The kingdom of God, no.5

In my last email, the kingdom of God, no.4, I ended with this pleasantly shocking statement from Billy Graham: "I can no longer proclaim the Cross and the Resurrection without proclaiming the whole message of the kingdom which is justice for all."  At the time that Billy Graham wrote this article in Transformation (1989), it was not common that evangelical leaders defined the kingdom of God as justice for all, nor that the kingdom as justice was put on a theological par with the cross and resurrection.  But Graham never explained what caused him to take this new theological position; he did not ever refer to a single scripture verse to back up his statement.  This is pure speculation on my part, but possibly Graham had read Mt. 6:33 in the New English Bible; it reads: "Seek first God's kingdom and his justice. . . ."

A professional Bible translator, Steven Voth, has documented how flawed English translations of the NT are in terms of justice.(The Challenge of Bible Translation, chapter 14 entitled "Justice and/or Righteousness.")  In Spanish, French and Latin translations of the NT, justice occurs around 100 times; in the English NIV, only 16 times.  But then, strangely, Voth uses an OT analysis of sedeq to make his point.  I wish he would have discussed the difference that translating dikaiosune in the Sermon on the Mount as justice (See Joseph Grassi, Informing the Future and my article on Rejusticizing the Sermon on the Mount) instead of righteousness would have made or how we would interpret Romans if translators would have created an injustice/justice axis instead of an unrighteousness/righteousness axis.

The English speaking Christian world generally has a shallow understanding of biblical justice.  Why?  In the KJV, the word justice never occurs in the NT and rarely in the OT.  So for centuries English speaking Christians read a Bible that said little about justice.  The KJV translators mistranslated the Hebrew word mishpat about 100 times; they translated mishpat as justice only once whereas the RSV or NIV translators translated it justice about 100 times.  In the KJV, the famous verse from Amos 5:24 reads: 'Let judgment run down as water. . . . " whereas in the NIV it reads: "Let justice roll on like a river. . . . "  In fairness to the KJV translators, mishpat means both judgment and justice.

So the KJV readers read much about individual righteousness, but little about social justice or Jubilee justice.  Both evangelical theology and practice reflect an overly individualized gospel devoid of a strong social justice emphasis.  The Hebrews, however, thought holistically; individual righteousness and social justice went together like Siamese twins.  They could not be separated and live (See Job 1:1 and 29:7-17).  But much of Western Christian thought compartmentalizes life, thinking that a person can be individually righteous through Jesus Christ even if one remains uninvolved in doing justice.  Not a biblical option.

When it comes to the NT, something similar occurred.  Most English translators have translated the Greek word dikaiosune as righteousness even though a growing number of scholars such as Joseph Grassi, Timothy Keller, Ken Wytsma, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Howard Snyder, Graham Cray and David Bosch insist that dikaiosune means both justice and righteousness or justice/righteousness.

There is one major English translation that captures the strong justice meaning of dikaiosune---the New English Bible translated by British scholars.  In the NEB, Mt. 6:33 refers to "God's kingdom and his justice"  In Romans 14:17. the NEB reads: "The kingdom of God . . .is justice."  Graham Cray in his article in Transformation (1988) entitled, "A Theology of the Kingdom," translated Mt. 5:6 as "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice."  And Mt. 5:10.  Cray comments:  "Much of this is entirely lost to readers of the English Bible, because of the false separation made between righteousness and justice, and because dikaiosune is consistently translated 'righteousness' in English translations, whereas in the Septuagint [Greek translation of the Hebrew OT] it was often used to translate justice."  In summary, Cray states that the agenda of the kingdom of God on earth is justice and the dynamic of the kingdom is the Holy Spirit.