Intro

INTRODUCTION

T he papers comprising this volume are presented at a conference

organised by the Ethos Institute for Public Christianity on 23
September 2017 on the broad theme, ‘Justice and the Common
Good’. This conference, held at the Trinity Theological College
(TTC), was organised in collaboration with seven theological
colleges and institutions in Singapore: Singapore Bible College,
Biblical Graduate School of Theology, Theological Centre for Asia,
Discipleship Training Centre, Baptist Theological Seminary and
TTC. The conference is a clear and heartening testament of the
warm camaraderie and that these different institutions enjoy and
their commitment to the common mission of theological education.
‘Justice’ and ‘common good’ are topics that have received much
scholarly attention in the past few decades. Eminent economists
like Amartya Sen1 and political philosophers like John Rawls2 and
Michael Sandel3 have written eloquently about them. Their works
are still being discussed and analysed by academics, politicians
and policy makers. Christian thinkers of every theological and
ecclesiastical stripe have also entered the fray. Thus, writers
as diverse as Ronald Sider4, Nicholas Wolterstorff 5 and Duncan
Forrester6 have published significant works, drawing in their own
ways from the rich theological and moral literature of the church.
These scholars believe that Christianity has important contributions
to make in what has become an increasingly secular discussion of
these important topics.
They are not the only ones who hold this view. Other
Christian writers—for example, Catholic theologians like John
Neuhaus and Michael Novak—have argued quite persuasively
that liberal democracy is unable to supply the philosophical and
moral foundations upon which values like liberty, equality and
justice must be built. Without these foundations, not only will these

1
2  JUSTICE AND THE COMMON GOOD

values become devoid of serious substance and depth, democracy

itself, they argue, will be in jeopardy. Neuhaus, for example, could
speak of ‘democracy’s democratic self-destruction’. This prospect, he
argues with characteristic perceptiveness, should remind us that
‘democracy requires more than the institutions of democracy’7. These
authors believe that democracy requires a certain theological and
moral vision of humanity and human society that secular ideologies
unable to offer by themselves. They believe that Christianity is able
to meet this lack; it is able to offer the indispensable support of the
moral claims of secular society. Taking the issue of human rights
as an example, Novak writes: ‘The moral reasoning behind natural
rights …. is based upon a special concept of human dignity: the
dignity of having been created by God, called to be a friend of God,
and being inalienably responsible for one’s use of liberty’.8
The authors of the essays in this volume concur with this view.
Philip Satterthewaite starts the conference off with a survey of the
Old and the New Testaments and demonstrated that the topic of
justice is central to Scripture. He then focuses on two texts from
the Old Testament, which, he believes, are neglected by Christians
today, namely, Exodus 20-23 and Proverbs. Satterthwaite brings
the biblical texts in creative conversation with three contemporary
authors: Nicholas Wolterstorff (a Christian philosopher from the
Reformed tradition), David Bentley Hart (an Orthodox theologian)
and Jonathan Sacks (a British Rabbi). He concludes with the
emphasis that Christians are called to be witnesses of God, and that
a major part of that witness ‘relates to the issue of justice’.
In his paper entitled, ‘Immigration and Justice’, Fong Choon
Sam turns our attention to one of the most pressing issues of our
time. He discusses the complex global migration phenomenon and
examines its many different facets. Fong then turns his attention to
the Singapore context and discusses the attitudes of Singaporeans
towards immigrants. Plumbing the rich theological and spiritual
resources that can be found in both the Old and New Testaments,
Fong argues that the Bible has much to say about how the ‘fatherless,
the widow and the foreigner’ are to be treated, and what it means
to treat the other as neighbour. Fong ends his paper with some very
practical suggestions about what the Christian community to reach
out to migrants in Singapore.
In his response to Satterthwaite’s paper, Simon Chan warns
against an uncritical acquiescence to the modern emphasis of
human rights, especially the way in which that concept has morphed
 Introduction 3

