Introduction: An Agenda for

Restoring Wholeness
By Ted Grimsrud
People think there are circumstances where one may deal with human beings without love, but
no such circumstances ever exist. Human beings cannot be handled without love. It cannot be
otherwise, because mutual love is the fundamental law of human life.Leo Tolstoy
(Resurrection, 450)
These words from Tolstoy set my agenda for this book. Do circumstances indeed exist where
some human beings are authorized to treat other human beings in unlovingways? Tolstoy
asserts as a fact that they do notmutual love is the fundamental law of human life. Given
that we live in a world where in fact often people do not treat other human beings lovingly,
Tolstoys law must be, at the least, shown to be true. We cannot take it for granted.
Testing Tolstoys Law
So, what we will do in these pages is test Tolstoys law, treating it more as a hypothesis that
must be examined than as settled fact. May we find clear evidence of the positive side of
Tolstoys lawthat human beings thrive best under the conditions of mutual love? And, more
to the point for this book, may we find clear evidence of the negative side of Tolstoys law
that when human beings treat others without love something fundamental about everyones
humanity is diminished?
What do we mean by handling human beings without love? We can have no doubt that such
(mis)handling is all too common. Let me suggest that one clear expression of this handling
without love is the use of violence. Though we notoriously have a difficult time defining
violence with genuine precision, most of us may surely agree that harmfulnesslies at the heart
of our understanding of violence. An act of violence, by definition, causesharm.
Hopefully, then, we may agree in closely linking together handling without love with
causing harm with acting violently. And if Tolstoy is correct, we will suspect that violence
is not only incompatible with love, it also violates the fundamental law of human life and
hence is most unlikely ever to be redemptive or whole-making.
Violence Needs Justification
Now, again, lets remember that we will be testing the validity of Tolstoys law, not taking it as
a settled fact. Nonetheless, even if one is inclined to doubt Tolstoy on this law, I believe we
should all agree (should we be reflective) that most (if not all) inter-human violence in our

world does require justification. We treat violence as inherently problematic (requiring

justification), even if we believe it may be necessary or appropriate.
We do act as if Tolstoys law is on some level operative. Even if we dont think of violence as
absolutely forbidden under all circumstances (which is indeed how Tolstoy himself applied this
law), we at least see violence as behavior that requires an explanation of whymay be acceptable,
all things considered.
Think about acts of violence that most people in our society believe are acceptable. One type
of acceptable violence is self-defenseeasily justified (for most of us) as obviously necessary
for our own survival. However, many acts that may acceptable for self-defense are seen as
inherently wrong if done as acts of aggression.
Three other categories of commonly accepted violence include warfare, punishment of
convicted criminals (including the ultimate act of violence, the death penalty), and the use of
corporal punishment on children. All three areas follow a somewhat parallel type of logic, the
logic of justifiable retribution (i.e., using punishment to respond to wrongdoing).
First, a person commits some kind of wrongdoing. This violation requires a response that
repays the pain caused by the wrongdoing with pain inflicted on the wrongdoer (what we mean
by punishment). We justify the harm caused the wrongdoer because of the harm they first
caused. The natural benefit of the doubt against violence (reflecting the validity of Tolstoys
law) is overcome by the need to exact retribution for wrongdoing.
The reasons for the need to exact retribution may vary greatly depending on the circumstances
(certainly warfare and corporal punishment differ profoundly). One reason might be the need
to maintain social order and not let wrongdoers get away with violating that order. Another
reason might be to offer some sort of satisfaction for victims of wrongdoers. Another reason
might be to help bring about positive change in the lives of wrongdoers.
Another area of commonality among these three types of generally acceptable violence
includes the need to limit the extent of the retributive (or corrective) violence so that no more
harm is caused than is necessary to achieve the purpose of this violence. As well, we may also
say that the violence be limited to authorized personnel (hence, war declared and executed by
legitimate governments, capital punishment only by the state after due process [rather than
personal retaliation], and corporal punishment only by parents or other approved authority
figures).
Interestingly, James Gilligan, formerly a prison psychiatrist in Massachusetts, argues in his
book Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic that unsanctioned violence also almost
always follows some kind of logic of justification. Even mass murderers and other perpetrators
of horrendous acts of violence generally follow fairly explicit and often carefully thought

through justifications for their obviously unjustifiable acts. Gilligan believes often the
justifications relate to needs such people feel to gain power, to retaliate for perceived wrongs,
or regain a lost sense of honor.
For our purposes, the point we may draw from Gilligans argument is that even for
extraordinarily violent people (and often, tragically, such people act violently time after time)
violence remains in some sense problematic, requiring some kind of (however twisted)
justification.
Problematic Consequences for Violence
Focusing on the socially acceptable types of violence and returning to Tolstoys law, we may
suspect that even when violence seems clearly justifiable in terms of accepted criteria, we still
should expect that violence will have problematic consequences. If it is simply a law of human
existence that each person must be treated with love, then violating that law will likely bring
with it negative consequences.
Most of us surely would agree that in each of the three areas I have mentionedwarfare,
criminal justice, punishment of childrenwe do have plentiful examples of extraordinarily
negative consequences to the use of violence, negative consequences that outweigh whatever
positives may ensue. We surely would not all agree on whether negative
consequences always result from the use of violence. However, if we recognize that at least
sometimes even sanctioned violence leads to serious problems we will want carefully to rethink
the ease with which we accept the notion that violence can and should easily be justified.
In this book, we will consider just one type of sanctioned violencepartly to test Tolstoys
law, partly to help us reflect on how indeed we might best work at restoring wholeness in the
face of brokenness in our world in general, and partly to consider this particular issue as
important in its own right. Our issue is the punishment of convicted criminalsand the
problematic consequences that have resulted from this type of sanctioned violence.
Given the ever-growing presence of what some critics now call the prison-industrial complex
in American culture, this issue deserves our thoughtful attention in its own right. However, I
will suggest that the treatment of convicted criminals in our society provides an important and
unsettling window into our core theological convictions. And, more hopefully, reflecting on
criminal justice issues theologically has promise to help us deepen our awareness of the healing
message of the gospel of Jesus and its relevance for our social ethics.
An Enormous Crisis
In the United States right now, we face a crisis of enormous proportions. In his courageous call
for a large-scale re-evaluation of our criminal justice practices, United States Senator Jim Webb
of Virginia began his March 29, 2009 cover article in Parade Magazine by stating Americas

criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace. Well look
more closely at this crisis in the next chapter. Lets just assume right now the possible validity
of Webbs comments.
We are pushed by this crisis (one among many related to violating Tolstoys law) to ask a basic
question. How do we best respond to violations of human dignity in ways that serve our
societys wellbeing? Such violations do happen; people are treated violently; crimes
occur. And such crimes require response. Society cannot allow such brokenness to fester and
spiral into more brokenness. However, is violence a valid means to break this spiral of
brokenness?
We must ask, echoing Walter Winks opening words in his classic study, Transforming the
Powers, how might we respond to evil in ways that reduce rather than expand the evil? Or,
echoing Friedrich Nietzsche, how might we successfully resist monsters without becoming
monsters ourselves?
The evil we must respond to is the evil of violent crime (that is, one of the evils we must
respond to is violent crime). The standard response in our society involves punishment. We
(through our representatives, the state) give back pain to repay the pain the offender gave the
victim. This pain for pain by definition involves (albeit justifiable) violencecausing harm
to the harm doer.
We may call this dynamic of repaying violent crime with violent punishment retributive
justice. Our culture grounds retributive justice in philosophical (and, actually, theological)
assumptions about the nature of our moral universe. We at least implicitly tend to see the
moral universe as involving a kind of balancing act. We may characterize this balance thus:
when the balance of the moral universe is tilted due to violent crime, another act of violence
must occur to restore the balance.
Traditionally, Christians in the West have seen the moral universe to be reflecting Gods
character. In Western theology going back at least to the early Middle Ages, Gods holiness
has been seen as the core element of Gods character insofar as it relates to public
morality. God has established and revealed to humanity basic laws that tell us what God
expects from us. These laws reflect Gods holiness, holiness that requires perfect obedience of
Gods creatures. When human beings violate these laws, God reacts with anger at Gods
violated holiness. God moves into a punitive mode that Gods basic character as a holy God
requires. We will return to this theme in chapter three below. Here we simply need to note that
beliefs about how Gods holiness leads to Gods punitive response to violations of Gods law
have greatly shaped and continue to shape how many people in our society envision responding
to crime. Hence, our current criminal justice system that to its core operates in terms of
retributive justice.

With Tolstoys law in mind, we must ask whether we have evidence that our punishmentoriented criminal justice system (that does indeed accept that there are circumstances when
people may be treated without love) actually does foster social wellbeing. Further, we must ask
whether the theological grounding (explicitly stated and implicitly assumed) for such a criminal
justice system is theologically sound.
When we reflect on the moral acceptability of punitive violence, we touch on our views of
ultimate reality, of the moral nature of the universe, and of our deepest sense of right and
wrong. Even if we are not couching these issues in overtly theological terms, they do
nonetheless have to do with theology. Christian theology has profoundly shaped western
culture to the extend that we must pay attention to theology if we are to understand our
cultures values. And, if we understand theology to be the process of reflecting on our deepest
values (not simply about explicit references to God), we will recognize that our thoughts about
justice are theological thoughts.
Healing Justice (And Theology)
My intended audience for this book is first of all people who understand themselves to be
Christians, so I do not feel the need to develop a detailed argument justifying discussing the
issue of the morality of violence in theological terms.
As well, part of my agenda in this book is to encourage Christians to take responsibility for
seeking social healing in our society. If, as I will show in chapter two, we are experiencing a
great deal of social disease in our society right now because of our criminal justice practices,
and if, as I will show in chapter three, many of the underlying forces that exacerbate this
disease are rooted in theological convictions, we need to approach the issue of healing our
theology as part of the process of cultivating social healing.
I will argue later in the book for an approach that I will call restorative justiceboth as a
means of healing our practice of justice and our theology. Restorative justice within our
societys criminal justice system goes back to the 1970s, though this approach is grounded in
ancient traditions, including various religious traditions. My concern will mostly be with the
Christian tradition, but I recognize the ways various other traditions perhaps have an even
stronger claim than Christianity for encouraging a spirituality of restorative justice.
This is what I will be doing in the chapters to come. As I have already mentioned, chapters two
and three will discuss the present crises in American criminal justice practices and theological
dynamics that have helped create these crises.
Then I will suggest that we may actually go back to the Bible and read it, with our issues in
mind, as offering inspiration for restorative rather than retributive justice. The first step in this
reading will be to propose that we best read the Bible as a single story (with many tangents)
and give an overview of the central theme of this biblical storywhat I will call Gods
healing strategy.

We will then look closely at several of places in the Bible that most directly offer guidance for
reading the Bible as encouraging restorative rather than retributive justice. The prophets of the
Old Testament addressed justice and injustice in ancient Israel in light of their understanding of
the core concerns of Israels law. The prophet who most transparently writes about justice is
the prophet Amos. Jesus himself serves as the core orienting point for understanding Gods
healing strategy, and hence for understanding the biblical view of justice as fundamentally
restorative rather than retributive. The Apostle Paul and the book of Revelation may also be
read as advocates for understanding justice restoratively rather than retributive.
Now, obviously these claims for the messages given in the Bible will be contested, so we will
need fairly carefully to consider the bases for reading what have often been seen as retributive
texts (e.g., Amos and his message of judgment, Paul and his affirmation of the states swordbearing function, and Revelation with its polarizing good/evil narrative the recounts massive
blood-letting).
Then we will focus directly on several of the ways this recent movement called restorative
justice has worked in the criminal justice arena at alternatives to punitive practices.
To conclude the book, we will reflect more broadly on how our discussion of healing justice
might contribute to theories and practices that contribute to approaches to dealing with issues of
evil and wrong-doing that indeed do have hope of succeeding at resisting evil in ways that do
not add to the evil.
We do, after all, live in a world where violations do happen. To simply advocate denying the
needs victims have for vindication and the needs societies have for order and security in the
name of an ideal of healing and wholeness would likely only increasebrokenness and
alienation. So, in light of the discussion of justice in this book, we will conclude with some
thoughts about how to find genuine justice that offers possibilities for wholeness for all people
concerned.

Our Current Crisis

By Ted Grimsrud
When we think of criminal justice primarily in terms of punishment and when the system
remains vulnerable to political manipulation, we are bound to have major problems. Such an
approach directly violates Tolstoys law that mutual love is the fundamental law of human
life. As is to be expected when fundamental laws are disregarded, destructive consequences
follow.

Lets consider some of the ways criminal justice practices in the United States have evolved
into our current crises.
The Rush to Punish
In July, 1997, the state of Virginia executed Joseph ODell. According to Helen Prajeans
book, The Death of Innocents, Joseph ODell almost certainly did not commit the crime for
which Virginia killed him.
When ODell went to trial, he realized that the court-appointed lawyer had no interest in
defending him, so out of desperation he defended himselfthough he had no legal
training. After ODells conviction and death-sentence, he did get help from
professionals. This help included a DNA test that undermined the states scantly evidence
allegedly linking him to the crime. But the legal system did not allow this new evidence to be
considered. The state and the courts wanted a conviction and an execution.
Our system rewards prosecutors who gain capital convictions; people in power make it harder
and harder for those convicted of crimes to gain a new hearing. This is true even as dozens
upon dozens of convicted people have been shown to be innocent due to DNA testing in recent
years. We now know for sure just how shoddy the process of defending those accused of crime
is in so many places.
What undergirds these dynamics of state-sponsored killing? A general sensibility in our society
that justice requires punishment, even death in face of violent crime. Our societys urgency
makes it impatient with delays to the satisfaction that comes from retribution. This urgency
almost guarantees the kinds of abuse that happened with Joseph ODell.
ODells cause had been taken up by the city of Palermo, Italy. After his death, the Italians
asked that he be buried in Palermo. His gravestone says: Joseph Roger ODell, honorary
citizen of Palermo, killed by Virginia, USA, in a brutal and merciless justice system.
I have become convinced that these words do not belong together: brutal and merciless with
justice. What we call our criminal justice system is, to an unconscionable degree, brutal
and merciless. To the extent this is so, though, we have a system not of genuine justice but
rather a criminal injustice system.
In recent years, America has expanded the destructive dynamics of retribution. Forty years
ago, our rate of imprisonment was about 100 per 100,000 people in the populationone of the
highest in the world, but in the same ballpark as most of the West. Now, our rate is off the
charts in relation to these other countriesover 700 prisoners per 100,000 and still growing.

Not only has it been good politics to send people to prison, it has also been big
business. Increasingly, prison systems are privatizedproviding great incentive to build more
prisons, to send more people to jail, to make it harder to get out, and to make the prison
experience more devastating. When more prisoners mean more profits, why should the prisonindustrial complex seek to rehabilitate and restore?
Retributive Justice in America
Though criminal justice practices in the early years of the United States tended toward a
retributive approach, between the mid-1800s and the 1970s, we, in some respects, did move
away from strictly retributive justice. David Garland, in The Culture of Control, argues that a
penal-welfare model gained ascendancy, with a concern for rehabilitating offenders.
Politicians found it disadvantageous to try to intervene in criminal justice issues due to seeing
criminal justice as a no-win issue with which to be identified. Hence, the prison system was
allowed to pursue its own agenda.
However, with a significant increase in the crime rate following World War II, politicians
discovered that law and order rhetoric would gain popularity. Because the modern criminal
justice system did not have a wide constituency, and, probably more importantly, because the
modern criminal justice system tended to be centralized and bureaucratic and not noticeably
effective in reducing crime, when strong critiques were raised in the 1960s and 1970s, the
somewhat ineffective focus of rehabilitation soon decreased.
As a consequence, the logic of retribution returned with a vengeance in the last quarter of the
twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-first. Our contemporary paradigm of
retributive justice:
1. We see crime mainly as violating the law and the state, the keeper of laws, as crimes victim.
2. The state must give offenders what they deserve: pain commensurate with the harm they have
done. Justice establishes blame and administers pain, satisfy the demands of the moral balance
that the violation be countered by the punishment.
3. We achieved justice through an adversarial process between prosecutors and defense that
pits the offender against the state. One side wins; the side loses.
The paradigm of retributive justice is a recipe for alienation. By making the satisfaction of
impersonal justice the focus of our response to criminal activity, the personal human beings
involvedvictims, offenders, community membersrarely find wholeness.
Moreover, the larger communitys suffering often only increases. Many victims of violence
speak of being victimized again by the impersonal criminal justice system. Offenders, often
alienated people already, become more deeply alienated by the punitive practices and persondestroying experiences of prisons.

