24 minute read
Lawyers as Ministers of Justice
Rodney D. Chrisman Professor of Law, School of Law
Justice as a Part of the Gospel
An often-overlooked part of Jesus’s mission (i.e., the Gospel) is justice. In modern times, the Gospel is all too often thought of as being exclusively concerned with personal evangelism. This view relegates other professions and vocations, such as business, engineering, or law, to secondary concerns — important to be sure, but not rising to the level of Gospel concerns. The Gospel presented in the Bible, however, is not so truncated. Certainly, Jesus was and is concerned with the evangelism of individual souls, but this is not His only concern.
The Old Testament prophets consistently condemn God’s people for not only their idolatry but also their injustice. Two passages from the book of Isaiah are illustrative, although many more could be cited and discussed. In Isaiah 10:1-2, in the midst of warning Judah that God’s judgment was coming upon them via the instrument of Assyria, Isaiah writes “Woe to those who enact evil statutes and to those who constantly record unjust decisions, so as to deprive the needy of justice and rob the poor of My people of their rights, so that widows may be their spoil and that they may plunder the orphans” (Is 10:1-2, NAS).
This passage is addressed to a society pervaded by injustice. It is replete with unjust legislation (“evil statutes”) and “unjust [judicial] decisions.” In such a society, people are deprived of justice and robbed of their rights such that they become spoil and plunder. In such a setting, where there is no rule of law, the ruling principle becomes power resulting in the relatively powerless and vulnerable (“the needy,” “the poor,” “widows,” and “orphans”) bearing the brunt of the injustice.
Into this context of wide-spread injustice, God describes the mission of the Messiah as establishing justice in the earth. In Isaiah 42:1-4, speaking through the prophet Isaiah, God states:
Behold, My Servant, whom I uphold; My chosen one in whom My soul delights. I have put My Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry out or raise His voice, Nor make His voice heard in the street. A bruised reed He will not break And a dimly burning wick He will not extinguish; He will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not be disheartened or crushed
Until He has established justice in the earth; And the coastlands will wait expectantly for His law (NAS).
As this passage demonstrates, Jesus’s mission includes “bring[ing] forth justice to the nations” and “faithfully bring[ing] forth justice.” His aim is to “establish[] justice in the earth” such that “the coastlands,” which is an image designating the “remotest peoples of the earth”1, “will wait expectantly for His law.” Matthew, in his quotation of this passage, renders the last line as “And in His name the Gentiles will hope,” (12:21) thereby equating Jesus’s Name with his law and justice, offering them as things in which the remotest peoples on the earth will hope. Ungodly rulers, with their “evil statutes” and “unjust decrees” bring oppression and hopelessness, but God’s faithful servant, by contrast, with His righteous judgment and law, brings justice and hope.
Lawyers as Ministers of Justice
God, in His graciousness, has chosen to allow His people to participate in what He is doing in His world. Specifically, Christian lawyers get the privilege of participating in Christ’s mission of establishing justice in the earth. This is done in a variety of ways, depending upon the area of law and policy in which the particular lawyer is called to serve. The following discusses two examples, one familiar to most readers and one likely less familiar, to illustrate this point.
Criminal Lawyers as Ministers of Justice
Given that most people have seen television dramas or movies involving criminal investigations and trials, readers likely will be familiar with the role of lawyers in the area of criminal law. Therefore, this familiar area of law serves well to illustrate how lawyers can further the Gospel as ministers of justice.
Romans 13:4 states that the civil magistrate or government is God’s minister on earth to exact vengeance and bring punishment on evildoers. A prosecuting attorney serves as a minister of justice in seeking, within a system of rules of procedure and evidence, to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant is guilty of a given crime and therefore deserving of punishment. It is perhaps easy for many people to see how a lawyer serving in this capacity is operating as a minister of justice. Similarly, the defense attorney is also acting as a minister of God’s justice. The defense attorney holds the prosecution to proving its case, requiring that the rules of evidence and criminal procedure are followed, and that the defendant receives a fair trial. This too furthers Christ’s mission of establishing justice in the earth.