since its promulgation in the UN Universal Declaration on Human

Rights in 1948. He points out that the primary focus of the Bible is
not the rights of individuals as such—even those of compromised
and vulnerable individuals—but rather society’s obligation to
them. Chan makes the further point that covenantal relationships
cannot be established on rights, but on the mutual obligations of
members of a community to one another. Chan appreciates Fong’s
careful analysis of the global immigration phenomenon as well as
the current situation in the context of Singapore. Fong has also
provided practical suggestions on how the church can respond to
the plight of the migrants, and, Chan maintains, the onus is on the
church to take up some of these ideas.
In her paper, Kwa Kiem-Kiok examines the question of justice
and the ecological crisis by focussing particularly on climate change
and the contributions that human activities have made to global
warming. She discusses the response of the world community to
this issue with brief references to the 1992 ‘Earth Summit’ in Rio
de Janeiro and the 2015 Paris Accord. Kwa then examines—albeit
very briefly—what the Bible has to say about stewardship to the
creation, drawing from the works of Howard Synder and Calvin
DeWitt. In the final two sections of her paper, Kwa explores how the
current ecological crisis has brought to the surface issues of justice
that the world cannot ignore and suggests some steps that can be
taken by individuals and churches to address the problem.
In his wide-ranging paper, Richard Goetz addresses the
troubled concept of human rights by discussing its origins and
historical development, and by asking if this concept has any
Scriptural warrant. In tracing the history and development of the
notion of human rights, Goetz takes the reader on a whirlwind
tour beginning with Plato and Aristotle and terminating at the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He then identifies and
discusses some important issues related to human rights discourse,
ranging from the relationship between human rights and natural
law to the question about whose responsibility it is to secure these
rights once they have been identified. Goetz goes on to examine
the Scriptures and identifies a number of important themes that
emerges from its pages that should inform and shape the Christian
perspective of human rights. He concludes his paper with some
pertinent observations and assessments.
In his response to Kwa’s paper, Malcolm Tan pointed out that
besides global warming, more could be said about other important
4  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

JUSTICE AND THE COMMON GOOD:

A BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVE Philip Satterthwaite

Introduction

I n his book Know and Tell the Gospel, the Australian evangelist
John Chapman describes a striking encounter:

During the last ten years I have spoken at hundreds of

small meetings in homes. There is no doubt in my mind
that some of the hardest people to reach with the gospel
are those who have been hurt by Christians (or church
members). One man told how he’d been swindled in a
business deal by a church warden. ‘Do you want me to
become like him?’ he asked. ‘I want both you and him to
become like Jesus’ was the only reply I could think of. But
I grieved over that situation.1

An incident like that immediately makes clear to us why justice (in

this case, honesty in business transactions) should be of concern to
Christians. We recognise that when Christians deprive others of
their legitimate rights and fail to deal justly with others, the gospel
is brought into disrepute. If we have any knowledge of church
history then we can see how the same thing is true on a larger scale:
when the church has failed to uphold justice, when the church has
gone so far as to lend support to unjust regimes—at those times, we
recognize, it has been least true to itself and its calling.
5
6  JUSTICE AND THE COMMON GOOD

We recognise this, yet at the same time we perhaps feel

uneasiness when we hear the word ‘justice’. Here is a task we have
neglected, we may think; here is an issue that may disrupt our
comfortable life-styles, that may take a lot of effort and thought on
our part and make us unpopular in certain circles as well.
Or at least, that is how I respond when I hear the word. I
cannot claim a track record of social involvement or of campaigning
on behalf of the underprivileged and marginalised. I am a scholar:
I like the quiet life, the leisure to read and think. I am not one of
nature’s activists. And yet, as a Bible scholar, I cannot but note that
justice is a remarkably pervasive theme in the Bible. My aim in this
paper is to present some of the Bible’s teaching on this topic.

