§ 84. The justice of God is that divine causality through which in the state of universal sinfulness there is ordained a connexion between evil and actual sin. 1. This interpretation undeniably is much narrower and more limited than that yielded by the method of other theologians, and therefore requires special vindication. To begin with, here too use is made of the position that justice is of two kinds, namely, legislative (or distributive) and retributive. The former of these, however, cannot be brought under our definition at all. In fact, the thinkers referred to seem to have forgotten that the terms ‘law’ and ‘justice’ always imply a relation to something given. Human legislation and distribution can be just, and may be said to be just, only in view of an already given situation to which it is attached and upon which it is based. Divine legislation and distribution, however, is primordial and creative; it is that from which existent things themselves and their relationships all alike proceed, which needs nothing to attach itself to, and which in its perfection accordingly cannot be described as justice at all, but would more aptly be designated wisdom1—a divine attribute that we cannot deal with till a later stage. Hence the divine justice can be retributive only. But even of retributive justice our interpretation covers only the half; for the term is used to denote not only the punishment of wickedness, but also the rewarding of goodness, while our definition has nothing to say of a connexion between well-being and the power of the God-consciousness, but refers only to that between evil and sin—precisely that connexion, in fact, which we call punishment. Now we might concede the omission, and even excuse it as involved in the very process of abstraction in which we are engaged when discussing one element of our Christian consciousness, namely, the consciousness of sin, and for the time putting aside the other; but at most we should thereby be exposing an inconvenience of our method, which here forces us to split a divine attribute in two. In point of fact, however, our Christian consciousness recognizes no reward proceeding from the divine justice; anything that might possibly be called reward is for us something unmerited, and attributable to the divine grace.2 The rewarding side of the divine justice can have no other object than Christ,3 and Him only as one who is different from all other men. From our own religious consciousness, therefore, we can know only of God’s punitive justice; His rewarding relatively to ourselves we must simply leave out of account. For while Christ Himself seems more often and more variously to portray the rewarding action of God,4 yet the increase of a man’s powers and the expansion of his field of action—two things, be it noted, corresponding exactly to each other—are no more a reward in the proper sense (i.e. one that might be contrasted with evil as conjoined with sin) than the increase of wickedness could in the proper sense rank as a punishment.
- Now, if the conception of divine justice has to do only with the connexion of evil with sin, it would surely seem natural that it can apply solely to the sphere of sin; and in that case the postscript (p. 341) may well appear superfluous. It is clear that if we formed part of a sinless corporate life we should never have an idea of this side of the divine causality at all, for it is only through our consciousness of sin that we come to the idea of the divine justice. The term itself, however, likewise implies that as sin diminishes the connexion between sin and evil is done away in an equal degree; and done away, moreover, quite independently of whether there is any change in the material side of man’s condition; and this abrogation, i.e. the forgiveness of sin, falls under the very same divine causality;5 for it is in this that the recompense of Christ lies. Our restriction of the connexion itself to actual sin rests partly on the fact that, as the original sinfulness still remains unchanged in the corporate life of man, the connexion with evil could not possibly be annulled were it due to that sinfulness; partly also on the fact that the connexion exists only in so far as it has a place in our consciousness, while the consciousness of the original sinfulness exists in us only in and along with actual sin. Moreover, it is only with actual sin that we must connect not merely the existence of social evil—for it is only definite sinful tendencies of individuals which in corporate life develop into persistent causes of hindrance—but the fact that natural imperfections are regarded as evils. Hence in the measure that sin is done away, not only does evil occur no more, but even the sin which has become actual operates no longer as a hindrance to life, but as a helpful incentive.6 The formation and annulment of the connexion of sin and evil, accordingly, involves two things: first, that the entire constitution of the world, in so far as evil depends upon it, is related in the most definite way to human freedom as that in which sin is grounded; and secondly, that in our consciousness the two are connected not merely occasionally, but essentially and universally. Since therefore the divine justice, thus regarded, is a form of the divine causality that remains self-identical throughout our whole experience, and covers the whole province of finite intelligence known to us, so that, together with the form of the divine causality treated in the foregoing paragraph, it regulates everything that upon this side of our antithesis bears upon the ethical, we seem to be perfectly justified in setting it forth as a distinct divine attribute.