David Garland portrays the culture of control in criminal justice as a new form of social
segregation. We no longer focus on rehabilitating and reintegrating offenders. To the contrary,
criminal justice practices now focus on identifying and then isolating offenders. The prison is
used today as a kind of reservation, a quarantine zone in which purportedly dangerous
individuals are segregated in the name of public safety (Culture,178).
We emphasize the difference between offenders and law-abiding citizens. Being intrinsically
evil or wicked, some offenders are not like us. They are dangerous others who threaten our
safety and have no call on our fellow feeling. The appropriate reaction for society is one of
social defense: we should defend ourselves against these dangerous enemies rather than
concern ourselves with their welfare and prospects for rehabilitation (Culture, 184).
James Gilligan, for many years director of psychiatry for the Massachusetts state prison system,
strongly critiques retributive justice. In his book, Violence, Gilligan asserts, a societys
prisons serves as a key for understanding the larger society as a whole (185). When we look
through the magnifying glass of our prison system, we see a society trying to control violence
through violence, inflicting incredible suffering on ever-more desperate people.
Gilligan writes, our prisons have become cruel, inhumane, and degrading, with severe
overcrowding, frequent rapes and beatings, prolonged and arbitrary use of solitary confinement,
grossly unsanitary, disease-inducing living conditions, and deprivation of elementary medical
care (Violence, 23-24).
Underlying our societys tolerance of these conditions is what Gilligan calls the rational selfinterest theory of violence (Violence, 94-95). For this theory, human beings decide to use
violence based on a rational calculation of costs and benefits. If the costs of wrongdoing are
high enough, that should deter such wrongdoing. Hence, allowing our prisons to be hellholes
should serve to prevent violence by deterring would be wrongdoers.
A Story from Australia
Robert Hughes, in The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australias Founding, illustrates this rational
self-interest theory. The British founded Australia as a penal colony in the late 18th century
and fostered for it a terrible reputation to deter crime. Over time, though, life in Australia
proved to have its attractions, so officials sought to establish a prison within the prison that
would indeed frighten even the most hardened criminal.
Norfolk Island sits some 1,000 miles east of the Australian mainland. Though scenic, this
island had attributes of a natural prisonno harbor, cliff-bound and girdled with reefs. In
1824, Thomas Brisbane, Australias governor, under orders from Britain to prepare a place of
ultimate terror for the incorrigibles of the System (Fatal, 455) made plans to establish on
Norfolk Island a prison of last resort from which no escape would be possible. Although no
convict could escape from it, rumor and reputation would. In this way, the Old Hell, as
convict argot termed it, would reduce mainland crime by sheer terror (Fatal, 456).

No attempt would be made to reform prisoners. The islands prisoners must be the worst of
those convicted of crime in Britain and then again in Australia. Brisbane wrote, the felon who
is sent there is forever excluded from all hope of return (Fatal, 456).
Norfolk Island became, in Robert Hughes words, the worst place on earth. It became a the
common practice for a group of prisoners to draw straws, one become the murderer, the second
the victim, and the rest of the group witnesses. The commander of Norfolk Island did not have
the authority to try capital crimes; the murderer and the witnesses had to be sent to Sydney for
trial. The prisoners yearned for the meager relief of getting away from the ocean hell, if only
to a gallows on the mainland.
Alexander Maconichie, Professor of Geography in London, in 1837 investigated the treatment
of prisoners in Australia. His report condemned the System, which he believed debased free
and bond alike. John Russell, the British governmental official in charge of the British penal
system who himself opposed the System of transportation of convicts to Australia, saw
Maconochies report as ammunition for reform, so he saw that it was widely distributed.
In 1840 Russell appointed Maconochie head of Norfolk Island with the chance to try out his
philosophy that prisons should seek to rehabilitate more than punish. Maconochies initial
encounter with the prisoners gave him hope. As he explained to the prisoners that his role was
not to be their torturer but to help them change their lives, they began to cheer. According to
one witness, from that instant all crimes disappeared. The Old Hands from that moment were
a different race of beings (Fatal, 502-03).
Maconachie got rid of the special whips used by the floggers. The island had never had a
church, but now Maconachie built two, one for the Catholics and the other for the
Protestants. He gave every man a plot of rich soil, set up classes in vegetable and fruit
gardening, and encouraged them to sell their surplus to the officers. Under his administration,
920 prisoners were discharged to freedom in Syndey. As of 1845 (two years after
Maconochies leadership of Norfolk Island had ended), only 20 of them had been convicted of
new crimes.
However, this success did not insure Maconochies continued role. The British recalled him in
1843. An increase in crime rates in Britain during the 1830s and early 1840s led to more harsh
prison practices, increasing support for having a symbol of the threat of extreme terror as a
crime deterrent. Norfolk Island filled this requirement. The prison returned with a vengeance
to its brutalizing ways for more than a decade until Britains practice of sending convicts to
Australia began to wind down.
The story of Norfolk Island shows how the logic of retribution links with belief in the deterrent
impact of the promise of terrible punishment for wrongdoers. Norfolk Island, as seen in the

rejection of Maconochies fruitful efforts to rehabilitate the prisoners, did not have the purpose
of reforming offenders or protecting society from the dangers of recidivistic convicts. Rather,
it served as the symbol of ultimate terrorregardless of the costs to the actual prisoners who
suffered mightily at the hands of the brutal punishments of the Island.
Social Consequences
Ironically, treating prisoners with brutality and other dehumanizing tactics actually serves to
put the broader society more at risk. Gilligan, if the purpose of imprisonment were to
socialize men to become as violent as possible both while they are there and after they return
to the communitywe could hardly find a more effective way to accomplish it than what we
do (Violence, 155). Treating people violently makes themmore violent. When we realize that
nine out of every ten prisoners eventually does return to society, we cannot escape the
suspicion that treating prisoners violently and thereby making them more violent endangers all
of us.
Gilligan asserts, violence does not occur spontaneously or without a cause, it only occurs
when somebody does something that causes it. Therefore, all we need to do to prevent violence
is to stop doing what we have been doing to cause it (Preventing, 20). The logic of retribution
is not an answer to the problem of violence; it is one of the central causes.
Nonetheless, we remain in the grip of that logic in our criminal justice practiceswith many
negative consequences.
1) Our societys growing social fragmentation is exacerbated by the othering of convicted
criminals. To treat them as understandable is to bring criminals into our domain, to humanize
them, to see ourselves in them and them in ourselves. The criminology of the other encourages
us to be prepared to condemn more and understand less (Garland, Culture, 184).
2) We pour an ever-higher amount of governmental resources into our prison
system. Ironically, as we reduce public investments in education, job creation, and other ways
to heighten the stake citizens have in our society we make crime more attractive for needy
people.
3) With the growing privatizing of prisons, we are fostering a more austere system with fewer
resources available to make prison life humane and a means for rehabilitation plus, we are
making corruption and profiteering more likely.
4) The combination of the growing imprisonment rate with laws that permanently, in many
states, disenfranchise convicted criminals, leads to a growing segment of the population that
has no sense of being vested in the wider society. This sense of alienation, ironically fostered
in the name of public safety, actually makes all of us less secure.

5) All convicts receive lifetime stigma few escape. They will spend the rest of their lives with
the identity of ex-con living with a debt to society they are never allowed to repay.
6) The prison system serves as a breeding ground for more violence. The reduction of the role
of prisons as a context for education in usable life skills (apparently the best predictor that
convicts will not return to prison after release is if they have earned a college degree while in
prison) directly parallels the increase in the role of prisons as a context for education in
violence.
7) Our present prison population is becoming a ticking time bomb due to high incidents of
communicative diseases that will likely spread to the wider population. Journalist Wil Hylton
gives details for one example of a major public health problem within the prisons likely to
spread to the broader society. Hylton details how health care for prisoners has been poor, in
part due to privatization of the health care and other cost cutting measures. So, a Hepatitis C
epidemic in the prisons may spread to the wider society (remember that nine out of ten
prisoners will eventually be released). Somewhere between 20 and 40 percent of American
prisoners are, at this very moment, infected with Hepatitis C, and therefore quite contagious
(Sick, 45).
However, Hylton points out that prisons do little to screen for the disease. And even for the
few diagnosed, treatment is difficult to obtain. As infected prisoners are released, we may face
a drastic increase in Hepatitis C infections in the broader societyin part due to the retributive
philosophy of punishing rather than healing convicts.
The Costs of Punishment
James Gilligan concludes that nothing stimulates crime as effectively as punishment (or, we
could say, nothing fosters violence like violence). Punishment is a form of violence in its own
right, but it is also a cause of violence. Punishment makes people more violent
(Violence, 184). Punishment has this impact because it humiliates its recipient, having the
ironic impact of fostering shame in a way that actually reduces a persons sense of guilt and
responsibility. People who feel profound shame are especially prone to acting violently,
especially when the inhibiting influence of guilt is absent.
Gilligan describes this dynamic: Mans greatest pain, whether in life or in prison, is the sense
of personal insignificance, of being helpless and of no real value as a person, an individual a
man. Imprisoned and left without any voice in or control over the things that affect him, his
personal desires and feelings regarded with gracious indifference, and treated at best like a
child and at worst like an animal by those having control of his life, a prisoner leads a life of
acute deprivation and insignificance. The psychological pain involved in such an existence
creates an urgent and terrible need for reinforcement of his sense of manhood and personal

worth. Unfortunately, prison deprives those locked within of the normal avenues of pursuing
gratification of their needs and leaves them with no instruments but sex, violence, and conquest
to validate their sense of manhood and individual worth (Violence, 181).
The spiral of violence intensifiespeople hurt others, then the state hurts the violator, setting
the violator in a culture of extreme violence (the prison) that further socializes the violent
person to be violent. Eventually, often more severely damaged than when entering prison, the
violator returns to society primed for more violence.
Such consequences are to be expected when we so blatantly violate Tolstoys law. If allhuman
beings are to be handled with love, we may expect that a culture that practices the kind
of mishandling I have described will enter into a spiral that dehumanizes the punishers as well
as those punished. This spiral must be broken. However, before reflecting on how to break this
spiral, we must look more closely at the theology that undergirds it.

The Logic of Retribution and

Its Consequences
By Ted Grimsrud
In calling this book, I make a play on the word healing. I use it in two sensesas a call
to heal our understanding of justice and its underlying theology, and as a description of how
authentic justice (and theology) might be sources for healing brokenness in our world.
To think of healing our understandings of justice and theology, we must first begin with a
diagnosis of the problem. This chapter will address that concern. Then, we will rethink justice
and theology in ways that makes them resources for healing.
Retribution and Theology
Almost all violence emerges with some kind of rationale that justifies its use. Warfare, capital
punishment, and corporal punishment all follow a self-conscious logic. At the core of this
logic usually rests a commitment to the necessity of retribution, justifying violence as the
appropriate response to wrongdoing. When wrongdoing violates the moral order, justice
requires retribution or punishment, repaying wrongdoing with pain.
The legitimacy of retribution seems to be a cultural universal in the United States. Where does
valuing retribution come from? We find deeply ingrained in our religious consciousness the
belief that retribution is Gods will. As Timothy Gorringe shows inGods Just Vengeance, we
cannot deny the close link between Western Christianity and strong support for retribution.
The logic of retribution underlies many rationales for the use of violence. In the logic of
retribution God is understood most fundamentally in terms of impersonal, inflexible
holiness. Gods law provides the unchanging standard by which we measure sin. According to
this framework, human beings are inherently sinful. Gods response to sin is punitive. Jesus

death on the cross is necessary as a sacrifice to provide the only basis for sinful humans to
escape deserved punishment. Most violence is justified as in some sense being an expression
of this deserved punishment (punishment defined as inflicting pain in response to wrongdoing).
The theological rationale for punishment rests on the view that appropriate punishment reflects
Gods character. The first, and most basic, attribute of God is holinessGod inability to
countenance any kind of sin. If God has contact with sin, God must destroy it immediately.
Theologian Millard Erickson presents it this way: The nature of God is perfect and complete
holiness. This isthe way God is by nature. He has always been absolutely holy.Being
contrary to Gods nature, sin is repulsive to him. He is allergic to sin, so to speak. He cannot
look upon it (Christian Theology, 802). Human beings have been told what we must avoid
doing in order to keep from violating Gods holiness. When humans sin, we diverge from
Gods laws and sin directly against God (Christian Theology, 803). When human beings
violate Gods holiness, our sin makes God angry. God must (due to Gods holiness) punish
sin. Violated holiness must be satisfied.
According to the logic of retribution, Gods inflexible holiness is basic, and human beings
invariably violate that holiness. Because of this holiness, God may not freely act with
unconditional mercy and compassion toward rebellious human beings. Simply to forgive
would violate Gods holiness. Compassion without satisfaction is not possible for
God. Erickson asserts: For God to remove or ignore the guilt of sin without requiring a
payment would in effect destroy the very moral fiber of the universe (Christian
Theology, 816).
Justice, in this framework, works to sustain the moral balance of the universe. If we upset the
balance, justice requires payment to restore the balance. This payment is made through
punishment, pain for wrongdoing. The doctrine of the atonement enters here. Due to the
extremity of our offenses, the only way God can relate to us is if there is death on the human
side to restore the balance. The only way this can happen is through the enormity of the death
of Gods own son, Jesus, whose own powerful holiness balances the unholiness of all of
humanity.
Human beings, when they confess their own helpless sinfulness, may claim Jesus as their savior
from Gods righteous anger. Jesus satisfies Gods retributive justice (pain for wrongdoing) on
our behalf.
Within the logic of retribution, salvation (defined as the restoration of harmony with God)
results through violence. The basic nature of the moral universe as founded on impersonal
holiness requires such violence. Salvation happens because Gods holiness is satisfied through

the ultimate act of violencethe sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. In this view, God is no
pacifist. In fact, Gods plan requires that Gods own Son be violently put to death.
In light of this understanding of the nature of God and of the fundamental nature of the moral
universe, the logic of retribution indeed leads to acceptance of justifiable violence.
Retributive Responses to Crime
Punishment involves, by definition, the intentional infliction of pain and is a form of
violence. Punishment by the state requires justification as it involves violence. We normally
consider violence to be morally and socially unacceptable; hence, violence requires a rationale.
In the criminal justice tradition of the Western world, justifications given for punishment have
been tied to an understanding of ultimate reality that believes the moral universe requires
retributive justice when natural or divine laws are violated. Such retributive justice restores
the moral balance. Given its religious roots, Western culture applies a particular understanding
of God as ultimate reality: retribution is needed to satisfy the need God has that violations be
paid for with pain. When someone commits a wrong, it is assumed, the central question of
justice is What does she or he deserve? And we assume the answer will be pain.
So, the issue of punishment (authorized human beings inflicting pain on other human beings) is
theological as well as philosophical and political. Punishment has to do with how human
beings understand the world we live in, the values by which we shape our lives. The concept of
punishment as justice follows from beliefs about God and Gods character.
The close connection between Western political philosophy and Christian theology dates back
to early in the fourth century with the first Christian emperor, Constantine. The work of
Augustine at the end of that century gave it powerful theological grounding. Western concepts
of justice were decisively shaped during the Middle Ages through an interaction between
Christian theology and newly emerging concepts of law. The theology/law interaction deeply
influenced Western culture as a whole and helped to reinforce a retributive view of justice (see
Ted Grimsrud and Howard Zehr, Rethinking God, Justice, and the Treatment of Offenders).
Part of the theology underlying retributive justice speaks of how God was (and is)
understood. There are some key aspects of the view of God generally characteristic of
medieval Europe that shaped (and were also shaped by) the emerging punitive practices of
criminal justice. They continue to be foundational in present-day practices of retributive
justice.

