Perfect Justice and Perfect Mercy are Incompatible

Great Debates
1

This thread is to prevent the hijacking of the Why Don’t Some Christians Accept That “Personal Experience of God” Differs thread.

Claim: Justice and mercy are not utterly compatible, but ultimately conflict.

Justice involves adhering to a standard. When standards conflict, justice requires keeping to the higher standard.

Example: people can reasonably claim that a legal principle is unjust because it contradicts a “higher” law of morality, and that disobeying the temporal law is just.

People have common ideas about what principles should define justice (often including things like “fairness” or “goodness”, which are pretty complex), but anything can potentially be considered justice.

Mercy involves setting aside a principle to prevent or reduce suffering. An active choice to avoid inflicting suffering can be considered merciful, if only because it involves setting aside the idea that inflicting or not inflicting are equivalent possibilities.

Examples: reducing the punishment of a guilty person, giving a “second chance” to someone who isn’t entitled to one, etc.

When people discuss these concepts, they often make the implicit assumption that “Goodness” is always the highest principle, and the mercy involves setting aside other principles in favor of Goodness.

From these points, we can conclude that justice and mercy are only partially compatible.

A judge who set aside the principles of the legal system to adhere to a moral standard while reducing suffering can be considered both just (in regards to the moral standard, but not the legal one) and merciful.

But a person who set aside the “highest” principle (whatever that is) for any other might be merciful, but by definition would be unjust. A person who adhered to the highest principle would be just, but they would be unable to be merciful in regards to that principle.

As a result, no one can be completely just and completely merciful. Ultimately, you have to choose one or the other. There are lots of situations where a person can be both (when the highest principle requires that a person set aside lower ones to reduce suffering), but that highest principle cannot be justly set aside for anything.

2

Ooh: one additional note.

If mercy is considered as the highest standard, what would it set aside for it? Setting itself aside would be both unmerciful and unjust – it wouldn’t be able to set aside itself.

It would be the same as having a principle that no one can inflict suffering if they can prevent it, and so avoiding inflicting wouldn’t be merciful, but merely just and lawful.

3

I disagree with your definition of “justice.” Justice means doing what is just. If mercy is justified then it is justice. If mercy isn’t justified, then it can’t be said to be perfect.

4

Hmmm…

What rule/law describes what things are justified and what things aren’t?

Mercifully setting aside that law is unjust. Applying that law completely and without exception is obviously just… but mercy is all about making exceptions to the rules.

If it’s just to prevent suffering, according to the ultimate law, then it’s not merciful to prevent that suffering. It would be merciful AND just to set aside a lesser principle that resulted in suffering and conflicted with the ultimate law, though.

5

No rule. A person. Or as my Theology 101 prof said, “God is not good because he is said to do good things; good things are good because God says so.” i.e. the nature of “good” is defined as being in accordance with the nature of God.

Now defining and understanding that nature … there’s the tricky part.

6

oops, to be clearer, I should have used “just” instead of “good.” I trust the point still holds.

7

But can justice really be defined except in reference to a legal system? Mercy is an emotional response to suffering. Justice is an intellectual concept designed to allow civilized society to function. Justice is blind, right? Being blind, it (she) is immune to the temptation of mercy.

8

What determines what God says?

And justice is then fundamentally knowable. There’s no reason God would have to be consistent: He could contradict what He said earlier, and make just things unjust and vice versa.

Why do we even need the concept of “justice” if it’s the same as what God says? Why not just say “the Will of God”?

And praising God because He’s just then becomes completely circular.

[sigh] I don’t think that stance works at all. It’s interesting to think about, at least.

9

I don’t think that justice is synonomous with legalism. Legalism is just an imperfect method for trying to administer justice. Slavery was legal. It was not just. When legalism fails, mercy can be used to override legalism and still administer justice.

