toward Justice 15-16

In the Greek New Testament, one often comes across the adjective 'dikaios', the noun 'dikaiosyne', the verb 'dikaio' and others. The words starting with 'dik' is common. Similarly, the word starting with 'dik' in Plato's Republic is common. And Republic is about justice. Well, in the translation, something has gone missing. 'Righteousness' or 'righteous' are often the words used to translate the word starting with 'dik' instead of 'justice' or 'just'. If one critically examines, 'righteousness/righteous' have similar meaning with 'justice/just'. However, in common usage they don't seem to be understood to mean the same thing. 'Righteousness' is meant to imply moral purity of the self; whereas 'justice' is meant to imply his or her relation to the outside world. One is pietistic and the other social. 

In the Beatitude, one reads 'Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness/ for righteousness' sake' (dikaiosyne).  Compare this with 'Blessed are those who are persecuted because of justice/for the sake of justice'. Is it plausible to suppose that I shall be persecuted for seeking pietistic moral purity or for seeking justice in social terrain? The latter seems more plausible. Nick gives so many more cases to argue that many a times where 'justice' must be used, the translators have used 'righteousness', and therefore, have led to the idea among certain people that justice has been supplanted in the New Testament. Theologically and biblically, one can make a strong case that justice runs through the entire Scripture. 

Journey Toward Justice 14

This chapter is titled 'Justice in the New Testament'. One of the parables in the New Testament that Nygren based his understanding of justice or the lack thereof is the parable of the labourers. In the parable Jesus tells, the owner invites people to come and work in his vineyard for a day's wage. People came forward. One joined the work in the morning; another in the afternoon and still another one later. Different people joined at different time. At the end of the day, the one who came early got the day's wage he was promised. He was okay there. But he realised that the owner pays the same amount of money to the guy who came in the afternoon and also to the one who came later. He complaint that it's not fair that others got as much as he got saying that since he joined early he should get more. The owner said that he got what he deserved and he was not treated unjustly. The question is: was the owner unfair or unjust? Well, Nygren thought the owner treated him unjustly! 

But this interpretation made Nygren argues that justice is supplanted in New Testament with love. Nick argues that justice is not supplanted in the New Testament with love. Justice runs through New Testament as well. It is there in the Old Testament and it continues in the New Testament too. Nick takes Luke's 4 where Jesus read the Old Testament text and then concludes that in him what the Old Testament text says in coming true. And that text is about bringing good news of release to the oppressed. Nick goes on cite other texst too to make his point. 

In the next chapter Nick argues why oftentimes English reader of New Testament misses out 'justice' though it's THERE. It's got to do with translation! 

Journey Toward Justice 13

This chapter is titled 'On the Claim that Justice is Supplanted in the New Testament'. Nick states that there are those who argue that justice is supplanted by love in the New Testament Bible. One group says that God is concerned about justice but to bring justice in the social order is not our business; God will eventually do that in his time. We just have to wait for now. Another group states that what New Testament really teaches is to love our neighbour, to be benevolent or compassionate. Nygren and Kierkegaard belong to this latter category. Nygren underscores that New Testament is all about love and we should go to all extent to seek the well-being of others. Justice is not the point. Of course, sometimes love may 'perpetrate  injustice', but fine; just love. The came Reinhold Neibuhr who says that New Testament does teach about love. But then try saying 'we love you, Hitler; no killing, please.'; It won't work. Neibuhr says that there are really bad people out there and therefore love alone will not work on this earth. Justice must also be pursued. 

Journey Toward Justice 12

This chapter is titled ' Justice in the Old Testament'. The three ancient writers mentioned in the previous chapter derived their idea about just society from the Scripture that they read. In the Old Testament, which was a book given to ancient Israel and at present considered Holy Book by the Jews and the Christians, the topic of justice litters the text. Do justice; do justice; do justice is a recurring theme in the Old Testament Bible. And the group of people for whom Israel was mandated to seek justice consists of widows, foreigners, orphans and the poor. The quartet appears again and again. The rich people people too face injustice from time to time – being robbed, murdered, raped etc. But compared to this quartet, the injustice they face is not quite of same degree. For these four group of people injustice is everywhere and every moment, so to speak. Thus seeking justice in the Bible is about righting injustice and seeing it through the lens of the ones facing injustice, from the perspective of the victims. The Bible is not a philosophical textbook and so it does not attempt to provide a theory of justice. Nevertheless it speaks about seeking justice and seeking it from the perspective of the ones wronged.  

