Christopher D. Marshall, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001, 342 pages.
Reviewed by Wayne Northey
In 1965, noted New Testament scholar C.F.D. Moule published an article in a little known Swedish academic journal. Entitled “Punishment and Retribution: An Attempt to Delimit Their Scope in New Testament Thought”, he began with this observation: “It is likely, I know, that many readers - perhaps most - will find themselves in disagreement with the radical thesis I am about to present. But my hope is that time will not have been wasted - whatever the conclusions reached - because the thesis leads us in any case to ponder, once more, the very heart of the Gospel.” He continued with a terse summary of his conclusions: “What I offer for your consideration is the thesis that the word ‘punishment’ and other words related to it (especially ‘retribution’) have, if used in their strictly correct sense, no legitimate place in the Christian vocabulary.
His article argued that in New Testament witness vengeance is at God’s initiative (Romans 12:19) - and is never the Christian’s prerogative personally, nor to will for the state. But even from God’s perspective, if God “... has willed the dire consequences that ensue on sin, it does not necessarily follow that he has willed them retributively, punitively. It may be that he has willed them as the only way of doing justice to the freedom and responsibility of the human personality, as he has created it.”
Thirty-six years later, New Testament scholar Chris Marshall has published a book-length study with similar conclusions. There has been nothing like it in the interval.
The study is wide-ranging. Section one, “Introduction”, considers various Christian sources of moral guidance; early Christian witness from the “underside” (“they write as, to, and on behalf of the victims of abusive state power (p. 16)”); how Christian faith speaks to the public arena (neither “directly and legalistically to the machinery of the state” nor “irrelevant to wider social issues (p. 31).”) Marshall states that his “main intention is to survey a broad range of New Testament texts pertinent to the subject of crime and punishment in order to ascertain the extent to which they reflect what might be called a vision of restorative justice (p. 32).” As to the contour of that vision, “My premise is that the first Christians experienced in Christ and lived out in their faith communities an understanding of justice as a power that heals, restores, and reconciles rather than hurts, punishes, and kills, and that this reality ought to shape and direct a Christian contribution to the criminal justice debate today (p. 33).”
In the second part Marshall considers “The Arena of Saving Justice”, with a look at Paul and Jesus, seeing in Paul Justice As the Heart of the Gospel, Divine Justice as Restorative Justice, Justification by Faith as Restorative Justice, and the work of Christ (atonement) as Redemptive Solidarity, Not Penal Substitution. With this last heading Marshall challenges directly the longstanding dominance of atonement as “satisfaction” and “penal substitution”, both retributive constructs, which historian Timothy Gorringe in a study of the impact of such understanding upon the development of western criminal law declares to be a “mysticism of pain which promises redemption to those who pay in blood (God’s Just Vengeance)”. Marshall writes: “The logic of the cross actually confounds the principle of retributive justice, for salvation is achieved not by the offender compensating for his crimes by suffering, but by the victim, the one offended against, suffering vicariously on behalf of the offended - a radical inversion of the lex talionis (pp. 65 & 66).” Finally, he sees Jesus as embodiment of God’s justice, and his way as non-retaliation.
In the third Section, “Punishment That Fits”, Marshall looks at the Purpose and Ethics of Punishment, and after discussing all the main theories considers the notion of “Restorative Punishment”, which he believes is Punishment as the Pain of Taking Responsibility.
With the fourth Section, “Vengeance is Mine”, Marshall looks at divine and human justice, including the issue of “Final Punishment”, the doctrine of hell. His overall conclusion is, “Restoration, not retribution, is the hallmark of God’s justice and is God’s final word in history (p. 199).” In the Preface to Larry Dixon’s recent The Other Side of the Good News: Confronting the Contemporary Challenges to Jesus’ Teachings on Hell, theologian J. I. Packer suggests that eternal conscious punishment of unbelievers, as argued in Dixon’s book, is the only biblical view allowed. Marshall begs to differ, stating “For our purposes, the point to notice is that God’s final word is not retribution but restoration... (p. 197)” Of hell itself, based on the biblical material, he says: “Maybe a humble agnosticism is the wisest option (p. 196).”
The fifth Section, “Justice That Kills”, spends fifty pages on the issue of capital punishment. It should be no surprise that Marshall finds no biblical mandate for the death penalty. “Capital punishment is incompatible with a gospel of redemption and reconciliation (p. 253).”, he sums up.
The final Section, “Conclusion”, presents Forgiveness as the Consummation of Justice. Marshall discusses the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission headed by Bishop Desmond Tutu as illustrative of the attempt at a political application of forgiveness. He quotes Tutu saying, “[W]ithout forgiveness, there is no future (p. 283).” This is also argued persuasively in Donald Shriver’s AN ETHIC FOR ENEMIES: Forgiveness in Politics. “Forgive and forget” gives way to “Remember, forgive, and be free.”
The book is well written, cogently argued, and widely researched. (Few key books are left out of discussion, such as Shriver’s noted just above. Another is Sister Helen Prejean’s Dead Man Walking.) In the words of a reviewer on the back cover (Graham N. Stanton), “There is no comparable discussion [anywhere].”
Richard Hays in The Moral Vision of the New Testament (Harper, 1996) states that tradition, reason, and experience throughout history have prevented biblical Christians from living out the radical nonviolence of the Gospel. Chris Marshall has pointed the way of such a biblical reading in response to crime and justice. Will biblical Christians rise to the challenge, or settle as so often for sub-biblical, even non-biblical views about retribution? This book stands as direct challenge to embrace a justice “beyond retribution” “that manifests God’s redemptive work of making all things new (p. 284).”
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