This view of God provides the basis for understanding God to will violent punishment. Gods
will for violent punishment provides a crucial impetus for the overriding of our need to justify
killing or in other acts of violence toward human beings.
Timothy Gorringe makes a strong case for the atonement theology of Anselm of Canterbury
(c.1033-1109) providing a crucial link in applying this view of God to the practice of punitive
criminal justice. However, surely the roots of such an application of these theological themes
go to Augustine. The key impact Greek philosophy had on theology may be seen in emerging
notions of Gods impassivity, the growing abstraction of concepts of justice, and the
objectifying or othering of offenders (in Augustines caseand in the following
generationsespecially the objectification of heretics providing the basis for their severe
punishment).
In the early Middle Ages, the church, as it struggled with the state for dominance of European
society, utilized the law of the later Roman Empire as its instrument for solidifying its
authority. It merged its theology with this newly rediscovered legal system to create canon
law. Secular authorities, in their turn, followed suit (see Zehr, Changing).
The Greek-influenced theology provided a notion of Gods impersonal holiness and retributive
response to violations of that holiness. This theology merged with Roman legal philosophy,
which was also centered on impersonal principles. Instead of being based on custom and
history, law in this perspective stood alone. From the base of Roman law, the church built an
elaborate structure of canon law, the first modern legal system.
By providing for prosecution by a central authority, the church established a basis for attacking
both heresy and clerical abuse within the church. The extreme expression of this new approach
was the Inquisition in which representatives of the Pope ferreted out heretics and tortured them
in order both to obtain evidence and to settle accounts.
No longer was the individual the primary victim of crime. An entire moral order was the
victim, and the central authority was its guardian. Wrongs, no longer simple harms regarding
redress, became sins requiring retribution. The punitive practices that followed from such
retributive logic diverged greatly from the approach of the earliest Christians. In the early
church, wrongs were seen as wrongs against persons. In Matthew 18, for instance, wrongdoers
are to make it right to the victim, then the obligation is loosened in heaven.
However, in the medieval understanding, wrongs came to be seen as against Gods moral order
and against the sovereign, who was a legalistic, punishing figure. God took the place of the
victim, and salvation became a matter of appeasing an angry God.

Gods punishment was portrayed as so awful that all our attention needs to be on saving the
sinner from punishment, leading to ignoring the needs of the victim. This theologyas did the
emerging legal systemfocused on dealing with the offender.
Justice became a matter of applying rules, establishing guilt, and fixing penaltieswithout
reference to finding healing for the victim or the relationship between victim and
offender. Canon law and the parallel theology began to identify crime as wrong against a moral
or metaphysical order. Crime was a sin, not just against a person but against God. The church
has the role purging the world of this transgression. It was a short step to see the social order as
willed by God and crime as sin against this social order. Increasingly, focus centered on
punishment by established authorities as a way of doing justice.
By the end of the sixteenth century, the cornerstones of state justice were in place in
Europe. They drew deeply from the underpinnings of retributive theology. New legal codes
enlarged the public dimensions of certain offenses and gave to the state a larger role. Criminal
codes began to specify wrongs and to emphasize punishment. Some of these punishments were
overwhelmingly severe, including torture and death. Such understandings of state justice
readily crossed the Atlantic with the colonizing of North America.
Enlightenment thought and post-Enlightenment practice increased the tendency to define
offenses in terms of lawbreaking rather than actual harms. If the state represented the will and
interests of the public, it was easier to justify defining the state as a victim and giving up to the
state a monopoly on intervention. Most importantly, the Enlightenment provided new
objectivity in the practice of punishment.
Enlightenment thinkers did not question the idea that when wrong things occur, pain should be
administered by the state. Instead, they offered new justifications for state-initiated
punishment. They instituted more rational guidelines for administering pain. And they
introduced new mechanisms for applying punishment.
The primary instrument for applying pain came to be the prison. The reasons for the
introduction of imprisonment as a criminal sanction during this era are many. However, part of
the attraction of prison was that one could grade terms according to the offense. Prisons made
it possible to calibrate punishments in units of time, providing an appearance of rationality and
even science in the application of pain.
The retributive model of justice reflects a movement that transformed Western culture between
the eleventh century and the present. Through this process, crime came to be defined as against
the state, justice became a monopoly of the state, punishment became normative, and victims

were disregarded. But it was not a simple matter of theology shaping emerging criminal law or
vice versa. The influence went both ways, with law and theology shaping each other.
Developing penal theory, based partly on Roman law, helped reinforce the punitive theme in
theologye.g., a satisfaction theory of atonementthat emphasized the idea of payment or
suffering to make satisfaction for sins. Biblical interpretation was biased in that the Latin
translation of the New Testament caused it to be read through the lens of Latin law. According
to the New Testament, Christs death was intended to end retribution. However, the later
reinterpretation, including satisfaction theology, worked toward the oppositedesensitizing
westerners to, and even justifying, judicial violence.
Retributive theology, which emphasized legalism and punishment, deeply influenced Western
culture through rituals, hymns, symbols. Timothy Gorringe, in Gods Just Vengeance, suggests
that an image of judicial murder, the cross, bestrode Western culture from the 11th to the
18th century, with huge impact on the Western psyche. It entered the structures of affect of
Western Europe and in doing so, pumped retributivism into the legal bloodstream,
reinforcing the retributive tendencies of the law(224). The result, at minimum, was an
obsession with retributive themes in the Bible.
A kind of historical short-circuit occurred in which certain concepts were taken from their
biblical context, interpreted through the lens of Roman law, then used to interpret the biblical
text. The result was an obsession with the retributive themes of the Bible and a neglect of the
restorative onesa basic theology of a retributive God who desires violence. As we saw above
in chapter two, the consequence of this theology and the criminal justice practices it
encourages, have been disastrous. Hence, we have need for healing justiceand theology.
Against Retribution
A crucial step in breaking free from the destructive dynamics of violence responding to
violence is to recognize that the notion of ultimate reality that underlies the retributive justice
paradigm, drawn from a particular notion of God, is a human construct. These ideas about God
are ideas human beings have drawn from human investigations of the world and, especially in
the West, of the Bible and Christian tradition.
Timothy Gorringes archaeology of the impact of Anselms theology on penal practices in
the West in Gods Just Vengeance provides a good example of such recognition. Gorringe
helps bring to the surface the interplay between human culture and humanly constructed
theology in formulating a rationale for punitive criminal justice practices.
All theology, in the broad sense of our views of ultimate reality, is a human construct. To
quote Gordon Kaufman from In Face of Mystery: All understandings of the world and of
human existence are human imaginative constructions, grown up in a particular historical
stream to provide orientation in life for those living in that history. But at any given time it is
always an open question whether the conceptions and values and perspectives inherited from

the past remain suitable for orienting human existence in the new present; this is a question to
be investigated, never a position which can simply be taken for granted (43).
The notions of God and ultimate reality that underlie the retributive paradigm outlined above
are not set in concrete. The ever-deepening and destructive spiral that results from responding
to wrongdoing with violence need not be inevitable. The spiral may be resisted, even broken,
in part because its ideological basis has no ontological standing. Retributive theology is simply
based on human ideasideas that may be challenged and refuted.
Retributive notions are the result of human reflection and human application. If these
constructs contribute to brokenness instead of healing, furthering the spiral of violence instead
of fostering genuine peace, they need to be deconstructed and replaced.
For Christians, recognizing the humanness of all theology does not leave us without criteria for
ascertaining better and worse theological constructions. We need not fatalistically sink into
moral relativism. Our confession of Jesus as the definitive revelation of God gives us, in the
biblical story that culminates with Jesus, a clear sense of direction concerning which theologies
contain truth and which do not.
Ironically, given the roots of our predicament in Christian theology, if we would return to
Christianitys founding documents, the writings of the Bible, we may find healing. Should we
try to read them afresh, free from the filters of the later retributive paradigm of Christendom,
we might well discover the bases for a very different understanding of justice, ultimate reality,
and God. This alternative reading of the Bible provides the basis for constructing a new
understanding of justice. We may call this new understanding restorative justice rather than
retributive justice. Restorative justice offers us a different perspective on how we may respond
to violence. Perhaps with a new perspective, we may be able to imagine responses to violence
that break the cycle, striving for the healing rather than the punishment of wrongdoers.
To put it another way, the source of our problem might actually provide a way to overcome the
problem. Dutch law professor Herman Bianchi has suggested in his book,Justice as
Sanctuary, that we should apply homeopathic theory to our situation. He states that maybe it
will take a dose of what made us sick to cure us. Since an interpretation of theology got us into
this illness (as we have outlined above), Bianchi suggests that it may well take a dose of
theology to heal us (2).
In what follows, I will be trying to provide some resources for the work Bianchi suggests may
be necessarya biblical and theological rationale for rejecting the logic of retribution in favor
of a logic of restorative justice.

Healing Theology: A Biblical Overview

By Ted Grimsrud
We have seen that Christian theology all too often links closely with alienating retributive
justice practices. However, theology may also help free us from those practices. I will suggest
a fresh reading of our founding documentthe Biblethat points towardrestorative rather than
retributive justice.
First of all, we need to ask about the Bibles intended message. What does the big picture show
us when we look at the Bible as a whole? And does this big picture speak to our concerns
about justice?
Some interpreters dont see the Bible giving us a coherent big picture. I dont have space
here to justify either my conviction that the Bible does indeed give us such a story or my
particular take on this story. What I will do is give a quick summary of what I understand to be
the core elements of the Bibles main storyline and suggest a few ways this broad story speaks
to justicebefore focusing more closely on several bits of the story in the chapters to follow.
Drawing on my book, Gods Healing Strategy, I offer this quick overview of the biblical
storya story, as we will see, that has major implications for how we think about justice and
issues of retribution and reconciliation.
The Need for Healing
Early on, the Bible tells us something has gone wrong. Loving relationships have been
broken. Creation has been marred. Salvation is needed. However, God will not simply step in
and by coercive force make things right. Love shapes Gods activity; patient, long lasting,
persevering love fuels Gods response to wrongdoing.
Genesis one concludes, everythingwas very good. Then, Genesis three tells of a break in
the relationship between human beings and God. Genesis 411 tells more of brokenness:
Cains murder of Abel, Noah and the Flood, the Tower of Babel. At the end of Genesis eleven,
we read of Sarahs barrenness.
Something new emerges with Genesis twelve. In the face of barrenness, God calls Abraham
and Sarah to begin a communityand God makes this new beginning possible, giving Sarah a
child. Thus begins Gods strategy for healing as summarized in Genesis 12:3: In you all the
families of the earth shall be blessed.
God establishes a community of people who will know God. Through these people living
together in peaceable community God will make peace for all the families of the earth. This
healing strategy proceeds through the Old Testament and the New, culminating in Revelation
2122. Gods ultimate response to Adam and Eves wrongdoing is not retribution but the
restoration of wholeness characterized by the New Jerusalem.
Gods calling of a people included two elements. First, I will bless you, God said, so that
[second] you will be a blessing. The story tells of a God who creates out of love and who

responds to human brokenness with continual creativity. At key points throughout, Gods
creative involvement serves restorative justice. God seeks to heal, not to punish, wrongdoing.
The story is a winding story. Abrahams descendants went to Egypt, and in time, were
enslaved. Exodus 2:235 tells of their plight. The Israelites groaned under their slavery, and
cried out. Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God. God heard their groaning, and
God remembered Gods covenant with Abraham.
Gods remembering results in the call of Moses to lead the saving involvement of God with
the people. Moses challenges Pharaoh with the words of God, helps the Hebrew slaves
coalesce as a coherent community, and leads the people in their escape from Egypt and
slavery. The escape culminates with the miraculous flight through the parted Red Sea waters.
The God of the Exodus is not a God of people in power who lord it over others. This is a God
of slaves who hears the cries of those being treated like non-persons. Gods human leader,
Moses, is not a commander of weapons of war but a weaponless prophet whose authority is
based solely on him speaking for God.
The Hebrews do not simply leave Egypt behind, but reject Egypts unjust ways. When God
gives the Hebrews Torah (the Law) following the exodus, much of Torah was explained in
opposition to Egyptian cruelty. Torah comes after liberation as an additional work of Gods
grace, a resource for ordering peaceable living in the community of Gods people. Torah
serves justice, most profoundly, as a guide to wholeness, not as a prescription for punishment.
After the Israelites settled in the promised land, they lived as an association of tribes. When
Israel has need, judges arise and unite the tribes for a whileGideon and Deborah were two
of the best. However, the system did not always work well. The book of Judges tells mostly of
judges who were not that great. It concludes: In those days there was no king in Israel; all the
people did what was right in their own eyes (21:25).
Then, under Samuel, a good judge, things get betterfor a while. Then, chaos returns (1 Sam
8:13). Israels elders ask for a warrior-king in the face of a threat from their
enemies. Appoint for us a king to govern us, like the other nations (1 Sam 8). Samuel insists
that Israels elders will regret their choice. He tells the elders that, under their king, they will
return to Egypts injustice: You shall be his slaves. But God grudgingly gives Israel a king.
As it turns out, even the Hebrews greatest king, David, tends toward the ways of Pharaoh, as
seen in his infamous action with Bathsheba. David becomes infatuated with the beautiful
woman, takes her, and has her husband killed. Though the prophet Nathan confronts David and
the king repents, great damage had been done.
Davids style of kingship carried over to his son Solomon. If we look at the story from the
perspective of the Bibles message of Gods healing strategy (and from the portrait of valid
kingship in Deut 17:14-17), we see Solomon as a power-seeking, merciless leader, who moved

ancient Israel toward its tragic ending. Solomon ruthlessly eliminated his opponents, built a
standing army, began forced labor, gathered wealth for himself, and entered alliances with
other nations and worshiped their Gods. Solomon turns aside from following God. His wives
turned away his heart after other gods; and his heart was not true to the Lord his God (1 Kings
11:4).
Prophetic Critique of Communal Injustice
The kings after Solomon tended even more towards injustice. The society moved away from
the vision of Torah. In time, a few became quite rich, and many others became very poor. The
prophet Amos challenged this unjust society to turn back to God and Torah as their only hope
of finding life. Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing
stream (Amos 5:24). Justice has to do with water, with life. To do justice is to support life.
The prophets also teach, as seen in Hosea eleven, that no matter what, God continues to love
Gods people and desire their healing. Hosea draws on Israels memory. When Israel was a
child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my child (Hos 11:1). The exodus revealed
Israels identity and Israels understanding of God. God did not demand that the children of
Israel earn Gods love, but that they would live in light of the care and respect God had shown
them. Sadly, Israel did not remain committed to Gods ways. The more I called them, the
more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols (Hos
11:2).
God, though, speaks of more than punishment following disobedience. How can I give you
up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? Can I simply let you go, my child, after all
that I have done for you? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and
tender. I will not execute my fierce anger;for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your
midst, and I will not come in wrath (Hos 11:89). This God acts with mercy and compassion
because it is part of Gods very nature to do so.
God Remains Committed to Healing
The Hebrews did not heed the prophets and turn from injustice toward justice. The prophesied
consequences came to pass. The center of their religious life, the Temple, was destroyed as
was the center of their political life, the kings palace. Many were shipped away to Babylon in
exile. The prophet Jeremiah linked Israels conformity with the injustices and idolatries of the
nations with the end of their nation state. His own life symbolizes Israels fate when he travels
to Egypt, symbolizing the return to the pre-exodus dynamics of their society.
However, even with his dark words and profound grief, Jeremiah also provides words pointing
forward and indicate that Gods healing strategy continues. Jeremiahs words helped the
Israelites survive as a people. He encouraged them to seek the wellbeing of whatever society

