Judgment as Retribution and Restoration?

A common theme in recent theological work is to stress God’s justice as restorative rather than retributive. The underlying assumption appears to be that retribution is mean, nasty, and unnice and therefore unworthy of a God of love, grace, and mercy. For instance, Tom Smail comments: “God’s justice is concerned less with punishing wrong relationships than with restoring right ones. Like the heroes of the Book of Judges, Jesus is concerned with freeing the land from the evil forces that have infested it and setting our humanity free from the personal and social twistedness that is corrupting and destroying it.”[1] Stephen Travis believes that “Retributive concepts are forced toward the edges of New Testament thought by the nature of the Christian gospel. It is a gospel that proclaims Christ as the one through whom people are invited into a relationship with God. Once the relationship to Christ and to God is seen as central, retributive concepts become inappropriate. The experience described by such terms as forgiveness, love, grace and acceptance overrides them. And the experience of those who refuse to respond to this gospel is not so much an experience of retributive punishment as the negation of all that is offered in Christ.” He points out that the biblical imagery for justice contains warnings of retribution against the wicked, but they are largely metaphors for exclusion from God’s presence rather than speculative descriptions of postmortem torments like that found in some Jewish literature. Moreover, retributive judgment is frequently juxtaposed with wider visions of the triumph of God’s glory and love. In his conclusion he asks whether “retributive language should be displaced from Christian vocabulary” in favor of “the language of a relationship to Christ”.[2]

Now I can genuinely sympathize with a desire to escape the western captivity to a contractual understanding of divine-human relationships and the limitation of justice to recompense of deeds. Aristotle and Anselm have set the agenda and grammar for theology for too long. So instead may God give us a covenant relationship rather than a contract. May his justice be transformative rather than punitive. But the more I think about this the more baby and bath water comes to my mind. God’s covenants are intimately relational, but they are also legally binding, hence the law-suit motif one finds in the Pentateuch and Prophets. God’s justice will transform the world, but a transformed world must be one where the most insidious of evils and their perpetrators are not lightly rinsed with a perfume of goodness. Evil is such that it must be destroyed or quarantined if the goodness of God has utter supremacy in the new creation. Precisely because God condescends to covenant with creation is why he can prosecute his contention when his covenant partners fail to follow the obligations in that relationship. Precisely because God is love is why he must not allow evil to have the last enduring word in any corner of the galaxy.

We do not have to choose between retributive and restorative schemes of divine justice. The righteousness that brings judgment also fills the universe with God’s shalom for. For “the fruit of that righteousness will be peace; its effect will be quietness and confidence forever” (Isa 32:17; cf. Ps 85:10; Isa 9:7; Heb 12:11). There can be no reconciliation without recompense otherwise the disorder, destruction, and decay of evil prevents peace from lasting. The incarnation and the cross achieve both: juridical judgment and relational peace wrought in the atonement. As Henri Blocher comments: “Retribution and restoration are not mutually exclusive; the good news is the retribution, and the basis of restoration is in the person of the head and substitute.”[3] Theologians will protest that this is divine violence and it sanctions human violence rather than preventing it. Yet God’s justice is about vindication not vindictiveness. The “vengeance” (ekdikeō) of God is not his unbridled and disproportionate violence unleashed through an unchecked hatred at his opponents. It is more properly his righteous decision to be the God who vindicates those who suffer and avenge their pain with an appropriate action that holds the subjects of evil responsible for their actions (see esp. Deut 32:43; Luke 18:3, 5; Rom 12:19; Rev 6:10). Divine vengeance – like it or not there is such a thing – is not a license for human violence, but the grounds for the end of it. As Miroslav Volf states: “The certainty of God’s judgment at the end of history is the presupposition for the renunciation of violence. The divine system of judgment is not the flip side of the human reign of terror, but a necessary correlate of human nonviolence”.[4]

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[1] Tom Small, Once and For All: A Confession of the Cross (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1998), 95.

[2] Stephen H. Travis, Christ and the Judgment of God: The Limits of Divine Retribution in New Testament Thought (2nd ed.; Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2008), 325,327.

[3] Henri Blocher, “God and the Cross,” in Engaging the Doctrine of God: Contemporary Protestant Perspectives, ed. B.L. McCormack (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2008), 140 (125-41).

[4] Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 302.

Synerism?

I constantly read that any soteriology that is apparently synergistic must be bad. Whether that is second temple Judaism or semi-pelagianism, they are synergistic, and therefore they are the bad kinda thing that the Apostle Paul warned of. But I think that "syngergism" as soteriological category is a misnomer. First, every form of soteriology seems to have an element of divine action and human response. If "salvation" is contingent upon certain human responses, like faith repentance, then anywhere where you have a divine sovereignty/human responsibility tension, then you are gonna have some kind of synergism. Even if God animates the human response directly or indirectly, it is still a human response. Second, the only form of soteriology that is not synergistic is universalism. Unless you do absolutely nothing, no response, no responsibility, no ability, no effort at all, the only form of monergism is universalism, everyone gets saved no matter what they believe or what they've done. Some systems of soteriology are explicitly synergistic and they speak of cooperating with divine grace (e.g., Roman Catholicism, Greek Orthodox), however, we should avoid ragging on these with the charge of "synergism" because any soteriology that includes a human response is in some sense synergistic. A better way to evaluate soteriologies (ancient or modern) is to look at the type of divine action, its efficacy, and the human response that makes it effective in a particular scheme.

