If justice is directed by the need to bring redemption to wherever the curse is found Christians would be involved in all sorts of issues. Missional churches in major cities, for example, would consider abortion a social justice issues and suburban churches would be much concerned about material poverty.

I’m beginning to wonder if one of the reasons evangelicals are so inconsistent on issues of justice is that they lack a theological anthropology that has space for an emphasis on the inherent dignity of the human person.

The over-emphasis on “total depravity,” combined with a deficient theology of creation, renders orienting conceptions of justice around the image of God (Gen 1:26-28) seem anthropomorphic.

Perhaps missional leaders are blind to abortion as an issue of humanity dignity, limiting it to a political issue because, for evangelicals, issues of justice follow personal preferences instead of normative ethical principles.

In fact, I’m not so certain that “the gospel” (as a conceptual tag) is an appropriate hermeneutic for conceptions of justice given other robust themes in the biblical narrative like love, creation, kingdom, grace, covenant, mediator, “the glory of God,” etc. that are embedded in the biblical narrative to allow the Holy Spirit to open up our moral imaginations for ourselves and our neighbors.

Missional churches, and other evangelicals, would be helped by additional categories.

For example, the Roman Catholic Church is much more consistent on issues of justice because it situates justice in relation to violations of God’s image rather than the personal preferences of individual pastors, churches, social agendas, or political ideologies. Here’s is an excerpt from Evangelium Vitae:

“Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where people are treated as mere instruments of gain rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others like them are infamies indeed. They poison human society, and they do more harm to those who practise them than to those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonour to the Creator”.

If missional and evangelical churches had anything close to this as normative ethical theory we would not have silly bifurcations between Christians who focus on “abortion” versus those who focus on “poverty.”

There would be no caricatures of “Religious Right” Christians versus “Social Gospel Christians,” those who focus on political means versus those who focus on local means, and so on.

If justice is directed by the need to bring redemption to wherever the curse is found Christians would be involved in all sorts of issues. Missional churches in major cities, for example, would consider abortion a social justice issues and suburban churches would be much concerned about material poverty.

What if missional churches and evangelicals adopted what I call the “Jones principle of justice:”

Justice means that every human being should be treated according to what it means to be human, and what it means to be human is to be one who bears the image of God and who has a divine calling to fulfill.” (David Jones, Biblical Christians Ethics, 83).

Human dignity changes everything.
_______________________________________

(Editor’s Note: David Clyde Jones is Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology and Ethics at Covenant Theological Seminary, where he has taught continuously since 1967, perhaps having taught more PCA Teaching Elders than any other single professor)

Anthony Bradley is an Associate Professor of Theology and Ethics at The King’s College, NYC. This commentary is taken from Bradley’s blog, The Institute and is used with permission of the author.