they were part of (Jer 29:7) while at the same time maintaining their distinct identity as people
of Torahremembering Gods blessing in order to be a blessing.
In light of Jeremiahs witness, the entire Old Testament may be read as a cautionary
tale. Nation-state-centered, sword-oriented politics failed to be a viable vehicle for sustaining
the people of God calling to bless all the families of the earth.
The vocation to spread peace will be fulfilled not through the violence of the nation-state but
through the peaceable witness of counter-cultures scattered throughout the world. These
countercultures will center their lives on responding to Gods creative love with creative love
of their own. The survival of the people did not require the assumed pillars of identitythe
kings palace and the temple. These pillars lay in ruins. But the peoplehood and its call to
bless all the families of the earth, remained.
Jesus and the Liberating Kingdom of God
At Jesus time, a large empire (now Rome) again dominates Israel. Economic injustice remains
widespread. So, too, does poverty and a large disinherited peasant class. Religion generally
supports the status quo, as it had in ancient Israel.
Jesus message echoed many prophetic themes. God gives life as a gift and expects that those
who know Gods mercy share it with others. Jesus critiqued trust in weapons of war and the
quest for worldly success. He proclaimed Gods healing strategy and formed a community
meant to bless all the families of the earth.
In Mark, Jesus starts his ministry with a simple proclamation that summarize Jesus
mission: The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the
good news (1:15). Salvation comes as Gods gifta God of restorative not retributive justice.
Jesus combined his teaching with his healing activity. However, Jesus realized that living out
his message includes suffering. He links his with suffering his followers will face. If any
want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow
me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake,
and for the sake of the gospel, will save it (Mk 8:345).
Jesus realizes that through his willingness to suffer and die, Gods salvation will be made
known. Jesus will not fight back, but will rely on God to vindicate him. Jesus taught his
followers that they too must take up their crosses and remain committed to love and mercy
even when such a commitment leads to suffering.
The religious leaders began to look for a way to kill Jesus (Mk 11:18). And, in a few days, in
cooperation with the Roman political leaders, they succeed. The Roman governor, Pontius
Pilate, oversaw Jesus death by crucifixion. From Pilates perspective, Jesus was merely an
insignificant irritant. Pilate has no interest in Jesus truth. He orders Jesus killed.

But Jesus does not stay dead. With Jesus resurrection, God vindicates Jesus life as truth and
shows that love is stronger than death. Jesus promises that those who trust in him will also live
on and need not fear death. Jesus resurrection keeps Gods healing strategy going, the
possibility of life even in the face of death and despair.
Paul and the Gospel
An early persecutor of Jesus followers, Paul became the most important interpreter of Jesus
way. He first learned about Gods mercy in Jesus through his own desperate need. Paul, a
young Pharisee strongly committed to a quite strict understanding of religious faith, found
himself in conflict with Jesus and his followers.
He became a leader among the Pharisees, specializing in persecuting Christians and regularly
breathed threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord (Acts 9:1). Pauls hostility
toward the Christians arose because of his commitment to protecting Gods honor. Later, he
wrote: You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I violently persecuted the
church of God and tried to destroy it. I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of
the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors (Gal 1:134).
Then, he met Jesus (Acts 9:3-9) and had his life turned completely around. Because Paul did
sincerely want to do Gods will, he was able to receive Gods direct revelation to him. This
Jesus who you hate in fact truly reveals your God. Paul experienced first hand Gods justice as
restorative and not retributive.
One of Paul questions: how could I have been so violent in the name of God? How can I now
understand God in a way that will overcome such sacred violence? Pauls own experience
infuses the book of Romans. As an alternative to doing violence in the name of obedience to
God, he writes of obedience that comes from faith (1:17) that the gospel of God produces.
The gospel of God is the good news that more than anything else, God loves us and wants us
to be whole. In response to Gods love, we are challenged ourselves to love. This is the most
important law or commandment. Paul makes this clear later in Romans. The one who loves
another has fulfilled the law (Rom 13:8).
Paul argues in Romans 13 that all people are sinful and need Gods mercy. He asserts: Gods
mercy is available, to everyone, without distinction. To God we are all loved people who can,
and must, accept Gods mercy and who can, and must, share this mercy with others. Now,
apart from the law, the justice of God has been disclosed in order to justify, by Gods grace as a
gift, all who trust in that grace, which God has made known through Jesus (3:21).
Christian Faith Under Fire
The early Christians continued to face persecution, mostly from the Roman Empire. Who
would the people worshipthe God of Jesus Christ or the emperor-as-god? A common

religion of emperor worship helped unify the various peoples of the empire. Faithful Christians
saw worship of the emperor as blatant idolatry. By refusing such worship, they threatened the
social unity based on common religious practices.
The book of Revelation encouraged Christians. In its visions, it challenges the hearts of its
readers. Follow the way of Jesus. Find your strength in communities of the Lamb, not
communities of the Beast (Empire).
Revelation five presents a crucial image. The chapter envisions a scroll with a large
meaning. No one can be found to open the scroll. The writer weeps. ThenDo not weep,
one has been found. Who has the needed power? The Lion of the Tribe of Judah (a military
conqueror). But thenthe conqueror isa Lamb standing as if it had been slain (Rev 5:6).
Jesus Christ, slain but now raised from the dead. The power that truly matters is not the power
to kill others, but the power to trust in God, face death faithfully, and trust in Gods vindication.
In chapter thirteen, we meet the terrible Beast with the power of governmentcrowns and
throne. Revelation 13:4: The whole earthworshiped the dragon [meaning Satan], for he
had given his authority to the Beast [meaning the Empire], and they worshiped the Beast,
saying Who is like the Beast, and who can fight against it?
John says do not share this worship. And, do not fight back with violence (Rev 13:10). Follow
Jesus on the path of non-retaliation even in the face of violence. Refusing violent resistance to
the conquering attack of the Beast shows how to break the spiral of violence. The first few
verses in chapter fourteen show the deeper reality of the Lambs victory, with those who follow
him. The Beasts conquering was only temporary. These visions reveal the reality of
Revelations readers. The persecuting Roman Empire aligns with Satan and must not be
worshiped. As Jesus followers faithfully follow the Lamb, they will be present with God.
The concluding vision in Revelation 2122, the New Jerusalem, reveals Gods completed
healing strategy. This enlivening hope helps Christians remain strong and faithful. The New
Jerusalem will be free of the forces of evil, creation as God intended it.
The final vision promises the healing of the nations. The human enemies of Gods people will
not, in the final event, be destroyed. They, too, find life when the Lamb breaks the dragons
spell. Jesus followers do not fight back and join the spiral of violence due to this hope that
even the nations might find healing. Persevering love, not brute force, is the method.
Revelation portrays the spiritual forces of evil, symbolized by the dragon and his cohorts, as
powerful and as behind the persecutions, injustice, and sufferings that plague people of faith.

Chapters 2122 conclude, though, that this evil will not last forever. The power of everlasting
love will win out. Gods healing strategy will conclude with its mission accomplished.
Gods Healing Strategy and Restorative Justice
Reading the Bible as the story of Gods healing strategy points clearly toward restorative
rather than retributive justice:
(1) The world is all too often infected with brokenness and alienation. Gods has established
faith communities, not as a remnant that remains comfortably detached amidst the brokenness,
but so that people who know Gods healing love might enter the brokenness of the world, being
agents for healing wherever needed.
(2) The community witnesses to a message of peace and healing, not of condemnation and
fear. God, in intervening in the world most profoundly through the witness of people shaped
by Gods mercy, offers the world a carrot more than a stick. Thus, God calls the community to
manifest authentic peace in its common life and to speak of this peace to the wider world,
rather than to speak of justifiable violence and religiously underwritten conflict and
judgmentalism.
(3) The faith community holds a double-sided perspective concerning the wider world. The
empires are to be seen as Gods rivals for peoples loyalties. The empires are to beviewed with
great suspicion. Yet, at the same time, the Bible promises healing to the nations. The critique
of power politics, the formation of counter-cultural faith communities, and the clear awareness
of the contrast between Torah and gospel versus the ideologies of empire, should, for the
sake of the nations, foster their genuine healing.
The prophets, like Jesus, modeled this double-sided perspective. They preached Gods justice,
formed and cultivated the life of communities countering Empire, engaged the nations to the
point even of suffering martyrdomand trusted in Gods vindication, a vindication that
culminates not in human beings being punished but in human beings, even the kings of the
earth (Rev 2122), being transformed and healed.

Old Testament Justice (Amos)

By Ted Grimsrud
Lets now look at a place where the Bible uses the explicit language of justice. The fullest
discussion of justice in the Old Testament shows up in the book of Amos. However, Amos
treatment of justice echoes what we also find elsewhere in the Bible.

Amoss Time and Place

Amos addressed his words to the ruling elite of Israel, the northern kingdom that had split off
from Judea due to King Rehoboams oppressive practices (1 Kings 12). When Amos enters the
scene several generations later, Israel lives in peace and prosperity. We get glimpses of the
peoples enthusiastic self-confidence (Amos 6:1; 8:3). Their popular religiosity saw the
nations prosperity as the inevitable result of its faithfulness to God.
However, all was not wellas Amos came from Tekoa in the south to proclaim. Israel had
originally been an egalitarian society. Torahs social blueprint contained made concern for
vulnerable people (such as widows and orphans) central. Torah sought to minimize the gap
between a few wealthy and powerful elite and a mass of poor, even landless, peasants.
Torahs inheritance system served as a means for common people to control their own
resources. Israel confessed that Yahweh owned the land. The land served the good of
everyone, not only the profit of a few. A decentralized legal systemthe court in the gates of
the villagesjoined with the inheritance system to insure full participation in community life
for everyone; we could call this full participation justice. The court system helped the
weaker members of the society who otherwise had no power and influence. Without the justice
of the court they would not be able to maintain themselves in the social order.
This social ordering arose from the Israelites covenant with God. God established their nation
in gracious love and desired the people to live in communion with one another. The covenant
community was accountable to Godif it did not maintain its faithfulness, it was liable to be
judged. Amos came onto the scene to announce that God was indeed about to carry this threat
of judgment out. The social transformation of Israel had decisively moved away from covenant
faithfulness.
Poverty and distress plagued the people at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. Control of
the land had shifted to a few centralized owners who exploited the people for their own
gain. This process cut to the heart of the covenant-community concept. Israels God had cared
for the Israelites in their enslavement in Egypt. The exodus from Egypt and the gift of Torah
established Israel as a community meant to embody Gods justice. Increasing injustice
profoundly jeopardized this witness to Gods healing agenda.
Amoss General Message
In chapters one and two, Amos prophesies against Israels neighboring nations. This sets his
listeners up for the challenge that begins in 2:6. In speaking against the nations, Amos gains
the sympathy of his listenerswho agree that, of course, those nations are terrible and
unjust. Amos then charges Israel with major crimes. He focuses on transgressions against
harmonious ordering of Israelite communal life: (1) the sale into debt slavery of the innocent

and needy; (2) the oppression of the poor; (3) the abuse of poor women; and (4) the exploitation
of debtors.
Amos turns Israels complacent view of its place as Gods covenant people on its head
(3:2). He insists that privilege entails responsibility; the Israelites have been
irresponsible. Therefore, they are even worse than the despised pagans who never knew
God. Consequently, Israels salvation history will become judgment history. Amos preaches
that God has to do with justice and righteousness, not with Israel regardless of Israels way of
life. When Israel itself is unjust, God will judge Israel.
Because of its past history as the recipient of Gods gracious acts, Israel uniquely knew Gods
concern for the vulnerable. Because their leaders forgot this about God, the society will
suffer. The whole book drives this world-shattering thought home.
Israelites did indeed know Torahs concern for the vulnerable on an intellectual
level. However, their leaders failed to administer the law fairly, and justice went
disregarded. Worse, this happened in the midst of thriving religiosity. People flocked to the
shrines but disregarded Gods call for justice for the vulnerable. Amos insists that religion
made things worse for Israel. Ritualistic faithfulness masked ethical unfaithfulness.
In Israel, a veneer of peace and prosperity covered a corrupt reality. Rather than being a sign of
Gods favor, this reality (even with its peace and prosperity) will be judged by God. Many
people live in poverty while a few gain great wealth. In fact, the richcontribute to the problems
of the poor. Even the one refuge of the poor, the court-system, has been corrupted and turned
on its head to serve the rich instead of the poor.
Amos gives an example in 2:6. For rich creditors money has more value than people. Even
more, the people who are needy are victims for insignificant reasons. Amos here implies, the
needy are sold because they can not pay back the small sum they owe for a pair of sandals.
This covenant disloyalty will result in judgment. We are given an image of a plumb line in
7:8likening the Israelites to an out of line wall. Disalignment characterizes injustice, life
distorted and at variance with its intended dynamics.
Amos says that Israel, despite its chosenness and special relationship with God, will be judged
due to its injustice. Israel especially embodies injustice toward people at the bottom of the
social ladder. The nation deprives vulnerable people of their rightful status as full members of
the covenant community.
We must note, though, that Amos does not use the term justice to describe judgment. As we
will see, justice speaks to the solution, not the problem. Justice has to do with life, not
judgment. Do justice and livedo injustice and face judgment.

The key to the book of Amos lies in its final few verses (9:11-15). This conclusion portrays
restoration and healing. Many scholars see this vision as added on to the book later, arguing
that it contradicts the books central punitive message. I believe, to the contrary, that this final
vision tells us of the purpose of justicerestoration not punishment.
In light of this vision of healing, the message of the book as a whole centers not on punishment
but on healing. Even amidst the injustices and poison of the present social order, Gods
message of justice remains truthful: turn to justice and find healing. Justice as restoration.
Amoss View of Justice
Four texts in Amos specifically speak of justice:
Seek the Lord and live, lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and it devour, with
none to quench it for Bethel, O you who turn justice to wormwood, and cast down
righteousness to the earth (5:6-7).
Amos links justice and righteousness here with the presence of God as the life-bestowing
force. By calling the evil good (i.e., the so-called justice at the gate that had become
injustice, and the peoples wealth, that was gained at the expense of the poor and weak) and the
good evil (abhorring the one who speaks the truth, 5:10), the Israelites transform what should
be sweet (justice) into something bitter (wormwood).
Seek good and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you,
as you have said. Hate evil and love good and establish justice at the gate; it may be that the
Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph (5:14-15).
When speaks of hating the advocate of the right and abhorring those who speak the whole
truth, he refers to opposition to the court-justice system. Such opposition, in Gods eyes, leads
to death. True life in Israel can only flourish when Gods concern for the vulnerable finds
embodiment in its social life. Such embodiment requires that the justice at the gate truly be
justice, correcting wrongs done.
Concern for such justice goes back to the legal code itself: Exodus 23:6-8You shall not
pervert the justice due to your poor in his suit. Keep far from a false charge and do not slay the
innocent and righteous, for I will not acquit the wicked. And you shall take no bribe, for a
bribe blinds the officials and subverts the cause of those who are in the right.
To experience the presence of God, in Amoss view, Israel must practice justice. Religiosity
does not matter. Amos makes this point in our next passage.

