Stranger in a Strange Land

• INTELLECTUM VERO VALDE AMA • Greatly love the intellect

—Augustine

In this space two issues ago [“Thou Shalt Not Take Cheap Shots,” September/October] I wrote about what might be called “rules of engagement” for argument, drawing on an essay by the philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff (“Tertullian’s Enduring Question,” The Cresset, Trinity [June/July] 1999). Here I want to continue on that theme, focusing on a particular kind of argument that is pervasive in American society today. In arguments of this type, there is a claim of injustice and a demand that it be redressed. For example—though readers who have not been in hibernation for the last decade could supply their own examples—in the Chicago Tribune of November 29, 1999, columnist Salim Muwakkil advocated the payment of reparations by the U.S. government to the descendants of slaves. The next day, the front page of the Tribune featured a story about survivors of the siege of Leningrad during World War II, who are now calling for reparations. “People talk so much about survivors of the Nazis,” says Bella Zaltsman, a “Leningrad survivor” now living in Chicago. “And in this, we are not included? Is that justice?”

Of course, these examples represent only one subset of the many varieties of such claims. Recently I was told that Wheaton College (where, I am delighted to say, my daughter began her studies last fall) is under pressure to change its admissions policies. Unlike many colleges (see “Colleges Look for Ways to Reverse a Decline in Enrollment by Men,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 26, 1999), Wheaton has maintained a more or less even balance between men and women. But because far more women than men apply to Wheaton, the admissions bar for women is set much higher. (Many young men enrolled at Wheaton, it could be said, are the beneficiaries of “affirmative action.”) To some of the parents of young women denied admission—and no doubt to some of the applicants themselves—this seems a clear injustice.

There’s no point in enumerating further examples. What’s urgently needed, it seems to me, is a calculated stepping back to reflect on how we think and talk about justice. Ah, more talk! More academic conferences, more dreary, abstruse papers collected in volumes that no one will open. Yes, that’s precisely what the doctor ordered. So some cynic will observe, not entirely without cause. (Cynicism is rarely baseless!) But in answer, we need only point to works such as Miroslav Volf’s Exclusion and Embrace, where the discourse of justice is examined via theological insight, biblical exegesis, and the particularities of current conflicts. What matters is the quality of the talk.

So this column is first and foremost a “call for papers,” for essays on “justice talk.” They may be primarily philosophical or theological or sociological, they may be informed by literature or law or psychology, they may be very broad in their sweep or narrowly focused. They should be readable—readable by civilians—and should not exceed 5000 words.

In the meantime, to get the ball rolling, I will again take some words from Nicholas Wolterstorff as a point of departure. The text is a newspaper report (The Grand Rapids Press, November 13, 1999) of a lecture, “Is There a Place for Justice in Christian Education?”, given by Wolterstorff as the inaugural speaker in Calvin College’s Beversluis Forum. “Securing social justice,” the newspaper article begins, “means there must be a strong emphasis on listening—especially to those on the lower rungs of society, according to Yale University Divinity School Professor Nicholas Wolterstorff.”

Here there’s a clear continuity with the ethics of argument sketched by Wolterstorff in the essay cited above. As the newspaper report tells us,

Asked by sophomore social work student, Joel Filmore, 29, of Chicago, how he reconciled or explained instances of racial prejudice within the Calvin community, Wolterstorff said he considered such incidents a failure. Filmore, a bi-racial student, told Wolterstorff he has experienced a surprising amount of racial prejudice among the college’s students.

“In general, the answer to what you have said is to call it by its name,” Wolterstorff told Filmore. “Recognize it as a failure and then ask what we can do about it.”

What the story doesn’t report is that Wolterstorff also issued a very important caveat: perceived injustice is not necessarily real injustice.

“One of the few subjects on which we all seem to agree,” writes Thomas Sowell in his new book, The Quest for Cosmic Justice (Free Press, 214 pp.; $25), “is the need for justice. But our agreement is only seeming because we mean such different things by the same word.” What the claimants who survived the Leningrad siege want is nothing more or less than recompense for “the undeserved misfortunes arising from the cosmos.” Such “cosmic justice” will never be attainable in this world.