Journey Toward Justice 11

This chapter is titled 'Natural Rights in Three Church Fathers'. In this chapter Nick traces the prevalence of the idea of natural rights to the Church Fathers. Church Fathers are those leaders of the Christian Church in the first five hundred years of church history. The point is that Nick is trying to argue for the point that the idea that natural rights emerged from the Enlightenment Period with the likes of Hobbes and Locke is mistaken. He is rather trying to show that Hobbes and Locke were working with the idea bequeathed to them by earlier thinkers specially by those Medieval writers on Jurisprudence. But again these writers on jurisprudence were working with the idea that was there in the writing on earlier thinkers. Nick quotes from the writing of Ambrose of Milan (340-397), who is known as the spiritual guru of St. Augustine, and also from Basil the Great (330-379)and finally from John Chrysostom ( 347-407) . Moreover, these writers were not functioning within the atmosphere that expresses possessive individualism. 

Journey Toward Justice 10

'Is Rights-Talk for Expressing Possessive Individualism?' is the title here. Well, if we look at the different situations going on in the world, the answer appears to be no. When the Palestinians/Blacks/Coloured people/ use the language of rights in their social and political discourse, was it a case of possessive or rather obsessive individualistic thinking? No. So the charge that possessive individualism is in the DNA of rights-language is not true. 

Go back to history. Where can we trace the language of rights being employed. Did it start with the likes of Hobbes and Locke and some have underscored? Nick argues that it started well before that. The canon lawyers in the 12th century employed such language but they were not possessive individualists. So the charge that rights-language essentially is about possessive individualism is not true. There could be cases like that specially in the West, but historically that is not the case. And even recent cases -- apartheid issue, civil right movement etc. --  tell otherwise. 

Journey Toward Justice 9

This chapter is titled 'Why Rights-Talk is Important'. There are those who argue that discourse on justice should be from the perspective of obligation, care, compassion, benevolence etc. 'We should care for the poor/deprived...' is the kind of approach they argue for. Nick disagrees. Nick rather starts of from the other side; from the side of the poor/deprived/wronged. The difference between the two approaches is very significant. 'I ought to care for the coloured people (in apartheid South Africa)' and 'the coloured people ought to be given their due right' are two significantly different way of seeing the issue at hand. The latter requires decentering and putting myself in the shoe of the victim. 

Journey Toward Justice 8

This chapter is titled 'Rights Grounded in Worth'. This is an important chapter of the book. There are different sorts of rights. Some are given by legislation while others may be there because of promise/speech acts. But other sorts of rights are natural rights. But how do we ground this natural rights? Some people argue that this sort of right is grounded on the person's autonomy; meaning, to violate the right of a person is to violate her autonomy. But a question arises: when a person is raped, is it wrong because her autonomy is violated or is there something deeper than just violating her autonomy? Nick argues that there is something deeper. 

Is it wrong to feed someone who is in coma to the dogs? This person has no autonomy; so if it's wrong, then the grounding of why it's wrong has to go beyond violating autonomy. Nick argues that the grounding for such right is on the worth or the dignity or the value of a person. To violate her right is to disrespect her dignity as a human. 

Journey Toward Justice 7

'What are Rights?' is the theme of this short chapter. For Nick, since justice is based on rights, it is important to define what rights are. But rights are of different sorts. But the point is that rights are normative social relationships. Meaning, rights are about normative relations which also says this is the way you ought to treat or this is the way I ought to treat you, and if you fail to treat me this way or vice versa, then you wrong me or vice versa. 

Nick thus underscores that 'primary justice is present in society insofar as the members of society stand to one another in the normative social relationship of being treated as they have a right to be treated.' 

Journey Toward Justice 6

There are different sorts of reasons given against rights-talk; against the language of rights being employed to talk about fairness in the society. One of the main arguments against rights-talk, as Nick sees it, is that this sort of thing amounts to strong sense of individualistic thing. 'My right' 'my right' 'my right' kind of thing conveys a sense of individualistic thought. Nick concedes that this might be there, but then the fact that this is there does not mean that we throw out the whole concept of rights. If we throw out the whole concept of rights, this would be throwing the baby with the water. What is the required is that where there is wrong employment of the concept or where there is abuse of rights language, there needs to be correction. After all many social movement like civil rights movement in the US or the movement against apartheid in South Africa and so on employed the language of rights and brought social change, yet they are hardly about excessive individualistic thinking. 

What critics of rights-talk often leave unsaid is what will be lost or what moral category/concept would be lost if this language or concept of rights is altogether discarded. And Nick would venture on to argue that something very key to moral discourse would be lost if this language of right is altogether discarded from our society. Therefore, rights-talk or language of right must continue to be part of our moral discourse. 

Journey Toward Justice 5

Nick tells that there are two ways in the West that people think about justice: right order conception and inherent rights conception. Plato's Republic, for example, is the former kind while his (Nick's) is the latter kind. Proponents of the former kind holds that a society is just if it is rightly ordered, or rather conforms to certain principle. Proponents of the latter kind holds that a society is just if people are treated as they have a right to be treated. Nick says that Rawls also falls into this right order conception of justice. 

So Plato's conception is of the former kind and so is Rawls' conception. I fancy that Nick would agree that Mill's conception is also of the former kind and also that of the capability approach especially that which is advanced by the likes of Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen; and this would also include the one advanced by Michael Sandel. 

