Human Rights via the Hermeneutic of the Trinity Promote Social Justice

Ann Lewis Boyd

Theologically, the Triune God places emphasis on community whereby the whole spectrum of human rights contribute to the common good of all mankind and all of the created order. Creation theology gives an account of the relationship of God with humanity and all creation from which the imago Dei concept is derived. Being made in the image of God confers on human beings an inalienable dignity as persons. The unique and distinctive characteristic of human beings is the ability to imagine the transcendent, anticipate a future, and concomitant with these capacities, and be accountable to God for all the earth. The choices integral to being in the image of God require freedom of will, reason, mutuality and cooperation.

The way in which God, the transcendent source of all being, is understood effects how we understand personhood and what it means to be created in the image of God. The Triune Divinity concept extends the perception of God beyond a solitary monarch with hierarchical connotations to one of relationship and community. This hermeneutical lens transitions us from individualism to communitarianism because it defines persons in relationship with God and neighbor, rather than as individuals who are due entitlement rights.

Human rights discourse occurs both inside and outside Christian contexts, as illustrated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 in the secular social ethos, and as rooted in natural law in the moral theological context. Pope John XXIII endorsed human rights language to enable the church to speak and teach in a pluralistic world. Human rights have become the lingua franca for secular ethics and moral theology.

Contemporary debates expose tensions between universalism and relativism, individuality and communitarian norms. A pressing question in ethics and moral theology is whether or not there are universal goods which all people at all times can agree to be true. If ‘good’ is not universal for human beings at some fundamental level, then ‘good’ is a relative concept bound to time, culture, and individual perspective. If ethics are relative, then each generation, culture, society, must define anew what is ‘good’ and how to live in ways approximating the good life. On the other hand, if there are universally valid elements common to all humanity, then the commonweal of human community can establish priorities that promote the good of all persons, commonly called ‘justice’.

Justice is a multifaceted concept, including philosophical and theological notions of equality, mutuality, and fairness. If values diverge as deeply as the relativists posit, then justice is only viable in the context of a culture and its chosen polity. However, if essential and elementary elements of human experience and existence can be defined in common, then justice can be crafted to support, enhance, and insure stability and viability of all persons. Justice corrects injustice, giving preference to the poor, oppressed, and vulnerable, while simultaneously protecting the rights of the privileged.

Trinitarian theology calls the church to work in concert with society to promote justice, human rights, freedom, and dignity of all persons. Christian realism acknowledges the “impossible possibility” of love as motivator to move toward justice while being aware of the realities of human depravity, sin and estrangement. Absolute justice is love. Justice, through the hermeneutical lens of the Trinity, is God with outstretched arms embracing all humanity and all creation.

TRINITY

The one God of inexhaustible mystery is also involved in the world, creating, redeeming, and renewing as a “tripersonal mystery of love.” ¹ The image and symbol of the Trinity presents a community of being, three interwoven profound relations. The Christian expression of the trinity as transcendent mystery, historically mediated, and liberatingly immanent, stresses its soteriological purpose: to announce the good news of human liberation and cosmic reconciliation coming from God through Jesus Christ in the Spirit.²

Karl Rahner’s axiom “the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity and vise versa” signifies the epistemological truth that is given in the economy of salvation and redemption, through which we may know the transcendent, immanent, Triune God. Proclaiming the divine mystery in the power of love, we only approximate truth in metaphorical, analogical, and symbolic language.³ The Patristic Fathers described the Trinity as three hypostases in one homoousios. The Greek philosophical meaning of hypostasis is essence, self-subsistence, or substance of a thing. Translated into the Latin as persona, and subsequently into English as person, the concept lost much of the ancient understanding. The priority of reason and individual consciousness in the Enlightenment and postmodern philosophy reduced persona to autonomous person shifting the image of three persons in one toward tritheism. The original intent of Trinity was to negate division and affirm unity of being. The quantitative interpretation should be avoided in order to concentrate on the symbolic through which God is understood as unity of being, community of being, or konionia.⁴ Rahner suggests that God, through incarnation and grace, communicates himself to created nature in Jesus in such a way that the giver is the gift, and continues to reveal himself through the Holy Spirit.⁵

Moltmann begins with salvation and characterizes the living konionia, the community among three divine persons as the “social trinity.”⁶ For Moltmann, the cross is the Trinitarian event, opening a path for the suffering of the world to enter the very being of God, to be redeemed in an eschatological victory of divine life. His central point is that the Triune God is present in human suffering.⁷

