From the concrete imagery of God as the Householder of the world house, we can move to the key question, "Do all God's children have enough?" (page 3). Distributive justice is concerned with the equitable distribution of the basic necessities of life to all God's children.
However, Crossan stipulates, correctly in my judgment, that the biblical vision of distributive justice is not "Liberalism, Socialism, or Communism" (page 3). But then he says, "We sometimes name the biblical vision of God's World-Household as Egalitarianism but actually, Enoughism would be a more accurate description" (page 3).
But the very use of the term Egalitarianism to characterize the biblical vision of distributive justice calls to mind political discourse about civic government, just as the terms Liberalism, Socialism, and Communism do. If the biblical vision of distributive justice is understood to be political discourse about civic government, then we should expect that some people might try to establish a civic government based on this vision. They might even take a hint from Crossan and refer to the new civic government as being based on Enoughism. The government of Enoughism, it might be proclaimed, aims to institute the basic necessities of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to all God's children. Because all God's children are spread around the world, the government of Enoughism should be the world government, not a government restricted to a certain local territory such as the Jewish homeland. After all, if God is the Householder of the world house, then the world house should have one worldwide government under God, shouldn't it?
I, for one, would prefer not to use the biblical vision of distributive justice as a way to think about forming a civic government. In part, a civic government should be concerned about distributive justice. But a civic government should be a government of laws, with penalties and punishments for breaking the laws, which is what is meant by retributive justice. At times, Crossan seems to write as though we could and probably should do away with retributive justice, because he connects retributive justice with violence. As a result of the way in which he discusses violence, he forces me to defend violence because I want to defend retributive justice under the laws of civic government. However, I am not going to undertake to set forth here a full-fledged defense of violence in connection with retributive justice. Suffice it to say that Crossan seems to work with an implicit sense of the term "violence" that seems to exclude any possible defense of penalties and punishment in connection with retributive justice. So far as I can tell, we human beings have not yet progressed to the point where our civic government can do away with penalties and punishment for violations of the laws.
By the way, I have often taught Edward Bellamy's 1888 utopian novel LOOKING BACKWARD: 2000-1887, in which he does indeed imagine that by the twenty-first century we Americans would have progressed to such a point of development. It is fun to imagine such utopian possibilities. But how do we get from here to there? Bellamy doesn't know. By comparison, Crossan provides insights about spirituality and the spiritual life that sound promising as to how we Americans might get from here to there. But we still have a long way to go to get from where we are today to the point where we will no longer need retributive justice with penalties and punishments for breaking the law.
Moreover, just as we Americans should not use the experiment in participatory democracy in ancient Athens as a model for civic government today, so too we should not use the experiment in covenantal government under the Mosaic body of laws in the ancient Jewish homeland as a model for civic government today.
Nevertheless, I have no objection to self-appointed prophets such as Bellamy using the vision of distributive justice that Crossan discusses to criticize our contemporary shortcomings and limitations and to urge certain kinds of reforms. As a matter of fact, in American history, we have had an abundance of self-appointed prophets, and we will probably never experience a shortage of them.
A BRIEF DIGRESSION
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