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

cross the blessing originally promised to Abraham is extended to

Gentiles as well as Jews. The new creation has thus begun with
Jesus’ death and resurrection, and the forces of evil have been
decisively defeated. The church’s task is to proclaim and live out
the gospel of Christ, announcing forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ name,
and making disciples of all nations in fulfilment of the promise to
Abraham. Jesus is coming again to complete the work of redemption:
to judge evil once and for all, to make all things new, restoring the
entire creation and bringing in the ‘new heavens and new earth’
spoken of in the prophets.
One can, however, produce another ‘big-picture’ reading of
the Bible like the one just sketched, but this time focusing on the
themes of justice and injustice. In the Old Testament this reading
might run as follows.
God created the world as a place of beauty and order. When sin
entered the world, this led to the spread of violence and injustice
across the earth. Think of Cain’s violence in Genesis 4. Think of the
world before the flood, described as ‘corrupt in God’s sight, and…
filled with violence’ (Genesis 6:11).
Part of Abraham’s calling as it unfolds in Genesis was ‘to charge
his children and household after him to keep the way of the Lord
by doing justice and righteousness’ (Genesis 18:19). Genesis 18 tells
us that justice and righteousness were so central to this calling that
God in effect invited Abraham to challenge him regarding the justice
of destroying Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham boldly accepted the
invitation (verses 22-33): what if there are fifty righteous people in
Sodom? What if there are forty-five? And so on all the way down to
ten.
The account of Abraham’s descendants in Genesis 25-50 can be
read as an account of familial injustice and restoration: how Jacob
cheated Esau and then sought reconciliation, restoring the blessing
he had stolen; how in the next generation Jacob’s sons were torn
apart by Jacob’s favouritism towards Joseph and how the breach
was restored through repentance and forgiveness.
In Exodus, God brings his people Israel justice and freedom,
delivering them from cruel slavery in Egypt. At Sinai God gives
Israel a teaching, where one of the major focuses is justice leading to
the creation of genuine community (Exodus 20-23). In Deuteronomy,
Moses further explains that the purpose of the teaching is to show
the nations what God’s justice looks like in practice (see especially
Deuteronomy 4:6-8; 26:16-19).
8  JUSTICE AND THE COMMON GOOD

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:

Give the king your justice, O God,

and your righteousness to a king’s son.
May he judge your people with righteousness,
and your poor with justice.
May the mountains yield prosperity for the people,
and the hills, in righteousness.
May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,
give deliverance to the needy,
and crush the oppressor. (Psalm 72:1-4)

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:

Help, O Lord, for there is no longer anyone who is godly;

the faithful have disappeared from humankind.
They utter lies to each other;
with flattering lips and a double heart they speak.
(Psalm 12:1-2)

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:

The New Testament is all about justice.... justice, along

with its negative, injustice, is one of the main themes of
the New Testament—real justice and real injustice, not
some spiritualized counterpart thereof. In this world of
ours, persons are wronged, justice is breached. That is
the ever-present context of the New Testament writings.
Sometimes the writers bring this context to the fore; often
they take it for granted. From their location within that
context they speak about the coming of justice, about the
struggle against injustice, about judgment on breaches of
justice, and about forgiveness for such breaches.3
10  JUSTICE AND THE COMMON GOOD

In Matthew 3 John the Baptist announces the coming of God’s

kingdom, and then speaks of repentance and coming judgment. In
Luke 4 Jesus announces that ‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me... to
bring good news to the poor... to proclaim release to the captives...
to let the oppressed go free...’ (Luke 4:18-19; cf. Isaiah 61:1-4).
The themes of justice and divine judgment and of liberation from
oppression run through all the Gospels. Jesus repeatedly warns
that many in Israel are pursuing the wrong goals, because they
have a wrong view of the kingdom of God, consequently that they
face terrible judgment.4 His warnings in part focus on the themes
of wealth, poverty and injustice within Israel.5 It fits with this that
the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ trial, death and resurrection highlight
the themes of justice and the future vindication of the Son of Man so
prominently (e.g., Matthew 26:57-68; Luke 22:66-71).6
Elsewhere in the New Testament, there are texts such as
James 2 with its critique of favouritism shown towards the wealthy
in Christian gatherings, and James 5 with its attack on the rich
who ill-treat their workers: ‘Listen! The wages of the labourers who
mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the
cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts’
(verse 4). Then there is the Book of Revelation, and the plea of the
martyred saints for vindication in Revelation 6:9-10: ‘how long will
it be before you judge and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of
the earth?’ Revelation 17-18 speaks of the injustice perpetrated by
‘Babylon’ (a coded reference to Rome), and the divine judgment that
it will bring down.
Perhaps Paul is an exception? Surely Paul focuses more on
‘justification by faith’ than on the establishment of justice? Did Paul
not describe himself as ‘not having a righteousness of my own that
comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ’
(Philippians 3:9-10)?
Here we come to a major translation issue. In English we
have two groups of words: one group which includes the words
‘just’, ‘justice’, ‘justify’ and ‘justification’, and a second group which
includes the words ‘right’, ‘righteous’ and ‘righteousness’. The two
groups have different connotations: in English ‘justice’ does not
mean the same as ‘righteousness’; the semantic ranges of the two
words overlap, but are not identical.7 But in Greek there is just one
group of words, all of them recognisably related, corresponding to
those two groups of words in English. Putting the point crudely,
when setting out the gospel of God in Romans, Paul did not have to
 Justice and the Common Good 11

