WHERE DID GOD'S LAW OF JUSTICE COME FROM?

A speculative exploration of LDS theology...

Change of pace…

An old friend and I, both members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, were ruminating and musing together not long ago on the unfathomable subjects of God and eternity - of immutable things that have no beginning and will never end.

In process of that explorative ramble, we encountered the question of God’s justice. What is it? Where did it come from? Though it is a principle that sits at the very center of Chrisitan theology, it doesn’t seem to have a clear definition, isn’t clearly understood and is simply taken for granted.

God’s justice is God’s justice.

Or is there more to it?

Whatever justice is, Christian theology, the Christian faith, would not and could not exist without it. Where there is no law of justice, there would be no sense of wrongdoing, no awareness of sin, and, without sin, no need to be saved from sin, no need for a Savior, no need for Jesus Christ, no need for the Christian faith.

But what actually is it? What is justice? What is just and what is unjust? Did God create the law of justice? Is it arbitrary? Are justice and injustice, right and wrong, good and evil whatever God says they are?

Interestingly, there seems to be written into the human soul a sense of justice, a basic sense of what is right and what is wrong. Where did that come from? Read on…

Ask a traditional Christian where God’s law of justice comes from and he is likely to answer that, like everything else, God created it. If so, since he himself is clearly subject to the law of justice and cannot override it, has he, an all-powerful God, created a law he cannot break?

If so, logical problems - logical contradictions - arise, akin to the old saw that asks, if God is omnipotent - all-powerful - can he create a rock so big he can’t lift it? Or, in this case, if God is omnipotent, can he create a law he cannot break?

There are similar classic questions having to do with the justice of God. If God, a perfectly just being, created man from nothing - an ex-nihilo creation, as traditional Christian theology maintains - why did he create some to go to heaven and others to burn forever in hell? Where is the justice in that? If God, being omnipotent, could create everyone so all would go to heaven, why would he not?

Is God a sadist?

Obviously, we know he is not… so there must be some other explanation.

Alone among the many expressions of Christian faith in the world, the revealed theology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints provides answers to these logical conundrums which otherwise have no rational, logical answers in traditional Christian theology.

LDS theology, revealed from heaven in modern times, provides answers that prove God is not an irrational, illogical, arbitrary being, as traditional Christianity has long presented him to the world, but instead, by means of modern-day revelation, is shown to be both perfectly just - compliant with the uncompromising demands of the independently existing law of justice - and perfectly merciful, within the bounds where mercy is possible.

Thus, we can finally understand God to be not a being of contradictions but a God of perfect love, justice and mercy, perfectly possessed of the characteristics that define him as the Supreme Being, our Heavenly Father.

This critical understanding of God flows from modern-day revelation that provides clarification of what is eternal.

• What is it that exists eternally, never was created and never will have an end?

Again, the traditional Christian answer here would be only God is eternal, without beginning or end. Everything else is part of his creation - the universe, the world, mankind, the definitions of right, wrong, sin and justice, judgment, heaven and hell - everything.

LDS theology broadens our understanding in these critical areas by making clear there are more eternal things than are dreamt of in traditional Christian philosophy:

• “Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.”

- Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Doctrine & Covenants 93:29

In this stunning revelation, we see that man, in his essential identity, his intelligence, his ultimate being, is not a created thing. Like God himself, man is eternal, without beginning or end, is indeed the same kind of being as God and has Godlike potential (see Matthew 5:48. Ears to hear? If A=B and C=B, then C=A).

This is a truth - that we all were in the beginning with God - that gives deeper meaning to our sense that we are God’s family, not some random creation from nothing, alien to him. In his creative capacity, God has placed man, his intelligence, in a created physical body and in a created sphere of existence - the world - where he is free to choose for himself, choose between good and evil, and thus determine his own eternal fate:

• “All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence. Behold, here is the agency of man, and here is the condemnation of man; because that which was from the beginning is plainly manifest unto them, and they receive not the light.”

- Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Doctrine & Covenants 93:30-31

The words of this revelation expand our grasp of what is eternal, give us the understanding that we ourselves are eternal, uncreated beings, and answer myriad questions about God that, previously unanswered, have forced traditional Christians into logical contradictions.

