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I agree that Christians will sometimes understand "justice" differently from the world, because we will have the righteousness of God as our standard. But I don't think it is as complicated as you suggest for us because the Bible has some pretty clear guidance.If the wealthy exploit the poor, that's injustice.If widows and orphans go uncared for, that's injustice.If strangers are ill-treated, that's injustice.

In Christian terms, justice is more than a merely concept. It will always be concrete. I agree it is about more than "fairness" (and its secular companion "tolerance"). It will go further than both.

Posted by Richard @ 01/18/2003 09:11 PM CST

I put the term social justice in quotation marks because I was using it in the sense of equality or fairness that most peopole in my experience seem to associate with it. However, social justice as a function of the Church may or may not be, even in the terms Richard uses, a goal toward which we should strive. Justice ultimately belongs to God. We find in Scripture, especially in the NT, and in the person of Jesus Christ, that God's justice isn't what we could have guessed. When we deserved punishment, God gave us forgiveness and a place with Him in eternity. Justice, for God, and for the Church, is graciousness. Because of the connotation of equality and fairness employed by the state, and by Constintian disposed churches with the term "social justice", I would rather speak of the Church's work as "social graciousness." We work grace in the world. That is true justice. If we wish to speak of justice, let us qualify the term, lest we create confusion about what we mean.