For instance, biblical justice requires that a defendant may only be condemned on the testimony of two or three witnesses (e.g., Deut 17:6 & 19:15, Num 35:30, Matt 18:16, and 2 Cor 13:1). Given the fact that there will not be two or more witnesses to every crime, God is willing for some wrongs to go unpunished by humans. All wrongs will eventually be righted and all sins eventually punished, either in Christ’s atoning work on the cross or in the condemnation of the sinner to eternal punishment in hell. However, temporally, God’s justice requires a procedural and evidentiary system that will prevent sinful men from punishing other sinful men unless certain minimums are satisfied, such as a minimum requirement of two or three witnesses. A criminal defense attorney, holding the prosecution to these standards, serves God as a minister of justice and furthers Christ’s justice in the earth.
Further, the Bible presents Jesus as an Advocate for the accused, or, in other words, a defense attorney who stands on our behalf.
My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world (1 John 2:1-2, NAS).
Jesus, to be sure, is a special type of defense attorney. He does not argue that the accused are innocent, but rather, knowing that they are guilty, pleads instead His own innocence and righteousness and that He has paid for the sins of the guilty ones through His atoning death on the cross. Still, even taking into account that important difference, a Christian criminal defense attorney can be a minister of justice acting in Christ-like role.
A less familiar example also illustrates the role of lawyers as ministers of justice. In Psalm 94:20, the Psalmist asks, “Can wicked rulers be allied with you, those who frame injustice by statute?” (ESV). In modern times, much injustice is framed by statute. In fact, the sheer volume of statutes and regulations governing the
activities of modern people and businesses in and of itself is such that it can be described as unjust and a tyranny. Further, much of these statutes and regulations are either temporary or constantly subject to change or sometimes even contradictory.
Of this particular type of injustice, James Madison wrote that:
It poisons the blessings of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed? (The Federalist No. 62.)
When Madison wrote these words, the laws he would have known would be a mere fraction of the thousands upon thousands of pages of statutes and regulations comprising the legal environment in modern American today. One can only imagine what he would say if confronted with just the modern Internal Revenue Code, which is only one of the 54 Titles of the United States Code!
This unjust legal environment deters the start-up of new businesses and threatens the survival of existing businesses, and, by the very nature of the risks and costs it imposes, its burdens fall particularly hard on smaller businesses — those that are less powerful and more vulnerable. This keeps people from using their God-given gifts and abilities to bless others and glorify Him. A business or planning lawyer can serve Christ as a minister of justice in this area by assisting individuals and businesses in navigating this labyrinth of statutes and regulations. A lawyer serving in this role literally helps people shepherd their gifts, abilities, time, treasure, and, yes, even dreams.
Conclusion
As demonstrated in the foregoing, Christ’s mission is broader than is often thought and includes establishing justice in the earth. Lawyers can serve Christ as ministers of justice, experiencing the privilege of being used by Him to bring forth justice such that the remotest peoples hope in His law. This service is rendered in areas that are familiar to the general public, such as in the instance of criminal lawyers discussed above. However, it is also rendered in other important areas that are less familiar, as in the example of a business or planning lawyer described herein. Many other examples could be given, such as lawyers fighting for Constitutional rights or representing the poor and needy or widows and orphans. Through this service in its various forms, biblical justice is established in the earth such that eventually, one day, people near and far — even unto the most distant coastlands — will hope and wait expectantly on His law.
1 Crossway Bibles, The ESV Study Bible 1315 (2008).
ETHICS, VOCATION, AND CHRISTIAN GOOD: AN OPEN LETTER TO THE STUDENTS OF LIBERTY
Dear Students,
There is no such thing as ethics.
Now that I have your attention, let me illustrate what I mean. And let me demonstrate how our shared Christian faith proves that this statement is not only true, but also encouraging as you prepare yourselves for vocation in the world. My goal is to show you how a proper understanding of such a provocative statement may enlighten your path from Liberty out into your calling, vocation and the realm of business. Loving is good. Killing is bad. How do you know? What makes something good? Freshman tend to answer by saying, “something is good because it is good.” But, what makes something good? What is the “criteria” for something to be called good?