I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though
you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal offerings, I will not accept them, and the peace
offerings of your fatted beasts I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your
songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and
righteousness like an overflowing stream (5:21-24).
Again, Amos connects justice with life. Life in the desert requires scarce water. Life in the
community requires justice. When Israel does not practice justice, the community withers
and its worship rings false. Life departs the community. To have life in the community, justice
and righteousness must roll down like floods after the winter rainsand persist like those few
streams that do not fail in the summer draught.
Do horses run upon rocks? Does one plow the sea with oxen? But you have turned justice
into poison and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood (6:12).
The first part of this verse asks if the impossible could happen and the second part says that
indeed in can. The impossible happens; the leaders of Israel do it. Amos finds it incredible that
the rich could be content in their luxury and not grieve over the ruin of Joseph. Their
injustice destroys the covenant community (6:6). A place of justice (the court at the gate) has
become unjust, poison. This violation of Gods world staggers the mind. Amos can only
compare it with some incredible perversion of the natural order of things.
Key Points Regarding Justice in Amos
For Amos, most foundationally, justice links inextricably with life. Do justice and live, Amos
asserts; do injustice and die. Amos does not see justice as an abstract principle but rather as a
life force. An unjust society will die; it cannot help but collapse of its own weight. Genuine
justice cultivates life.
More particularly, justice seeks life for everyone in the community. Because life is for
everyone, justice pays particular attention to the people denied life. Justice provides for access
by all to the communal good life. None can justly prosper at the expense of others, or even
in the light of the poverty and need of others.
Amos sees justice as part of the created order. Injustice defies nature, like a crooked wall or an
ox plowing the sea. To be unjust is thus inherently self-destructive. Injustice poisons its
practitioners.
Chapters one and two show that Amos saw Gods justice as intended for everyone, including
the pagan nations. The covenant people have a special responsibility due to their special
awareness of Gods justice. Serious as their failure may be, still they are not judged more
harshly than the other nations. Those too met with destruction, only Israel retains a

remnant. However, Israels failure to practice justice, in Amoss eyes, destroys the hope of the
nations. God calls Israel to be a blessing to the nations, to witness to Gods justice and
love. When Israel is unfaithful, no blessing comes forth.
Amos sees justice as something to be done: relationships established, needs met, wrongs
corrected. Justice, in Amos, has nothing to do with a meaningless cult. Justice links with
specific acts and people. It is not abstract nor ahistorical.
Gods justice, we see from 9:11-15, ultimately seeks redemption. Gods critique of Israel
hopes that Israels self-destructive injustice might be corrected. God does not inspire Amoss
threats and warnings for the sake of repaying rebellious Israel an eye for an eye. Amos voices
them in order to inspire transformationrecognizing that should Israel not respond the death of
her nation-state will come.
Amos sees justice as the solution; it is what the community should (must) seek. Let justice roll
down like waters, like an ever-flowing stream that brings life. Injustice poisons like
wormwood. Judgment is not justiceit is what happens when there is no justice. Justice is
about healing; justice is about transformationjustice is not about punishing.
Thoughts on Old Testament Justice in General
We may conclude, based on Amoss teachingand the rest of the Biblesthat genuine justice
serves life. Gods justice in the Old Testament centers not primarily on retribution but on
salvation. Gods justice does not punish so much as correct. The justice of God saves,
manifesting Gods fidelity to the role as the Lord of the covenant. God created the earth and its
inhabitants for harmonious relationships. God continually acts, even in the midst of human
rebellion, to encourage those relationships.
The Old Testament does not treat justice primarily as a legal concept. Justice tends to merge
with steadfast love, compassion, kindness, and salvation. Justice has to do with how a
loving creator has made the world. To be just means to live according to the creators will, to
be in harmony with God, with fellow human beings, and with the rest of creationand not to
rest until everyone else also finds such harmony.
The Bible pictures justice as part of the created order. The Old Testament connection between
justice and life follows from some of its ideas regarding creation. The Bible confesses
creation to be an act of the covenant-making God of Israel. Creation harmonizes with the
values of the covenantlove, justice, peace, compassionthat sustain and nourish life. We
find no disjunction between the creator God and the covenant-making God.

Human life originated as an expression of Gods covenant-love. All human action that
harmonizes with that love has meaning, the basic meaning of creationand is thereby
just. Because humankind has been created in the image of this God, all people need
relationshipswith each other and with God. Human activity finds its purpose in facilitating
these relationships. Because all people share in the image of God, they have dignity and
value. Discrimination and disregard of any human life can thus never be justified. Injustice
severs relationships; justice establishes and/or restores relationships.
God created the cosmos created good; evil enters as an aberration. It can and must be
resisted. To conquer the power of evila power especially manifested in the severing of
relationshipsdefines doing justice.
The Bible portrays creation in terms of love. Faithfulness to the creation mandate equals
living lives of love. Hence, people of faith have the calling to shape their social lives according
to the values of love. This love motivates efforts to do justice. Gods love provides the
motivation and the model for Gods followers.
Love applies to all areas of life according to the biblical teaching. Love should shape
decisively the means and ends of all activity of the people of faith. We only become loving by
practicing love at all times. Love gives those who shape their lives by it a hopefulness to
believe that Gods justice and Gods love can be a reality in the worldand thus to act to make
it so.
Biblical justice equals conformity with the will of the loving, covenant-making creator
God. Justice links with love, rather than standing in tension with love. We see Gods justice in
how Gods intervention has always sought the salvation of Gods people and the restoration of
covenant relationshipsfor the sake of blessing all earths families.
Gods love works to set right that which has been corrupted. That is, Gods love works for
justice. We may define Gods justice as how God expresses love in the face of evil. Love
expressed in the face of evil acts to stop the evil and to heal its effects.
Old Testament people believed that Gods justice served as the norm for the nations as well as
for Israel. Amos legitimately condemns the nations for their injustices, based on Torah. Torah
revealed Gods will for all people, and God holds all people accountable for how they respond
to that will.
God created everything, embedding justice into creation. Amos speaks, then of the
unnaturalness of injustice, comparable to an ox plowing the sea or a wall being crooked. All
people exist as part of Gods creation, as created in Gods image, and as accountable to God.

These beliefs primarily led to negative conclusions (such as Amoss) regarding the actual
practice of justice on the part of the nations. The nations too will be judged by God for being
unjust. However, scattered examples of just people outside Israel (e.g., Rahab the harlot; the
repentant people of Ninevah in Jonah; even, to some extent, Cyrus, the Persian leader) practice
justice. Gods justice could be known and done by anyoneby virtue of their humanness.
Gods covenant people have responsibility to practice whole-making justice. This
responsibility stems from their potential to bless all the families of the earth. Isaiah 2 and
Micah 4 powerfully portray people from all the nations learning the ways of peace, of genuine
justice, from Israel.
In Amos one and two, the prophet speaks in general terms of blatant injustices. From 2:6 on he
speaks more specifically to Israel. He does so, not primarily because the nations lacked the
capability of perceiving the need to be just in the ways Israelites were. Rather Amoss focus
reflects the idea that Israels calling entailed a closer relationship with God at this point. God
expected more of Israelfor the sake of the nations.

Jesus and Justice

By Ted Grimsrud
In the Christian tradition, justice has often been seen as something far removed from Jesus
life and teaching. Influential theologian Reinhold Niebuhr famously wrote of Jesus providing
our ideals, the impossible possibility of loving our neighbors and forgiving seventy time
seven. However, when we enter the real world of politics and the balancing of egos that the
political process necessarily involves, the best we can hope for is a kind of rough justice.
This kind of justice finds its sources not in the message of Jesus but in the common sense of
power struggles, coercion, and necessary violence and punishment.
Niebuhrs reflections often were filled with wisdom, especially when he challenged sociopolitical absolutisms that fostered holy wars and a loss of awareness of ones own selfishness
and pride. However, by positing a polarity between Jesus message and justice he undermined
both our ability to understand justice in more redemptive and restorative terms and our ability
to see in Jesus a political approach that indeed did directly speak to the real world.
If we read the gospels through the lenses of restorative rather than retributive justice, we see
that Jesus message in fact has a close connection, not a stance of tension, with justice.
Jesus and Gods Healing Strategy

In chapter four, we looked at the Bibles story of Gods healing strategyGods work to bring
healing to creation, centered on communities of people who know Gods love and share that
love with other human beings. Several Old Testament terms describe this healing strategy
shalom (peace), hesed (loving kindness), mispat and tsedeqah(righteousness/justice) prominent
among them. These terms often cluster together in a mutually reinforcing way.
Just a few examples include Micah 6:8 (What does the Lord require of you but to do justice,
and to love kindness?), Psalm 85:10-11 (Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; justice and
peace will kiss each other. Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and justice will look
down from the sky.), and Psalm 89:14 (Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your
throne; steadfast love and faithfulness go before you.).
Jesus plays the central role in the biblical story of Gods healing strategy. He understood
himself (and was confessed thus by early Christians) to fulfill the message of Torah. He makes
the call to love neighbors, to bring healing into broken contexts, and to offer forgiveness and
restoration in face of wrongdoing central.
The gospels tell of Jesus own witness to Gods love, a witness that centers precisely on
problems of violence, brokenness, conflict, and alienation. As Jesus stated, he did not come to
minister to those who are well but to those who need healing (Mark 2:17). In doing so, he saw
himself in continuity with Moses and the prophets and with the healing message of Torah.
The gospels add to the Old Testament story in several waysa message of fulfillment and
continuity, though, not a message of discontinuity. Jesus announced the presence of Gods
kingdom in a new and powerful sense. To give evidence of this presence Jesus offered direct
forgiveness apart of Temple sacrifices. Jesus healed people of diseases that had alienated them
from the faith community (such as leprosy, bleeding, and blindness). And Jesus freed people
from their bondage to the powers of evil through exorcisms. In these ways, Jesus affirmed the
message given from the start of Gods healing work.
However, echoing what happened with agents of healing earlier in Israels history, Jesus met
with intense opposition. The religious and political leaders collaborated in arresting and
executing Jesus. The prophet of healing justice found himself unjustly accused of blaspheming
Israels God. God then acted decisively, raising Jesus from the deaddemonstrating once and
for all that the God of justice means to bring healing not condemnation, inclusion not exclusion,
forgiveness not punishment.
Jesus message may be summarized thus: God has created what is in love. Gods commitment
to love allows for human rejection, and the rejection may lead to alienation. God actively
witnesses to the need to turn from the alienation and to turn back toward Gods mercy. This
witness finds expression in the lives of those who do turn to God and themselves witness to

Gods love in the midst of alienation and brokenness. Gods justice finds expression in this
costly witness whereby Gods people bring healing amidst brokenness.
Gods son clarifies his healing vocation in face of temptations to fight injustice with coercion
and violence. In rejecting these temptations, Jesus makes clear that genuine justice has not to
do with punishing wrongdoers and a kind of holiness that cannot be in the presence of sin and
evil. Rather, genuine justice enters directly into the world of sin and evil and seeks in the midst
of that world to bring healing and transformationa restoration of whole relationships.
Jesus acts of justice involve not only healing the hurting but also confronting those who have
been doing the hurting. The powers-that-be retaliate. The religious and political leaders do
have a kind of justice on their sidejustice in the sense of the self-interests of people in power
and their laws and policies that act to sustain their power. Jesus did violate this kind of
justice and so retribution by the powers-that-be followed.
In raising Jesus from the dead, God definitively undermines the claims of the powers-that-be to
act on behalf of Gods justice in their punitive practices. These practices do not serve genuine
justice but rather only an unjust peace and order. Jesus conveys clearly the message that the
leaders of the rebellious human structures do not serve Gods justice after all. This point in the
gospels reiterates the Old Testament. There both the empires (Egypt, Assyria, Babylon) and
the Israelite nation-state serve unjust powers, not the just power of God as they claim.
The final element of Gods healing strategy as expressed in the story of Jesus is a continuation
of the centrality of the community of God. Jesus followers know Gods justice, share it
widely, and in that way bless all the families of the earth. Jesus called together a community
and equipped followers to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name
of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that
[he] commanded [them] (Matthew 28:19-20).
Jesus and Old Testament Justice
When we understand justice in the Old Testament in line with Amoss message, we may easily
see how Jesus ministry echoed what Amos meant when he equates justice with life-sustaining
water in the desert.
Amos words about justice spoke to Israels failure to embody Torahs concerns for the
wellbeing of all people in Israel. Amos calls for turning back to Torah and away from the
injustices that favored the wealthy power elite over the vulnerable poor. This turning back
involved a recovery of genuine justice as the community stands for life for everyone. The call

to justice went out as a call to avoid judgment; justice was not the judgment but the way to
avoid it.
Jesus proclamation followed the same logic. Jesus began his public ministry with a call to
repent (Mark 1:15)turn from injustice and alienation and turn toward life. The kingdom of
God (the rule of God as presented in Torah of old) is present. And in this kingdom, God has
special concern for the wellbeing of the vulnerable, the excluded, and oppressed (see also
Lukes version of Jesus opening words in Luke 4).
As with Amos, Jesus proclaims repent intending to encourage a positive
outcome. Turntoward life. However, a failure to turn will lead to further alienation and
separation. The justice for which Jesus calls his followers to thirst in the beatitudes
(Matthew 5:6) speaks of life, of reconciliation, the restoration of relationships with God and
with one another (same as the justice the Old Testament links with peace and steadfast
love). Note, however, that Lukes version juxtaposes those who do hear and respond to Jesus
message with those who do notand woe to the unrepentant rich, echoing those of Amoss day
(Luke 6:24-26).
Jesus incarnates Old Testament justice. The prophets preached a message of justice where God
enters the brokenness of fallen humanity and brings the possibility of healingblessing all the
families of the earth. Hosea captures the essence of Gods justice when he speaks for God:
My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my
fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in
your midst, and I will not come in wrath (Hosea 11:8-9).
Gods holiness motivates Gods compassion. God in the midst of Gods people practices
compassion not punishment. Certainly we have evidence of other understandings of Gods
holiness in the Old Testament. However, for Christians who believe Jesus fulfills the core
message of Torah, Hoseas proclamation conveys the most fundamental meaning of Gods
holiness. Jesus, now confessed as God incarnate, follows precisely the pattern Hosea presents.
As the Holy One in the midst of humanity, Jesus brings a message of compassion and healing,
not condemnation and punishment. God as seen in Jesus is holy not in the sense of being
unable to be in the presence of sin and evil but in the sense of willingly entering directly into
the reality of sin and evil with a message of compassion. Matthew 89 gives a series of healing
stories that illustrates this type of holiness. Jesus heals all sorts of unclean and excluded
peopletouching their uncleanness with transformative love.
In the midst of these healings, the Pharisees challenge Jesus directly on our point. They
confront Jesus followers. Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? Jesus

hears this and responds: Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are
sick. Then he makes a direct link with the message of the prophets, quoting Hosea 6:6Go
and learn what this means, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have come to call not the
righteous but sinners (Matthew 9:11-13). The justice of God (Gods response to wrong-doing)
has to do with the logic of mercy, not the logic of retribution that requires violence to balance
the moral scales.
Amos points ahead to realized restorative justice (9:11-15). Jesus embodies this promise. For
Jesus, too, Gods will as expressed in Torah includes a direct challenge to injustice and
oppression. However, this will means to include everyone, sinner and just person alike, in a
reconciled community that heals the wounds that lead to the oppression and injustice. Even
those who put Jesus on the cross deserve forgiveness (Luke 23:34).
Jesus Own Use of Justice Language
These points about Jesus and justice have been obscured in the history of English-speaking
Christianity by the decision of New Testament translators to render the Greek
word dikaiosune and its derivatives as righteousness (and righteous, unrighteous,
wicked, and wickedness) instead of as justice (and just, and unjust, and injustice).
I will not go into a philology debate here. Rather, let me simply say that the translations clearly
can go either way. Our main concern should be to resist the tendency of such terms to be
understood in terms of present-day meanings for words such as righteous and wicked (and,
of course, justice and injustice) and then reading that meaning back into the biblical text.
I want to suggest that we use justice (and derivatives) consistently to make clear that often
words with the dik- root are being used together in ways that our English translations may make
unclear. Given the use of dik- words in the Septuagint to translate Old Testament justice
language, we may justifiably read these words as justice, injustice, just, et al.
Lets focus on Matthew, the gospel that uses this language more often than the other
gospels. Matthew calls Joseph, the husband of Jesus mother Mary, a just man (1:19). When
he learns of her pregnancy he wants to protect Marys reputation and dismiss her
quietly. Then, as a more authentic expression of his justness, Joseph takes to heart the words
of the angel in dream and realizes that Mary has the Lords blessing and he stays with her.
Matthew reports Jesus lengthy discourse known as the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus outlines
the basic characteristics of his message, presenting this message as an updated Torah. He
begins with a statement of the kind of people who will be most at home in this kingdom he is
bringing nearerincluding those who hunger and thirst for justice (5:6). Such people will be
filled. As a programmatic statement, Jesus here links his message directly with the Old
Testament prophets and their reading of Torahand promises that justice will be done.

