God's Justice

From the previous blog post, we see how the judicial concept of God's mercy is actually a distortion that results from applying human concepts to theology. What, then, do the references to God's justice mean in both the Old and New Testaments? What comes to mind is the human concept of justice, represented by a balance, where the good are rewarded and the bad are punished in an equitable manner. This is the type of justice that ideally takes place in a human court. But is this really the meaning of God’s justice in the Holy Scriptures?

To answer this question, we consider the Hebrew word for justice, which is "tsedaka". This word literally means the divine energy which accomplishes man’s salvation. The meaning of "tsedaka" is also nearly synonymous to two other Hebrew words, "hesed", which means mercy, compassion, and love and "emeth" which means fidelity and truth. So in the language of the Holy Scriptures, when we say that God is just, we do not mean that He is a good judge who knows how to punish people equitably according to the seriousness of their crimes but that He is loving, compassionate, and forgiving.

And that is what the early Church taught about God's justice. Writing back in the 7th century, Saint Isaac (who for a short time was the bishop of Nineveh, an Assyrian city in what is now Iraq) asks "How could we apply the concept of human justice to God when we read the parable of the wage given to the workers: “Friend, I do thee no wrong; I will give unto this last even as unto thee who worked for me from the first hour. Is thine eye evil, because I am good?” or when we read the parable of the prodigal son who wasted his wealth in riotous living and then only for the contrition which he showed did his father run and fall upon his neck and give him authority over all his wealth." Saint Isaac concludes, "None other but His very Son said these things concerning Him lest we doubt it, and thus He bare witness concerning Him."

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