Justice versus Mercy (Part 1)
“Everyone has won, and all must have prizes” – Lewis Carroll- The Alice Books
In regard to the age-old conflict and debate arising from conflict concerning Justice versus Mercy; I would like to add another coupling of terms in a grapple of antagonism: Logic versus Grace. Logic most often sides with Justice; and Grace with Mercy.
Don’t switch off here – this essay is NOT about the UK and its politics. There’s an interesting statistic of recent currency which has arisen out of academic research made into the psychology of those who in Britain voted for or else against the UK leaving the EU in the Referendum held here last year.
This statistic seems to me to be a cool illustration highlighting some of the ‘baggage’ being carried by that electorate, in regard to persons in general being either pro Grace and Mercy or else pro Logic and Justice. Pretty well mutually-exclusively so.
This statistic claims that all persons polled who answered ‘considerate’ to the question put to them voted on the side of remaining in the EU; and that no-one polled who answered ‘well-behaved’ to the same question voted to stay in the EU. The question put to them was:
“Would you rather your children were considerate of others or else well-behaved?”
Fascinating I think. Says something. Let the psychologists decide. Or the educationalists?
Let’s move on. I have a volume , one single volume of the works of a Puritan Preacher of the 17th century in Britain and his name was Thomas Manton. It is one volume of around thirty he has extant. Thomas Manton is a cool read. He is very severely Puritan; but his mind is razor sharp and for all his sympathies for Justice and Logic, his mind perceives often whereabouts I have not been before.
Thomas Manton offers this argument (paraphrased by me) against the wisdom of assuming that Christ prays even for the unregenerate who are predestined to perdition. Heavy stuff eh?
He says that Christ’s care and his saving work, as well as those items which his saving work has obtained for men and women; none of this ought to be considered to be falling ‘to the ground’ as he puts it. Thus were Christ to be praying for unregenerates predestined to perdition his work and those benefits and merits he has gained would be ‘falling to the ground’ in this regard.
Now the Justice and Logic crew would maybe cite Christ himself saying ‘ Cast not your pearls before swine’; whereas the Mercy and Grace crew might cite Christ saying: ‘
“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Christ insists in his parable of the Wedding Feast that the Master’s servant should go out to the vagabonds of society and so drag them into the Feast by force if necessary.
“I will have my house filled’ says the Master.
Thomas Manton’s argument convinced me for a time – it was so nicely made – until I thought it through some more and saw that his logic was impeccable but perhaps a bit too impeccable? But this is what the further reaches of Puritanism is all about – making doctrine square up to the demands of reason in its stricter form – as being logical.
There are plenty of caveats to be made – are made – in scripture; which counter a use of a stern logic in the interpretation of God’s dealings with men and women.
“Those things which are impossible for men are possible with God’
“With God, all things are possible’
“God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform”
I won’t go on.
Our logic, as men and women, has taken a turn for the worse even in the field of science where it is very well at home. Quantum physics and sub atomic physics, and several other branches of science and its studies are at an impasse in their use of human logic to formulate ideas about what might be going on in Creation.
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.”
It appears possible that our scientific inquiry into the workings of nature may have to be finding a new idea of ‘logic’ radical and non-intuitive, so as for it to go yet further into those depths. Get hold of Rupert Sheldrake’s book ‘The Science Delusion’ – an Oxbridge scientist speaking to scientists about good science and what it actually means. Sheldrake is called a ‘heretic’ by logician-type scientists; although his lines of argument are persuasive and eminently rational. Check him out.
Certainly there appears every chance that:
a) God’s ‘logic’ is something we are not (yet?) capable of understanding AND
b) Our own logic might well become ‘curiously extended’ in future days, perhaps soon, when the next Great Leap in science etc is made by someone as yet unknown, unsung, maybe unborn?
Should my surmises turnout to be prophetic, then such an extension to the common conceptions of present logic will have serious repercussions for Theologians; maybe, I hope, making the rigid severe logic of the Predestinarians, like that of their secular brothers and sisters in arms; the determinists; a logic superseded and to some extent outmoded. Just as in the same way that Newton’s Laws are now a localised tool in the smaller spaces of the Universe and Einsteinian space in much bigger quantities runs under quite radically different rules to Newton’s?
To be continued...
This is incredible! Love it. @matthew.raymer
excellent insight...thank you so much