Jesuit Journeys
Fall 2007

Social Justice

By Fr. Tom Hughson, SJ

Social justice is now a Jesuit hallmark. Since the Second Vatican Council and then at the Jesuit General Congregations 32-34, we have cemented commitment to social justice into official definitions of Jesuit mission. Institutional reorientations and personal initiatives on every continent have incorporated that commitment into the practice of discipleship in India, Latin America, Australia, Europe, Indonesia, Africa and North America. Jesuits are about the Trinity, faith, Church, and redemption by God’s grace; social justice is seen as integral to the core of faith.

It would be easy to imagine that the prominence and numbers of Jesuits means also that social justice is somehow a commitment unique to the Society of Jesus. Since Vatican II the Society of Jesus has given greater visibility to an outlook already in place from the end of the nineteenth century, though at a lower profile. For example, many Jesuit colleges and universities in the US from the 1920’s on had “labor schools” in support of the union movement at a time when many urban Catholics were working-class. Jesuits embrace social justice as an element in the mission of Christ’s Church taught by Catholic social teaching from Pope Leo XIII to the present, not as if it were their own arbitrary preference. Nor is it unique to the mission of Christ carried out by the Catholic Church. The World Council of Churches, for example, has had a commitment to social justice ever since the Uppsala Assembly in 1968. In the United States the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church USA, the United Methodist Church, the Society of Friends, and many others have taken public stands on behalf of social justice in regard to racism, poverty, marginalization, unemployment, gender equity, and environmental degradation. Social justice is a dimension not just of Catholic faith, but belongs to the way most churches see the calling of the gospel in the contemporary world.

Concern for social justice comes from the teachings of Christ and his public life, preaching, ministry, example, and interactions. Social justice is a part of who God is and thus part of who we are as human beings, whether Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, or disconnected from any formal religion. True, biblical studies have enabled us to read the life and teachings of Jesus against the background of the Torah and prophets of Israel and the vision of a just social order. Catholic social teaching and social ethics have clarified and applied biblical values as found in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures.

Catholic social teaching integrated into the Jesuit mission affirms connections between faith and justice, but often this may not be coextensive with the practical and theoretical outlooks of Catholics in the United States. Some may doubt that it really belongs to a life of faith.

What Jesus taught and did expressed his being, his identity. Christianity stands or falls on who Jesus is, not just on what He taught. The indissoluble link between Christian faith and social justice originates in who Jesus is, not only in what He said – His preaching of the kingdom of God.

Not designed to keep readers in suspense, John’s gospel declares Jesus’ identity at the outset. The Prologue to John’s Gospel says with hymnic reverence, “the Word was God… and the Word became flesh.” Nonetheless, this proclamation of divine ‘descent’ does not purport to be the first thing known about Jesus. It comes first in the gospel in order to reveal the identity of one already known to disciples. John’s gospel does not begin the way Mark’s gospel does, with an account of how some came to follow Jesus of Nazareth. Rather, the Prologue interprets the Jesus already known to His followers. This Jesus who walked the dusty roads of Judea, who suffered, died, and rose is the Word, the Logos, through Whom all that has come to be has come to be.

The terms “Word” and “Logos” in John 1 are synonymous. The Logos is the Father’s perfect expression. The Greek “Logos” gets translated as “Verbum” (Latin) or “Word” (English). After the biblical period, this divine identity of Jesus was often encapsulated in the phrase, “Son of God.” The Word, Logos, Son of God is the second person in the Trinity Who is Jesus. In 451 AD the Council of Chalcedon summarized this mystery without explaining it by teaching with Pope Leo the Great that Jesus is one divine person (the Logos) in two complete natures (divine and human) each of which remains distinct.

Affirming Jesus’ divinity interprets the entire universe of creation and of human meaning. Jesus is the Logos who in creating also sustains all in existence as its ordering, governing source. We know Jesus acted in a way, or taught us, an orientation toward a just social order that today we call social justice. But, the die was cast in favor of a just social order long before Jesus ever took human form, before Moses mediated the covenant law to Israel, before the prophets declaimed against injustices. The die was cast in the divine act of creating insofar as humans were created with a luminous nature inclined toward reasonable relationships, amid sin, ignorance, and finitude. But as Augustine remarked, in a human witness to justice amid injustice, even a band of thieves demands some sort of justice in distributing plunder among its members, and objects to other brigands taking it from them. The ultimate source for the human orientation toward all forms of justice is the creating Logos, Who governs universally through the luminous nature of humanity. The Logos in the flesh is Jesus Who instituted Christianity.

