The Seat of Justice in the House of Love: Toward an Ecclesial Theory of Justice
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Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 2016 The Seat of Justice in the House of Love: Toward an Ecclesial Theory of Justice James Grant Gholson Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the Ethics in Religion Commons Recommended Citation Gholson, James Grant, "The Seat of Justice in the House of Love: Toward an Ecclesial Theory of Justice" (2016). Dissertations. 2281. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/2281 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 2016 James Grant Gholson LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO THE SEAT OF JUSTICE IN THE HOUSE OF LOVE: TOWARD AN ECCLESIAL THEORY OF JUSTICE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY PROGRAM IN THEOLOGY BY JAMES GRANT GHOLSON CHICAGO, IL DECEMBER 2016 Copyright by James Grant Gholson, 2016 All rights reserved. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank all of the people who made this dissertation possible, starting with the staff and faculty in the Theology Department at Loyola University Chicago. Whereas everyone in our department is beholden to the inimitable Catherine Wolf in one way or another, I am particularly because of the extreme patience she showed to me as I struggled to navigate the various bureaucratic processes of graduate school life. In addition to being a careful and helpful reader of the drafts of this text, Dr. William French is responsible for introducing to me the crisis at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which originally got me thinking about a justice in the church. From Dr. Michael Schuck I learned to think seriously about the problem of the relation of the individual to her society, and the ideas I first thought through in a paper written for his class form the backbone of the first chapter of this work. Moreover, I greatly appreciate his willingness to accept a position on my dissertation committee at a relatively late date in the process of the project’s completion. I cannot begin to name the debt I owe to my director, Dr. Hille Haker, who shepherded this project in the long years from its infancy to its completion. While challenging many of my epistemological, methodological, and ethical assumptions, she was never less than a model of Christian charity, and I am a better thinker and a better person because of her. iii I would like also to acknowledge my wonderful son James, who intuitively seemed to know just when to interrupt my writing in our home study at those times when I felt I could no longer concentrate on writing. And what can be said about the many contributions of my wife Erica, except that without her inexhaustible support, encouragement, and love you would not be reading this dissertation right now. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .......................................................................................................... iii PREFACE ....................................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER ONE: FRAMEWORK FOR AN ECCLESIAL THEORY OF JUSTICE ............. 3 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 3 Prolegomena to a Postliberal, Ecclesial Ethics ....................................................................... 7 Karl Barth ................................................................................................................................. 7 Ludwig Wittgenstein ............................................................................................................ 13 Hans Frei ................................................................................................................................ 18 George Lindbeck ................................................................................................................... 22 Summary ................................................................................................................................ 29 The “Standard Account” of Christian Ethics ........................................................................ 31 Pre-Constantinian Era ......................................................................................................... 32 Post-Constantinian Era ........................................................................................................ 36 Religion in the Enlightenment ............................................................................................ 41 Christian Narrative Justice: Promise and Problems ............................................................ 45 Mary Doak ............................................................................................................................. 49 Glenn Stassen ........................................................................................................................ 52 CHAPTER TWO: THE COMMUNITY OF THE RESURRECTION VERSUS THE PRINCIPALITIES AND POWERS OF THE WORLD ....................................................... 60 Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 60 A Post-Protestant Paul?: The New Perspective .................................................................... 64 The Faith of Jesus Christ ......................................................................................................... 75 Paul’s Apocalyptic Gospel ....................................................................................................... 81 God wages war against fallen creation ............................................................................... 82 God’s victory through Christ liberates humanity ............................................................. 83 Christ reveals our sin ............................................................................................................ 85 The Exousiology of the New Testament ................................................................................ 93 Berkhof’s Christ and the Powers .......................................................................................... 93 The Powers in the Work of John Howard Yoder ............................................................ 106 The Role of the Community in Relation to the Powers ................................................. 115 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 116 CHAPTER THREE: LOVE AND JUSTICE .......................................................................... 120 Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 120 The Thomistic Option: Two Encyclicals of Benedict XVI ................................................ 124 Critical Analysis .................................................................................................................. 133 An Honest Realism: Reinhold Niebuhr............................................................................... 141 Critical Analysis .................................................................................................................. 147 A Dialectical Approach: Paul Ricoeur ................................................................................. 152 Critical Analysis .................................................................................................................. 164 v Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 166 CHAPTER FOUR: TWO KINDS OF JUSTICE: AGAPIC AND INSTITUTIONAL...... 172 Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 172 Institutional Justice ................................................................................................................ 174 Critique of Distribution Theories of Justice .................................................................... 176 The Situated Self .................................................................................................................. 179 Group Identity ..................................................................................................................... 184 The Five Faces of Oppression ............................................................................................ 187 City Life ................................................................................................................................ 196 Young’s Responsibility for Justice .................................................................................... 197 Structural Processes as Powerful Practices ...................................................................... 201 Self-Critique as Ecclesial Institutional Justice ................................................................. 211 The Church as a City .........................................................................................................