The first chapter explores Christopher Marshall’s compassionate Jesus through Luke 15:11–32. More than a decade ago Marshall established his approach with Beyond Retribution in which justice is rehabilitated as one of the Scripture’s central themes. For Marshall, the promotion of justice is primarily understood as a restorative activity.37 Particularly in the Australian context, Marshall’s dual roles as biblical scholar and restorative justice practitioner should not be overlooked. Australia boasts some of the world’s best restorative justice researchers.38 Australia has also demonstrated early, best practice of restorative justice to the world.39 Drawing together practice and principles has been a key concern for the restorative justice movement during the last decade.40 With “one foot in the academy” and “one foot in the justice system,” Marshall has been attentive to both principle and practice, which is demonstrated throughout his most recent work, Compassionate Justice.41 Marshall’s conclusion to his earlier studies is the perfect introduction to his view of justice through an extended engagement with Luke 15:11–32: “according to the witness of the New Testament, the basic principle of the moral order is not the perfect balance of deed and desert but redeeming, merciful love.”42
The second chapter examines John Howard Yoder’s nonviolent Jesus through his teaching on enemy-love (Luke 6:27–45). He proposes a more imaginative way of Christian discipleship than retaliation, particularly for victims. Respect for the victim and their needs coupled with the crucial place of forgiveness are some of the more contentious issues in the theory and practice of contemporary restorative justice. Therapeutic analysis and tools have deepened our society’s capacity to name wrongdoing. They have also empowered victims to tell their story in order to be heard by wrongdoers and sympathisers. While the public naming of wrongdoing has regrettably fed the media and political obsession with shaming wrongdoers, the witness of theological traditions has persuaded some victims that forgiveness is a necessary step toward healing and reconciliation. Tragically, faith-based approaches can and have been misused to pressure victims into offering forgiveness prematurely or, perhaps worse, to forgive superficially. The tension between naming a wrong and forgiving a wrongdoer suggests a justice that renounces retaliation. This justice is consistently taught and practiced by the nonviolent Jesus.
Dietrich Bonheoffer’s Jesus for others corrects a recent misunderstanding of Jesus’ death: Jesus died not only by his enemies but for his enemies. Luke’s dramatic account of Jesus’ death by and for his enemies (Luke 23:26–49) records Jesus’ conversation with two wrongdoers and affirms the priority of self-donation, instead of self-interest, when Christian disciples are wrongdoers.43 It commends justice with repentance. The following testimony, drawn from a person who remains in prison for their crimes, highlights the need for wrongdoers to take responsibility for their actions.
At the start of the legal process on my arrest, denying guilt was a practical necessity as I was facing trial and in our system of law and criminal justice it is for the Crown to prove its case and everyone is entitled to a defence as a matter of law and fairness . . . However, when I returned to the documents of the bombing-murder conviction in 1997 with the idea of a fresh evidence appeal, I found that a picture emerged that was not as rosy as the one that had grown in my mind in the ten years up to that point. Put simply I really did not like what I saw about myself in those documents . . . I knew that I had to move on from the person I was in the past and to do that I needed to act in a more responsible way and stop fighting the conviction, but it took sometime for me to admit that to myself, and even longer to admit it to others.44
This wrongdoer describes the change that took place as an “epiphany.” Through this process the convicted man truthfully remembered his wrongdoing and truly repented by taking responsibility for it. Bonhoeffer’s understanding of Jesus’ death for others is essential for justice with true repentance and forgiveness.
The fourth chapter survey Miroslav Volf’s image of an embracing Jesus based on Saul’s Damascus road encounter with the risen Jesus’ (Acts 9:1–31). It is a story of reconciliation between victim (Jesus) and wrongdoer (Saul). Reconciliation is based on the wrongdoer remembering their wrongdoing truthfully by accepting responsibility for it.45 Reconciliation is also based on the testimony of the victim. There is respect for both the wrongdoer and the victim. For lasting reconciliation to be achieved the truth must be named with a desire to forgive. Such forgiveness invariably costs something for the victim. Wrongdoing must be named truthfully before it can be forgiven. Such naming is usually costly for wrongdoers. Reconciliation cannot be achieved, therefore, unless naming and forgiving are held together. But does the holding together of the naming and forgiving of wrongs offer a faithful interpretation of Saul’s encounter with the risen Jesus? The role of Ananias—on behalf of the Christian community in Damascus—emphasizes the embodied nature of Christian discipleship. The embracing Jesus insists on justice with repair. Ignoring the need for repair and restitution is to ignore a critical obligation of justice-making in social relationships. Saul’s Damascus Road encounter contains the vital elements of conversion, call and reconciliation. But it is more than each or any of these. To ignore the risen Jesus’ instruction to Saul that he must continue on to Damascus where he will be told “what he must do” neglects a significant aspect of justice and leaves the observer with a diminished reconciliation. This is what Bonhoeffer might have described as “cheap” reconciliation.
Following the restorative Christ: justice without retaliation but justice with reconciliation, repentance and repair
Biblical justice, sometimes interpreted as shalom, has been a significant element in the emerging movement of restorative justice. Rarely do these adequately account for the great diversity within Scriptural perspectives on justice, however, that are inherent in the crucial distinction between the semantic domains of justice and righteousness. The restorative justice movement appears to prefer the Scriptural witness to hqFdFc; as relational and social justice (“delivering, community-restoring justice”) while re-interpreting classic definitions of dikaiosu&nh (“righteousness, forensic justice”) to suit its priorities. In his extensive survey of the semantic domains, Marshall gives the definition of dikaiosu&nh as “God’s justice as a redemptive power that breaks into situations of oppression or need in order to put right what is wrong and restore relationships to their proper condition.”46 Notably, the formative studies in restorative justice literature were inspired by the Hebrew Scriptures, particularly the Prophets, which call for the actual practice of justice, and not merely the articulation of a concept of justice.47 Oft-cited examples of such holistic appeals include “hold fast to justice” (Hosea 12:6), “establish justice” (Amos 5:15), “do justice” (Micah 6:8) and the prophet Isaiah’s vision of the proper worship of God as the enacting of justice.48 Theological contributions to restorative justice have depended lagely on Hebrew notions and, until the recent works of Marshall and, Myers and Enns, have offered little more than passing engagement with the Gospels and the Pauline letters.49
The justice of the Restorative Christ
The focus of this book is the restorative Christ. Misunderstandings about restorative justice abound, particularly in Christian circles where some are concerned that restorative