The Logos acting through Jesus’ divine nature labors for social justice before, during and after the Incarnation, and not only through the humanity of Jesus. The Logos’ universal divine power and action cannot be mediated entirely through Jesus’ created humanity. The act of the Logos creating all that has come to be, in John 1, cannot be attributed to Jesus in his humanity.

Creating does not and cannot proceed from the humanity of Jesus, but cannot be divided from it either because of the divine/human union in the Incarnation. The distinct humanity of Jesus with all its traits and capacities cannot be separated from this divine activity of the Logos, yet it cannot be identical with it either. Whatever belongs to the Logos belongs to Christ even if not exercised through his humanity. If there is something of social justice in the creating activity of the Logos, it cannot be ignored by those who believe in Christ.

Human struggles for justice and peace, according to American Jesuit John Courtney Murray in his 1964 classic, “We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition,” are in alliance with the Logos’ divine “work of reason” whether people realize it or not, believe in Christ or not. This is not about the extent to which people accept the gospel in faith, but the extent to which they welcome the little voice of conscience in looking at society.

In this perspective, when ordinary citizens or elected officials in a democracy act for justice, they are allies of the Logos, cooperating with the Logos’ purpose, whether aware of it or not. The upshot is that faith in Christ cannot be separated from social justice because the humanity of Jesus cannot be separated from the divine Logos. Jesus is the incarnate Logos, Word of God among us. Now, Jesus is one and the same Logos Whose divine nature acts through but also beyond the human nature of Jesus, so his humanity dedicated to our salvation cannot be separated from the Logos universally drawing humanity toward justice. Faith in Christ affirms the whole reality of Christ including his divine nature (his divine identity as Logos is of course not masculine or feminine but the ultimate source of both).

However, the universal work of the Logos that influences humanity toward social justice, cannot be the precise and distinct newness of Christ, salvation, and Church. All peoples, societies, and religions have the seeds of justice in them, not only Christianity. The Logos is always and everywhere laboring for justice, not only in the Catholic Church, not only among all Christians, not only among adherents to all religions.

Social justice is integral to Christ’s saving mission, though, and not only because of His message and example, but because of who Jesus is, the Word/Logos made flesh. Jesus’ divine and human natures cannot be separated or divided as if they were two persons. So too, Christian discipleship cannot divide itself from part of Jesus’ reality, his divine identity as the Logos, and still remain fully and integrally Christian. Christian faith cannot be separated from justice, especially social justice, without denying the identity, not only the message, of Christ. The reason so large a swath of Christianity has embraced the link between faith and justice has everything to do with Christ as Logos and with the spirituality of discipleship.

A Christian obligation to act reasonably, to seek social justice, and by that same fidelity to God, obliges Christians to seek common ground on social justice with all others of all religions or of no professed religion. A commitment to social justice serves the ordering purpose of the divine Logos whom Christians revere as Jesus the Christ. This is a basis for seeking common cause with other Christians, with adherents of other religions, and with secular humanists and atheists on behalf of social justice.

Social justice is part of Christian faith and discipleship because it is a work, a purpose, of the creating Logos Who is Jesus. But it is not distinctively Christian. Christians agree with Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists in America, no less than with people at a distance from any religion, that slave labor in India or Pakistan, racism in the United States, economic exploitation in many places, or any number of specific kinds of injustice offend human dignity and are to be changed.

Social justice belongs essentially, but not uniquely, to Christ, to Christianity, and to Christian faith. It belongs to Christianity because it is tied indissolubly to Christ who is the divine Logos in the flesh. How we understand Christ makes a huge difference in how we understand social justice. Practicing commitment to social justice involves some lived and possibly reflective answer to a question about Jesus that the New Testament places before every person, church, and generation of Christians, “Who do you say that I am?”