A problem that threatens to divide contemporary evangelicalism is that of social justice. The evangelical debate is between parties who agree about the Christian’s responsibility to aid the poor and needy. Their clash involves conflicting answers to several separate questions. What is justice? Is the Christian’s undisputed obligation to demonstrate love for the needy an integral part of justice? Or is the confusion of love and justice a conceptual muddle without biblical warrant that threatens society with great mischief? Does the Christian’s social responsibility obligate him, as many evangelicals are now claiming, to adopt as his means the political system commonly referred to as “liberalism”? Are liberal social programs really the most effective means to aid the poor or are they, more often than not, counter-productive? Most evangelicals who are politically liberal believe it is impossible to be both a biblical, spiritual Christian and a political conservative.
A variety of factors complicates the social, political, and economic disagreements among contemporary evangelicals. First, few Christians, whatever their political persuasion, have made the effort to study the foundational issues that underlie the problem of justice. Basic concepts like freedom and the state are usually left unexamined, as are the details of the conflict between socialism and a market economy. Anyone wishing to deal adequately with the problem of social justice is forced either to begin with a lengthy treatise on the foundational issues or trust that the sincere reader will seek out for himself the relevant literature already available. Unfortunately, many who have attempted to present “the” evangelical view of social justice have failed to do the necessary homework.
Secondly, the evangelical liberals who write most frequently about social and political issues are ignorant of the major publications of mainstream conservatism. The very slogans they use against “Capitalism” betray their unacquaintance with major economic works like Ludwig Von Mises’s Human Action (Yale, 1949). Other books, indispensable to any fair appraisal of contemporary conservatism, include: George Nash’s The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (Basic Books, 1976), James Burnham’s The Suicide of the West (Arlington House, 1970), M. Stanton Evans’s Clear and Present Dangers (Harcourt, 1975), and two books by the late Frank Meyer, What Is Conservatism? (Holt, 1964) and In Defense of Freedom (Regnery, 1962).
Most recent evangelical publications on the subject have maintained that the demands of social justice bind the Christian to the means of political liberalism. This assertion is supplemented by allegations that because political conservatism lacks compassion for the poor and fails to support programs to alleviate poverty, hunger, and need, it is an unacceptable option for the evangelical. Previous statements of this claim raise questions about the evangelical liberal’s grasp of the complex social, political, and economic foundations of justice as well as the fairness of his treatment of the conservative alternative. The argument that follows suggests that the liberal evangelical is often inattentive to important distinctions in the notion of justice, that he fails to see how his claims draw him into an unavoidable and mischievous dependence upon a coercive state, that many of his programs to help the poor end up, because of his poor grasp of economics, being self-defeating, and thus his interpretation of Scripture’s teaching about justice is confused.
What is distributive justice? Three kinds of justice have traditionally been distinguished. First, interpersonal relations involving economic exchanges raise questions of commercial justice. When people exchange goods and services, questions arise as to whether the exchange is fair or the compensation just. Passages of Scripture like Leviticus 19:36 and Proverbs 16:11 that oblige merchants to have just scales and weights seem directed to this type of justice. Secondly, instances where some wrong must be made right under either criminal or civil law are occasions for remedial justice.Exodus 23:3–6 is one of several biblical passages that speak to such issues. Finally, questions about distributive justice arise in situations where some good or some burden is to be apportioned among human beings. Such situations are encountered frequently. Imagine, for example, a parent who must decide how to divide a pie among a large family. Or consider the case of a man preparing his will who must decide how to divide his estate among several prospective heirs.
