If you follow the evangelical blogosphere, you’re no doubt aware of the most recent dust-up over the Social Justice Statement. In what follows, I want to briefly explain (1) why I didn’t sign the statement and (2) defend the use of the phrase “social justice.”
Why I didn’t sign the statement:
If you actually read the document, it’s much more reserved than you might expect. This is also its weakness, however. Words go undefined and assumed, leaving the reader unsure as to who or what is actually being rebuked. And then there’s the generally condescending attitude toward any sort of activism:
“And we emphatically deny that lectures on social issues (or activism aimed at reshaping the wider culture) are as vital to the life and health of the church as the preaching of the gospel and the exposition of Scripture. Historically, such things tend to become distractions that inevitably lead to departures from the gospel.”
The statement is full of false dichotomies such as this. Because of the inherent nature of Scripture, the preacher doesn’t have to apply the text, per se; rather, he has to show the text’s applicability. Thus, the line between expositing the passage and exhorting the people is always blurred. Indeed, the book of James demolishes the sort of hermeneutic that siloes hearing from doing. I didn’t sign the document because I can’t tell women working at crisis pregnancy centers across the country that they’re distracted. I can’t tell them that they’re on a slippery slope to gospel-departure. I can’t tell them that they should believe what Psalm 139:13 says about babies, but not act upon it.
Of course, God holds us responsible in regards to the faithfulness which we show to our work, not our fruit, but is the preacher really being faithful to his calling if he isn’t hoping and praying that the Spirit, through the word, will reshape individuals, families, neighborhoods, indeed “wider cultures?” With Nicholas Wolterstorff, I want to insist, “The church is not merely to wait with grim patience for the new age when the Spirit will fully renew all existence. It must already, here and now, manifest signs of that renewing Spirit.”
In defense of social justice:
Having said that, however, my goal isn’t to attack those critical of social justice. With those critics, I think that the identity politics being practiced on the left and right is an acid that’s leaving the fabric of our culture threadbare. The longer we soak in it, the more the societal trust that’s required for a community to flourish disintegrates. Indeed, anyone who’s read Karl Marx knows his name isn’t being invoked in vain by those critical of our increasingly tribalistic politics.
So while I couldn’t in good conscience sign the statement, I don’t think those who did are bigoted or uninformed. As I said, my goal isn’t to attack the document or its signers. Rather, my goal is to defend the origin and use of the phrase social justice. As I understand the criticism, “social justice” language is problematic because (1) it has Marxist origins thus imports, at best, problematic categories, and (2) it assumes that’s there are multiple kinds of justice, whereas Scripture only speaks of one sort—God’s.
The first point will take the least amount of space to refute. As a point of historical fact, one of the first philosophers to use the expression was the Catholic priest Antonio Rosmini, writing in Italy in the 19th century. At places, Rosmini sounds as if he could be responding directly to the recent critics of the phrase:
“Justice is not manufactured by human beings, nor can human hands dismantle it. It is prior to laws made by human beings; such laws can only be expressions of justice. Justice is the essence of all laws to such an extent that Saint Augustine had no hesitation in refusing to name as ‘law’ anything that lacked justice. Nor does authority exist except as a servant of justice.”
The Acton Institute is to be commended in their efforts to bring Rosmini’s writings back into relevance. While no doubt others use the phrase in a way incongruent with the originator’s intent, I seek to defend the sort of social justice about which Rosmini speaks and the Acton Institute, for example, embodies.
The second point will take a bit longer than the first. In an effort to be fair to those critical of the phrase, I’ll engage with one of the chief critics directly, Voddie Baucham. Dr. Baucham sums up his point powerfully:
“There’s no such thing as ‘social justice.’ In fact, in the Bible, justice never has an adjective. There’s justice and there’s injustice, but there’s not different kinds of justice.”
Perhaps a story will be of help here. I have a good friend who recently made a compelling case for Socialism using Scripture. Toward the end of our conversation, she asked how I could read the book of Acts—in which we see believers having all things in common—and not embrace a forced redistribution of wealth. Moments earlier, I had said that I believed the government was too far-reaching as it is, so it took her off guard when I conceded that wealth should indeed be redistributed. To not redistribute wealth, I said, would be a tremendous injustice.
“Finally, you #FeelTheBern!” she shouted with joy! Not quite. You see, if a mother and father don’t redistribute their income to their children, they’re derelict. If they don’t freely feed, cloth, and house their toddler, they’re unjust. Scripture commands as much, to not obey would be sin. Likewise, giving to your church, as we see in more places than just Acts, is a divine directive. God doesn’t suggest we redistribute our income, he insists. Yet in these instances, it’s the family and the church that are the instruments of redistribution. So, to say something is demanded of a person isn’t the same thing as saying it’s the State’s prerogative to enforce said demand.
But more to the point, surely there’s a difference between how we share our money with our immediate family and how we share our money with our church community. Our kids will likely require much more than a tenth of our income, after all! Now, if you’re familiar with the Neo-Calvinistic tradition out of which I come, you’ve already anticipated the two points I was trying to make with my friend: (1) the State isn’t the only vehicle for the distribution of justice and (2) we ought not ham-fistedly apply directives given to one institution to another.
There are myriad different spheres of life—schools, cities, clubs, churches, families—each with their own system of governance, their own sovereign, their own code. Indeed, I don’t think it would be an equivocation to say each sphere has its own justice, if by that we mean that a just way to behave in one sphere might be unjust in another. For example, we should have compassion on anyone living in poverty, but our responsibility for the impoverished person correlates to how closely the person is related to us, a point Paul makes in 1 Tim 5:8:
“If anyone doesn’t take care of his own relatives, especially his immediate family, he has denied the Christian faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”
A man might be justified in passing a homeless man on the street without stopping, but if the same man were to pass by his mother begging on the street without stopping, he’d no doubt be unjust in doing so. One action can be just in one context or sphere but unjust in another. The sphere, not only the action, matters.
A pastor ought not imprison a criminal in his vestry—that’s the role of the State. A mayor ought not baptize the police chief—that’s the role of the church. Likewise, while the description of believers living a life of shared resources in Acts is no doubt prescriptive today, it must be prescribed within the appropriate sphere, namely the church.
None of this is to say that Scripture has nothing to say regarding the State. To the contrary, kings and all civil rulers are beckoned therein to rule justly and govern under the ultimate Lordship of Christ. The Bible speaks to every sphere of life, as Abraham Kuyper taught so many of us. A well-ordered society is one in which each sphere is in tune with God’s revelation, both special (i.e. Scripture) and general (i.e. Natural Law).
A just society requires more than just one sphere functioning appropriately, it requires all of them working in harmony with one another and the divine order of reality. One can be born into a healthy family that worships in an unhealthy church, just as one can go to a healthy school in an unhealthy city. Speaking of social justice, then, allows us to speak about the society on a macro level—evaluating more than just the State or the church or the family or the prison system or the school—but analyzing the economy of institutions as a whole, with God’s special and general revelation as the grid.
In conclusion, I understand that I’m not likely to convince my friends who are critical of social justice to adopt the phrase. But my hope is more modest than that. My hope is that in showing that the (1) origin and (2) usage of social justice aren’t as nefarious as is often claimed, the critics can at least allow for the possibility that not everyone is using the word to smuggle in a Marxist agenda.