choose between ‘justice’ and ‘righteousness’: in Greek he could write

one word which evoked both ideas.
What if English Bibles had translated ‘justice’ rather than
‘righteousness’ at key points of the New Testament?8 What if our
translations of Romans 1:16-17 read: ‘I am not ashamed of the
gospel... for in it the justice of God is revealed...’? What if at Romans
14:17 we had read: ‘For the kingdom of God is not food and drink
but justice and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit’?9 What difference
might that have made to the faith and practice of English-speaking
churches?
Also relevant here is the New Testament teaching about ‘doing
good’. Christians should of course treat each other justly, as the
letter of James makes particularly clear. But, as both Paul and
Peter remind us (Galatians 6:10; 1 Peter 3:13-17), we also uphold
justice by being committed to ‘doing good’ more generally that is, by
doing good to non-Christian and Christian alike.
In the Greco-Roman world there was a tradition of public
benefaction: those who had the means would help their fellow
citizens by erecting public buildings or making clean water available
or buying grain at a time when grain was scarce and then selling it
on cheaply. The New Testament encourages Christians to continue
this tradition of public benefaction, as they have means, as a witness
to the gospel.10 Such acts of benefaction can be seen as a form of
justice: providing citizens with goods (food, water, clothing, shelter)
to which they are entitled as humans made in God’s image.11 That
is, a commitment to the just treatment of our fellow human beings
is an important part of our commitment to Christ.12
Summing up this section, justice is a major theme of both Old
and New Testaments. God’s setting a world marred by sin to rights,
God’s establishing justice and condemning injustice, leading to the
restoration of the entire creation: the Bible focuses as much on
these themes as on salvation from sin. In fact, these themes are
intimately linked throughout the Bible. If we rejoice that salvation
from sin is such a prominent theme in the Bible, then we should
also give due weight to the fact that the themes of justice and the
overthrow of injustice are equally pervasive.
12  JUSTICE AND THE COMMON GOOD

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.

Exodus 20-23 (and Deuteronomy 4)

I begin with Exodus 20-23, the first major body of ‘law’ or ‘teaching’
which the Israelites receive after they have been liberated from
slavery in Egypt. As they come before God at Mt Sinai, they come
in the knowledge that God has saved them and made them his own
people, his ‘treasured possession’ among all the nations of the world
(Exodus 19:5). The question addressed at Mt Sinai is: what kind of a
people should they be? How should they live in response to God’s act
of salvation? Exodus 20-23 answers that question in some detail.
These chapters cover a striking variety of topics: right worship;
the rights of Hebrew slaves; violence, lethal and non-lethal; property
and restitution; treatment of foreigners; treatment of debtors; the
proper conduct of lawsuits; Sabbath keeping. Underlying these
different topics there is a single unifying concern, a concern for
community.13 These chapters reflect a sense that violence and
injustice have the potential to rip Israelite society apart, that
violence and injustice must be restrained and appropriately dealt
with when they occur.
The world reflected in Exodus 20-23 is not a perfect world, nor
are the Israelites perfect human beings. Exodus 20-23 envisages
people fighting, falling into debt, mistreating each other, using
excessive violence, stealing and telling lies. Property goes missing,
accidents happen, fires get out of control, oxen gore humans, donkeys
wander off and fall into pits. These chapters start where the people
are: they do not begin by setting out an ideal picture of a just society
and urging the Israelites to live up to it. Rather, they sketch the
situation in Israel as it is likely to be and urge the Israelites to learn
how to render justice to each other in that situation. Sometimes
compromises are necessary: for example, the parties in a dispute
may disagree on the facts of the case. If so, one party has to swear
an oath before God, and the other party has to accept that as the
end of the matter (Exodus 22:10-11). It is not a perfect solution, but
it brings closure.
 Justice and the Common Good 13