The cited examples of distributive justice have certain features in common. They are controlled situations in the sense that they are fairly limited in size and scope. The distributors have some legitimate claim to that which they are distributing and can usually, at least in principle, obtain the relevant information needed to come to a decision. For example, the parent about to divide the pie can ask how hungry everyone is. In such controlled everyday situations, the concept of distributive justice makes perfectly good sense. However, most of the contemporary concern about social justice pertains to situations where the benefits (like appointed offices, honors, or welfare payments) or the burdens (like taxes) are distributed by the state among the members of a huge and complex society. Many liberals also insist that the vast disparities in income and wealth that exist in a society like ours are a legitimate subject in discussions about distributive justice. A massive leap is required to get from the limited and controlled situations where considerations of distributive justice are obviously relevant to the unlimited and spontaneous situations found in society as a whole. In limited situations, justice is possible because the distributor usually has access to the information he needs to make his decisions. But when the context becomes as broad as an entire society, no one person or central authority can ever attain sufficient knowledge about the millions of individuals and the incalculable number of decisions, actions, and exchanges that have brought them to their present holdings. The more complex a society, the less likely it is that any one person or central agency can possess all the essential information.
Furthermore, the attempt to apply distributive schemes of justice to society as a whole rests upon several misleading analogies. When the whole of society is in view, “we are not in the position of children who have been given portions of pie by someone who now makes last minute adjustments to rectify careless cutting. There is no central distribution, no person or group entitled to control all the resources, jointly deciding how they are to be doled out. What each person gets, he gets from others who give to him in exchange for something, or as a gift. In a free society, diverse persons control different resources, and new holdings arise out of the voluntary exchanges and actions of persons.… The total result is the product of many individual decisions which the different individuals involved are entitled to make” (Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, Basic Books, 1974, pp. 149–150). The concept of social justice simply is not applicable to the consequences of a spontaneous, uncontrolled process like a free market.
Social justice, as viewed by the liberal, is possible only in a society that is controlled from the top down. There must be a central agency with the power to force people to accept the liberal’s preferred pattern of distribution. And because people’s normal desires will lead them to economic exchanges that will upset any original pattern, the pattern can only be preserved by continuous interference by the state with the lives of its citizens. If social justice is to have any meaning, any factors that might contribute to spontaneous deviations from the desired pattern must be eliminated.
Distributive Justice And The State
When a political liberal talks about distributive justice on a societal level, he usually has three things in mind. First, he believes the present distribution of goods and burdens is unjust because it fails to measure up to his preconceived pattern. Secondly, he believes the present spread must be redistributed to match better his criterion. And finally, this required redistribution cannot be voluntary. Because the more privileged members of society will not willingly part with their greater share, the liberal wants the state to be authorized to take by force whatever the central authority believes necessary to meet the requirements of “justice.” That this appropriation is normally effected through taxation does not alter the fact that it is an act of force.
Liberal devotees of social justice fail to recognize how their theory enslaves them to the state. They overlook the massive threat the institution of the state poses to human liberty and values. Those who profit from the power of the state have done a good job of passing the state off as a benevolent friend ready to help in every time of need. The state, they affirm, is simply an extension of our own corporate desires. But the state is not coextensive with the people. The state is that much smaller group that runs the society and forces the others to obey. It is an institution of coercion. The force it uses may be blatant as in the case of armies, prisons, or firing squads; or it may be applied more subtly in the form of threats. But wherever the state exists, one will also find coercion. In fact, one thing that distinguishes the state from other institutions within society that use force (like the Mafia) is the total monopoly on force demanded by the state. The state cannot tolerate any competing agency of force within its territory. Because of its monopoly on the use of coercive power within its territory, the state can engage in actions that, if committed by a private citizen, would be deemed criminal. In the words of Albert Jay Nock, the state “forbids private murder, but itself organizes murder on a colossal scale. It punishes private theft, but itself lays unscrupulous hands on anything it wants.…” Given the state’s monopoly on power and its propensity to misuse that power as an aggressor against human rights and an enslaver of human persons, one might legitimately wonder if the state has a moral right to exist.
Another attack upon the moral legitimacy of the state comes from those who question the morality of the means by which the state acquires the wealth that supports its power. The vast majority of people in society acquire what wealth they have by first producing something and then exchanging voluntarily with others. This peaceful means of free exchange is the basis of our society. But there is another way of acquiring wealth, by force and violence. In this second way, people who themselves do not produce anything simply appropriate whatever they can from those who have produced. Thieves acquire their wealth in this second way; so does the state. The state can exist only because it functions as a parasite upon the productive segment of society. Instead of producing, it preys upon those who do produce.
