The Last Judgment

Christian Ethics in a Legal Culture

Andrew Skotnicki

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781138110700
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317026372
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Ethics & Religion

In a culture obsessed with law, judgment, and violence, this book challenges Christians to remember that Jesus urged his followers to judge no one, bring harm upon no one, and follow no law save the law of altruistic love. It traces Christian history first to show that Christians of an earlier age took very seriously the gospel injunctions against punitive legal judgment and then how the advent of formal legal codes and philosophical dualism undermined that perspective to create a division between a private Christian spirituality and a public morality of order and legally sanctioned violence. This historical approach is accompanied by an argument that the recovery of a Christian ethic based upon unconditional love and forgiveness cannot be accomplished without the renewal of a Christian spirituality that mirrors the contemplative spirituality of Jesus.

Chapter 1 Law and Judgment in the Hebrew Scriptures

DOI: 10.4324/9781315556352-2

A thesis that argues that law and judgment, in all but the most restricted circumstances, are improper ideas for Christians must find its principal warrant in the biblical text and, since it provides so much of the basis for the Christian experience, the Hebrew Bible. Gunther Bornkamm has remarked that the Bible is not only the most popular book ever written, it is also the most misunderstood.¹

¹ Gunther Bornkamm, The New Testament: A Guide to its Writings, trans. Reginald H. Fuller and Ilse Fuller (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1973), p. 1.

Cognizant of that proviso, I will contend that there is a continuum of interpretation regarding the divine law in these paradigmatic texts. At one end, there exists a particular, austere and legal approach to creation and God’s role within it; on the other, a unified, relational, and contemplative one.² The latter worldview lays the groundwork for the argument that will be sustained throughout the book concerning law and judgment. Here, one’s love of God and God’s creation, and one’s silent contemplation of the divine mystery, provide the horizon wherein law is interpreted and judgments are rendered. The law is sacred but must be viewed in light of a deity who speaks to the attentive heart in a language that supersedes the literal language of the Torah, especially the promise that its obedient servants will prosper (Job 29: 12–17; 31: 5–40; Mal 3: 14–15). It is in this framework, reminiscent of the theology in the Book of Job, that Jesus approached the law.³ In contrast, there exists a far more literal Deuteronomic view that the laws revealed in the Torah are a manifestation of God’s inscrutable and unsearchable ways and are unconditionally binding regardless of circumstance or human disposition, unless amended by God Himself.⁴

² Edward Peters notes that the influence of the Jewish Bible “reached a far wider audience than Plato or the Greek orators, and that audience paid particular attention to its vivid expressions of human helplessness and terror, particularly in its language of confinement and release, of captives ransomed by God, of refuge and sanctuary, and of exile and return.” See “Prison Before The Prison” in Norval Morris and David J. Rothman (eds), The Oxford History of the Prison (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 14. Conversely, Moshe Chayim Luzzatto argues that the spiritual soul is “radiant,” representing the shining of God’s countenance, but the body is defective, and proceeds from “the absence of divine goodness” and the concealment of God’s countenance. God is guiding the universe to perfection but only by creating these two orders of good and evil, rewarding the first and punishing the second. See The Knowing Heart, trans. Shraga Silverstein (Jerusalem and New York: Feldheim, 1982), pp. 105ff. ³ A number of authors criticize the reading of Job as an exercise in theodicy wherein God’s justice and law are vindicated in the course of the narrative. See Alan Bernstein, The Formation of Hell (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 156–162; Roland Murphy, The Book of Job (New York: Paulist, 1999), p. 130; Paul Ricoeur, “Religion, Atheism, and Faith,” in The Conflict of Interpretations, trans. Charles Freilich (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1974), pp. 460–61. ⁴ “[T]he rule of His will is absolute, allowing of no deterrent whatsoever at any time whatsoever.” Luzzatto, Knowing Heart, p. 65.

Whatever variations of interpretation may be summoned by the range of opinion presented above, the people of ancient Israel understood law within the context of a covenant, implying a relationship between God and the people whom God chose to bear witness to a gracious and loving plan for the redemption of humankind (Isa 2: 2–4). The rules emanating from this covenant are thus deeply bound to the historical events that form the story of the Jewish people. Yet, in this long and hallowed history, God shows a willingness to reshape both the form and content of laws since they comprise a charter for the preservation and flourishing of life as it is conditioned by unfolding events, not simply a set of rigid, ahistorical mandates (Dt 30: 15–16). In parallel fashion, punishment, while often severe, cannot be separated either from the covenantal promise of restoration or from an unfailing love that makes good out of the human propensity to do evil and seeks to foster a humble serenity rather than rebellion in the face of life’s painful limitations.

