[NOTE: This was
presented at The Sixth International Conference on Restorative Justice. See: http://www.sfu.ca/crj/database/scholar/110_02_04.htm.]
By Wayne Northey
Introduction
A few years ago, at
a VOMA (Victim Offender Mediation Association) conference in Des
Moines, Iowa, I saw a plaintive note on a bulletin board:
DOES ANYONE KNOW OF ANY RESTORATIVE JUSTICE VIDEO RESOURCES THAT ARE NOT
RELIGIOUS?!
Restorative
Justice in North America, birthplace of its contemporary worldwide expression from
within criminal justice systems, grew out of a religious community,
specifically in the mid-seventies in the Mennonite community of Kitchener, Canada,
as an explicit religious response to a social problem[1]. No culture exists without religious foundation,
claims anthropologist René Girard. If,
as Girard continues to explain in an expansive theory of the geneaology of
violence[2], a “scapegoat mechanism” is generated by
religion to address the problem of violence, by which sacrificial victims are
immolated to restore peace and social cohesion, then religion just may be the
source of the corrective to universal scapegoating violence as well[3].
Beyond
Retribution
I thought I’d
look at a Christian Spirituality of Restorative Justice through the recent
publication of a book that directly addresses this issue.
Beyond
Retribution: A New Testament Vision for Justice, Crime, and Punishment (Marshall, 2001) is a stirring instance
of rereading the Judeo-Christian founding texts to provide a basis, not for
continued scapegoating violence in the Western secular state (which still has
intact many trappings of a bygone religious era![4]), but for a profound redirection of
traditional interpretation of those texts away from violence, “beyond
retribution”, towards, biblically, shalom, reconciliation and
forgiveness.[5]
Marshall’s book is highly significant to “secular”
Western culture, steeped in Judeo-Christian legacies, in its quest to move
towards Restorative Justice. “It is an
irony of history”, claims Religious Studies professor James Williams, “that the
very source that first disclosed the viewpoint and plight of the victim is
pilloried in the name of various forms of criticism… However, it is in the Western world that the
affirmation of ‘otherness,’ especially as known through the victim, has
emerged. And its roots sink deeply into
the Bible as transmitted in the Jewish and Christian traditions… the standpoint of the victim is [the West’s]
unique and chief biblical inheritance.
It can be appropriated creatively and ethically only if the inner
dynamic of the biblical texts and traditions is understood and
appreciated. The Bible is the first and
main source for women’s rights, racial justice, and any kind of moral
transformation. The Bible is also the
only creative basis for interrogating the tradition and the biblical texts
(Williams, 2000, pp. 195 & 196).”
In response to the Judeo-Christian sacred
texts, two broad approaches have been taken: rejecting the texts in a bid to
find a higher humanism[6];
or reinterpreting them in the process of “appropriating their inner
dynamic”. The former I suggest is
culturally akin to cutting off the nose to spite the face. Marshall
demonstrates the latter with this publication.
He has thereby set a new benchmark in biblical studies on justice,
crime, and punishment. With it, one
arguably sees the Bible as spiritually “the first and main source” for the
emerging phenomenon of Restorative Justice[7].
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
(Moule, 1965, p. 21).”
His was a clarion call
for the Judeo-Christian tradition to move “beyond retribution” in its
appropriation of the sacred texts[8]. Thirty-six years later, New Testament scholar
Chris Marshall published a book-length study with similar conclusions. There was 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)”); and how Christian faith speaks to the public arena (neither
“directly and legalistically to the machinery of the state” nor “irrelevant[ly]
to wider social issues (p. 31).”) Marshall
states here 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 (Gorringe, 1996, p. 102)[9]”.
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 [law of retaliation] (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. He retains the word “punishment”, but first
empties it of all its punitive thrust, then reinvigorates it with an
accountability/responsibility payload.
The reader may decide if this semantic make-over is successful.