Yet, for the time being, the doing of justice will result in persecution (5:11). The status quo,
founded on injustice, will not welcome the work of Jesus friends but will fight it tooth and
nail. Again, Jesus links his followers and their work for justice and its consequences with the
prophets of old (5:12)and promises Gods vindication.
Jesus calls his followers to a justice that surpasses that of the Pharisees (5:20). This follows a
strong affirmation of Torah. His debate with the Pharisees concerns what constitutes the key
elements of Torah. Jesus sees himself in continuity with Moses. His ministry of justice
embodies the message of Toraha message we will later hear summarized as love of God and
neighbor. The ministry of justice centers on love of neighbor. Jesus will issue a blistering
critique of the Pharisees precisely on his view that their application of Torah does not center on
love and genuine justice (two closely linked motifs for Jesus and the prophets).
Jesus challenges his readers to avoid preoccupation with material possessions can too easily
govern ones loyalties. God knows we need to eat and have a place to sleep. We may trust
God for these provisions. Our preoccupation, though, should be with the kingdom of God and
its justice (6:33). As we trust in God and share Gods priorities (Gods healing strategy of
restorative justice), God will meet all our other needs as well.
Matthew tells of Jesus conflict with the Pharisees over hungry people gleaning food and Jesus
healing a man with a withered hand on the Sabbatha conflict over the meaning of Torah. Is
Torah about mercy or about sacrifice (12:7, quoting Hosea 6:6)? Matthew follows this
encounter with a paraphrase from Isaiah 42:1-4 about the chosen servant of God (said to be
fulfilled in Jesus) who, at the heart of his ministry (linking back to Genesis 12:1-3 and Isaiah
2:2-4) proclaims justice to the Gentiles. The servants ministry of non-coercive love will
bring justice to victory.In his name the Gentiles will hope (12:18-21).
Jesus gives another lesson on the meaning of justice in his parable of the laborers in the
vineyard in Matthew 20. He tells of a landowner who hires some workers and promises to pay
them a just wage for their work (20:4). In the end, he pays them what he
promised. However, to the chagrin of the first workers, who worked all day for their wage, the
owner paid the same amount to some workers hired later in the day. Jesus suggests here that
justice has not to do with strict fairness but also includes a kind of generosity that goes beyond
what is expectedwithout short-changing the original commitments. He challenges those who
would question of justice of such generosity: Are you envious because I am generous?
(20:15).
Matthew links justice and generosity toward those most in need again in a confrontation
between Jesus and chief priests. The tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the

kingdom ahead of you, Jesus asserted. For John came to you in the way of justice and you
did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you
saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him (21:31-32). The way of justice here
refers to restorative not retributive justice, a kind of justice that is inclusive and effects healing
not a kind of justice that is exclusive and effects alienation between the haves and have-nots.
Jesus again reiterates the Old Testament sense the key elements of Torah complementing one
another: mercy, justice, and shalom. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you
tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and
mercy and faith (23:23).
A final example from Matthew comes when Jesus speaks of the end of the age. He
concludes this teaching with an account of the great separation between those deemed to be just
and those deemed to be unjust. The decisive factor in this life or death expression of justice
turns out to be acts of generosity and compassion: I was hungry and you gave me food, I was
thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and your welcomed me, I was
naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you
visited me (25:35-36). Such acts embody genuine justice and echo the words of Jesus about
his own vocation in Luke four: freedom for the oppressed, sight to the blind, good news to the
poor.
The final item on Jesus account in Matthew 25 of the just life ironically contrasts with what we
saw above in chapter two concerning the practice of retributive justice in our society. For our
society, such justice involves locking people up under horrific conditions and essentially
condemning them to a life sentence of shame and alienation. In contrast, for Jesus genuine
justice involves visiting prisonersdisplaying welcome, hospitality, and healing.

Justice in Romans and Revelation

As with the gospels, our awareness of the centrality of justice in the theology some of the
central books of the New Testament is hindered by the tendency of English translations to use
the term righteousness. However, if we translate the Greek word dikaiosune and related
terms as justice, et al, we will see that our topic is important in books such as Romans and
Revelation. And we will see that the concerns of these books reinforces what we have
discovered about justice in the Bible so far.
Pauls program
In his most thorough articulation of his theology, the letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul
begins his argument with a programmatic statement in 1:16: I am not ashamed of the gospel;

for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to
the Gentile. In the gospel the justice of God is revealed through faith for faith.
By the justice of God, Paul has in mind a cosmic transformation that brings together the
personal and social in a unified transformative intervention by God to bring healing to all
aspects of creation (see especially Marshall, Beyond Retribution).
Paul links justice closely with salvation. In the Bible, Gods justice describes God works
to bring healing in the face of brokennessrestorative justice. Paul understood Gods
justice to be the characteristic of God that leads to salvation (not punishment) for Gods
enemies (see Romans 5:1-11).
Paul announces that Gods justice has now been revealed. The term translated revealed
(apokalypsisthe word from which apocalypse comes) in many cases in the Bible indicates
an epoch-defining, transforming message from God. For Paul, God reveals that in Jesus the
kingdom of God has been made present. Those who receive this revelation will never see the
world the same again.
Paul asserts in 1:17 that the just shall live by faithfulness. As the letter to the Christians in
Rome will reiterate throughout, this faithfulness most powerfully should be characterized by
the coming together of Jew with Gentile.
The Nations
After this introduction, Paul turns to the big problem. He analyzes dynamics that move people
from the rejection of truth to lack of gratitude to trust in created things to out of control lust to
injustice and violence. This dynamic expresses wrath, which has to do with God giving
them up to a self-selected spiral of death.
In 1:17 we have the salvific revelation of Gods justice. In the next verse, we have the
suppression of truth that leads to the revelation of Gods wrath. With justice, people see
created things for what they are (pointers to the creator), not false gods worthy of ultimate
loyalty. Such sight leads to life. With wrath, the act of giving loyalty to created things
results in truth being suppressed and a spiral of lifelessness.
God has built within creation itself directives that should lead to justice (linking justice
here with a basic stance of gratitude towards life that encourages kindness, generosity, and
wholeness in relationships). Many people have not lived in gratitude (1:22) and as a
consequence brokenness characterizes much of human life.
People trade their humanity as Gods children for images that resemble created things. This
trade leads to an exchange of justice for wrath leading to an exchange of justice for injustice, of
life for death. This exchange, Paul insists, is not necessary. God has shown the world what is

needed. What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them,
seen through the things he has made (1:19-20). However, when human beings exchange the
glory of God for images that resemble created things they lose their ability to discern Gods
revelation.
In 1:28, Paul once more refers to the dynamic where God gives them up, in this case to a
debased mind. They cant see reality as it is. The revelation of Gods love becomes wrath
for them rather than whole-making justice. When people trust in things other than God, their
ability to think and perceive and see and discern is profoundly clouded.
When people worship created things, the progression moves inexorably toward injustice
suppression of truth (1:18), refusal to honor and give thanks to God (1:21), darkened minds
(1:21), the exchange of Gods glory for lifeless images (1:23), being given up to lusts that
degrade their bodies (1:24), the worship of the creature rather than creator (1:25), degrading
passions (1:26), shameless acts (1:27), debased minds (1:28), and profound injustice and
violence (1:29-31).
Works of the Law
Pauls concerns in 1:18-32 center on idolatry and the need to be free from the bondage idolatry
fosters. If one points fingers at other idolaters while denying ones own tendency to worship
idols, one will never find such freedom. Hence, the very same things (2:1) that those who
point fingers (the judgers) do are themselves forms of idolatry.
Paul himself, before he met Jesus, had experienced his own exchange of God for the boundary
markers protecting the truth faith that required a violent defense. Pauls degrading
passions were not sexual but ideologicaland led to the same result, injustice and violence.
After Paul met Jesus he learned that violence is always a sign of falsehood. The truth he
thought he served was actually a lie. The works of the law that he defended turned out to be
idolatrous. He had been just as much of an idolater as those who run the Roman Empire.
Paul writes of Gods just judgment in 2:5 using the same terms that in 1:32 are translated as
Gods decree. The latter is what the first set of idolaters know but ignore in their
injustice. The former is what will be revealed to the second set of idolaters on the day of
wrath. The injustices of 1:29-31 and the judging of 2:1-2 are the same kind of phenomena;
both blind people to Gods authentic justice. By denying the life-giving justice of God, both
types of idolaters condemn themselves to experience Gods justice as wrath.
Justice Apart from Idolatry

The conclusion to Pauls argument in Romans 13 shows us that Pauls own liberation
followed a revelation of Jesus apart from works of the law. This is how the idolatry problem
is solved: The justice of God through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for all who believe
(3:22).
Gods justice here joins the thread throughout the first three chapters that links together
justice, injustice, and Gods decree/just judgmentall terms with a dik root. Another dikword,
justification, points to how God will set things right and bring about healing and
reconciliation.
Contrary to Saul the Pharisees idea that justice leads to persecution of followers of Jesus,
now Paul the Apostle asserts that justice involves reconciliation. God makes this justice known
in an epoch-transforming disclosure. Gods work is primarily a work to make known, to
transform minds, to enlighten those whose idolatry had darkened their awareness.
The law and prophets attest to Gods disclosure of genuine justice (3:21-22). They had
proclaimed the same message. To be just means to love God and neighbor and bless all the
families of the earth. The law and prophets also attest to the problems that arise when the law
becomes an idol that underwrites injustice.
Jesus faithfulness in his life discloses Gods justice. As Jesus emphasized, the law is to serve
human beings, not human beings to serve the law. Jesus own life of freedom from the Powers
and their idolatrous dynamics frees (redeems, 3:24) all those who trust in his way as the true
disclosure of Gods justice.
When Paul speaks of Jesus blood as the means of a sacrifice of atonement put forward by
God, he refers to Jesus self-sacrificial life that led to his crucifixion as a witness to Gods
justice. God put forward Jesus in order to show Gods justice (3:25). Jesus self-sacrifice
was effective through his faithfulness (3:25). This understanding of Gods justice leaves no
place for self-superiority. What becomes of boasting? Paul asks. It is excluded (3:27). All
have equally practiced idolatry and all have equal access to the healing justice of God.
The Just God of Revelation
In Revelation, the New Testaments only piece of apocalyptic literature, Gods justice here has
to do with a view of the ultimate fate of humanity and links with Gods wrath. How does
Gods work envisioned in Revelation reflect Gods justice? Lets look at the four texts that
specifically refer to Gods justice.
Gods Justice and the Song of the Lamb: 15:1-8. This passage prefaces the series of seven
bowl-plagues that make up chapter 16. The bowl-plagues are the third and last series of sevenfold plagues. In these plagues, John reports on pictures of reality, what has happened and will
continue to happen. These things, by and large, are evil. What John saw in the Lamb opening

the seals (6:1) and thereby setting the plagues in motion, however, affirmed that God uses even
these evil things to bring about Gods purposes.
The vision in 15:1-8 juxtaposes plague with worship language. John sees the worship of the
conquerors who sing the song of Moses and of the Lamb, and affirm Gods deeds as just and
true. All nations will come and worship God because Gods just deeds have been revealed.
John alludes to Exodus 15 (crossing the Red Sea). Those who conquer the beast are heirs of
the children of Israel whose faithfulness liberates them from the dominance of the evil
powers. The song of the Lamb indicates they conquered through following the way of Jesus.
The song in 15:3-4 contains phrases from various Old Testament passages that together
emphasize Gods greatness all nations to worship God because Gods just deeds have been
revealed. These same nations have bowed before the Beast in 13:7 and raged at Gods
judgments in 11:18. Gods justice does not destroy but converts them.
The plagues and outpouring of Gods wrath somehow link with Gods justice. The songs of
Moses and the Lamb serve to tie the plagues in with the exodus and with Jesus. The ultimate
effect and central manifestation of Gods just deeds are salvific, leading to the celebration of
the conquerors and the worship of the nations. The conquerors celebrate because they
have, by their conquering of the Beast, contributed to the nations coming to worship God.
Giving the Oppressors Their Due: 16:4-7. In the third bowl-plague, we see God called just
twice. The angel of the waters, the one pouring out the bowl that turns water into blood, calls
God just. Then follows the altar in a likely reference back to 6:9-11, where John saw under
the altar the souls of the martyrs who cry out for God to avenge their blood.
The specific references to justice here have to do with Gods judgment on those who have
shed the blood of Gods saints and prophets (16:6). In judgment, God giving the bloodshedders blood to drink through the agency of the angel who turned drinking water into
blood. This seems like a clear case of simple eye-for-an-eye retributive justicebut maybe
not.
The plagues, stated to be instruments of Gods wrath (cf. 16:1), show God at work in the
midst of the evils and catastrophes of human history. God does not directly cause these but
rather God uses the powers evil act for Gods own purposes of destroying those evil powers
and establishing the New Jerusalem. The wrath in Revelation, attributed to God, is the
impersonal working out, within history, of evil destroying itself (cf. Hanson,The Wrath of the
Lamb).