Nick argues that if we look at debates about justice/injustice in the past, those who faced injustice often did not appeal to certain principle to insist that they were wrongly treated; they just spoke about saying that they were denied of their rights and that they were wrongly treated. They were performing their action from the vantage point Nick advances though they may not be developing a theory about it; Nick also did the same thing in the beginning. It was only later that he developed a theory that matches his previous actions. 

This is rather interesting because Nick has argued elsewhere for certain epistemological position which in effects says that there are beliefs (and so actions) that is in us which may not have philosophical ground for taking such a view but over a period of time we come to be aware of such belief and then go on to provide a philosophical ground for holding such a belief. So it's not that philosophical justification/ground always precedes belief; sometimes it could be that belief precedes philosophical justification. 

Journey Toward Justice 4

In this chapter, Nick tells about one advantage about starting from the position of the one wronged. He contrasts it with Rawls' position. Rawls' concept of justice is based on right, but a highly abstract contractarian view about right. He asks the question what a just society would look like from an abstract position. Nick's view is also based on right but he starts of differently. He will explain in later chapters how he does that. 

But he argues that one advantage he has over Rawls' approach is that Rawls' approach is able to deal justice/injustice at the level of institution only; it fails to take into consideration issues of justice/injustice between individuals and communities -- those entities which are not institutional, whereas his approach is able to take consideration about justice/injustice at different levels. Of course, Rawls may respond and say that his theory is not an adequate theory of justice while Nick claims that his theory of justice is meant to be an adequate theory of justice. 

Journey Toward Justice 3

Nick begins his theorising about justice from the perspective of the one wronged. When Rawls begins his, he positions the setting in an abstract condition where everybody is blinded about their personal preference; stripped the citizens of so many items of knowledge. The idea was to develop a theory of justice from a standpoint that Rawls considers neutral. Nick's approach is different. Now someone may ask him why starts from the one being wronged; why not from a neutral position. Nick's argument is that there is no one who really starts truly from a neutral position; we all start from certain position. 

The point, therefore, is not whether someone starts from the one wronged or from obligation perspective or from the religiously neutral perspective; the point is whether the theory is able to adequately takes into consideration issues of justice and injustice. 

I would want to add that even Rawls has an idea of the good in his assumption. He calls it the 'thin theory' of the good. So, yes Rawls' starting point is also not really neutral though it may appear neutral at first glance. Everyone starts of from somewhere. 

Journey Toward South 2

In the second chapter, Nick tells a story about his encounter with a Palestinian Christian leader, four years after the Conference on Palestinian issue. The year would have been 1982.  Raised in West Bank, Father Iliya Khoury has now been expelled from his birthplace by Israel and so he now lives in Jordan. Fr. Khoury tells that he felt abandoned by the Christians in the West. The Christians are supporting Zionists, but why are they doing so at the expense of the Christian brother and sister Palestinians? The Palestian Christians are caught between Israelis and Muslims. The Muslims see Christian West supporting Israel and so they don't see Christian Palestinians in good terms. And the Israelis are trying hard to expel the Palestinians; what the Palestinian Christians supposed to do? They are willing to be martyred, but the Western Christians would be forcing them to be martyr for an unworthy cause. 

Christians in the West are not gaining Muslim converts. Well, as Palestinian Christians they live with the Muslims. They know the Muslims. With the kind of attitude and actions of the Western Christians, they will not be successful in the evangelistic effort. The Muslims need to see first that they can live with the Christians. And Palestinians can show that Israelis, Christians and Muslims can live together. But for that to happen Western church needs to change first. 

Journey Toward South 1

Journey Toward Justice

By Nicholas Wolterstorff

Baker Academic

2013

This is the first chapter of the book. In this chapter Nick tells the story of how he came to believe that he got a call from God through the words of the ones wronged and  that he needs to speak up for the wronged ones. He did not have such a conviction earlier, but after having gone through certain experiences his understanding of things changed. There are two experiences that he tells in the book. 

The first is his encounter of Apartheid in South Africa in a Conference in 1975. In the Conference, he heard and saw blacks and coloured people speaking out angrily about the dehumanising experiences they faced daily due to state policy called Apartheid. The Afrikaners deflected the charge by saying that such a policy was required to enable different people group to maintain their ways of life. They further said that they showed benevolence to these blacks and coloured people by giving them used clothes occasionally, food during Christmas etc. The Afrikaners did not see the issue in term of justice vs. injustice. But Nick saw the issue through the lens of justice vs. injustice. 

The second episode was when Nick was invited for a Conference on Palestinian rights in 1978. He saw and heard from Palestinian themselves about injustice meted out to them. 

Nick asks two questions in this chapter. First, why can't benevolence substitute for justice? Second, why did certain people look into the same eyes, yet not saw the issue as matter of justice/injustice while others saw it that way. Nick defers the answer to later chapters.