These chapters are also strikingly egalitarian, particularly

when read in their ancient Near Eastern context. It is true that
there is a distinction between the status of slaves and maids and
that of free citizens in these chapters; but, that aside, all Israelites
are supposed to have equal standing before the law, regardless of
social standing and wealth. In this respect Exodus 20-23 differs
from other ancient Near Eastern law codes, for example the 18th-
century BC laws of Hammurabi, which distinguished between the
rights due to an upper-class person and the lesser rights due to a
‘commoner’.14 These chapters, in fact, evince a particular concern
for the vulnerable: for slaves, women, foreigners and those who fall
into debt (21:1-6, 26-27; 21:7-11; 22:25-27; 23:9).
We may not be particularly impressed with what these chapters
teach in regard to these groups of people. We read, for example, that
a man can sell his daughter into slavery, and the man to whom she
is sold can even give her to his son as a wife (21:7-11). The only
rights the woman enjoys in that situation are: (i) that she cannot be
sold on ‘to a foreign people’; (ii) that she is allowed to go free if she
is not given proper food and clothing, without repaying the money
that was given for her. This is not perfect justice, but it does ensure
some justice for the woman—a fairly minimal justice perhaps, but
better than what might otherwise have happened.
That, rather sketchily, is the teaching of Exodus 20-23.
What were Israelites supposed to do with this teaching? I believe
that they were meant, as we say, to run with it: not to regard it
as setting the limits of their obligations towards God and fellow-
Israelites, but to reflect on other areas of their lives to which the
teaching might apply.15 Further, the teaching was not meant
to be followed unthinkingly. On the contrary, it is clear that the
Israelites were supposed to reflect on why it was right for them to
follow this teaching. More than once these chapters address the
issue of motive: we read that Israelites should respect the rights
of resident aliens because they themselves were once aliens in the
land of Egypt (22:21; 23:9); and that creditors should treat debtors
with compassion because God is compassionate (22:25-27).
In these and other ways, then, justice is to be administered in
Israel, with the aim of maintaining Israel as a community, so that
Israel should fulfil its calling of being ‘a priestly kingdom and a holy
nation’ (19:6).
All the points made above about Exodus 20-23 apply to the
Book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy restates much of the teaching
14  JUSTICE AND THE COMMON GOOD

of Exodus 20-23 at greater length, introducing some distinctive

emphases. In particular, one passage in Deuteronomy 4 takes
up from Exodus 19 the idea of Israel as a ‘priestly kingdom and
holy nation’ and asks: why should Israel follow the teaching given
through Moses? The answer Moses gives is...

…this will show your wisdom and discernment to the

peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say,
“Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!”
For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the
Lord our God is whenever we call to him? And what other
great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this
entire law that I am setting before you today? (4:6-8)

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):

The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel:

For learning about wisdom and instruction,
 Justice and the Common Good 15

for understanding words of insight,

for gaining instruction in wise dealing,
righteousness, justice, and equity…

Righteousness, justice and equity are indeed major themes of the

book. Among other things, Proverbs speaks out against: violence
both physical and verbal (1:8-19; 6:12-15); deceit (12:22; 20:17);
corrupt business practices (11:1; 20:23); wealth gained in wicked
ways (15:6; 16:8); a callous attitude towards the poor (15:21; 17;5);
judicial corruption (17:15; 21:3). Conversely, Proverbs commends:
gentleness in word and deed (11:17; 25:15); honest speech and fair
business practices (12:19; 16:11); generosity, especially to the poor
(19:17; 22:9); and a willingness to speak up for the cause of justice
before rulers and officials.18
Some of the most striking sayings in Proverbs are those which
set a particular state of affairs before us and in effect ask us: what
do you think of that? Or: what will you do about that?
At Proverbs 18:16 we read: ‘A gift opens doors, it gives access
to the great.’ The saying is true: a gift can indeed open doors; maybe
it is not wrong to give a gift as a token of respect. But surely the
saying also asks us: why do you want to gain access to the great?
Do you intend to speak up on behalf of others who do not have this
access, or are you seeking your own interests? Are your motives just
and selfless or unjust and thoroughly selfish? Are you in fact using
your wealth to subvert justice? Yes, you can give a gift, but should
you?
Here is Proverbs 19:4: ‘Wealth brings many friends, but the
poor are left friendless.’ How true: the poor have few material goods
and many needs, and so most people do not desire friendship with
them. But the saying challenges us: where will we seek to make
friends, among the poor or among the wealthy? And if we are wealthy
ourselves, will we treat the poor graciously and generously? Will we
be their friends even though it will not make us richer?
Proverbs 22:2: ‘The rich and the poor have this in common: the
Lord is the maker of them all.’ Again, true: but what follows from
this saying? Various things might follow. Christians sometimes
treat the sayings in Proverbs as though they were ‘easy answers to
life’s problems’, a collection of off-the-peg sayings given us to spare
us from having to think too long or hard about particular issues.
But this saying in Proverbs 22 seems designed, not to put an end
to thought, but to stimulate thought. It makes us pause; it causes
16  JUSTICE AND THE COMMON GOOD

us to reflect on what it means that God is the Creator of us all, rich

or poor. Our reflections might go in various directions: we might
reflect that we should give equal justice to rich and poor; or that we
should respect rich and poor alike; or that God holds us accountable
for how we treat both rich and poor. The saying gets under our skin.
It invites us to take seriously the fact that all humans, rich and
poor, are created by God in God’s image. It asks us: if this teaching
is true, what will we do about it?
Proverbs’ teaching about justice is not restricted to the
behaviour of individuals. Here is Lady Wisdom, wisdom personified,
speaking in Proverbs 8:

The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil.

