Step one: to prevent further violence and aggression, the wrongdoer might be excluded for a period of time, or in extreme cases, reported to the police.
Step two: listen to the stories of the various stakeholders to understand their interpretation of what had occurred.
Step three: name the wrongdoing (a moral verdict) while acknowledging this is always a fraught undertaking containing the possibility that further injustice might be done.
Step four: impose a sanction (such as a ban) on the person who has been aggressive and violent.
Step five: enable those who were labelled as “victims” and “wrongdoers” to reconnect with the community after the sanction. (This step, in my experience, is usually more important than the ban itself. The community’s commitment to both justice and reconciliation was commonly referred to as “forgiveness-with-accountability”).
Step six: require an act of deliberate repentance by the wrongdoer, with a renewed commitment to abide by the values of the community.
Step seven: bring reconciliation to the whole community by considering who needs or deserves an apology. An apology may be due to the victim, the volunteer or the entire community (some circumstances demand a public apology).
Step eight: continue the process of restoring relationships between individuals within the wider web of relationships that is the community’s life.
The eight steps just outlined are immediately recognizable to those readers familiar with either the theory or the practice of restorative justice. Other readers are rightly concerned that I have skipped ahead to describing a process for justice without first defining what is meant by justice.
What kind of justice?
From the discussion so far it is clear that some attempt must be made to reconcile, or adjudicate between, the many competing versions of justice. Community stability dictates that justice cannot simultaneously be one thing and many things. The abusive person in the community centre cannot avoid facing the demands of justice, regardless of whether it is the rough justice of the streets, the judicial justice of the courts, the therapeutic justice of the social workers or the restorative justice of the Christian community. However, to be subjected serially or simultaneously to differing justice systems would be manifestly unjust. But does this mean that justice must be reduced to a single and comprehensive ideal before it can be done at all? If so, whose version of justice ought to prevail in such a situation?
In a dominant culture, the justice of those with status, wealth and education prevails. In a therapeutic culture, the justice of expressive and articulate victims prevails. In a street culture, the justice of those with physical strength and fearlessness prevails. In a judicial culture, the justice of reasoned logic and adversarial discourse prevails. Plainly, versions of justice are as diverse as human culture itself. What place, then, do Christian conceptions of justice occupy? Are they just another rival version of justice? Three conceptions of justice, identified by Yale theologian Miroslav Volf, assist in answering this question. The first is the universalist claim that there is only one justice. The second is the pluralist concession that justice bears many names. The third is the practical acceptance that justice can only be understood and enacted within a specific interpretative tradition.2 I will deal with the strengths and shortcomings of each conception before placing justice within the interpretative tradition of Christian theology and practice and dealing with the consequences of doing so.
Justice: the one, comprehensive ideal
Historically, there is no shortage of idealised accounts of justice. They can be traced back to the ancient world. While Plato pointed out in The Republic that Socrates was unwilling to define justice, Aristotle readily defined justice as “treating equals equally and unequals unequally, but in proportion to their relevant differences.”3 This approach has influenced most subsequent theories of justice.4 Aristotle’s distinction between corrective justice (based on arithmetic equality) and distributive justice (based on geometric equality), still informs most contemporary discussions. But we soon encounter the problem of recognising and resolving the tension between “conflicting demands of distributive and commutative justice.”5 The tension stems from the desire to persist with a single, integrated and comprehensive view of justice that applies to all people and for all time. It is a virtual “utopia located nowhere or a philosophical ideal applicable everywhere.”6 This presupposition is evident in all the major accounts of justice prior to and including John Rawls’ magisterial work A Theory of Justice, published in 1971.7 Thirty years after it first appeared, during which seismic shifts in the study of epistemology had taken place, Rawls recognized that he needed to deal with the increasingly pressing issue of pluralism. His deliberations were published as Justice as Fairness: A Restatement.8 Rawl’s shift from a single conception of justice to competing and contrasting ideals of justice has preoccupied a generation of scholars and practitioners.9 Thus, we need to ask: is justice necessarily situational and, perhaps, inevitably contingent?
Justice: has many names in many contexts
The shift in Rawls’ approach has led to the widespread recognition that any exploration of justice must acknowledge a plurality of notions and ideals. As a result, singular definitions of justice have become rival accounts. The American ethicist Karen Lebacqz has identified six approaches to justice that have influenced each other in a number of ways.10 Rawls’ project was not merely to provide an alternative view to Mill’s utilitarianism. He wanted to replace it. Similarly, Princeton political philosopher Michael Walzer’s Spheres of Justice sought to surplant Rawls’ view by demonstrating that “justice is a human construction, and it is doubtful that it can be made in only one way.”11 Walzer’s project is one of the more influential accounts of the essential plurality of justice. He notes that there is a big difference between plurality and relativism. Those advocating for the plurality of justice believe there can be freedom from the domination of the powerful.12 Economic and social power can be properly contained within its own sphere of justice. The judicial justice of the police and the courts, the rough justice of the streets and the backrooms, and the restoring justice of the Christian community could be considered to be three of the many “spheres” (according to Walzer) of justice accommodated in public life. The French philosopher Paul Ricoeur poses a more basic question: “how do we find agreement and make judgments without resorting to violence?”13 If justice itself bears many names, the act of judging becomes a contemporary “dilemma” identified by the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor simply because we do not have ways of judging between its “worlds.”14 The possibility of taking a stand in the name of justice is diminished by plurality and relativism. Ricoeur maintains the act of judging must “put an end to a virtually endless deliberation.”15 The “secular age” does not, however, provide sufficient grounds for judging. In fact, if Taylor is correct, non-religious grounds for thinking and acting actually distance us from injustice. Consequently, we do not have to judge.16 The Australian philosopher John Passmore critiques Western liberal democracy’s “ability to