This passage portrays the outworking of wrath as part of Gods justice. Gods wrath is
necessary for evil to be destroyed, which is the only way creation can ultimately be
liberated. Gods wrath serves Gods redemptive purposes.
The Wedding Supper of the Lamb: 19:1-10. Following the destruction of Babylon in chapter
18, John reports a scene of celebration. Gods judgments are true and just. These true and
just judgments lead to the wedding of the Lamb in 19:7, the focus of the celebration. The
Bride, the followers of the Lamb, made herself ready by putting on the fine linen. The linen
stands for the just acts of the saints (19:8).
This passage celebrates salvation. All that has stood in the way of Gods rule has been
removed, and the New Jerusalem may now come down. The key aspects of justice here are:
(1) the tying together of Gods justice with the destruction of the evil powers and salvation, and
(2) the emphasis on the importance of the Lambs followers doing deeds of justice.
The Warrior for Justice: 19:11-21. The rider is Jesus, of whom 19:11 states: in justice he
judges. He comes as the one who has conquered through his death and resurrection. He comes
to this apparent battle with the forces of the antichrist (a battle foreseen in 16:14) already the
victor. The outcome of the battle is not in question. The rider, called faithful and true
remained such even to a martyrs death. He gained the white horse due to this faithfulness.
In 19:13, the rider approaches the dressed in a robe dipped in blood. The blood has already
been shed before the battle begins, an allusion to Jesus cross. So no actual battle takes place
here. He can already ride the white horse having conquered with his death and resurrection.
The armies of heaven (19:14) carry no weapons. They too have already conquered. The
only weapon mentioned at all is the sword that comes out of Jesus mouthhis word, the
gospel (cf. Heb 4:12 and Eph 6:17). This sword eventually brings the nations to their knees.
The Beast and the kings and armies have only to be seized and thrown into the lake of fire
(19:20). We see no trace of any battle. John believes that Jesus death and resurrection won
the only battle necessary to defeat evil. The picture of Christs victory in this passage simply
reveals the one sufficient victory he has already won. Jesus war for justice (19:11) sets
things right and establishes Gods kingdom fully with the weapons of powerful love.
Why God is Called Just in Revelation
Revelation uses just as a key term to characterize Gods involvement in human history. Why
does John call God just in Revelation?
John presents God using all that happens in human history for the purpose of establishing the
New Jerusalem. Gods just deeds are ultimately redemptivefor creation, for the faithful
witnesses, and ultimately for the nations and the kings of the earth (cf. 21:24).

Revelation indeed contains visions of destruction. However, visions of God as creator and
redeemer (chapters 45) who makes all things new (chapters 2122) bracket and interpret the
plagues. The chaos fits within Gods plan and leads to the fulfillment of human destiny in final
union with God. The plagues do not exemplify Gods justice but only serve the true end of
Gods justice: the redemption that leads to the new world.
The core of Revelation lay not with the descent of the city of God, described in its closing
visions, but with the vision of God and the Lamb in chapters four and five. The slain and risen
Lamb has accomplished redemption, risen to the throne of God, and begun his reign. The turn
of the ages lies in the past. To see the most decisive expression of Gods justice, look at Jesus.
The centrality of the Lamb in Revelation leads to a reversal of conventional wisdom regarding
power and justice. The power of love equals true justice. The Lamb reigns over history, not as
a crowned king like Caesar, but as the incarnation of love itself. This love goes so far as to
give itself, to abandon itself. The Lambs kingly power rests on this kind of love.
Gods just deeds accomplish the destruction of the evil powers that imprison humankind. John
differentiates between these powers, who are Gods real enemies, and human beings, for whose
sake these powers must be destroyed. Fighting evil with the violent tools of the beast only adds
to the evil. The Lambs way of persevering love offers the only possible victory over the evil
powers. Christs way alone can bring the struggle between the powers of good and the powers
of evil for ultimate sovereignty over creation to its final conclusion.
The just deeds of God, according to the overall message of Revelation, seek not the
punishment and destruction of people but rather the destruction of the destroyers of people. It
is upon these that Gods retribution falls. And as a consequences, the dragons human allies,
the kings of the earth, find healing. Gods just deeds lead to salvation even for those who
rebelled against God. The leaves from the tree of life bring justice as healing to the nations
fulfilling the promise of Genesis 12:3 that Abrahams descendents would bless all the families
of the earth.

Putting Restorative Justice into Practice

By Ted Grimsrud
Human beings cannot be handled without love, Leo Tolstoy wrote, and yet our concept and
practice of criminal justice have been built upon the opposite. We have seen in the chapters

above that the Bible supports Tolstoys assumption that love is fundamentaland provides our
best definition of justice.
What would a concept of justice look like if it were based on lovethat is, on respect and
concern for the people involved, on a commitment to respond constructively? Could such a
relational or restorative approach to justice not only be articulated but actually implemented
(see Zehr, Changing and Zehr, Restorative Justice)?
A Grassroots Revolution
Since the late 1970s, a growing movement has sought to do just this. Eduardo Barajas, Jr., a
program specialist for the National Institute of Corrections, has characterized it like this: A
revolution is occurring in criminal justice. A quiet, grassroots, seemingly unobtrusive, but truly
revolutionary movement is changing the nature, the very fabric of our work. He argues that it
extends beyond most reforms in the history of criminal justice: What is occurring now is
more than innovative, it is truly inventive, a paradigm shift (Barajas, Moving Toward
Community Justice).
The immediate source of this restorative justice movement may be traced back to two
Mennonite practitioners in Ontario, Canada. Frustrated with existent criminal justice practices,
trying to put into practice, their religious beliefs, seeking to be practical about peacemaking,
they conducted a series of victim-offender reconciliation encounters between two juvenile
offenders and the numerous people these young men had victimized in a drunken spree. This
led to the implementation of various forms of victim-offender mediation or reconciliation
throughout North America, Europe and elsewhere and to the development of restorative justice
theory.
From of that tiny source emerged what has become an international movement. This
restorative justice stream has many much deeper sources; indeed, its exact origin is obscure. It
can be traced to a variety of religious traditions. During the past several decades it has been fed
by the conflict resolution movement as well as the seemingly contradictory movements for
victim rights and alternatives to prison. Feminist theory has provided an important awareness
of how the patriarchal nature of our structures, including the justice system, but has also
enriched the stream with its emphasis on an ethic of relationship.
The stream is fed in important ways from a variety of traditional values, practices, and
customs. Indeed, two of the most promising forms of restorative justice todayFamily Group
Conferences and Circle Sentencing, come directly from aboriginal or indigenous values
adapted to the realities of modern legal systems.

In contrast to the retributive paradigm of justice outlined earlier in this book, the concept of
restorative justice underlying these approaches might be summarized like this:
(1) Crime is primarily a violation of, or harm to, people and relationships.
(2) Violations create obligations. The aim of justice is to identify needs and obligations so that
things can be made right to the extent possible.
(3) The process of justice should, to the extent possible, involve victims, offenders and
community members in an effort to mutually identify needs, obligations and solutions.
Key Ideas of Restorative Justice
The restorative justice concept may be framed in a variety of ways, but two ideas are
fundamental: restorative justice is harm-focused and it promotes the engagement of an
enlarged set of stakeholders. Most restorative justice can be seen as following from these two
concepts.
Restorative justice views crime first of all as harm done to people and communities. Our legal
system, with its focus on rules and laws, often loses sight of the reality that crime is essentially
about causing harm. Consequently, the system makes victims at best a secondary concern of
justice. A harm focus, however, implies a central concern for victims needs and
roles. Restorative justice, begins with a concern for victims and how to meet their needs, for
repairing the harm as much as possible.
A focus on harm also emphasizes offender accountability and responsibilityin concrete, not
abstract, terms. Too often we have thought of accountability as punishment, that is, pain
administered to offenders for they pain have caused. In reality, punishment has very little to do
with actual accountability.
Little in the justice process encourages offenders to understand the consequences of their
actions or to empathize with victims. On the contrary, the adversarial process requires
offenders to look out for themselves. The process discourages offenders from acknowledging
their responsibility and gives them little opportunity to act on this responsibility in concrete
ways. The neutralizing strategiesthe stereotypes and rationalizations that offenders use to
distance themselves from the people they hurtare never challenged.
However, if crime has most of all to do with harm, accountability means encouraging offenders
to understand that harm, to comprehend the consequences of their behavior. Moreover,
accountability means taking responsibility to make things right in so far as possible, both
concretely and symbolically.

The principle of engagement suggests that the primary parties affected by crimevictims,
offenders, members of the communitybe given significant roles in the justice process. They
need information about each other and involvement in deciding what justice in each case
requires. In some cases, this may mean actual dialogue between these parties. In others it may
involve indirect exchange or the use of surrogates. Regardless, engagement implies
involvement of an enlarged circle of stakeholders as compared to the traditional justice process.
The three central questions of the retributive justice paradigm might be characterized like
this: What laws have been broken? Who done it? What do they deserve? The comparable
questions for a restorative approach then might be these: Who has been hurt? What are their
needs? Whose obligations are they?
What Does Justice Require?
What does the Lord require? asks the Hebrew prophet Micah, and begins the answer like this:
To do justice. But what does justice require? The latter question is central to restorative
justice. What does justice require for victims? For offenders? For communities?
Out of the traumas of victims experiences come many needs (see Zehr, Transcending). Some
of these have to be met by victims themselves and their intimates. But some of their needs are
best addressed by the larger society, especially the justice process.
Victims badly need what might be called an experience of justice. This has many
dimensions. Often it is assumed that vengeance is part of this need but various studies suggest
that this is not necessarily so. The need for vengeance often may mostly be simply the result of
justice denied.
The experience of justice seems to include public assurance that what happened to the victim
was wrong, that it was unfair, that it was undeserved. Victims need to know that something is
being done to make sure that the offense does not happen again. Often they feel the need for
some repayment of losses, in part because of the statement of responsibility that is
implied. So restitution and apologies from an offender can play an important role in the
experience of justice.
Victims also need answers; in fact, crime victims often rate the need for answers above needs
for compensation. Why me? What could I have done differently? What kind of person did
this and why? These are just a few of the questions that haunt victims. Without answers, it can
be very difficult to restore a sense of order and therefore to heal.
Another area may be termed truth-tellingopportunities to tell their stories and to vent their
feelings, often repeatedly, to people that matter: to friends, to law enforcement people, perhaps
even to those who caused this pain. Only by expressing their anger and by repeatedly telling

their stories can many victims integrate this terrible experience into their own stories, their own
identities.
Also, victims need empowerment. In the crime, an offender has taken power over victims
livesnot only of their body and or property during the incident itself, but over their
subsequent emotions, dreams and reality. Indeed, many victims find that, at least for awhile,
the offense and the offender are in control of their psyche. That is profoundly
unnerving. Without an experience of justice and healing, this too can last a lifetime.
Offenders indeed need to be held accountable, but in ways that encourage empathy and
responsibility. They certainly have other needs as well. Instead of isolation, offenders need
encouragement to be reintegratedor integrated for the first timeinto the community. They
need opportunities for personal transformation. This implies focus on developing competencies
(instead of the usual focus on deficiencies). It requires that they have an opportunity to have
their own needsincluding the harms and sense of victimization that may have led to their
actionsaddressed.
Although retributive justice is done in the name of the community (which actually means the
state), in actuality the process leaves the actual human community of those affected by the
crime is out. It addresses the communitys needs only abstractly, if at all. Fears and
stereotypes are heightened rather than addressed. People are encouraged to view things in
simple dichotomiesthem and us, guilty or innocentrather than appreciate real-life
nuances. When the process leaves the community out of the justice process, the community
misses important opportunities for growth and community building.
When we process conflicts in healthy ways, they provide the means to build relationships
between people and within communities. Take this away, and you take away a fundamental
building block of community and of crime prevention. Communities have needs well as
responsibilities that must be addressed.
Examples of Restorative Justice
To address these needs, a diverse set of practices has emerged in various communities. Most
work in a cooperative relationship with the existing justice system, receiving referrals from
it. Many are designed to provide alternative sentencing options or alternatives to arrest or
prosecution. Others, such as those that work with severe violence, may be primarily designed
to assist the healing of victims and offenders, with minimal impact on legal outcomes. Most,
however, involve some form of victim-offender conferencing. That is, they involve an
opportunity is provided for a facilitated dialogue between victim and offender, often with a
written restitution agreement as part of the outcome.

Three examples of restorative-oriented alternatives that have emerged include the

following: (1) Victim Offender Conferencing (VOC); (2) Family Group Conferences (FGC);
and (3) Sentencing Circles (SC).
(1) Victim Offender Conferencing. In North America, the leading form of victim-offender
conferencing, at least until recently, has been called the Victim Offender Reconciliation
Program, Victim Offender Mediation, or Victim Offender Conferencing (VOC).
In its classic form, it is operated in cooperation with the courts but often housed in separate
non-profit organizations. Upon referral of a case by the court or probation service, trained
volunteers separately contact victim and offender to explore what happened and determine their
willingness to proceed. If they agree, victim and offender are brought together in a meeting
facilitated by the volunteer mediator who serves as a neutral third-party. In this meeting, the
facts of the offense are fully explored, feelings are expressed, and a written restitution contract
worked out. This contract and a brief report then go back to the court or referring agency. If it
is to become part of a sentence, it must receive final approval of the court, then becomes a
condition of probation.
In its original form, VOC predominately handled property offenses such as
burglary. Increasingly, however, programs are being designed to handle cases of violence,
including offenses such as rape and homicide. Offenses like this, of course, require special
precautions and procedures and so VOC is today taking many forms (see Amstutz,Victim
Offender Conferencing).
(2) Family Group Conferences. Recently, new forms of conferencing are emerging, new
applications are being tried, and new lessons are being learned as a result of two approaches
originally rooted in indigenous traditions.
Family Group Conferences (FGC) emerged in New Zealand (and soon in Australia) in the late
1980s as a response, in part, to the concerns and traditions of the indigenous Maori
population. The western-style juvenile justice system was widely recognized to be working
poorly and many Maori argued that it was antithetical to their traditions; it was oriented toward
punishment rather than solutions, was imposed rather than negotiated, and left family and
community out of the process.
In the new juvenile system adopted in 1989, all juvenile cases with the exception of a few very
violent crimes are diverted from police or court into FGCs. This was perhaps the first truly
restorative approach to be institutionalized within a western legal framework.
Instead of court hearings, youth justice coordinators facilitate conferences including victims
and offenders, though families of the offender are also an essential ingredient. Not only do
families help to provide accountability and support but advocates argue that it empowers the

family as well. Caregivers involved with the family may be invited and a youth advocatea
special attorneyis included to look out for the legal concerns of the offender. Victims too
bring family or supporters. Moreover, the police (who are the prosecutors in this legal system)
take part in the meeting.
The meetings are not only large but include parties with divergent interests and
perspectives. This group is expected to come up with a recommendation for the entire outcome
of the case, not just restitution, and they must do this by a consensus of the group! Even more
startling, they actually manage to do so in most cases. Family Group Conferences are working
well enough that many judges and other practitioners have called for their adaptation to the
adult system in New Zealand and pilot projects are under way there (see McRae and
Zehr, Family Group Conferences).
(3) Sentencing Circles. Sentencing Circles (SC) have developed as an effort to take seriously
traditions and concerns of indigenous peoples. Until recently they operated primarily in Native
Canadian or First Nation communities, but in Minnesota and other places they are being
applied to a variety of settings, including inner-city neighborhoods and the workplace.
Sentencing Circles take a variety of forms. Usually, though, they work in conjunction with the
formal legal process to provide forums for developing sentencing plans while at the same time
addressing community-wide causes and problems. SCs bring together offenders, victims (or
their representatives), support groups and interested community people to discuss what
happened, why it happened, and what should be done about it. Discussions are apparently
wide-ranging and aim toward a full airing of facts and feelings and consensus about solutions.
While the punishment or sentence of the offender is worked out here, primary emphasis is on
healing of victim, offender, and (significantly) community. The principal value of the approach
is the impact on communities. In reinforcing and building a sense of community, SC improves
the capacity of communities to heal individuals and families and ultimately to prevent
crime. These emerging practices imply a radically different approach to justice for offenders
one that emphasizes an accountability that is active rather than passive responsibility (see
Prannis, Circle Process).
Along with these community oriented approaches to restorative justice, an additional approach
has emerged that focuses on working within offenders within the prison system.
The Resolve to Stop Violence Project (RSVP) began in the mid-1990s as an attempt to apply
restorative justice principles to violence reduction within prisons (Schwartz,Dreams). RSVP
focuses on helping offenders to become aware of and acknowledge their violence. This process
encourages a sense of responsibility that in most cases has been sorely lacking among the
offendersa lack exacerbated by the typical adversarial approach to criminal justice.

