But the question is that if God doesn’t have to create justice (that is, if nothing per se deserves to be created), then the justice a man gives to another man can’t be owed to that man since if all creation is not per se, deserving of existence; and if justice means doing to someone what he rightfully deserves,it would seem that justice isn’t deserved by anyone. So really, why does justice exist?
Somehow, God created justice for His glory but at the same time, justice didn’t need to come into being…
Fakename:
Sorry, I was unable to get online this morning. I had a surprise: my brother come home a week early from the Virgin Islands, where he has been working for some time. (St. Croix - must be aweful!) In any event, I’ll get to it right now:
"The word
justice is sometimes taken in a broad sense to signify the assemblage of all the virtues. Thus the state of supernatural and preternatural perfection in which our first parents were constituted before the fall is known as the state of
original justice. The reason is that the possession of all these gifts rendered them
rightly ordered, so that the lower faculties of their soul were subordinate to the higher, and the higher were subordinate to God. In the same sense, St. Joseph is called a just man*, and we speak of the reception of the supernatural life as
justification.
In the strict sense, justice is a cardinal virtue, and is defined as “the moral virtue inclining the will to render to everyone his
right, according to some measure of
equality.” -
Outlines of Moral theology, Very Rev. Francis J. Connell, p. 102, 1962.
The above is a short description of what
justice is for the Creator and for us. In my opinion, the two key words, in this passage, are the ones in bold print. To me, a
right is that deference one person accords another precisely because it is reciprocated - in like measure. Now, we have equivocated its meaning. But, ultimately, one has to conceive of the inception of the concept from its earliest appearance. The earliest appearance of the sense of it had to have been at a time when no less than two, but possibly more, adult, reasonable, communicative people existed on the earth. Otherwise wherever people gathered, the biggest fear would not have been the sabre-toothed cats!
Equality, in my opinion, is a concept that is a foundational belief or
principle, as it was one of those things that was held without grounds. The very few people that existed had to
know or sense ‘equality’ even before they could render conceptions verbally. Otherwise there would have been virtually no loyalty amongst the tribe members. I mean, no deference paid to any other human beings. So, justice between human beings was that almost overwhelming sense of respect engendered from
equality that nurtured interpersonal deference. That we each deserve is because we each owe: reciprocity.
God did not need to be connected to men triangularly. God created man as an outpouring of his Divine Love, which includes fecundity. But, he never gave up any free will in doing this. In fact, that he did it without any coercion or necessity makes the man of God’s creation that much more worthy. One could say, it made man the pinnacle of worthiness among natural (created) things.
God bless,
jd
Well said!