No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2015
As we all know James Luther Adams is a very hopeful person. This was most clearly seen in Jim's suggestion that I give the James Luther Adams lecture this year. My guess is that he heard that the overall theme of this year's annual meeting was justice and he hoped that, as a lawyer and a person who allegedly was doing theology from the vantage point of a lawyer, I should have something to say about the subject.
Several problems come to mind immediately with this expectation. The first is the problem of saying anything that JLA has not already said with greater depth and humor. The second problem is best expressed by the story of the young law school student who naively asked one of his law school professors to tell him what was meant by justice. The professor responded that, if he wanted to find out about justice, he should go across the street to the divinity school. He crossed the street only to be told to reverse directions and ask someone at the law school. We might explain this by saying that both schools are limited by narrow perspectives—perhaps a positivistic perspective at the law school and a pietistic perspective at the seminary. Another answer might be that each has trouble trying to figure out what justice is all about. In reading the latest discussions of justice, I gained a new appreciation for the slipperiness of the subject. Is Clarence Darrow right when he said about justice, “no one knows what it means.”
Originally delivered as the James Luther Adams Address at the annual meeting of the Unitarian Universalists at Yale University, June 23, 1989.
1. Darrow, C., The Story of My Life 353 (1960)Google Scholar.
2. Bellah, R., Habits of the Heart (1985)Google Scholar.
3. De Tocqueville, Democracy in America 567, 587–89 (1966)Google Scholar.
4. Adams, , The Indispensable Discipline of Social Responsibility: Voluntary Applications, in The Prophethood of All Believers 255, 263 (1986)Google Scholar.
5. Adams, supra note 4, at 201.
6. Gen. 1:31.
7. Id. at 1:27.
8. Matt. 24:50.
9. Id. at 10:30.
10. Id. at 18:12-14.
11. Id. at 18:10.
12. Deut. 18:3, Sam. 2:13.
13. Luke 4:18-19.
14. Gal. 3:28.
15. Bennett, J.C., Christianity and Communism 75 (1948)Google Scholar.
16. Id. at 76.
17. Copeland, W.R., Economic Justice 109 (1988)Google Scholar.
18. Amos 5:21-24.
19. Heschel, A.J., The Prophets 198 (1962)Google Scholar.
20. Id.
21. Gen. 18:19.
22. See A.J. Heschel supra note 19.
23. Id.
24. Achtemeier, , Righteousness in the Old Testament, in Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible 80 (n.d.)Google Scholar.
25. 1 von Rad, G., Old Testament Theology 370 (1965)Google Scholar.
26. Cremer, H., Bibilisch-Theologisches Worterbuch 273–75 (7th ed. 1892)Google Scholar.
27. See supra note 25, at 372.
28. Id. at 377.
29. Id. at 378.
30. National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Economic Justice for all Catholic Social Teaching and the U. S. Economy 25 (1986)Google Scholar.
31. Maritain, J., The Rights of Man and Natural Law 118 (1943)Google Scholar.
32. White, G.E., Tort Law in America 62 (1980)Google Scholar
33. Id. at 66.
34. Id. at 13.
35. Id. at 94-95.
36. See supra note 31, at 147.