Pride and arrogance and the way of evil
and perverted speech I hate.
I have good advice and sound wisdom;
I have insight, I have strength.
By me kings reign,
and rulers decree what is just;
by me rulers rule,
and nobles, all who govern rightly.

‘By me kings reign.’ There are a number of sayings in Proverbs

which address the issue of governing authorities. How should
rulers behave? How should they treat their people? How should one
conduct oneself before a ruler or an official, particularly if one is
seeking to persuade that person in a particular direction?
Take, for example, Proverbs 16:10: ‘Inspired decisions are on
the lips of a king; his mouth does not sin in judgment.’ Our first
response to that saying may be: Really?! Is that so? One can think of
a few exceptions to that as one looks around the modern world! Kim
Jong Un and Donald Trump may well believe that their lips speak
nothing but ‘inspired decisions’, but how many of their citizens agree
with them? The same was true back then: Israel and Judah each
had their share of uninspired and sometimes thoroughly wicked
kings. The first response of an Israelite hearer to Proverbs 16:10
might have been: Really?!
But you don’t have to take all the sayings in Proverbs at face
value: that is not necessarily how they work. Perhaps Proverbs 16:10
sets out an ideal: that is how kings ought to be, not how they always
are. Or maybe Proverbs 16:10 is somewhat ironic in character, as
much as to say: please understand, that’s how the king thinks of
 Justice and the Common Good 17

himself. Everyone else may regard him as a self-deluding idiot,

but he is still king. So if you want to influence him towards a just
or even a vaguely sensible decision, you must tread carefully and
avoid bruising his fragile royal ego.19
On the surface the sayings in Proverbs seem very simple,
almost naïve; but when you examine them closely, many of them
are quite subtle. We are meant to turn the separate sayings them
over in our minds, think of the different ways in which we could
understand them, and thus let the sayings stimulate us to further
reflection.
One of the issues that Proverbs invites us to reflect long and
hard about is: how do you approach a ruler? How should you seek
to influence an official? That is: how do you bring about political
justice? How do you uphold the rights of those whom the government
is neglecting or actively wronging?
Proverbs 20:26: ‘A wise king winnows the wicked, and drives
the wheel over them.’ Yes, that is how things should be. But there
is another scenario (Proverbs 28:15): ‘Like a roaring lion or a
charging bear is a wicked ruler over a poor people.’ If your king
(your president, the attorney general, the chief of police…) is like a
roaring lion, what do you do?
You can try to bring it about that he has some good people
advising him (25:5): ‘Take away the wicked from the presence of the
king, and his throne will be established in righteousness.’ If you are
one of these advisors yourself, you must learn how to speak gently,
tactfully and persuasively (25:15): ‘With patience a ruler may be
persuaded, and a soft tongue can break bones.’ But realize, too, that
sometimes gentleness and tact will not win the day. You may have
to take your courage in your hands and speak up, because if you do
not, others will suffer: (25:26) ‘Like a muddied spring or a polluted
fountain are the righteous who give way before the wicked.’
Justice in our personal dealings, seeking justice on behalf
of others, seeking justice even from a government not obviously
committed to justice: these are important themes in Proverbs.
Perhaps if we Christians had studied Proverbs more carefully, they
would be higher priorities for us.

The ‘Deep Structure’ of the Bible’s Teaching about Justice

I have given a broad-brush survey of biblical texts relating to justice,
and considered in more detail two parts of the Old Testament and
18  JUSTICE AND THE COMMON GOOD

how they may in their different ways spur us to reflect harder on

this topic. Let us now stand back and ask: what is the basis of the
biblical teaching? What fundamental insights does it rest on? What
is the ‘deep structure’ of the biblical writers’ thinking about justice?

