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This year we want to have a strong focus on missional justice. Over 5 weeks, we are reposting a helpful article from Tim Keller (Gospel in Life Q4 2020) comparing secular visions of justice with the Bible. Last time, he outlined a biblical view of justice. In this blog Keller critiques 2 different secular theories of justice, “freedom” and “fairness”.
The Spectrum of Justice Theories
In briefly outlining the alternative accounts of justice operating in our culture, some oversimplification is unavoidable.[13] Still, there is widespread agreement that something like the following four categories of justice theories are operating.[14]
All the theories on this spectrum are secular, sharing two assumptions. (a) First, unlike Martin Luther King, Jr. (see “Letter from Birmingham Jail”) they all assume that there are no transcendent, moral absolutes on which to base justice. They believe in Taylor’s “immanent frame,”[15] that there is no supernatural reality and so moral values and the definition of justice itself are invented by human beings. (b) They all see human nature as a blank slate that can be wholly reshaped by human means, not as a God-given nature that must be honored for us to thrive.
1. Libertarian – “Freedom” A just society promotes individual freedom.
This view, recently argued by Robert Nozick, believes in a small number of individual rights, but not entitlements. Persons have the right to not be harmed, an absolute right to private property if fairly earned, and to the rights of free speech and free association. The first way to guard these rights is to have small government, since high taxes are unjust, a violation of the right to private property, and large-scale government inevitably seeks to regulate speech, thought, and association.
The second way to guard these rights is to have an unregulated free market. The Libertarian view is highly individualistic, based on the implicit assumption that every human being belongs to him or herself, and that the outcomes of anyone’s life depend wholly on their individual choices and efforts.[16]
Quick biblical analysis:
First, this view denies the complexity of who we are—individuals yet embedded in communities instituted by God (family, state) and created in the image of a Three-in-One God. The Bible balances individual freedom with community obligation. Unlike the Bible, Libertarianism denies or downplays the role of oppressive social forces in what makes people poor, refusing to see how sin creates un-level playing fields that mere individual freedom cannot remedy.
Second, it denies the doctrine of the universality of sin. It sees the evil capacities of government but not so much of capital markets, though human sin is everywhere and will corrupt everything.
Third, it has a sub-biblical understanding of freedom. Libertarianism usually sees freedom in wholly negative terms—it is freedom from. But we were created by God for loving him and our neighbor, not just self-interest, and so the more we do what we were created to do the more free we will be.
Finally, this view’s understanding of absolute rights over property and over self does not square with the Bible’s view of creation. We belong to God, not to ourselves, and so does everything we own. Whatever we have is ultimately God’s gift and must be shared.
2. Liberal – “Fairness” – A just society promotes fairness for all.
This view, more recently argued by John Rawls, greatly expands the idea of human rights into (what Libertarians would call) entitlements.[17] Liberals add to freedom rights (right to speech, property, religion) also social or “economic rights” (right to an education, to medical care).[18] Rawls’ justification for such rights goes like this. He argued that if people had to devise a society from behind a “veil of ignorance”—not knowing where they would be placed (not knowing what race, gender, social status, etc. they would be)—that everyone would, out of pure, rational self-interest, design one in which there were significant legal measures to redistribute wealth to those who were born in poor communities and to establish many other economic and social rights. Only that kind of society would be fair and rational. Once it is established that economic and social rights are valid, then, in the Liberal view, there is no need in society for any consensus on moral values–no need to all agree on what the Good is. Rather, honoring individual human rights becomes the only necessary moral standard (and denying them the only sin). Then people will be free to live their lives pursuing whatever they believe is their good.
A major difference from the Libertarian view is that now it is just and fair for the State to redistribute wealth through taxation and government control of the market. Nevertheless, Rawls and liberals still believed that some kind of free market was the best way to grow the wealth of a society that then can be shared justly. The reason that Liberals are basically still friendly to capitalism is that ultimately this view is still highly individualistic, giving individuals freedom to create their own “good” and meaning and morality. So Liberalism still aims not for equal outcomes but equal opportunity for individuals to achieve their happiness. Individual outcomes are still seen as determined by individual efforts and work ethic.
Quick biblical analysis:
As much recent scholarship has demonstrated, Liberalism’s beliefs in human rights and care for the poor are grounded in Christianity.[19] The scholars argue that these beliefs depend on a view of the individual as having infinite dignity and worth and of individuals as being equal regardless of race, gender, and class. This belief only arose in cultures influenced by the Bible and marked by a belief in a Creator God. They also show that these Judeo-Christian beliefs do not fit with the modern secular view that there are no moral absolutes and that humanity is strictly the product of evolution. The conclusion is that these older beliefs in human dignity are essentially smuggled into secular modern culture. This means that Christians can agree with much in this justice theory. Nevertheless, as MacIntyre showed, there are contradictions and fatal flaws in Liberalism’s approach.
First, the freedom of the individual has become a de facto absolute that vetoes all other things and, unlike in more traditional societies, liberal societies have not been able to balance individual freedom and obligation to family and community. The result has been the dissolution of families, neighborhoods, and institutions. It turns out that, without a set of shared moral values (besides a commitment to individual freedom), and without a shared story of who we are corporately as people, a society cannot keep from fragmenting. Because Liberalism has been the dominant justice theory, the current tribalism, unprecedented loss of social trust, and breakdown of institutions can be seen as a failure of Liberalism. Some argue that Liberalism “worked” in a society only when religion remained strong, because it could offset the selfishness that individualism fosters and it could provide the sense of solidarity and community that individualism cannot give. Now that religion is in sharp decline, that balance is gone.[20]
Second, if justice is just honoring individual rights and entitlements and there are no higher moral absolutes, how can we adjudicate matters when rights-claims conflict and contradict as they so often do? Another problem with Liberalism is that people’s rights-claims often contradict. Liberalism has no way to determine if some rights may take precedence over others. In the feminists vs. transgender debate, who wins and on what basis? Loudest voice, most money?
Third, even secular critics point out that rationality is an insufficient basis for a fair society. Many critics of Rawls have observed that if your only motivation is rational self-interest, those behind the “veil of ignorance” would still not have to agree to entitlements. The number of poor is a minority—and chances are, you won’t be one. So why not take a risk by setting up a society that exploits the poor to advantage the rest of society? Why not opt for that as long as you aren’t likely to be poor yourself? Exploiting the poor then can definitely be seen as “rational self-interest.” But if Liberals want to respond that exploiting the poor is wrong they have taken away their right to do that, because they deny moral absolutes. Who is to say that exploiting the poor might not be, in a cost-benefit analysis, more practical than not? There are, then, no real guardrails to keep a liberal society from moving toward oppression.
Finally, Liberals’ insistence that religious views stay out of public discourse is hypocritical. It tells religious people they must not argue from their faith-beliefs but only use ‘public reason’ and ‘rational self-interest’—all the while smuggling in their own beliefs on human nature, rights, sexuality, and many other things that are faith-assumptions, left over from our Christian past, and not the deliverances of science.
In our next blog, Keller will critique 2 further views of justice: “happiness” and “power.”