It is thus not my intention to comb the Hebrew Scriptures in order to find proof texts for a sharply drawn antinomian argument. Such a task would, first of all, be impossible in describing a faith whose character is defined so poignantly by its relation to law. Besides, as we will see and as many readers already know, the early Christian community was hardly of a single mind with regard to locating the place of law and judgment in an ethic faithful to Christ. And even among the most fervent antinomians, the Torah could not be rejected as both a religious and moral guide. Christians were incapable of ignoring the divine origin of the Pentateuch without at the same time setting themselves on heretical turf, as both Manichaeans and followers of Marcion were to reveal.⁵ In whatever way early Christians approached the subject, law was in some form still an expression of God’s justice and sovereignty. This was the common belief of their Jewish ancestors, not to mention all the peoples of the Ancient Near East whose influence on Hebrew legal formulations was significant.⁶

⁵ See W.H.C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), pp. 212–18; 314–18. ⁶ Parallels between the legal system of Ancient Israel and those of its neighbors were not accidental. Scholars have noted the influence of codes as early as that of Hammurabi in the Hebrew texts. Bernard Levinson precludes a “lex ex nihilo” approach to a study of ancient Israel, noting that the very idea of a legal collection shows the influence of neighboring peoples. See Legal Revision and Religious Renewal in Ancient Israel (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 23. See also Ze’ev Falk, Hebrew Law in Biblical Times (Jerusalem_ Wahrmann Books, 1964), p. 73; Terence E. Fretheim, God and World in the Old Testament (Nashville: Abingdon, 2005), p. 137; Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), p. 32; Robert W. Shaffern, Law and Justice from Antiquity to the Enlightenment (Lanham, MD: Roman & Littlefield, 2009), pp. 3–5; Roland de Vaux, O.P., Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions, trans. John McHugh (New York: McGraw Hill, 1961), p. 152.

This chapter will first depict the traditional position that law, as imparted in the context of the Covenant, provides the only path God provides for the attainment of human and spiritual flourishing. As such, its provisions, as discerned within the tradition, are unconditionally binding. It will then develop the idea that law, despite its honorable place in the narrative of Judaism, is authoritative only within a deeper context of a contemplative and loving stance before God and creation. Finally, the implications of these two views for the punishment of lawbreakers will be discussed.

The Divine Origin of Law

For the Greeks, law was sacred. It expressed the structures of a permanent natural order, and in Plato that sense of divinity applied to the laws enacted by the community.⁷ The same can be said for the people of Israel. The creation accounts reveal a belief that God has instilled laws into the very fabric of life. The Psalms announce that this soundless moral message of God extends from one end of the universe to the other (Ps 19: 4–6). Implied law can be found throughout Genesis: after Adam and Eve disobey God’s command they hide and feel shame (Gen 3: 7–11); Cain, after killing Abel, laments that his sin is too great to be pardoned and that he can no longer endure the presence of God (Gen 4: 13–14); and Abraham is commended for his righteousness and obedience to the divine will even though the law had as yet not been proclaimed (Gen 26: 5).⁸

⁷ Remi Brague, The Law of God, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), pp. 18, 26. ⁸ The obedience praised by the biblical author cannot simply be reduced to a literary device to employ Abraham in a post hoc propter hoc relationship with the Mosaic law. See Fretheim, God and World, pp. 98–100.

The word for judgment found throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, mishpat, coincides with what might be considered not an extraneous pattern of normative human behavior but a natural one.⁹ Among its various meanings, including the case to be heard before a court and the judgment rendered, mishpat implies a “measured, balanced relatedness … to the whole of life.”¹⁰ This understanding also reveals a theological affirmation of the harmony between divine and human life as well as between divine and human judgment when the fundamental laws of the Creator’s universe are honored.¹¹

⁹ Brague, Law, p. 20. ¹⁰ Eliezer Berkovits, Essential Essays on Judaism, ed. David Hazony (Jerusalem_ Shalem Press, 2002), p. 146. ¹¹ Brague, Law, p. 58.

Furthermore, the law is revealed to the ancient Hebrews in the context of their own liberation from slavery. A free as opposed to an enslaved people are the subjects of law; it is the gift given to a community capable of voluntary assent to its provisions to enable them to maintain their freedom against the impulses and political decisions that led to their enslavement in the first place.¹²

¹² Ibid. Michael Walzer maintains that the Exodus story provides the paradigmatic pattern for all revolutions in history wherein oppression leads to liberation, and liberation leads to law. See Exodus and Revolution (New York: Basic, 1994).

Law, therefore, must always be understood not simply in a social but also in a literary framework. Each of the commandments given to Moses on Sinai, for example, is related to a story emanating from the experience of the people of Israel.¹³ This is not simply a charming stylistic device. The formative story of a people, not coercive force, is what provides law with the sacred character it so often possesses. A legal code always has a world-creating dimension. It carries the aspirations of a particular people a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue
• Introduction: Crime, Harm, and the Cultural Landscape
• 1 Law and Judgment in the Hebrew Scriptures
• 2 Law and Judgment in the New Testament
• 3 Law and Judgment in the Early Christian Community
• 4 Law and Judgment Prior to the Enlightenment
• 5 Twilight of the Gods: Rights, Reason, and Disenchantment
• 6 Law and Judgment in Modern Society
• 7 How Should Christians Think About Law and Judgment?
• Bibliography
• Index