God and Justice (part I)

      I've decided to break this post up into two parts: abstract and practical. This is partly due to scheduling, since next week will be cut short by the holiday, and partly due to the fact that the intersection of religion and justice is a particularly interesting one for me. I'd like to begin with the abstract.

     Typically, religious doctrines prescribe a certain way of living or set of rules that are in accordance with what can be considered divine, transcendent laws. In many religions, holy books and scriptures also lay out consequences for what happens when one does not follow these laws, usually punishment in either earthly life, or in the next life. In many denominations of Christianity, for example, to be an unrepentant sinner is to be damned into hell for eternity. We might then view God as the ultimate judge, jury, and executioner.

     But what can the role of earthly punishment be in light of the existence of the God of Abrahamic religions? If we take God to be omniscient and omnipotent (as many religions do) and also consider Him to be a being that ultimately gives people their just deserts (reward or punishment in this life or the next), it would seem that humanity does not need to assume the role of the punisher. In the past, when monarchies ruled by justification of Divine Right, it was assumed that whatever punishment or action taken by the officials of the state were simply extensions of the will of God. Now that many of us live in democratically elected governments and states that are at least tolerant of religious pluralism, it is likely (and perhaps necessary for many) that we think of civil authorities role in a different way. For example, if God is going to do ultimate justice, perhaps our role in treating criminals need only to be protection of the broader community. This was partly the contention of St. Augustine: that the purpose of punishment in a secular state was not to realize any type of justice but to keep people in line; that peace and order were made possible by fear of punishment. Would this allow us to see our punishment of criminals differently? Perhaps. It might reduce the amount of judgment or amount of harsh treatment we place upon criminals. It might also lead us away from the prison system as the end-all-be-all form of punishment.

     Another interesting aspect of religion and justice is the blameworthiness of an individual created by God, which ties somewhat into my discussion of Neuroscience last week. If we take the principle of imago Dei, that all human beings are created in the image of God, and also believe that He knows everything about us, passing judgment becomes almost a trivial exercise. To illustrate my point, let's say that I am born with kleptomanical impulses that are so strong I cannot stop stealing things from my family members no matter how harshly I am punished. In a religious worldview, however, presumably I have both been endowed with that trait by my creator. In this sense, it would seem cruel at best to blame me as a person for my kleptomania if it was a trait given to me by God. This, I think ties in to the concept of original sin. If all humans are born with a sort of tendency toward sinning, then how can we truly be blamed when we do? As Thomas Talbott wrote in a paper titled Punishment, Forgiveness, and Divine Justice, "if we are subject to evil impulses not of our own making, then God has less to forgive us for, not more."

    It also seems apparent to me that the communities that consider themselves the most religious are some of the strongest proponents of the death penalty. Somewhat related to my first question, I am curious as to whether the death sentence is not as big of a deal in a religious worldview as compared to a secular worldview. This is not to suggest that the taking of a life is not a serious matter for the religious believer. Instead, for the believer, death in this life only serves as a transition to the next one, whereas for the non-religious, death is the ultimate end. In this way, the death sentence is not so much a judgment itself, but rather a sending of a person onto their true judgment. If that person is destined for heaven, it might be seen as a reward, sparing the person years of misery in jail in favor of eternity in paradise. If destined for hell, well then we have made sure a truly wicked person does not enjoy any more earthly pleasures.

    Many of the considerations above revolve around a certain type of religious conception, mainly a broadly-painted Abrahamic worldview, and it is certainly true that not all the assumptions made above apply completely to many religious believers. However, I believe much of what constitutes religious justice as a whole is a desire for what can be called cosmic justice: that in the long run, the universe we live in is fair, and that truly good people will have truly good things happen to them. As my Sophomore year Philosophy of Religion teacher put it, "it is the hope that, in the end, the good will out." The darker, other side of the coin , however, is that the wicked will get what they deserve. As we have seen, there are problems in both attributing wickedness and holding someone responsible for their wickedness. But I think the larger problem is that it frames cosmic justice as a zero-sum game: the good get what is theirs at the expense of the bad and there is no room for growth, for the world to be made better. The stage is set from the beginning. All there is left to do is to watch the cosmic pluses and minuses play out.

Other Thoughts and Considerations

• To be sure, there are messages of hope, redemption, forgiveness, and compassion contained in religious scriptures. There are also plenty of religiously-based outreach groups that are focused on moving away from retribution and vengeance and subscribe more to restorative-based approaches. Thistle Farms is an example of one such organization. 
• Some readers of scripture read many of the passages concerning retributive justice as ensuring proportional response rather than over-the-top ones. At least one analysis of the famous eye-for-an-eye passage as preventing wholesale slaughters of a village by way of response to the murder of a member of a different village.
• I'll be posting again on Wednesday with an analysis of certain religiously-prescribed laws of justice, some thoughts on the religious activism around the death penalty, and hopefully some responses to the above questions by various religious experts that I've been in touch with.