One answer the revelation gives us, I think, concerns the law of justice. Did God create it? Is it arbitrary? I believe the answers to these two questions are no and no.

Imagine two uncreated, eternally existing things. Say, two rocks. Each has its own specific and differing characteristics - shape, size, weight. Importantly, because they both exist in the same eternal sphere, they have some kind of relationship to one another and can potentially have impact on one another. One rock might smack into the other and send it careening away. Think of a sort of a “butterfly effect” in the realm of eternal things.

Now imagine a vast number of individual, eternally existing intelligences, entities - all beings of the same type, but greatly differing in their individual properties, some more intelligent than others across a great spectrum of intelligence. Because they all co-exist eternally in the same sphere, they, like the aforesaid two rocks, have relationships one with another and can impact one another in various ways for good or ill. The aforesaid innate sense of justice we all seem to possess - the awareness, more refined in some than in others, of how we impact one another for good or ill - I suspect springs from these eternal roots.

Herein lies, methinks, the origin of the law of justice. It is not God’ arbitrary creation but arises naturally and independently from the collective eternal properties and characteristics of each individual eternally existing intelligence, each individual being, and the myriad interrelationships and interactions of those eternal properties, for good or ill, with all the other beings who constitute the great assemblage of eternal intelligences that, in part, subsequent to the War in Heaven, became God’s human mortal family.

In the midst of these eternal dynamics and the exercise of eternal free agency, justice/right/good is what one child of eternity does to another that is beneficial, and injustice/wrong/evil is what one does to another that is harmful. As eternal beings, we all have a sense of what it is to be treated well and what it is to be treated badly. From this springs Jesus’s admonition:

• “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 7:12)

Interesting, don’t you think, that Jesus said the whole law and the teachings of the prophets are rooted in this one principle.

Any deliberate exercise of free agency on the part of any one of us that harms or negatively impacts another - or even does injury to ourselves - is thus an injustice that somehow generates a cosmic consequence that requires recompense, a thing to be made right, a price to be paid - the unjust thing made just. This seems to whisper of a great eternal equilibrium that, when disturbed, must be restored.

Existing eternally and arising independently from God, the law of justice is impersonal, uncaring, has no feelings, no mercy, is implacable, and demands payment where the law has been broken.

Even a merciful, omnipotent God cannot deny the demands of the eternal law of justice:

• “Do ye suppose that mercy can rob justice? I say unto you, Nay; not one whit. If so, God would cease to be God… For behold, justice exerciseth all his demands, and also mercy claimeth all which is her own [through the Atonement of Jesus Christ]; and thus, none but the truly penitent are saved.”

- Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Book of Mormon, Alma 42:24-25

(Interesting… notice the prophet here characterizes justice as masculine - “his demands” and mercy as feminine - “mercy claimeth all which is her own”.)

Since “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” (Romans 3:23) every one of us must meet the impersonal, heartless, inexorable demands of justice. We can choose to pay the price ourselves, which will involve suffering hard to imagine:

• “For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent; But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I; which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink— Nevertheless, glory be to the Father, and I partook and finished my preparations unto the children of men.”

- Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Doctrine & Covenants 19:16-19

Those who choose to go down into the dark place to settle their own accounts with the law of justice will not come out until they have “paid the uttermost farthing” (Matthew 5:25-26), as Jesus said.

Fortunately, a loving God has given us an alternative.

From these hard and uncompromising realities arises the need for a Savior. God, our Heavenly Father, cannot deny the demands of justice - which have their roots in the eternal nature of things - but, loving us and desiring to spare us, he proposed to offer his precious Son as a sacrifice on the altar of justice - a sacrifice that would fully meet the demands of justice for the whole human family. His obedient Son said, “Not my will, but thine be done” and the great plan, the reconciling of the sinful human family to their perfect, righteous God, was accomplished:

• “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

- John 3:16

Right vs. wrong, truth vs. lies, reality vs. fantasy, knowledge vs. ignorance, order vs. chaos, law vs. lawlessness, patriotism vs. treason, liberty vs. tyranny, light vs. darkness, good vs. evil, happiness vs. misery, God vs. the Godless…

Torquemada