Questions about the legitimacy of the state are not necessarily intended to repudiate the need for social order in favor of social chaos. One result of the prevailing statism of our age is the inability of many to see how a large number of functions that have been surrendered to state control could be provided by voluntary, non-statist institutions. However, as evil as the institution of the state may be, it is frequently a necessary evil under the conditions that prevail on this planet. The undeniable need for internal security against criminal activity and for national defense against foreign enemies cannot be met by voluntary institutions and contributions. Nor is the provision of security the only legitimate function of the state. (See, for example, Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom, University of Chicago, 1962, p. 34.) The existence of a minimal state is clearly justified. But if the powers of that minimal state are to be expanded, the burden of proof should rest on the shoulders of the statist. As Oscar Cullmann has demonstrated, that proof cannot come from the New Testament (see Cullmann’s The State in the New Testament, Scribner, 1956).
Political liberalism, whether practiced by a secularist or by an evangelical, involves more than a commitment to certain ends like assistance to the needy. It requires advocacy of a particular means to those ends, namely, using the full force of the state to attain his goals. Christian political liberals want the state to use its vast powers of coercion to force everyone in society to help attain the Christian’s ends. Is it not possible to see the spectre of the Inquisition lurking in the background? No Christian, I trust, favors compulsion in bringing people to theological commitment. But is voluntarism any less essential to social virtue?
The liberal assumes that his promotion of social justice simply means the addition of a new moral value to those known in the past. He believes this new moral value “can be fitted within the existing framework of moral rules. What is not sufficiently recognized is that in order to give the phrase [social justice] meaning a complete change of the whole character of the social order will have to be effected, and that some of the values which used to govern it will have to be sacrificed.” Friedrich Hayek, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, fears that “like most attempts to pursue an unattainable goal, the striving for [social justice] will also produce highly undesirable consequences, and in particular lead to the destruction of the indispensable environment in which the traditional moral values alone can flourish, namely personal freedom” (F. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, University of Chicago, 1976, II, p. 67).
The necessary role of the state in all schemes of distributive justice has obvious implications for the relationship between justice and love. In fact, it should now be clear that justice and love must not be confused. By its very nature, the state is an institution of coercion; it must operate through the use of force. Furthermore, if the state is to appear just, it must function impersonally. Not to act impersonally would be to discriminate among persons. Justice then can only be effected through a state which uses force dispensed impersonally in accordance with law. But this analysis of justice conflicts at every point with the nature of love. Love, by definition, must be given voluntarily; no one can be forced to love. Moreover, love always discriminates; it is always personal (directed at specific individuals). And finally, love should be willing to sacrifice, to go beyond the ordinary moral and legal requirements of a situation. A necessarily coercive state cannot serve as an instrument of love. The state’s required use of force is logically incompatible with the nature and demands of love. As soon as the coercive state enters the picture, love must leave. When the evangelical liberal confuses love with justice, he is doing more than simply urging others in his society to manifest a compassionate love for the needy. He is in effect demanding that the state get out its weapons and force people to fulfill the demands of love. And how does the state do this? The state does this by becoming an institutionalized Robin Hood. The mythical Robin Hood is admired because he only stole from thieves (agents of the state). The Robin Hood state steals primarily from innocent individuals whose only crime was some measure of success or good fortune in life.
Justice And The Market
While the necessary ally of all liberal theories of justice is the state, their avowed enemy is “Capitalism.” Israel Kirzner observes, “One of the most intriguing paradoxes surrounding modern capitalism is the hate, the fear, and the contempt with which it is commonly regarded.” Capitalism is blamed for every evil in contemporary society including its greed, materialism and selfishness, the prevalence of fraudulent behavior, the debasement of society’s tastes, the pollution of the environment, the alienation and despair within society, and the vast disparities in wealth. Even racism and sexism are treated as necessary effects of capitalism. With such an easily identifiable cause of society’s ills, it is little wonder the liberal has such an easy solution, the replacement of capitalism by a “just economic system,” a euphemism for some type of centrally controlled economy.
