You may have heard the phrase before, ‘Old Testament Justice’. It’s not really limited only to the realm of the religious, but beyond, and into the scope of the secular as well. It’s something that denotes a firm and uncompromising hand when it comes to doling out a sentence or a response to criminal misbehavior. It calls to mind an unforgiving and harsh sentence coming from a judge who personifies those aspects. But what’s the proper way to look at justice, and is there room for anything else in determining a just response, whether ‘Old Testament’ or otherwise?
Most people in hearing just the words ‘Old Testament’ get a picture in their minds of a firm law, like the Ten Commandments, where they are as unyielding to anything as the stone they’re written on. It’s a picture of any deviation from the absolute letter of the law resulting in us getting squashed like a bug. It’s a tough environment to live under—one that evokes fear in our hearts and trepidation in our actions. But is that so called, ‘Old Testament Justice’? Is there still not room for mercy and forgiveness? Something, I think, that often gets missed in our ‘black-and-white’ minds is that just because something holds one absolute characteristic it can’t hold any others as well. Something can be wholly itself, while being wholly something else as well. They don’t necessarily lie in contradiction to one another. Instead of either, or; they can be both, and.
But isn’t ‘justice’ justice, regardless? Isn’t justice the same whether you add the modifier, ‘Old Testament’, to it? Maybe the term ‘Old Testament Justice’ is a misnomer, at least in the way most people think of it. What we naturally have in mind when we sometimes witness such a heinous act by another is that a swift, harsh response is best, and what is demanded by the situation. But even in these cases, there is opportunity for reflection and careful thought as to how justice should be carried out. A just response calls for the punishment to fit the crime. A just response calls for more than just an emotional reaction. A just response considers the context and entirety of the situation.
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For there not to be a proper corrective response to a wrong done is, in itself, unjust. But I would say to not involve any consideration for mercy within that justice is not fully just either. It would seem they work in concert. Thomas Aquinas made this statement: “Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution; justice without mercy is cruelty.” So, maybe justice in the ‘Old Testament’ sense wasn’t any different than any other kind of justice. Justice is justice. It can’t change, otherwise it would no longer be just. If you don’t understand the context, you won’t understand the term. You have to look at it in its entirety in order to properly understand it. It colors our understanding of the world, and it colors our understanding of God.