Salvation in Post-Exilic Judaism

I am currently doing research on both 1 Esdras and Judith for two different projects. Along the way, I am very interested in the soteriology of both documents and what they have to say about "salvation" in post-exilic Judaism.

In 1 Esdras, salvation is primarily seen in the successful (albeit problematic) return of the exiles to Judah to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple. A soteriological summary of 1 Esdras could be made with the words “we obtained mercy” (1 Esdr 8:53) where the returning exiles stress their reliance on God in prayer for deliverance during their sojourn to Jerusalem. At two key points in the narrative God is extolled for his mercy (1 Esd 8:53; 8:75) as he preserved the nation in the slavery of exile and enabled them to make a safe journey despite all the perils back in the land of Judea. At the beginning of the story the sin of the nation and its leaders is highlighted (e.g., 1:22, 32-55), yet God’s mercy returns in the decree of Cyrus (1:1-7), the triumph of Zerubbabel (4:59-63), and the call of Ezra (8:1-7). In the midst of the wickedness of the people and priests (1:47), God send them a messenger (i.e., Jeremiah) to call them because “he was trying to spare them and his dwelling place” (1:48), and yet this is met with their mockery and scoffing that earns God’s anger (1:49-50). It is clear that in 1:47-49 shows how God’s mercy is sandwiched between the impiety and hard heartedness of the people even if it is not efficacious. Nonetheless, even judgment can be worked ultimately for redemptive purposes and the exile is not meant to be permanent (1:55). Towards the end of the story, in Ezra’s penitential prayer (8:71-87), there is recognition that God has been faithful and merciful to his people in that he preserved them in exile, brought them back into the land, left them with a “root”, and continues preserves them with sustenance in their current state; although the people have sinned like their forefathers by intermarrying with foreigners since returning to the land. That in turn leads to contrition among the people, to the rectification of their misdeeds, and the offering of the appropriate sacrifices (8:88–9:20). In sum, 1 Esdras narrates the story of how a people who are “in” but who have violated God’s law take steps in response to their transgression (see Enns 2001: 75). It is in response to their experience of divine mercy, the exiles take measured steps to prevent any further catastrophe of divine judgment through a strenuous emphasis on separation from the nations, concerted efforts to rebuild the temple and Jerualem, and they attempt to reconstitute the body of exiles into a Torah-observant Judean society. Despite the nation’s manifold sin, both pre- and post-exile, the book focuses on how God did not completely forsake the nation. The initiative for the return from exile is attributed exclusively to God and not due to any prayer or petetiton by pious exiles. Yet preservation in the land appears to be contingent upon rebuilding Judean life in accordance with the Law of Moses (8:21-24; cf. 1:31; 5:50; 8:7, 84, 90; 9:37-50). All in all, 1 Esdras exemplifies the pattern of religion called “covenantal nomism” where God’s grace precedes the act of obedience that follows. Enns (2001: 77) aptly summarizes: “We have, in other words, transgression by the people of God, but for which there is a means of rectifying their position before God.

In Judith, there is no reference to divine initiative in bringing the nation out of exile. Instead, there is a big emphasis on the efficacy of prayer, fasting, and self-humiliation as mechanisms that prompt God's saving action to deliver the nation from Nebuchadnezzar (king of Assyria!). Any intervention by God for the nation is noticeably absent from the description of the return from exile: "But when they departed from the way he had prescribed for them, they were utterly defeated in many battles and were led away captive to a foreign land. The temple of their God was razed to the ground, and their towns were occupied by their enemies. But now they have returned to their God, and have come back from the places where they were scattered, and have occupied Jerusalem, where their sanctuary is, and have settled in the hill country, because it was uninhabited (Jdt 5:18-19)". Elsewhere, Judith states that a town on the verge of famine must continue to trust God rather than surrender. She argues that God is an ineffable mystery and that he reveals his salvation as he pleases and purposes (8:15-16). She is confident God will save them because they have not committed idolatry. In the end she exhorts her audience with the words: "Therefore, while we wait for his deliverance, let us call upon him to help us, and he will hear our voice, if it pleases him (Jdt 8:17)". There is a twofold paradox in Judith. First, Judith says that God is "not won over by pleading" (Jdt 8:16), yet the whole narrative assumes the efficacy of prayer to enable God "to hear our voice if it pleases him" (Jdt 8:17). Second, Judith urges the audience to "wait for his deliverance," but in the end she does not herself wait, rather, she acts quickly, decisively, cunningly, and violently to kill Israel's enemy. For those outside of the community, like Achior, salvation is by proselytism as the means by which one joins the "house of Israel" (Jdt 14:10). In the book, God is portrayed as mysterious and able to save, but the actual cause of salvation is the initiative of the people. I hesistate at calling this "legalism," but divine action is de-emphasized and divine initiative is entirely absent. In Judith, salvation is perhaps best achieved through covenantal piety which may or may not evoke God's favor. God’s election, covenant, and relationship with his people are largely assumed, but they are clearly conditional. Salvation is neither automatic nor efficacious. It is due to appropriate ritual appeals, godliness and contrition, obedience, the absence of sin, and merited by pious individuals like Joakim, Achior, Uzziah, and Judith. Overall, deliverance is only possible under the conditions of covenantal obedience which explains why Israel went into exile in the first place (Jdth. 5.18; 8.18).