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).” The
traditional Christian doctrine of hell as “eternal conscious punishment”
shrivels under the glare of this biblical reassessment of the ultimate,
literally most horror-filled, time-honoured image of a God who takes on the
character of “a bloodthirsty monster who maintains an
everlasting Auschwitz for victims whom He does not even allow to die
(theologian Clark Pinnock’s words, quoted in Dixon, 1992, p. 149).” One author, though vigorously committed to
this traditional interpretation, candidly admits: “Obviously, no follower of
Christ wants to be guilty of presenting God as one more heinous than Hitler (ibid,
pp. 149 & 150).” Indeed, claims Marshall. And one need not, according to the biblical
texts!
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 succinctly sums up.
The final Section, “Conclusion”, presents Forgiveness
as the Consummation of Justice. Marshall discusses the South African Truth and
Reconciliation Commission headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu as illustrative of
the attempt at a state-wide process and application of forgiveness and
accountability in post-apartheid South Africa. Marshall
quotes Tutu saying, “[W]ithout forgiveness, there is no future (p. 283).”[10] This conclusion is similarly argued
persuasively in Donald Shriver’s An Ethic for Enemies: Forgiveness in
Politics (1995). “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 the discussion, except Shriver’s noted just above, and Sister Helen
Prejean’s Dead Man Walking (1993).
In the words of a reviewer on the back cover of Beyond Retribution (Graham
N. Stanton), “There is no comparable discussion [anywhere].”
Richard Hays in The Moral Vision of the New
Testament (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
and a secular culture profoundly impacted by biblical revelation 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).”
Marshall’s publication also demonstrates how important
it is to read informed biblical reflection on social issues. All cultures, secular Western societies no
less, are profoundly religious. A Christian reading of Marshall’s book is immensely hopeful, both
about theological contributions to the public square and the future of
Restorative Justice. A secular reading
of Marshall’s
book is highly educative in understanding both the religious roots of
retributive justice, and the religious basis for critiquing those very
origins. I suggest that Marshall’s book, and The Spiritual Roots
of Restorative Justice (Hadley, 2001), should be required reading on every
academic reading list of courses on restorative justice.
Conclusion
In 1993 Lee Griffith published The Fall of the Prison: Biblical Perspectives on Prison Abolition. His is a tour
de force on a spirituality of penal abolition[11]. The book’s opening shot is: “The gospel is profoundly
scandalous, and until we hear at least a whisper of its scandal, we risk not
hearing any part of it (Griffith, 1993, p. 1).”
He presents his thesis in beguilingly simple terms: “Ultimately, there
are not two kingdoms but one – the kingdom
of God… ‘Freedom to the captives’ is not proclaimed
[by Jesus] in some other world but in our world. The matter finally comes down to a peculiar
question: Are there prisons in the kingdom
of God? And if there are no prisoners there and then,
how can we support the imprisonment of people here and now? For in fact, the kingdom of God
is among us here and now (ibid, p. 28).”
How indeed can
a Christian spirituality, responsive to the liberating thrust of the New
Testament founding texts, so utterly contradictory to state-sanctioned
scapegoating violence (the very kind that crucified its founder!), support
penal (pain delivery!) justice? That is the “peculiar question” this reflection leads to.
A contemporary theologian writes: “…the human walk… begins in
slavery and ends
in freedom, and [its] point of progress at every moment is faith
(Johnson,
1990, p. 11).” That is the quintessence
of spirituality arising from the Judeo-Christian narrative. It shouts
from the housetops: “Freedom for the prisoners (Luke 4:18)!”, and
“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free (Galatians 5:1)!”
Anthropologist René Girard notes: “In the Hebrew
Bible, there is clearly a dynamic that moves in the direction of the
rehabilitation of the victims, but it is not a cut-and-dried thing. Rather, it is a process under way, a text in
travail; it is not a chronologically progressive process, but a struggle that
advances and retreats. I see the Gospels
as the climactic achievement of that trend, and therefore as the essential text
in the cultural upheaval of the modern world (Hamerton-Kelly, 1987, p.
141).” If Girard is right, part of that
“cultural upheaval” is penal abolition and restorative (transformative)
justice.
One writer commented on Griffith’s book thus: “Jesus said he had come to proclaim release
to the prisoners. In The Fall of the Prison Lee Griffith
makes what Jesus meant altogether clear.