This question is the foundational query that started the discipline of ethics. The study of ethics tries to answer the simple questions: “What is good?” and “What is right?” The study of ethics started in ancient Greece. To simplify and to guide our study we will just say it started with Socrates who asked and tried to answer these questions. His student Plato took up his project, and then Plato’s pupil Aristotle in turn inverted Plato’s starting point trying to solve this ultimate riddle. If you look at the famous painting of The School of Athens by Raphael, you will see Plato pointing up at the realm of the forms for the Good and Aristotle pointing down like a good scientist to that which can be observed for the source of the Good. That basic debate is still with us and no one in philosophy has won the day. Plato was intellectually honest enough to know that he had not closed the deal. And most intellectuals today will agree that no one in the history of thought has “proven” or shown the source of the good sufficiently to satisfy all comers.
Now right off the bat, the clever student will surely rebuff my thesis saying, “Dr. Brat, the ancient Hebrews surely had a system of ethics. Have you not heard of the 10 commandments? That is one source of our Christian ethics and it is true because God said so on Sinai. And Sinai preceded the Greeks!” Well done: A+. Excellent point. And I will get to this eventually, such a rebuttal actually helps to prove my point up there in the first sentence. There is no such thing as ethics.
As I said previously, ethics is the study of the “criteria” for the good. This leads to the question: “What is it that makes something good?” In academia, if Plato says something is red because it has redness, that is not satisfactory for academics. What is it that makes red, red? Getting dizzy yet? Hang with me. The same goes for ethics in academia. If you answer that something is good because God says it is good, that is fine within the faith community but not outside of our community. The academy rarely accepts such arguments in their domain. Typically they argue that such beliefs are a tautology or circular reasoning. And of course Christian scholars have strong responses to all of these questions. I hope you can begin to see the foreshadowing being developed here. While we may believe and live out the Christian life in community, we also have to be ready to meet the business world where it is. So where is the business world in terms of ethics? I’ve given lectures on this exact topic for 20 years to every Rotary club and civic organization in the universe and so here is the condensed version.
If you open a standard business ethics book, you will find that most treat three ethical schools of thought in the academic setting. For example, the “Ethical Issues in Business” textbook by Pat Werhane, professor emeritus at UVA’s School of Business is very typical. It opens with 50 pages of ethical content followed by many applied cases. The ethical content covers three of the heavy hitters in Western ethics including Virtue Ethics (Aristotle), Kantian Ethics (Immanuel Kant) and Utilitarian Ethics (John Stuart Mill). Each of these three “Systems” of ethics argues for very different
conceptions of the Good and what is Right. You should study these systems, even if my thesis is correct, and this is for many reasons, but that is a tangent. The major and simple point that I want to make here is that when I give a Rotary talk, or an academic talk or a Church talk, I always ask folks to raise their hands if they are a Utilitarian. No hands go up. Okay, well how many Kantians do we have out there? No hands. Okay then how about Aristotelians? A few clever Catholics may raise their hands with a grin, but they get the point.
My point, I hope, is obvious, but it’s a critical one. The only ethical systems we teach in academia have no followers. No one lives out these secular and Enlightenment ethical systems. This is a major problem! Perhaps this is a bit hyperbolic, but the point is clear and unarguable. Following this question I can transition my inquiry to the crowd asking whether they instead live out a Christian or Jewish or Hindu or Confucian ethics. In response, nearly every hand in the crowd goes up! So what does this mean?
First of all it means that my thesis above is true. There is no such thing as ethics in general. There is no such thing as business ethics in general. But no one will tell you this in our secular world because it’s embarrassing. The secular world would have to admit that religious systems have won the day! Kantian ethics has few formal followers as do Aristotelean ethics and Utilitarian ethics. But the religious ethical systems like the one we strive for at Liberty apply to billions of followers. There is Christian ethics. But there is no such thing as ethics. Why does this matter?
It matters because all of these ethical systems clash like crazy on how they define the Good. For example, Utilitarianism states that the Good is that which maximizes happiness. And it does not matter at all what causes that happiness. Hitler maximized his own happiness by world domination and being evil. Mother Theresa achieved happiness by feeding the poor. But Utilitarianism says that both “should” pursue their own happiness. This is clearly wrong. But even though the label “Utilitarianism” is missing, this live-and-let-live philosophy sadly dominates the secular world in which we live and work.
When you hear business firms claim that they strive to live at the highest level of ethics, you should basically LOL because you “know” better. The highest level of ethics in the Christian tradition is the Sermon on the Mount. Few businesses have ever said that was their aim. For, we are fallen, and even the Church struggles mightily to attain this ideal.