Two Christian Perspectives: Wolterstorff and Bentley Hart

For Nicholas Wolterstorff the key issue concerns the inherent
rights of humans as beings created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-
28). Humans have been made ‘a little lower than God’ (Psalm 8:5):
when their rights are upheld, there is justice; when these rights
are denied, there is injustice.20 This is why the Old Testament
writers so often focus on what Wolterstorff terms ‘the quartet of the
vulnerable’: widows, orphans, resident aliens and the poor. These
were the people in Israel most likely to suffer injustice, and so the
Old Testament writers, with their strongly practical bent, focus on
them.21 But the underlying assumption in the Old Testament is that
all humans have rights which must not be violated: rights, among
other things, to be fairly treated, to be free from oppression; rights
to food, shelter and clothing. Indeed, human beings have a claim on
fellow humans to these things. Further, these are rights and claims
to which God is committed (Isaiah 58):

Is not this the fast that I choose:

to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin? (Isaiah 58:6-7)

Yet more blunt and clear is Isaiah 61:8: ‘I the Lord love justice.’22 On
this Wolterstorff comments:

Of course, it is not the abstract entity justice as such that

God loves. What God loves is the presence of justice in
society. And God loves the presence of justice in society
not because it makes for a society whose excellence God
admires, but because God loves the members of society—
loves them, too, not with the love of admiration but with
the love of benevolent desire. God desires that each and
 Justice and the Common Good 19

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

Building on this teaching of humans as made in God’s image, and

moving into the New Testament, the philosopher and theologian
David Bentley Hart notes the revolutionary impact of the Christian
belief that the Son of God had taken on human form. The teaching
of the incarnation—that the Christ was fully man and fully God—
had implications regarding human dignity; and for Christians this
meant the dignity of all humans, not simply those of a certain social
class.
Commenting on the scene in the Gospels where Peter, having
denied Jesus, weeps over his betrayal, a scene which most modern
readers would see as one of the most poignant and deeply serious in
the Gospels, Bentley Hart writes:

To the literate classes of late antiquity, however, this tale

of Peter weeping would more likely have seemed like an
aesthetic mistake; for Peter, as a rustic, could not possibly
have been a worthy object of a well-bred man’s sympathy,
nor could his grief possibly have possessed the sort of
tragic dignity necessary to make it worthy of anyone’s
notice. At most, the grief of a man of Peter’s class might
have had a place in comic literature... This is not merely a
violation of good taste; it is an act of rebellion.24

I believe Bentley Hart is right: this was a revolutionary teaching

in the Greco-Roman world of the early centuries AD: slaves, non-
citizens, criminals, the poor, the subject peoples of the Roman
empire—all possessed of an inherent dignity because of the simple
fact that they were all human beings?

...in these texts and others like them, we see something

beginning to emerge from darkness into full visibility,
arguably for the first time in our history: the human
person as such, invested with intrinsic and inviolable
dignity, and possessed of an infinite value.25
20  JUSTICE AND THE COMMON GOOD

Or again:

The new world we see being brought into being in

the Gospels is one in which the whole grand cosmic
architecture of prerogative, power and eminence has
been shaken and even superseded by a new, positively
“anarchic” order: an order, that is, in which we see the
glory of God revealed in a crucified slave, and in which
(consequently) we are enjoined to see the forsaken of the
earth as the very children of heaven.26

Bentley Hart notes the impact Christian teaching had on the

position of women:

...there can be little question regarding the benefits that

the new faith conferred upon ordinary women—women,
that is, who were neither rich nor socially exalted—
literally from birth to death. Christianity both forbade
the ancient practice of the exposure of unwanted infants
—which is almost certainly to say, in the great majority
of cases, girls—and insisted upon communal provision
for the needs of widows—than whom no class of persons
in ancient society was typically more disadvantaged
or helpless... Christian husbands, moreover, could not
force their wives to submit to abortions or to consent to
infanticide... Christian husbands were even commanded
to remain as faithful to their wives as they expected their
wives to be to them; they were forbidden to treat their
wives with cruelty; they could not abandon or divorce
their wives; their wives were not their chattels but their
sisters in Christ.27

He also describes the effect that Christian teaching eventually had

on the practice of slavery.28 There were church fathers who attacked
the Christian ownership of slaves (for instance, Gregory of Nyssa in
a striking sermon delivered during Lent in 379 AD). Teaching along
these lines occasionally resulted in incidents such as the freeing of
all the bonded servants in the city of Bologna in 1256. Such incidents
were much fewer, and their cumulative effect much more gradual,
than we might like. But it is plausible to think of the ‘Christian
revolution’ as having introduced a leaven into society which, though
it fermented somewhat fitfully over the centuries, finally led in the
 Justice and the Common Good 21