Now it is for us who have ears (quoted in Griffith, 1993, back cover).”
Indeed! What
is needed is a spirituality of transformative justice with ears – then hands
and feet!
From a Christian founding texts perspective on
restorative justice spirituality, the quest will never end until “Kingdom
come”. That is both permission and
incentive from within Christian spirituality, to vigorously, creatively, and
joyously join hands with all similar questers, whatever their religious beliefs
or unbeliefs. The best of Christian
spirituality has been ever inclusive and collaborative, while holding onto the
undisputed uniqueness of the Jesus story, which, as ultimate Story,
points the way home[12].
References
Bellinger, Charles K. (2000). The Genealogy of Violence: Reflections on
Creation, Freedom, and Evil, New York: Oxford University
Press.
Bianchi, Herman
(1994). Justice as Sanctuary: Toward
a New System of Crime Control,
Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
Dixon, Larry (1992).
The Other Side of the Good News: Confronting
the Contemporary Challenges to Jesus’ Teachings on Hell, Wheaton:
BridgePoint. [Reviewed elsewhere by me on this site.]
Gallaway, Burt and Wright, Martin (eds.)
(1989). Mediation
and Criminal Justice: Victims, Offenders, and Community, Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
Girard, René (2001). I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, Mahwah, N.J.:
Paulist Press.
Gorringe, Timothy
(1996). God’s Just Vengeance: Crime, Violence and the Rhetoric of Salvation,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Griffith, Lee (1993). The Fall of the Prison: Biblical Perspectives on Prison Abolition, Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans.
Griffith, Lee, (2002). The War on Terrorism and the Terror of God, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Hadley, Michael, ed. (2001). The Spiritual Roots of Restorative Justice,
New York:
SUNY Press.
Hamerton-Kelly, Robert G., ed.
(1987). Violent Origins, Stanford: Stanford University
Press.
Hays, Richard B. (1996). The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A
Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics, Harper.
Johnson, Luke
T. (1990). Faith’s Freedom: A Classic Spirituality for Contemporary Christians,
Minneapolis:
Fortress Press.
Marshall, Christopher (2000). “Paul and Christian Social Responsibility”, Anvil, Volume 17, No 1, 2000.
Marshall, Christopher D. (2001). Beyond Retribution: A New Testament Vision
for Justice, Crime, and Punishment, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Moule, C.F.D. (1965). “Punishment and
Retribution: An Attempt to Delimit Their Scope in New Testament Thought”, in Svensk
Exegetisk Arsbok 30, pp. 21 – 36.
Northey, Wayne (1998). “Book Review, God’s Just Vengeance: Crime,
Violence and the Rhetoric of Salvation”, Contemporary Justice Review,
Dennis Sullivan, Editor, Volume 1, Number 1, 1998.
Northey, Wayne (2002). “Book Review, No Future Without
Forgiveness”, Catholic New Times, Ted Schmidt, Editor, in three
issues, fall, 2002.
Prejean, Sister Helen
(1993). Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness
Account of the Death Penalty in the United States,
New York:
Vintage Books.
Redekop, Vern (1993). Scapegoats, the Bible, and Criminal
Justice: Interacting with René Girard.
Akron:
MCC U.S. Office of
Criminal Justice/MCC Canada
Victim Offender Ministries.
Shriver, Donald W.
(1995). An Ethic for Enemies:
Forgiveness in Politics, New York: Oxford University
Press.
Tolkien, J.R.R.
(1966). "On
Fairy-Stories", The Tolkien Reader, Ballantine, 1966.
Tutu, Desmond Mpilo
Tutu (2000). No Future Without Forgiveness,
New York:
Image Books.
Volf, Miroslav
(1996). Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity,
Otherness, and Reconciliation, Nashville:
Abingdon Press.
Williams, James G. (1996). The Girard Reader, New York: Crossroad Herder.
Williams, James G. (2000). “King as Servant,
Sacrifice as Service: Gospel Transformations”, in Willard M. Swartley, ed., Violence
Renounced: René Girard, Biblical Studies, and Peacemaking, Telford: Pandora
Press U.S.