Perhaps the first step to any fair discussion of the economic dimensions of the problem of justice is the abandonment of the term “capitalism.” “As coined and circulated by Marxism, the term has retained up to the present so much of its hate-filled significance and class-struggle overtones that its usefulness for the purpose of scientific discussion has become extremely questionable. In addition, it provides us with only a very vague notion of the real essence of our economic system. Instead of promoting understanding, it merely arouses the emotions and obscures the truth” (Wilhelm Röpke, Economics of the Free Society, Regnery, 1960, p. 259). We shall talk instead of the “market,” by which we mean an economic system in which goods and services are exchanged voluntarily. A market economy begins by assuming a system of human rights such as the right to make decisions and the right to hold and exchange property. The things people freely exchange on the market are things to which they must have had prior rights. The market requires a minimal state whose function is the protection of the rights that constitute the background of the market. People should be protected from fraud, misrepresentation, violence, theft, and other criminal acts.
The questions of distributive justice could never arise apart from some economic system within which scarce goods can be acquired and exchanged. The economic system produces the pie but not the criteria that determine the most just division of the pie. Since economics is a value-free discipline, economic systems themselves cannot provide the criteria of a just distribution. The market does not presume to place any value on human choices. That is the task of moral philosophy and theology, which serve as indispensable helpmates for economics. The market provides incentives for people to produce and makes it possible for them to transfer and exchange their holdings. What transpires in the market will be as moral or immoral as the human beings active in the market. The moral criteria that judge those actions and their consequences must come from some discipline other than economics. Because the market itself is amoral and does not supply the moral standards to evaluate what transpires within the system, it is a mistake to confuse economic merit with moral merit. There may be good economic reasons for paying a skilled baseball player twenty times as much as a dedicated missionary even though the missionary may be more deserving in a moral sense. Because many people are offended by the fact that someone less deserving in a moral sense is worth more economically, they believe steps should be taken to alter the situation through statist action. It is worth noting that there never seem to be enough people who are willing to alter the situation economically, for example, by paying more to hear the missionary preach than they will to watch the athlete perform.
The socialist attempt to apply moral principles to economic activities leads to a moral and economic desert. The same error is made by the evangelical liberal who wishes to replace the market where value depends upon supply and demand with a socio-economic system that ignores economic values and rewards moral merit. It is not difficult to organize dissatisfaction with the actual distribution of the market. It is natural to feel moral outrage at the prosperity of the wicked; it is easy to feel envy at the prosperity of the righteous. As long as some have more than others, it is natural for discontent to arise among those with less. But the liberal errs if he thinks statist intervention with the market will guarantee the primacy of moral merit. Once the distribution is placed in the hands of the state, it is highly likely that moral merit will once again be reduced to second place while the major shares go to reward political merit, as in Marxist countries. The attempt to alleviate the disparities resulting from the market’s reward of economic merit could lead to a highly discriminatory and politically biased distribution that is just as much in conflict with a moral perspective. Instead of being rewarded for economic contributions or for moral merit, a person will be rewarded for service to the state.
The system of economic exchanges found in the market is analogous to a kind of game. During the course of a game, much can be done to insure that the conduct of the players will be just. The rules can be announced and enforced by impartial officials. But beyond seeing that the game is played fairly, nothing in the nature of justice permits any tinkering with the final score, nothing can be done to guarantee a “just” result, that is, a score that is morally satisfying to the spectator. One might feel that because one of the teams has lost fifty straight times that it “deserves” to win. But any cheating on the part of the players or favoritism on the part of the umpires that would help realize the “morally preferable” outcome would be unjust. Once the rules have been agreed upon in advance of play, any violation of those rules is an injustice. And if the game is played according to the rules, no one can complain that the final score was unjust. The liberal’s confusion of economic and moral merit leads him to want to “fix” the final score.
