Justice, Righteousness & Law

A small diversion into the problems which can arise when trying to understand Biblical language in a very different culture.

The fourth beatitude says (in the usual English translation) "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness ...", so why does my previous post talk about justice?

On a simplistic level it is because the underlying Greek word used by Matthew, dikaiosynēn, literally means 'impartial justice'. 

The problem is that 'justice' in Biblical context is not the same as in the western-European (and ex-colonies) context we tend to assume. Indeed, this is true of legal language in general, which is why many traditional approaches to St Paul's letter to the Romans often miss its point.

We tend to think of law and justice in the sense of criminal law and criminal justice: some sort of abstract and unchanging right and wrong. In the Bible things are much more concrete: law and justice are about contract law - keeping or breaking a solemn and binding agreement. A lot of Biblical language, not least 'Testament' and 'Covenant', reflects this.

In the Old Testament the central contract is that made between God and the Israelites on Mt Sinai: the Torah, or Jewish Law, a contract with ten key clauses and several hundred sub-clauses and applications. 

So ‘righteousness’, in Jesus' context, means justice, but a particular idea of justice which is about conformity to God’s Law – more precisely, conformity to the terms and conditions of the covenant which God and the Israelites entered into on Mt Sinai. God is righteous because he keeps his side of that contract; the Israelites, again and again, are unrighteous because they persistently and deliberately fail to keep theirs.

In the third beatitude, those of the poor who lost their land were supposed to have had it returned at the following Jubilee. This hasn’t happened – there is a great injustice – but justice will come, “rolling on like river,” as Amos puts it (Amos 5:24), and “righteousness like a never-failing stream.”

One difference between law as a contract and law as an abstract idea is that a contract can be bought out - redeemed for a price agreed by both sides. Which still leaves the problems that the original Sinai contract was made to address, so you need a new contract: foreshadowed in the prophet Ezekiel's "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."

Which leads us into the great mysteries of Jesus, his death and resurrection, and the role of the Holy Spirit in changing us so that we might become "perfect as our heavenly father is perfect."

Grace and peace to you and to all who love you.

Framing Scripture II - The Big Picture

It seems to me that one of the reasons for the lack of meaningful communication between ("Christian") religious left and religious right is that the two groups are viewing scripture from within two very different frameworks. I would argue that these frameworks correspond to the two framing narratives around the whole of the Bible.

If you look at the first two chapters of the Bible they describe God's creation of the earth (in either literal or metaphorical terms, it doesn't really matter), and describe that creation as 'very good'. Mankind's relationships are wholesome and as they should be: with God, with one another and with the natural world. Peace and justice reign.

If you then jump to the end of the Bible, the last two chapters, they describe a world in which peace and justice once more reign: heaven and earth have been restored, relationships between God, mankind, and the natural world are as they should be. At the end of the story, as at the beginning, the world is very good.

To many on the left, or progressive, wings of Christian practice, this narrative of restoring the world by restoring relationships, by promoting justice and peace, is their guiding principle. Following the prophets, they proclaim the need for justice and compassion for the poor; they promote equal and just standing before God, and within human society, for men and women, black and white, straight and gay; and they emphasise proper and responsible stewardship of the natural world. This is all good, but incomplete.

If you move on to the third chapter in Genesis, you come to another, very different, framing narrative for the Bible. In this story sin and death come into the world, for God had warned them, "You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die." Yet eat they did (again, whether this story is to be taken literally or metaphorically is irrelevant - not least because creation before chapter three is so different from today that language is inadequate to properly describe whatever it was that happened in it).

Again, jump to the third chapter from the end of the Bible and this frame completes. The Fall is undone, but in the process the warning is fulfilled: "Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire."

This second frame informs the worldview of the religious right, with their emphasis on sin and death and hell, but also their emphasis on the need for Jesus to provide an escape from that 'second death' through his death on the cross.

If you look at the world around you, and at the people around you, there is beauty and ugliness, good and evil, constructive and destructive behaviours all intertwined. Our world is in the grip of these two different framing narratives, of life and hope versus death and despair. And it is Jesus, through his death and resurrection, who provides the way from the inner narrative of death to the outer narrative of life and peace.

Also, the Holy Spirit provides the way for us to be a part of that process, a part of the transformation of creation from the death of Genesis 3 and Revelation 20, to the new life (here on earth, incidentally) of Revelation 21/22.

To be continued ...

Framing Scripture I - The Road To Jericho

I do get frustrated when people rip bits out of the Bible and try to justify or make arguments with them without considering their context. At its worst this is simple 'proof-texting' - essentially taking an opinion then trying to claim that "God agrees with me and here's the proof". But even fuller consideration of a passage can completely miss the point if done without looking at its proper framing.

For example (from Luke 10:30-35):

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he travelled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

What is this? It looks like a news report of a mugging and its aftermath. There are those who want to treat the entire Bible as a combination of news report, science manual, and rulebook, yet most Scripture is so much richer than that.

To understand this story we need to look at its frame, the text before and after:

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’”
“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?”
In reply Jesus said:

...

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise."

Clearly it is a teaching story, about loving your neighbour, not a factual news report. That's what the story frame tells us.

In the wider context of our knowledge of the prejudices of the time, we know that Samaritans were scorned by many Jews, which gives the story its punch. But we can also read Luke's writings more broadly and see the emphasis on Jesus' acceptance of those who were, for various reasons, seen as 'outsiders' and scorned, and their inclusion into the early church. There is even a context in Jewish history where something very similar to this story - although on a larger scale - actually happened following a battle between Judea and Samaria (see 2 Chronicles 28:10-15).

Context and framing matter for anyone who truly wants to understand the Scriptures, or even to avoid being misled about what the Bible says.

Actually, there is a much bigger frame - or more accurately two frames - which go around the whole of Bible itself. Just as you cannot expect anyone to understand Luke's story of a mugging victim without seeing the story frame that fits around it, so you need to recognise the overall framing narrative of the whole Bible to gain a proper perspective on all it tells us.

To be continued ...