Zehr, Howard (1990). Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice, Scottdale: Herald
Press.
[1] See the story in “Introduction”, Mediation and Criminal Justice:
Victims, Offenders, and Community, edited by Martin Wright and Burt
Gallaway (1989).
[2] Charles Bellinger (2000) argues that René
Girard and Søren Kierkegaard are the West’s most profound theorists on the
cultural origins of violence. For an
introduction to Girard, see Williams (1996).
[3] This is in fact the “third great moment of
discovery” for Girard, according to him. “The third great moment of discovery for me
was when I began to see the uniqueness of the Bible, especially the Christian
text, from the standpoint of the scapegoat theory. The mimetic representation of scapegoating in
the Passion was the solution to the relationship of the Gospels and archaic
cultures. In the Gospels we have the
revelation of the mechanism that dominates culture unconsciously (Williams,
1996, p. 263).” Girard has since
published a full discussion of his reading of the New Testament anthropologically
with reference to violent origins in I See Satan Fall Like Lightning
(2001).
[4] In Scapegoats, the Bible, and Criminal
Justice: Interacting with René Girard (1993), Vern Redekop asks: “Is it
possible that what we call a criminal justice system is really a scapegoat
mechanism?” His response is: “In a
secular democratic society, nothing is as sacred as the law code and the
justice system which enforces it. The
buildings in which laws are made are the most elaborate and the courts in which
decisions are made about points of law are the most stately. Formality, uniforms, and respect surround the
agents of law.” He concludes: “It is
possible to think of the criminal justice system as one gigantic scapegoat
mechanism for society (pp. 1, 16, and 33).”, and illustrates convincingly.
[5] A similar orientation is found in the
publication The Spiritual Roots of Restorative Justice (Hadley, 2001),
to which this writer co-contributed the chapter on Christianity. It is also reflected in God’s Just Vengeance
(Gorringe, 1996). It is germane to
point out that the impetus for these publications was the already established
tradition from the Christian faith community of rereading its sacred texts in a
nonsacrificial way, in the direction of Restorative Justice.
[6] Girard refers to this as “crucifying the text”. See Williams (1996).
[7] See Bianchi (1994) for a similar commitment to biblical sources,
but from a secular perspective.
[8] Moule, an internationally renowned New Testament scholar,
eventually became a staunch supporter of Restorative Justice, after reading
Howard Zehr’s book, Changing Lenses (1990).
[9] Reviewed
in Contemporary Justice Review,
Northey (1998).
[10] Almost title of Tutu’s
magisterial reflection on Restorative Justice (2000), through the story of the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which Tutu headed from its inception. It is reviewed in Catholic New Times (Northey,
2002).
[11] He has recently written another tour de force: (2002).
[12] “Stanley Hauerwas has
suggested that the only thing that makes the Christian church different from
any other group in society is that the church is the only community that
gathers around the true story. It is not the piety, or the sincerity, or the
morality of the church that distinguishes us (Christians have no monopoly on
virtue). It is the story we treasure, the story from which we derive our
identity, our vision, and our values. And for us to do that would be a horrible
mistake, if it were not a true story, indeed the true story, which exposes the lies, deceptions, and half-truths
upon which human beings and human societies so often stake their lot (Marshall,
2000, p. 13.)” J.R.R. Tolkien of Lord
of the Rings fame, as a philologist has written:
“In [a true fairy-story] when the sudden ‘turn’
[Tolkien calls this a ‘eucatastrophe’] comes we get a piercing glimpse
of joy,
and heart’s desire, that for a moment passes outside the frame, rends
indeed
the very web of story, and lets a gleam come through… The Gospels
contain a fairy-story, or a story
of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They
contain many marvels… and among the
marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe.
But this story has entered history and the
primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been
raised to the
fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of
Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history.
The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation.
This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the ‘inner
consistency
of reality’. There is no tale ever told
that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical
men have
accepted as true on its own merits. For
the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that
is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to
wrath (1966, Epilogue)”.