The success of RSVP has been striking thus far and it is gradually gaining adherents. Two
recent studies of RSVP in the San Francisco County jails showed that for prisoners who took
the entire 16-week class, 82% fewer were convicted of crimes as of a year later compared to
similar prisoners who did not take the class (Epstein, Americas Prisons).
Tolstoys law suggests that justice needs to be redefined in new terms. Criminologists Richard
Quinney and John Wildeman, in The Problem of Crime, set the context like this:
From its earliest beginningsthe primary focus of criminology has been on retribution,
punishment, and vengeance in the cause of an existing social orderrather than a criminology
of peace, justice and liberation.If crime is violent and wreaks violence on our fellows and our
social relations, then the effort to understand and control crime must be violent and repressive
(40-41).
However, such an approach only intensifies the spiral of violence leading to greater
violence. What is needed is something that breaks the cycle of violence. Quinney and
Wildeman suggest that finally a peacemaking school of criminology is beginning to emerge.
I argue in this book that we do indeed need such a peacemaking approach to criminal
justice. This peacemaking approach must take seriously (and vigorously critique) the
philosophical and theological roots to retributive criminology. However, I have tried to show
that the deepest roots of Western theology, found in the Bible, are indeed fully compatible with
restorative (rather than retributive) justice. Thankfully, we have an increasing body of evidence
that shows that restorative practices are possibleand effective.

Restoring Wholeness: The Alternative

to Vengeance
By Ted Grimsrud
In this final chapter, we will look more broadly at how restorative justice theology might
provide an alternative to vengeance in the face of wrongdoing.
When human beings are violated in major ways, profound needs are created in the
survivors. By survivors we mean people who survive violent acts themselves and those left
when one of their loved ones lives is taken in violence. Major violations create for survivors
the need to restore their dignity, sense of identity, selfhood, and honor. We have several ways
we might restore our dignity: taking personal revenge, relying on the states retribution, and

seeking some sort of vindication that restores the sense of selfhood without exacting vengeance
on the wrongdoer. I believe the third path best opens the way to restored wholeness.
Revenge
I will define revenge and retribution as pointing toward two distinct responses to
violations. Revenge occurs when people, in response to violations, seek to retaliate, responding
to wrongdoing apart from official governmental channels. Retributionoccurs when the state
takes over for the victim (and victims associates). State involvement brings formal procedures
to apprehend, try, offer judgment, and punish the offender.
A major violation leads to the victim feeling diminished. When people feel damaged, they tend
to want to get even. Being violated leads to a loss of dignity and a powerful sense of shame. A
violated person may feel a powerful drive to do something that will restore their sense of
honor. In many cultures, people assume that ones restore this lost sense of honor by retaliating
against the violator. Social pressure plays a large role in pushing people to seek vengeance,
especially in contexts where a high premium is placed on reputation and honor.
According to Laura Blumenfeld, in Revenge, shame, or the loss of honor, creates the need for
revenge (26). Shame stems from ones loss of a sense of ones value, of ones full
humanity. Psychiatrist James Gilligan argues that this sense of the loss of ones humanity is
probably the most powerful source of psychic pain that a human being can encounter
(Violence). Shame creates a volatile drive to restore the sense of ones value and even
existence. Exacting revenge commonly provides hope for such a restoration. Consequently,
the drive for revenge links intimately with the powerful need to overcome shame and dishonor.
Blumenfeld notes the problematic dynamic of the revenge cycle when it moves from personal
to collective vengeance. Personal vengeance occurs when a survivor directly responds to the
violation and aims to retaliate against the perpetrator. In collective vengeance, groups of
people seek to harm other groups of people simply because of their identity.
Blumenfeld believes revenge must be aimed at the offender; aiming it at others reduces it to
terrorism. Collective revenge misses the whole point of revenge. At its cathartic best,
revenge focuses diffuse rage on a specific, guilty party. Taking revenge on any other person
turns its moral purpose upside down. Stripped down, it is a fancy word for terror. Terrorists
believe that there are no innocent bystanders, that all people of a kind are guilty (181-82).
Her point underscores the dynamics of revenge. As a rule, revenge stems from shame, a sense
of powerlessness, rage, and displaced anger more than careful moral calculation. Hence,
revenge is usually not about a tit for a tat so much as simply an expression of frustration and an
attempt to save face. Cultivating vengeful feelings and entering the cycle of revenge makes a
person vulnerable to having ones desires for vindication exploited by others. These vengeful
feelings may be easily manipulated. Terrorism exploits this desire for revenge.

People who have been violated share a quest for acknowledgment. What hurt was the lack
of acknowledgment. That, for many people, is the emotional goal of revenge, more than the
desire to hurt. They want the other person to acknowledge his mistake, to acknowledge the
legitimacy of their pain (292). So, we may expect that seeking revenge by killing perpetrators
may actually deprive victims of what they most need. Killing offenders makes
acknowledgment impossible. Even punishing offenders may make acknowledgment more
difficult.
Blumenfelds account reveals that the central dynamics of revenge are narrative, personal,
relational, emotional, and story-based. Revenge does seem to be a basic human inclination. It
is decisively shaped by how people view the world, the memories they have, the stories they
tell and retell.
Before considering how to think of a counter-narrative that provides an alternative to
vengeance, we need to look in more detail at the impersonal retributive justice with which we
in the West have sought to replace wild justiceand to see how it also is not an adequate
answer to the question of how to respond to wrongdoing.
Retribution
Judith Kay, in her book Murdering Myths, argues that an Enlightenment-influenced quest for
story-free universals shapes how our society views criminal justice. Such an approach argues
for objectivity and fairness in which the treatment of offenders treats all people the same. This
approach promises to provide a sense of stability and certainty as an alternative to the chaos of
the endless cycle of personal revenge. This approach toward justice also promises to provide a
basis for societies made up of diverse peoples to function as a unified whole.
However, this view of criminal justice as separate from and transcendent over any particular
stories has been plagued with serious problems. It tends to shield the human wielders of power
from scrutiny, making abuse of power more likely. People may accept the structures as benign
regardless of their actual impact. This foundational view of criminal justice creates a sense of
inevitability about the status quo, as if what is stands as the only optioneven when what
is leads to oppression.
Finally, Western criminal justice focuses on punishing offenders more than healingvictims,
offenders, and the broader society. The illusion of the particular story of retribution as a
transcendent universal underwrites violence that harms all in our society. And because our
society does not question this illusion, we fail to recognize how counter-productive our
practices are in relation to genuine justice.
Our society believes the pain and suffering effected through punishment of offenders will make
the offender a better person. We believe such punishment conditions a person to refrain from

wrongdoing in the future in order to avoid further punishment. It also helps one recognize the
error of ones ways. Such punishment, we say, balances the scales of injustice unbalanced by
the crime and helps a person realize how it actually feels to be a victim.
Kay argues, thought, that the use of punishment more likely makes offenders resent the
punishment rather than find it a stimulus for repentance. Resentful offenders more likely will
see their wrongdoing as justified than admit its wrongness. Punishment teaches the need not to
get caught more than that wrongdoing should not be done.
Most violent offenders have themselves been victims of violence. Their acts (in their minds)
generally are acts of retaliation. To be retaliated against only deepens the offenders in the cycle
of pay back. Punishment likely motivates them to want to hurt someone else.
The use of violent punishment infects everyone involved with the pathogen of violence. The
violent act damages its victimand person who inflicts the hurt. Beyond the individuals,
violence damages morally the institutions responsible for inflicting it on offenders. This
damage reverberates throughout the society that has created and supports such institutions.
Rather than helping the offender grow in empathy and compassion, virtues desperately needed
by people who are prone to hurt other people, punishment exacerbates anger, resentment, fear,
and a sense of self-justification.
Kay argues, both revenge and retribution falsely believe the wielding of coercive power to be
essential to affirming power and dignity (87). When people violate others, they destroy
human dignity. In face of this damage to human dignity, people need ways to have their
dignity restored. How might our personhood be restored when it is violated?
People tend to believe that when we do wrong we deserve to be punished, that punishment is
good for us even when abundant evidence points toward its widespread negative
consequences. We also grant the state the right to punishas if this right of the state overrides
the rights each person has to be treated with dignity and respect.
The internalized lie rests on the core belief in the efficacy of violencewhat Walter Wink
calls the myth of redemptive violence (Engaging the Powers). This myth emphasizes that
violence works better than any other alternative in dealing with problems such as
crime. Tragically, it seems that no amount of evidence to the contrary can undercut belief in
this myth.
Kay advocates redefining justice. Instead of thinking of justice in terms of paying back
violence with violence, she proposes that we think of justice in terms of the wholeness of each
person and society as a whole. The concept of justice changes in this new story. Ultimately,
the only response that will fix the situation is if people regain their humanity by emerging

from their grief and rage, regaining their ability to connect with themselves and with others. In
the long term, justice means the reclamation of human bonds (183).
Vindication
Revenge and retribution are both responses to the problems created when people are
violated. The violation of peoples dignity creates a need. Such violations rend the human
fabric. How might the damage caused by such violations be dealt repaired? How might human
beings who have been violated be helped to restore their dignity and sense of wholeness?
Howard Zehr, in Transcending, has collected several dozen stories from victims that provide
insight into the process of responding to violations. They show that while revenge and
retribution may play a role in the quest for wholeness, they are not generally that helpful. Zehr
proposes a broader rubric, vindication. Vindication has to do with a restoration of
dignity. Such a restoration provides a sense that ones existence, called into doubt through the
violation, has been vindicated. Revenge and retribution may for some people contribute to
vindication, but for many, vindication comes in other ways that dont involve hurting
wrongdoers.
The storytellers whose experiences Zehr recounts name a number of needs that they have
identified as a consequence of their trauma. The needs expressed by these storytellers center on
restoring the fabric of ones rent humanity in face of severe violations. These needs may be
met through finding meaningful things to do in the aftermath of the trauma.
In numerous cases, some acknowledgment from offenders of the wrongness of their act
provided important aid in survivors moving on. Survivors found satisfaction especially when
the acknowledgment was accompanied by a sense of regret. Storytellers spoke of their need to
avoid adding to the spiral of violence with their own vindictiveness and to find ways to be freed
from feelings of hate and bitterness.
Many spoke of hoping to find supportive communities with others who could share their grief
and help them restore meaning to their lives. Sadly, in these stories few reported finding such
communities. Several people spoke instead of feeling too much pressure to find closure, to
forgive, and to move on. Others did not seem to understand the depth of the trauma they
had experienced and the need for more time and patience with the gradual nature of the healing.
Most simply, numerous people spoke of the need to grow into a sense of acceptance of the
reality of what has happened. They need to come to terms with the transformed reality they
now had to live withthat life would never be the same following the violation. This sense of
acceptance, when achieved, seemed then to open possibilities for learning to live meaningfully
amidst the loss and pain.

Many storytellers expressed ambivalence about forgiveness. Forgiveness seems important yet
evasive. Some spoke of a clear ability to forgive, accompanied by a sense of release from the
weight of living with the violation. Others evinced much less clarity.
Forgiveness does for many play an important role in the repair of the rent fabric. It allows
survivors to move on with life and not let the crime define who they are. It serves as a means
emotionally to move past the trauma and end the presence of the trauma as an on-going,
devastating reality.
Forgiveness, in some cases, allowed for some level of reconciliation between the victim and
offender. This allows for mutual understanding of what led to the violation, how the various
actors experienced the violation, and for victims getting a sense of assurance that they indeed
did not deserve what happened to them.
Forgiveness also opens the possibility that offenders may seek constructively to make up for
what they had done. They may be able to work at restitution for the damage they caused and
find healing from their own traumas that may have led them to violate others.
An emphasis on forgiveness may also offer some dangers. On the one hand, forgiveness may
be granted too quickly, while the survivor is still traumatized. Such (possibly) premature
forgiveness may short-circuit the healing process and foster the repression of hurtswith the
possibility of future resurfacing of the trauma.
Forgiveness, if unaccompanied by genuine repentance on the part of the offender, may let the
offender off the hook too easily. It may lessen the possibilities that offenders will find healing
for their own traumashealing that requires taking responsibility for their acts.
One central need several storytellers mentioned was to understand the truth, as best as possible,
of what happened with the violation. This enables them to fit the events into their own story
and make better sense of their lives. Understanding what happened helps people better to adapt
to the true situation they find themselves in, even if it is difficult. As Sandy Murphy, a woman
whose face was disfigured in a brutal attack, said, The doctors wouldnt allow me to see my
face. They would say, Its going to be fine. That was a lie. The truth is important to
me. The truth helped me to be able to stand and say, This is ugly, but you can do it (156).
In response to crises created by violations, Zehr suggests three basic human needs that need to
be addressed. (1) The need to feel that we have substantial control over our own lives, or at
least important parts of our lives. (2) The feeling of safety that is rooted in a sense of
order. We need to believe that our world is basically orderly and that events can be

explained. (3) Healthy relationships with other people are essential for a sense of wholeness
(188).
At the heart of our identity as human beings lie stories we construct about who we are. The
experience of severely traumatic violations profoundly damages this constructed meaning. An
experience of violence represents an attack on those narratives, an erosion of meaning, and
therein lies a primary source of trauma (189).
Survivors need to find ways to recover from such blows to their sense of self. Victimization is
essentially an erosion of meaning and identity, so we must recover a redeeming narrative which
reconstructs a sense of meaning and identity (190). Efforts to respond helpfully to violations,
then, should center on victims reconstructing a sense of meaning and identity. Neither revenge
nor retribution serve this basic need very well.
Rather than seeing vengeance as a human need in the face of violations, Zehr argues for what
he calls vindication (191). The need for vindication entails a number of aspects, some of
which may tend toward taking revenge, but most of which point in other directions.
For Zehr, vindication might well include elements of the following.
(1) A restoration of respect. We feel vindicated when we become aware of being respected by
other peopleand when we gain a measure of self-respect. It is possible that this respect could
be achieved through exercising power to hurt offenders. However, more likely the respect will
be gained through positive actionssuch as ones that honor deceased victims.
(2) A recognition of the offenders wrong. We feel vindicated when we gain clarity about that
the violation was wrongand not our fault. This certainly can include convicting
offenders. The criminal justice system may provide such an outcome. However, from the
stories, survivors seemed to gain even more power when offender acknowledge their guilt and
apologize. The adversarial nature of our criminal justice system hinders more than assists such
acknowledgmentby segregating victim from offender, by creating a win/lose dynamic, and
by focusing on punishment rather than acts of restitution.
(3) Empowerment. We feel vindicated when we experience power in our lives and dont feel
simply at the mercy of others. Several of the storytellers felt empowered when the offender
apologized, giving the survivors a sense that they had some power in relation to the offender
based on how they responded to the apology.
(4) Removal of shame and humiliation.

(5) A recovery of meaning, the reconstruction of a redeeming narrative, a rekindled sense that
ones life has purpose and value.
(6) The establishment of affirming, supportive relationships.
None of these six elements of vindication require revenge or retribution. Some of them might
include either or both. On the other hand, seeking revenge or retribution might actually work
against the realization of some of the elements.
By focusing on healing rather than punishment, restorative justice provides for the possibility
of meeting these fundamental human needs for vindication. The emergence of the restorative
justice movement has stimulated a reappropriation of biblical materials that actually helps us
understand the basic message of the Bible in new ways.
From start to finish, the Bible tells the story of Gods healing strategy. Learning from and
applying the lessons of restorative justice to our broader social agenda will help all of us better
to seek peace and pursue it (Psalm 34:14).

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