Generous Justice

How God's Grace Makes Us Just

Timothy Keller

• Publisher: Hodder Faith
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781444702828
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

It is commonly thought in secular society that the Bible is one of the greatest hindrances to doing justice. Isn't it full of regressive views? Didn't it condone slavery? Why look to the Bible for guidance on how to have a more just society? But Timothy Keller, pastor of New York City's Redeemer Presbyterian Church, sees it another way. In GENEROUS JUSTICE, Keller explores a life of justice empowered by an experience of grace: a generous, gracious justice. Here is a book for believers who find the Bible a trustworthy guide, as well as those who suspect that Christianity is a regressive influence in the world.Keller's church, founded in the 80s with fewer than 100 congregants, is now exponentially larger. Over 5, 000 people regularly attend Sunday services, and another 25, 000 download Keller's sermons each week. A recent profile in New York magazine described his typical sermon as 'a mix of biblical scholarship, pop culture, and whatever might have caught his eye in The New York Review of Books or on Salon.com that week.' In short, Timothy Keller speaks a language that many thousands of people understand. In GENEROUS JUSTICE, he offers them a new understanding of modern justice and human rights.

Notes

INTRODUCTION – Why Write This Book?

1. The Corporation for National and Community Service is an independent agency of the U.S. government, created to support community service and volunteerism, and the publisher of Volunteering in America. The article from which the quotes in this paragraph are taken is by Mark Hrywna, “Young Adults Fueled Spike in Volunteers,” in The NonProfit Times, July 28, 2009, accessed at http:// www.nptimes.com/09Jul/bnews-090728-1.html.

2. Ibid.

3. See Walter Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel (New York: Macmillan, 1922), chapter 19, “The Social Gospel and the Atonement,” where Rauschenbusch rejects the theory of penal substitution and sees Jesus’s death as revealing the social injustice of this world, as well as the sacrificial, unselfish generosity that must be our operating principle if we are to heal the world of its evil.

4. Jonathan Edwards, “Christian Charity: The Duty of Charity to the Poor, Explained and Enforced,” in vol. II of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Sereno Dwight (Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth Trust, 1998), p. 164.

5. It might be objected that Jonathan Edwards was speaking here of only charity to the poor, not justice. But for Edwards, the word “charity” meant more than what we use it to mean today. See more on Edwards’s views in other chapters.

6. See Amy Sullivan, “Young Evangelicals: Expanding their Mission” in Time, June 1, 2010. Accessed at http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1992463,00.html on July 10, 2010. Sullivan writes: “Today’s young Evangelicals cut an altogether different figure. They are socially conscious, cause-focused, and controversy-averse. And they are quickly becoming a growth market for secular service organizations like Teach for America. Overall applications to Teach for America have doubled since 2007 as job prospects have dimmed for college graduates. But applications have tripled from graduates of Christian colleges and universities. Wheaton is now ranked sixth among all small schools—above traditionally granola institutions like Carleton College and Oberlin—in the number of graduates it sends to Teach for America. The typical Wheaton student, like many in the newest generation of Evangelicals, is likely to be on fire about spreading the Good News and doing good.”

7. An example is Joel B. Green and Mark D. Baker, Recovering the Scandal of the Cross (Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity, 2000.)

8. Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Hatchette, 2007).

9. “Jeffrey” (not his real name) was one of the brightest students in the school. When he graduated from high school, all other students with his grades got into private or Ivy League schools. He could not afford that, and went to a very inexpensive state school. Nevertheless, he went on to get a Ph.D. and today teaches in one of the premier graduate schools in the country.

10. See Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law 1150–1625 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1997). See chapter 1. See also chapter 2, “A Contest of Narratives,” in Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice: Rights and Wrongs (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).

11. David L. Chappell, A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004). Also, see Richard W. Willis, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Image of God (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.). This book argues that King and the African-American church drew heavily on the Biblical account that all humans are made in “the image of God” and are therefore equal and must be treated with dignity.

12. Some of the results of this work can be found in my book Ministries of Mercy: The Call of the Jericho Road (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986).

13. Harvie M. Conn, Evangelism: Doing Justice and Preaching Grace (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982).

14. Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).

ONE – What Is Doing Justice?

15. The Scripture quotations in this book are ordinarily taken from the New International Version translation. Sometimes I provide my own translations. The NIV, for example, regularly renders the word gare as “alien,” whereas I will usually translate it “immigrant,” which, I think, more accurately conveys to modern readers the meaning of the word. The word means “the outsider living in your midst.”

16. Mark Gornik now heads up City Seminary of New York in New York City. I consider Mark’s ministry to be an excellent, instructive example of how to do justice in a poor community. His book, To Live in Peace: Biblical Faith and the Changing Inner City (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), is an important theological reflection on the work of justice, particularly in a city. We will return to Mark’s work in chapter 2, where we hear his analysis of what makes a neighborhood poor, and in chapter 6, where I give an overview of the balanced system of ministries that Mark and others developed in Baltimore.

17. See Peter Craigie, Twelve Prophets, Volume 2: Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1985). “Although we may learn deeply from each of the three parts of the prophet’s message, it is the collective whole which is most vital” (p. 47). See also Bruce K. Walke, A Commentary on Micah (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), p. 394.

18. Waltke, Micah, p. 394.

19. This is a term coined, from what I can tell, by Wolterstorff, p. 75.

20. Howard Peskett and Vinoth Ramachandra, The Message of Mission: The Glory of Christ in All Time and Space (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2003), p. 113. Also quoted in Tim Chester, Good News to the Poor: Sharing the Gospel through Social Involvement (Nottingham, UK: InterVarsity Press, 2004), p. 19.

21. The main source of this term is Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1973). It is now available in a fifteenth anniversary edition from Orbis, publication date 1988.

22. Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice: Rights and Wrongs (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 79.

23. Ibid.

24. Christopher Wright, Deuteronomy (Exeter, UK: Paternoster, 1996), p. 13.

25. J. A. Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1993), p. 471.

26. These are Wolterstorff’s terms, and I think they are more positive and descriptive than the more common labels. Rectifying justice is usually named “retributive” justice (that is, punishing wrongdoers and reestablishing rights) and primary justice is usually called “distributive” justice (that is, making sure that goods and opportunities are more equitably distributed in society).

27. Christopher Wright sums it up nicely: “Mishpat is what needs to be done in a given situation if people and circumstances are to be restored to conformity with tzadiqah.” Old Testament Ethics for the People of God (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2004), p. 237.

28. Francis I. Anderson, Job: Tyndale Old Testament Commentary (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 1975), p. 231.

29. The metaphor of a father helping his children is useful in several aspects. A good father gives his children direct aid—he feeds them and protects them from danger. But a good father does not want his children to remain dependent on him forever. He wants them to grow up and become self-sufficient. So, too, helping the poor may begin with direct relief and protection, but the final goal should always be empowerment and self-sufficiency. To keep the poor dependent is paternalistic and unloving, and ultimately unjust.

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