Reading: Nicholas Wolterstorff Ponders the Issue

A contemporary Christian philosopher named Nicolas Wolterstorff has written extensively on the issues facing us in modern ethics. The following is an introduction to his thoughts. -RZ

These are excerpts from an article in the Christian Century entitled “An Interview with Nicolas Wolterstorff”. Retrieved from http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=3533

You have argued that Christians (along with other believers) have every right to make religious arguments in the public sphere--that they don’t need to turn to some neutral, universally rational language before they engage in political debate. Can you explain?

I think it is appropriate in our liberal democracy for Christians, along with adherents of other religions, to make decisions about political issues on the basis of whatever considerations they find true and relevant. I also think it appropriate for them to cite those reasons in public discussions and debates about those political issues. Sometimes, though not always, these reasons will be distinctly religious reasons--Christian, Jewish, whatever. Of course, if you want to persuade your fellow citizens who don’t accept your religious reasons to adopt some policy that you favor, you will have to try to find some reasons that they find compelling.

I don’t agree, then, with the view of many political theorists that when making up our minds about political issues or debating them in public, we have to appeal to some body of principles that we all accept, or would all accept if we did things right. I don’t believe that there is any such body of principles. It’s not that we Americans disagree about everything. But we don’t agree about enough things to settle our basic political issues by reference to a body of agreed-on principles.

How did a Reformed philosopher become passionate about justice?

I became passionate about justice because of two episodes in my life. First, in September 1976 I attended a conference in South Africa at which not only were white Afrikaners present but also black and "colored" (mixed-race) scholars from South Africa. The latter two groups spoke in moving language about the indignities daily heaped upon them and pleaded for justice. I felt that I had been called by God--in the classic Protestant sense of "call"--to speak up in my own way for these wronged people.

Second, in May 1978 I attended a conference on Palestinian rights on the west side of Chicago. About 150 Palestinians were present, most of them Christian. They too poured out their hearts about the indignities heaped upon them and pleaded for justice. Again, I felt that I had been called by God to speak up for these wronged people.

In short, it was hearing the voices and seeing the faces of the wronged that evoked in me a passion for justice. A good deal of my writing since these two episodes has been about justice. I see all of it as my attempt to speak up for the wronged of the world.

The effect of these two episodes has gone beyond my writing, however. I became friends with a rather large number of "coloreds" and blacks from South Africa and of whites in the resistance movement. I have often spoken about South Africa and have returned there a number of times. One of those times was as a character witness in a trial of Allan Boesak. Boesak, along with Bishop Desmond Tutu, was one of the two most important religious leaders of the resistance. He has been a dear friend for 25 years.

I also did a great deal of speaking on the plight of the Palestinians, and I became head of an organization called the Palestine Human Rights Campaign. When the Oslo Agreement was signed, I thought that the day of outsiders making a contribution to peace with justice in the Middle East was over, that it was now in the hands of the Palestinians and the Israelis. That proved to have been a naive conclusion!

Justice is a word we hear invoked in countless situations. Yet deciding what it means to act justly in particular situations (whether it’s a case of affirmative action or the huge global inequalities in living standards) is highly controversial. How can we begin to get clear about what justice is?

As I see it, justice is grounded in rights. A society is just insofar as its members are enjoying those goods to which they have a right--or to put it from the other side, insofar as no one is being wronged. In turn, I understand rights as grounded in worth. You have a right to my treating you a certain way if my failure to do so would be to treat you as having less worth than you do have.

A good number of moral systems do not take the worth of persons into account; they take into account only how well or poorly people’s lives are going. Utilitarianism is an example. The utilitarian says that we should aim at bringing about as much well-being as possible--that is, as much good as possible in people’s lives. Nothing is said about the worth of the persons whose lives those are. The reason I think that the recognition of rights is to be found in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures is that there one finds the worth of human beings affirmed.

So how does one decide what justice requires? How do I decide whether justice requires that I treat a student of mine in a certain way? I ask whether my not treating her that way would amount to treating her as if she had less worth than she does have. If she has written a top-notch paper but I nonetheless give her a mediocre grade, I have wronged her. Of course, it’s not always easy to discern what respect for worth requires. But it’s also not always easy to discern what obligation requires. And so on for all other moral concepts.

Justice is not everything, however. Love never falls short of justice, but often it goes beyond justice. Likewise, to return to politics, the common good goes beyond what justice requires.

I think that the overarching category that Christians should use for thinking about social and political relations is that of shalom. There is no shalom without justice, but shalom goes beyond justice.