West to the abolitionist movements of the 18th and 19th centuries.29

If we ask, then, what is the basis for the biblical teaching on
justice, surely it lies in Old Testament view of human beings as
made in God’s image. This already exalted view of human beings in
the Old Testament is taken to a new level in the New Testament,
with the teaching that the Son of God took our nature upon himself,
thus underscoring the irreducible dignity of all human beings in
God’s sight.30

A Jewish Perspective: Jonathan Sacks

And what about the pursuit of justice, the commitment of God’s
people to justice? At this point I would like to bring in a Jewish
perspective. In his book To Heal a Fractured World, Jonathan Sacks,
former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of Great
Britain and the Commonwealth, presents a striking interpretation
of Genesis 18.31
Genesis 18 brings together what seem to be two separate
narrative strands: the promise to Sarah that she will give birth to a
son, and God’s debate with Abraham regarding the fate of Sodom.
These two strands may not seem to belong together, but they are
in fact linked. The link is found in verse 19, where God states that
he has chosen Abraham so that he may ‘charge his children and
household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing justice
and righteousness.’ To quote Sacks:

Abraham, about to become father to the first child of the

covenant, is being taught by God what it means to raise
a child. To be a father—implies the Bible—is to teach a
child to question, challenge, confront, dispute. God invites
Abraham to do these things because he wants him to
be the parent of a nation that will do these things. He
does not want the people of the covenant to be one that
accepts the evils and injustices of the world as the will of
God. He wants the people of the covenant to be human,
neither more nor less. He wants them to hear the cry of
the oppressed, the pain of the afflicted and plaint of the
lonely. He wants them not to accept the world that is,
because it is not the world that ought to be. He is giving
Abraham a tutorial in what it is to teach a child to grow by
challenging the existing scheme of things.32
22  JUSTICE AND THE COMMON GOOD

Sacks clearly sees Genesis 18 as making point of quite fundamental

importance for Jewish faith and practice. I see nothing in what Sacks
says that Christians cannot take on board. The presence of injustice
in the world should disturb us: it should make us discontented, and
move us to prayer and action.

Christian Commitment to the Common Good

God’s people have always been called to be God’s witnesses.33 In
the Old Testament period, Israel’s witness to the nations centred
around the pursuit and practice of justice.34 In the Christian era the
work of witness continues, as the gospel of Jesus Christ goes out
to the nations. A major part of the witness to which the church is
called relates to the issue of justice.
Last year (2016) I was at a forum organised by the Singapore
Centre for Global Mission. The theme of the forum was: ‘We are All
Neighbours Now: The Gospel, Business and the Urban Poor’. Huge
numbers of people live in cities these days, many of them poor. One
of the questions raised at the forum was: how will the gospel touch
the lives of the urban poor?
One of the speakers answered the question as follows. We need
Christian businessmen and entrepreneurs who can help the urban
poor establish businesses of their own and lift themselves out of
poverty. We need Christian planners, architects and builders. Such
people can help shape our cities and organise their infrastructure
in ways that will help to build community among the poor. We need
Christian teachers and others who are prepared to spend time with
the poor and teach them skills which they would not otherwise
have. Such people can help the poor find access to jobs and resources
which would otherwise lie out of their reach.
Certainly we need to preach the gospel. But as well as
preachers, we need people with all these other talents. Such people
can use their skills to improve the lives of the poor and thus, in
the speaker’s words, ‘make Christ real and visible to them’. And
by making Christ ‘real and visible’ in these ways, we will also be
standing up for justice. A commitment to justice is part of our
commitment to the gospel.
To quote from a presentation given by Ronald Wong at the
launch of his recent book, The Justice Demand:35

...God’s conception of justice and righteousness has

an especial concern for the poor, needy, afflicted and
 Justice and the Common Good 23

oppressed. Of course justice and righteousness broadly

speaking are about right relations between people. But it
is never the powerful who need any assistance in obtaining
justice or righting wrongs. It is the weak, marginalised,
poor and oppressed. And who can better guarantee their
justice than the one who is most powerful and who is
perfectly just, that is God?

To which I would add: and who is called to follow God in working to

establish justice if not the church of Jesus Christ?