Many who don’t believe in the existence of God care a great deal about justice. It’s only with fear and trembling that I call them to consistency by pointing out how their concern for justice can’t be sustained by their relativism and/or atheism.
Those who recognize, through their experience of the world, that justice isn’t merely a matter of preference (see yesterday’s post) but, rather, is objectively real should ask themselves, what must be true for ultimate justice to exist? Here’s what R.C. Sproul says in Surprised by Suffering (summarizing Immanuel Kant’s argument):
[Kant] argued that for the moral sense of duty to be meaningful, there must be such a thing as justness. For justness, or right and wrong, to be meaningful, there must be justice. Thus, justice serves as a necessary condition for moral obligation to be meaningful…
If ultimate justice is to be had, the first requirement that must be met is this: we must survive the grave. If we do not survive the grave, and if justice is not served perfectly in this world, then justice is not ultimate and our sense of moral obligation is a meaningless striving after the wind. If ultimate justice is served, we must be there to experience it….
A second necessary condition for ultimate justice is the presence of an ultimate judge. But no ordinary judge will do. For ultimate justice to be ensured, the judge must have the proper characteristics.
First of all, the judge himself must be perfectly just. If there is a moral blemish in the judge’s character, then chances are his judgments will be tainted and our quest for perfect justice will fail…
For perfect justice to be ensured, the perfect judge must have perfect knowledge. In a word, the perfect judge must be omniscient lest some relevant detail escape his notice and distort his verdict…
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