THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE PRACTICE OF JUSTICE

Abstract

This paper argues that despite many rich and beautiful theories of justice by great scholars and theorists of justice, a just society and indeed justice in application will continue to be unrealistic unless adjudicators and all other agents of justice kill the spirit of greed and nepotism and allow the Holy Spirit – the spirit of justice, the Spirit of God with which God acts and causes actions in people, to act in them as was the case in the lives of judges, kings, and prophets of Ancient Israel and in the lives of Jesus and his Disciples. It will analyze some theories of justice beginning with Nicholas Wolterstorff’s natural inherent right which maintains that every individual deserves justice as justice is seen as an inherent right based on the fact that one is created in the image of God and loved by God. It will also review John Rawl’s theory of justice as fairness and Michael Walzer’s complex equality. It will go on to appraise Amartya Sen’s comparative social theory of justice as well as Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach. It will link the failure of these theories in practice to the fact that most adjudicators and other agents of justice have allowed greed and nepotism to silence in them the Holy Spirit – the spirit of justice, the Spirit through which God acts and causes actions.