So how can you go out in confidence knowing and believing that you have it right? Well, this is a matter of knowledge as well as faith and so you must study and get it right. But, in faith you will also be aided by God and the mighty works of God in history are a sure foundation. As you study, you will find that the JudeoChristian tradition has served as the guard rails for truth in Western civilization from the beginning. The Judeo-Christian tradition has also been the dominant source of values in the West as even its archcritics like Nietzsche acknowledged.
For example, in philosophy, Plato was great, but Augustine brought Plato’s wisdom into the Christian tradition. Aristotle was absorbed into the Catholic tradition by St. Thomas Aquinas. Augustine inspired Martin Luther and John Calvin, fathers of the Reformation and Protestant line of theology. The Enlightenment then followed and claimed that “Reason” is the measure of all things. Human Reason alone; not God. In the sciences, the Enlightenment produced great results. But in anything having to do with human nature, the Enlightenment failed completely because it got it wrong. The Enlightenment ethics of Hume and Kant and Mill were simply wrong. This could be why they have no followers as explained above. Human reason alone lacked the inspiration to motivate action. It turns out the simple love of Christ won the day. That is the good news in History.
In Virginia, even the great Jefferson got ethics wrong. He stripped the miracles out of his Bible because, in his view, human reason trumped God’s Revelation in his system. Thankfully, James Madison, who studied Hebrew at Princeton, got human nature right. He understood the fallen nature of man and he knew that power corrupts, so he designed into the Constitution a government of laws, based on individual rights and the separation of powers. This system has served us exceptionally well for more than 230 years; the longest surviving constitution in the world today. Yet our Constitution is under attack today by those who want to impose their own systems of anarchy on us and our country. Some are deconstructing the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Rule of Law and the belief that Free Markets and business can be a tremendous blessing. Our theological foundation is disintegrating and our shared commitments are coming undone.
Here, like America’s Founding Fathers, we turn to God’s Word for the answer. Psalms 11:3 says “If the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?” The answer is in the very next verse. “The Lord is in his holy temple: the Lord is on his heavenly throne.”
The times ahead may look tough. There is no sugar coating that truth. Let the faith you cultivate as you become a Champion for Christ at Liberty University be your armor in this upside down world. Get ready. You will need to develop every bit of knowledge and faith and courage God grants you. You are the one that, guided by God’s word, will have to decide what Good is for you. Choose Wisely. It will make all the difference. There is no shared ethics. There is Jesus Christ and the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Now receive the Benediction. God has called you to faith in Christ and has given you a vocation to go out and serve His world. Liberty has given you a foundation in faith and Truth and career. Follow God and God’s ethics in all you do. Go Big. Think Big. Believe Big. You will be a part of God’s Great work. Amen.
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Work as Worship, Worship as Vocation: An Interview with Jo and Vince Vitale
Recently, Jo and Vince Vitale took some time to have a conversation with Dr. Troy Temple, Interim Dean of the John W. Rawlings School of Divinity. Jo (DPhil, Oxford) and Vince (DPhil, Oxford) are both apologists with RZIM. Jo's research has focused on issues of Gender and Beauty in the Old Testament whereas Vince's research has focused on the Problem of Evil.
Temple: Our mission, here at Liberty, is to Train Champions for Christ in every profession. Are professions demonstrations of the gifts that God has placed in us and are they connected with the mission of the Gospel?
Vince: I am excited that this is part of the vision here at Liberty — a holistic approach to what God is doing in and through a person. Too often, the church imagines a sacred and secular divide, where the ministry professions are the sacred ones and the rest are just secular. Other professions are viewed at a lower tier compared to going into full time Christian ministry. Jesus himself most likely spent about 18 years in a “secular” profession before he went into full-time ministry. I have often thought about how weird some of our terminology about professions is. For example, the phrase “work-life balance” assumes that work is not going to be life giving, so you need a balance. I think this a good starting point for approaching this issue. We should be thinking about work with the lens of the Hebrew word, avoda, which means work, worship, and service. God designed us to have our work and worship intimately intertwined.