10

DTC: I didn’t mean to imply that whatever is legal is just. But if this is a thread to discuss whether justice is religious based or not, then I’ll bow out. And I assume TVAA is arguing the God angle rhetorically, not out of actual belief.

11

I don’t think Justice has to be religiously based. It can be discussed as a conceptual ideal like “goodness” or “truth.” Perfect justice is something that is strived for by humans and legalism and mercy both function as methods for acheiving it or at least getting closer to it.

12

Okay, so what is it?

Surely we have something in mind for what Justice is… what its defining properties are.

If not, what’s the point of talking about it? We can invent a name for a category, give it one property, and never do anything with it, but that’s just pointless.

I agree that legalism is an imperfect attempt at justice at best. When I used the word “law”, I meant it in the sense of a law of physics – a description of an inherent property of the universe.

Perfect justice can have no mercy, because it can’t make any exceptions, and the idea of mercy centers around exceptions or intercessions. “Heaven and earth are not humane”, and all that.

13

Mercy is just an exception to legalism not to justice. I think maybe you’re using the qualifier of “perfect” mercy when you really mean absolute mercy. Perfect mercy would be mercy which is perfectly applied. That is, it would be a compassionate forbearance of legalism whenever such compassion is justified. Forbearance of all legalism regardless of circumstances would not be perfect because it would not be perfectly justified.

Conversely, perfect justice would be impossible without mercy because legalism, as a human construct, cannot be perfect.

14

I admit, I’m referencing a commonly-made religious claim that God is both perfectly just and perfectly merciful (that terminology is generally used).

You bring up an excellent point, Diogenes. I’ll have to think about that for a while.

15

Well, as a starting point, we can define justice as “Rendering unto each that which he is due”, or more simply, “Giving each his due”.

16

Generally where some Christians trip on the infinite justice/infinite mercy thing is that they insist that everyone justly deserves to go to hell, even those who have accepted Jesus, but God is merciful by not giving them what they deserve. Which puts God in a situation when a person should justly be punished, but is not.

17

So how do we determine what someone is due? And if we’re generous (giving someone more than their due), doesn’t that mean we’re being unjust?

That’s an excellent example, Gaudere. That’s more-or-less what mercy is – refraining from punishment or intercession to prevent suffering.

18

Well, I said that’s the hard part… :wink:

Pretty much, yup.

Well, whether it works or not depends on the individual, I reckon. I was answering in the sense of explaining the way theologians have traditionally explained it.

It’s very counterintuitive for 21st-century people. We have it beaten into our heads that you have to think for yourself, that you have to follow your conscience, that you have to sort it out for yourself. All of which is also a part of theistic religions’ traditions, but there is also a belief that “good” “evil” “just” and “unjust” are defined by their congruence with God’s nature (which is unchanging); the just way of doing X means doing it the way God does it.

How do we know the way God does it? We don’t, always. There is scripture, there is the Holy Spirit, there is an institutional church established and preserved by God, and they all give the principles, some of the rules, and guidance. You work out the rest on your own. For fundamentalists, what amounts to “the rest,” is of course, a short list. For liberals, a longer one.

19

Can mercy be seen as included within the notion of justice? In other words, Justice could be defined as doing what is right, fair, equitable, etc., and this usually means following established laws. There are certain cases, however, which are either not covered by existing law or else have extenuating circumstances such that a strict application of the law would, in and of itself, be unjust. In these cases – and only in these cases – mercy comes into play to set aside the law.

Of course, from a Christian point of view, “infinite mercy” simply means that Jesus took upon himself all our sins, thereby providing all lawbreakers with a “get out of jail free” card if they simply accept Jesus into their hearts and/or do what he requires of them. In this scenario, justice is served by proxy. The punishment is still meted out, but somebody else suffered it anticipatorily (I’m hoping that’s the opposite of “retroactively”) in our place.

Barry

20

Yes, but what is the “law” that defines what is just? By definition, there can be no extenuating circumstances for that law.