God's Justice

Is God Intrinsically Righteous?

Psalms 99:4. ‘The King’s strength also loves justice; You have established equity;
You have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.’

Based on notes taken at the FIEC [fiec.org.uk] Leaders' Conference, 2023

The question is: justice is clearly an attribute of God, but does He have to be just? Is it intrinsic to His nature?

The question weighed on the minds of theologians down the centuries. For many, the issue bore on the freedom of God. Psalms 115:3. ‘But our God is in heaven. He does whatever He pleases.’ Athanasius, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas all took the view that while God is undoubtedly righteous, He is so purely because He chooses to be. Even after the Reformation, Calvin wrote in his commentary on John 15:13, ‘God could have redeemed us with a word or a wish, save that another way seemed best for our sakes: That by not sparing His own and only-begotten Son, He might testify in His person how much He cares for our salvation. And those hearts must be harder than iron or stone which are not softened by the incomparable sweetness of the divine love.’

The Westminster Confession, whilst it does speak of God as being, ‘infinite in being and perfection’ and of His ‘most righteous will’ (WCF 2:1), does not address God’s intrinsic justice. Indeed, some members of the Westminster Assembly, such as Twisse and Rutherford, opposed the idea. The 1689 Confession adds to the WCF that God’s ‘Essence cannot be comprehended by any but Himself.’

In 1647, in his first major work, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, John Owen agreed with Calvin, ‘The foundation of this whole assertion seems to me to be false and erroneous, namely, that God could not have mercy on mankind unless satisfaction were made by His Son … to assert positively that absolutely and antecedently to His constitution He could not have done it, is to me an unwritten tradition, the Scripture affirming no such thing, neither can it be gathered from thence by any good consequence.’ He went on to argue that for God, the cross was ‘suitable but unnecessary.’

There seem to be two main reasons that brought the young Owen to this conclusion: firstly, the issue of God’s freedom; a Pelagian view based on Psalms 115:3, quoted above, and secondly, the view that we can know God’s legislative and distributive justice, but not His intrinsic character or ‘existential justice.’

However, it did not take long for Owen to change his mind. In 1652, he wrote his Dissertation on Divine Justice, in which he wrote, ‘The justice of God, absolutely considered, is the universal rectitude and perfection of the divine nature; for such is the divine nature antecedent to all acts of His will and suppositions of objects towards which it might operate.’ He went on to argue that while God has no constraint as God to save anyone, and has freedom in the mode, timing and degree of punishment, without satisfaction He cannot pardon sin consistently with His nature, justice and truth. Hence the cross.

The evidence that Owen gave for his change of mind were fivefold: firstly, God’s ‘great detestation and immortal hatred of sin' – Habakkuk 1:13; Psalms 5:4-5; secondly, that God is portrayed as the righteous Judge – Genesis 18:23-25; Psalms 7:11; Romans 3:5-6; Acts 17:31; thirdly, that God’s punishment of sin flows from His nature – Revelation 6:15-17; fourthly, conscience and providence, as portrayed in Scripture and human experience, and fifthly, and most importantly, the revelation of the cross – ‘There are some attributes of His nature the knowledge of which could not reach the ears of sinners but by Christ; such as His love to His peculiar people, His sparing mercy, His free and saving grace, even the others, which He hath made known to us in some measure by the ways and means above mentioned, we could have no clear or saving knowledge of unless in and through this same Christ’ (c.f. Luke 23:41-44).

The first of these reasons – God’s detestation of Sin - is a theme pursued by other Puritans, notably Ralph Venning in his book, Sin, Plague of Plagues, and by John Bunyan who wrote, ‘Sin is the dare of God’s justice, the rape of His mercy, the jeer of His patience, the slight of His power, the contempt of His love ….. It is the fist that strikes the face of Christ (c.f. Luke 22:63-65).

So why did Owen change his mind? Partly it came from his defence of Penal Substitution against the Socinians who denied it. But also it was his further engagement with Scripture that gave him the confidence that God can be known, a theme which he pursued for the rest of his life. In teaching that God cannot simply forgive sins without a satisfaction, we are not limiting His freedom; we are simply acknowledging His nature. He is the yardstick of justice. All His attributes are essential rather than accidental; that is, His love, His wisdom, His justice, His wrath are all part of His nature. His love is just and wise; His wisdom is just and loving; His wrath is just and wise, and indeed, loving towards His people, so that He is, one the one hand, ‘…… By no means clearing the guilty’ (Exodus 34:7), yet at the same time, He ‘Devises means so that His banished ones are not expelled from Him’ (2 Samuel 14:14). These means are Penal Substitution. “Learn ye, my friends, to look upon God as being as severe in His justice as if He were not loving, and yet as loving as if He were not severe. His love does not diminish His justice nor does His justice, in the least degree, make warfare upon His love. The two are sweetly linked together in the atonement of Christ” (C.H. Spurgeon).