While the analogy between the market and a game serves a useful purpose, it should not be pushed too far. In the case of games, today’s score seldom affects tomorrow’s play. If the Cincinnati Reds beat the Dodgers 21-0 today, they both begin tomorrow’s game dead even. Regrettably, the economic game does not work that way. The economic game, in a sense, seldom ends and often those who have lost remain losers indefinitely; and their losses may affect the ability of their offspring to play the game in the future. To be sure, proponents of the welfare state overplay this problem and ignore the countless thousands who have used the freedom and opportunity of the market to succeed in spite of great handicaps. But what if the market, in spite of the advantages it has brought to the poor of past generations, is incapable of relieving all poverty and need? Should those unable to help themselves be allowed to suffer? Of course not. Friedrich Hayek, an outspoken critic of all forms of statism, insists, “There is no reason why in a free society government should not assure to all protection against severe deprivation in the form of an assured minimum income, or a floor below which nobody need to descend. To enter into such an insurance against extreme misfortune may well be in the interest of all; or it may be felt to be a clear moral duty of all to assist, within the organized community, those who cannot help themselves. As long as such a uniform minimum income is provided outside the market to all those who, for any reason, are unable to earn in the market an adequate maintenance, this need not lead to a restriction of freedom, or conflict with the Rule of Law. The problems with which we are here concerned arise only when the remuneration for services rendered is determined by authority, and the impersonal mechanism of the market which guides the direction of individual efforts is thus suspended” (Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, University of Chicago, 1976, II, p. 87). Similar views are expressed in Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty, Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom, and Wilhelm Röpke’s A Humane Economy. The alleviation of suffering in an affluent society can occur through extramarket means that fall far short of granting the state the added powers liberalism believes it must have. Liberal programs are necessary to the statist, not as a means of aiding the poor, but as a means to his possession of power; and power is what the liberal state is all about. “The principal beneficiaries of the money absorbed and dispensed by government are not poor blacks in ghettos or Appalachian whites or elderly pensioners receiving Social Security checks—the usual figures conjured up when social welfare is discussed. The major beneficiaries, instead, are the employees of government itself—people engaged in administering some real or imagined service to the underprivileged or, as the case may be, the over-privilege.… the gross effect of increased government spending is to transfer money away from relatively low income people—average taxpayers who must pay the bills—to relatively high income people—federal functionaries who are being paid out of the taxpayer’s pocket” (M. Stanton Evans, Clear and Present Dangers, Harcourt, 1975, p. 127). Evans’s book, incidentally, is more than a documentation of these charges. It is a powerful demonstration of the counter-productiveness of liberal social policies, which always seem to do more harm than good to the people they are attempting to aid. As Evans notes further, “the two richest counties in the United States are … Montgomery County, Maryland, Fairfax County, Virginia—principal bedroom counties for federal workers in Washington, D.C.” It pays to serve the poor under the aegis of the liberal state.
Justice And The Bible
The teaching of Scripture about justice is a matter of obvious concern to the Christian. Evangelical liberals have convinced themselves that with or without any support from economic and political theory, the Bible clearly commands a view of justice consistent with the values of political liberalism. Because Scripture repeatedly mentions justice in contexts that also refer to love, to helping the poor, and to providing food for the hungry, it is not difficult for them to present a superficially plausible case for their position. But these appeals to Scripture should be scrutinized very carefully. For example, some such verses refer not to distributive justice but to remedial justice. This is clearly true in the case of Exodus 23:6, which warns against depriving the poor man of justice but makes it obvious that the justice referred to is that found in a court of law. The same chapter (23:3) also warns against showing partiality toward the poor in a court of law.
Most of the confusion present in evangelical attempts to find a theory of distributive justice in the Bible results from inattention to the classical distinction between a universal and particular sense of justice. As Aristotle saw it in Book Five of his Nichomachean Ethics, a man could be said to be just in two quite different senses. The first of these, universal justice, is coextensive with the whole of righteousness, with the whole of virtue. A person would be just (in the universal sense) if he possessed all the proper virtues, if he was moral, if he kept the laws (which Aristotle thought should accord with virtuous behavior). A soldier who runs away from the enemy during a battle is unjust in the universal sense. So too is a husband who is unfaithful to his wife or fails to provide for his family.
