2. Justice Infused By Mercy
In the Christian tradition justice aims at the restoration of right relationships. Grounded in the texts of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, justice denotes righteousness or right relationship. Moreover, the righteousness and right relationship which justice intends is all-embracing, involving individual personal relationships, the relationships that constitute the community and also the relationship with God. In both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament the terms that are translated as justice carry this comprehensive meaning. The Hebrew terms most commonly translated as justice are tzedeq and mishpat, although these concepts also mean righteousness, are often found together. Indeed, in his discussion of these terms in The Prophets Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel highlights how they are often interchangeable, since they each evoke the idea of a comprehensive sense of right relationships, or righteousness, that is, of justice.[9] There is a similar philosophical affinity between justice and righteousness in the New Testament, an affinity that is also underwritten by etymology. The Greek term dik is translated as both justice and righteousness and speaks to a situation in which people live in harmony and right relationship with one another, as well as to the obligation to restore these relationships when they have been broken.
But the justice and righteousness about which the New Testament speaks is not a narrowly focussed one, concerned exclusively with rights, duties and deserts. Rather it reflects the covenantal relationship that God has with God’s people and is thus a relationship which is characterised by mercy and oriented towards reconciliation. Justice, righteousness and mercy are intimately related, although as is evident in the biblical texts and acknowledged in the traditions of interpretation, the precise boundaries between each of the concepts and the relationships between them is neither clear nor consistent. Pope John Paul II’s Dives in Misericordia speaks about this deep relationship between justice, righteousness and mercy, and in the various sections of the encyclical he highlights the complex and different ways in which the biblical texts interpret the relationship between justice and mercy. Discussing the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) he writes that ‘mercy is in a certain sense contrasted with God’s justice, and in many cases is shown to be not only more powerful than that justice but also more profound… The primacy and superiority of love vis-a-vis justice – this is a mark of the whole of revelation – are revealed precisely through mercy.’[10] Here, justice and mercy are complementary, but distinct, virtues. Justice is to be done, and the demands of justice are perfected by mercy.
However mercy is not opposed to justice, nor does it compromise justice, rather, as Pope John Paul II suggests later in the same encyclical, ‘[M]ercy that is truly Christian is also… the most perfect incarnation of “equality” between people, and therefore also the most perfect incarnation of justice as well…’[11]. He adds that, ‘the fundamental structure of justice always enters into the sphere of mercy’[12] and that mercy ‘has the power to confer on justice a new content, which is expressed most simply and fully in forgiveness.’[13] The parables of Jesus convey this connection, while the Letters of Paul reinforce these links further, speaking of justice as reconciliation.[14] Justice and mercy overlap and complete each-other, and in their inter-relationship they capture the expansive notion of justice as right relation that is entailed in the traditions of Judaism and Christianity. Of particular significance is Pope John Paul II’s insistence that mercy confers new content on justice, and that this new content is forgiveness. Here we see the radical reorientation of justice, no longer focused exclusively on what is due but rather expanded to recognise that in our shared vulnerability as human beings, the justice we seek must be a justice shaped by mercy. This renewed prominence given to mercy has been a vital resource for contemporary Christian thinking on restorative justice, and has recently been accorded an even more prominent position by Pope Francis, in Misericordiae Vultus, 15, in his book The Name of God is Mercy, 16, as well as through the many symbolic acts of mercy he performed during the Jubilee Year of Mercy.
[9] Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets, New York: Harper & Row, 1962, p. 200.
[10] Pope John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia, 1980, #4.
[11] Ibid. #14.
[12] Ibid. #14.
[13] Ibid. #14.
[14] See Christopher Marshall’s Beyond Retribution: A New Testament Vision for Justice, Crime and Punishment Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 2001, where he argues for the dominance of this model of justice, particularly in the New Testament, as does John de Gruchy in Reconciliation: Restoring Justice Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001.
[15] Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, 2015.
[16] Pope Francis, The Name of God is Mercy: A Conversation with Andrea Torinelli, London: Penguin, 2016.