Jo: Yes, I agree. It has always been hard to believe that Jesus said, “It is better if I go, so that the Holy Spirit can come.” How could this be better than Jesus being on earth? Well, because of this, the Holy Spirit is in the life of every believer and equips every believer to stretch out throughout the world, not just in ministry, but in every arena, carrying the work of God with them. Imagine the kind of impact that has! The Great Commission is to go out into the world and make disciples of all nations. We often think that making disciples means being a pastor, but making disciples means going into every arena and serving Christ in a beautiful way. The gospel transforms the whole mind and you can take that into every profession and every arena of life; actually being a Christian is going to make a fundamental difference in how you live and work in your profession. Not enough Christians are in those places, so when I see someone studying neuroscience as a Christian, and they go all the way to their post-doc and then they go on to teach, I think, “That is incredible!” We a need Christian understanding of the world informing that area of research — helping to explain how we come to understand the mind and our purpose as humans. Instead of withdrawing from those places as a Christian, more Christians need to step into them.
Vince: I became a Christian my first year of college while studying philosophy in a secular philosophy department and I had to wrestle through that. I can remember thinking, “Was there any value in what I was studying and is this something I should continue to pursue?” I did continue to pursue it and wound up doing my graduate studies in a secular philosophy department. Studying there made me realize that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the light. Not just that he is true, but that he is the grounding of all truth. So, if I am pursuing truth, whether it’s through philosophy or biochemistry or whatever it is, if I am pursuing truth claims, anything I am learning that ultimately is true, must be grounded in some way in the nature of God because God is truth himself. That totally transformed learning for me, because anytime I learn something true, at a fundamental level, I am learning something of who God is and what He has done. Learning, then, is a part of my worship and my relationship with him.
Temple: How can believers use these incredible opportunities in their professions as a launching pad for the proclamation of the Gospel?
Vince: When you are experiencing your work as worship, you’re in a place to see unique opportunities and to take those opportunities to share the Gospel. It is interesting how easily a grace theology or a works-based theology can infiltrate our work. When we’re talking about salvation, we know it’s based on grace and faith and not on works. But for some reason when I’m doing philosophy I think, “I’m learning this; I’m working out these ideas through my abilities and analysis.”
Oftentimes though, if you are experiencing work as worship, you begin to see work in a grace-centered way. When you are working through a grace-centered mindset, you begin to see how anxious people are when they are trying to work in a way disconnected from the one that gives grace. If you are working out of a place of worship and others are not, there should be a clear divide there that will provide all sorts of opportunities for conversation to share why it is that your work is a very different experience.
Jo: It does make such a difference when you allow the Lord to infiltrate the way you think and the way that you approach work. I remember meeting a student on a university campus who — over the course of a few hours together — gave her life to Christ. She had been watching Christians for about six months before she met me, so she had already been observing how Christians live. She said the thing that stood out to her was that Christians seem more joyful and hardworking than anyone else she had met. Unlike the culture she was coming from, hard work didn’t lead to depression and anxiety, but to freedom and joy. I think when you live that way it has such an impact.
Temple: How can we help our students see that calling is not a term that is captivated or held sequestered by those who are in full-time ministry in the church, but it is a term that applies to all those who are sons and daughters of the King?
Jo: I think the language of calling is interesting because, sure you may well be called to do something, but really first and foremost you’re called to be. You are called before anything else to love the Lord your God with all your heart soul mind and strength and then to love your neighbor as yourself.
We often meet people who are so focused on how they are going to get to a certain platform or reach a certain goal. Don’t worry about that. Who are the people who are in front of you right now? Who are the people in your neighborhood, in your community? Maybe there are people God is calling you to right now. God will get you wherever He needs to get you but who’s right in front of you is what you need to focus on. Maybe your calling right now is just to love and serve and meet the needs of those around you and let God do whatever He is going to do with that. Don’t worry about the future platforms. Paul worked as a tentmaker for so much of his ministry. That part probably did not feel glamorous, but who knows how many conversations and impactful moments he had just sitting there working on those tents? We turn “calling” into something transactional and achievable when it is actually so much richer and deeper.
Vince: I take comfort in the reality that the church is a body and that each one of us is a part of that body, each an essential part. In the context of that body, whether you’re called to be a hand or a foot or a shoulder, there is no hierarchy. All of the callings are needed, and you need to pursue where God is leading you and not where He is leading someone else or what someone else thinks. You will exhaust yourself or end up in a bad place spiritually if you’re trying to pursue someone else’s calling that’s not your own. We need to figure out which part of the body we are and be content in that, knowing that each part plays an essential role in what God asks his body to do.