This universal sense of justice appears repeatedly throughout Scripture. It is present in Genesis 6:9 where Noah is described as a just man who is perfect in all his ways. In Ezekiel 18:5, the just man is defined as one who does that which is lawful and right. Two verses later, the just man is described as one who gives his bread to the hungry, his clothing to the naked, and who obeys the laws of God. A man is just then in the classical universal sense if he is virtuous, if he keeps the commandments of God, if he is kind and charitable, if he provides for his family, if he helps the poor; in other words, if he manifests the virtues normally associated with a moral or righteous person. The vast majority of biblical allusions to justice appear to be examples of justice in this universal sense (see Jer. 9:24; 2 Sam. 23:3; Prov. 20:7; Isa. 26:7; Ps. 82:3; Mic. 6:8; Job 29:14–17; 2 Cor. 9:8–10; and so forth).
Earlier a distinction was drawn between commercial, remedial, and distributive justice. Aristotle regarded all of these as species of a more particular kind of justice. In the particular sense of the word, a person is unjust if he attempts to take more than he is due, if he grasps after more than his fair share. Injustice in its particular sense arises when equals are treated unequally and also when unequals are treated equally. There is nothing egalitarian about Aristotle’s formula. It clearly justifies unequal treatment in cases where people differ in significant and relevant ways just as it mandates equal treatment for cases that are similar in significant and relevant ways. Left unstated are any criteria as to what should count as relevant bases on which similar or dissimilar treatment should be based. The man who is just in the particular sense will treat others fairly; he will give them their due; he will not be grasping and seek more than he is due. This particular sense of justice can also be found in Scripture as when a merchant, for example, is warned to use honest weights and to treat his customers fairly (Prov. 16:11; Lev. 19:36). The particular sense of justice is also in view in Colossians 4:1 where Paul admonishes slave owners to treat their slaves justly and fairly.
The allusions to Aristotle have been entirely illustrative. They suggest a long and honored tradition that recognizes that the word “justice” can be used in several different senses. There is no reason to believe that any verse in the Bible that conjoins justice with love or aid for the needy is an endorsement of any twentieth-century pattern of distributive justice. Since each verse like this makes perfectly good sense as a reference to virtue or righteousness as a whole, the individual who would make these verses say more must shoulder the burden of proof. The only way the evangelical liberal can begin to find his theory of social justice in Scripture is by confusing biblical pronouncements about a universal sense of justice with the liberal’s particular theory of distributive justice. Because of the nature of universal justice, it is a simple matter to find justice conjoined in Scripture with love, charity, kindness to the poor, and help for the hungry. But it is logically irresponsible to infer from these statements that God endorses the welfare state, or socialism, or any contemporary pattern of distributive justice.
I have declared my unreserved support for the view that a society with sufficient means should attempt to meet the needs of its citizens who cannot care for themselves. I have also argued that this has nothing to do with justice in its particular, distributive sense. If the evangelical liberal and I agree on the need to support the less fortunate, what difference does it make whether we call it justice or something else? It makes a great deal of difference if the attempt to pack such notions into the concept of justice leads to conflicts with other social values, supports an expansion of statist powers, encourages economic interventionism that make it less likely that future generations will produce enough to take care of their needy, and results in social action that is counterproductive and actually harmful to the less fortunate members of society. (For documentation of this last point, see the book by Evans.)
We began by asking several questions. What is justice? We have suggested the word has several functions ranging from its use as a synonym for righteousness to more particular usages in which people receive their due in commercial, remedial, and controlled distributive situations. But does the phrase social justice, as employed by the liberal, have any meaning? That has yet to be shown. Is the Christian’s undisputed obligation to demonstrate love for the needy an integral part of justice? If justice is understood in its universal sense, the answer is yes. But if justice is taken in a particular sense as applying to the spontaneous distributions found in society as a whole, this too has yet to be shown. Does the conjoining of justice and love have biblical warrant? It does only if justice is understood in its universal sense. Is the confusion of love and justice a conceptual muddle that threatens society with great mischief? It certainly looks that way. Does the Christian’s social responsibility obligate him to the means of political liberalism? Based upon the liberal evangelical’s failure to establish his case, we must conclude that it does not.
G. Douglas Young is founder and president of the Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem. He has lived there since 1963.