Ruether describes the Trinitarian relationship as lacking competitive and hierarchical stereotypes, at the same time stressing the full identity of each of the three in radical equality.⁸ Foregoing the androcentric terminology of subordination, procession, dominance, first, second, and third, there remains a Trinity of persons mutually interrelated in a unity of equality. The theological term perichoresis evokes this sense of intertwined, encircling, interwoven strands of the three in one Triune divinity. “Divine life circulates without any anteriority or posteriority, without superiority or inferiority of one to the others. Instead there is a clasping of hands, a pervading exchange of life, a genuine circling around together that constitutes the permanent active, divine koinonia.” ⁹ The symbol of the Trinity provides a picture of a shared life at the heart of the universe, subverting duality into community. The mutual relatedness of different but equal persons thereby presents a paradigm for all human beings and all life.

The mystery of God as Trinity, as final, perfect sociality, embodies those qualities of mutuality, reciprocity, cooperation, unity, peace, in genuine diversity that are feminist ideals and goals derived from the inclusivity of the gospel message. The final symbol of the God as Trinity thus provides women with an image and concept of God that entails qualities that make God truly worthy of imitation, worthy of the call to radical discipleship that is inherent in the gospel.¹⁰

The classical theological understanding of relationship is one of accident, persons may be relational, but God is profoundly other. Distance rather than intimacy characterizes the divine-human intersection. An unrelated, unaffected, omnipotent theistic God limns the ultimate patriarchal idea of the solitary dominant male. Feminists place emphasis on relational autonomy as God loving in freedom and being involved in creation, and liberation, and yet retaining the whole transcendence of God’s divinity. Moltmann describes it as “God withdrawing himself in order to make creation possible…a cosmic generosity.”¹¹ Boff incorporates the concept of Trinity to shape a theology of God as liberator, dwelling in community of love with equality, mutuality, and respect for difference.¹² Boff and Moltmann understand the Trinity in ways that promote social justice compatible with feminist scholars. A vision of God in friendship and intimate compassionate presence in the affairs of the world leads to a fuller understanding of what is required of disciples. In the name of Christ, disciples must enter into the world in witness to his love, embracing all that suffer, liberating the poor and oppressed, and caring for the privileged in an all-embracing justice.

The mystery of God, Holy Wisdom, SHE WHO IS, is the dark radiance of love in solidarity with the struggle of denigrated persons . . . including the long generations of women. . . to lay hold of their genuine human dignity and value. . . She accompanies the lost and defeated, even violated women, on the journey to new unimaginable life. . . Alive in the koinonia of SHE WHO IS, women and men are called to be friends of God and prophets, that is, appreciators of her wonders, sympathizers with her resistance to whatever degrades beloved creation, companions to her passion for the world’s flourishing, starting with the nearest neighbor in need and extending to the farthest flung system by which we order, or disorder, our common life. . . Holy Wisdom herself, lives as the transcendent matrix who underlies and supports all existence and potential for new being, all resistance to oppression and the powers that destroy, while women and men, through all the ambivalence of their own fidelity, share in her power of love to create, struggle, and hope on behalf of the new creation in the face of suffering and evil.¹³

Mutual love among persons presents an egalitarian image. The symbol of Trinity teaches love in the context of one human community. “Perfect sociality embodies qualities of mutuality, reciprocity, cooperation, unity, peace, in genuine diversity.”¹⁴ The divine quality of love overcomes the debt of sin and affirms justice by transcending it.¹⁵ The Triune God embracing a sinful and suffering world through the cross transforms unjust, violent, and sinful persons into a kingdom of God. It is all grace, the holy trump card inscribed in the inner logic of divine justification, the cross, as Trinitarian love translated into a world of sin.

Secular forms of pluralism depict toleration, but theological imperatives to justice and love require more than toleration, they demand inclusion. “Loyalty to the truth requires confidence in the possibility of attainment, toleration of others requires broken confidence in the finality of our own truth.” ¹⁶ Confession of our limited nature to grasp, rather than be grasped by truth, makes it our hope to have a partial understanding of truth. Thus all dialogue is dialectical between the believer and unbeliever within all of us as fallen children of God.¹⁷

Universal lingua franca of Human Rights

The Pacem in Terris encyclical of 1963 by Pope John XXIII enumerated human rights endorsed by the church as a focus of “ethical teaching and pastoral strategy of the papacy in the realm of justice and peace.”¹⁸ The Trinity is central to the Christian tradition in the way that we understand God as self-gift, and human beings, made in the image of God, as relational beings.¹⁹ The Christian community claims to be inclusive of all humanity, asserting that the grounding experience of all human life is a shared life and therefore, universal. The hermeneutic of the Trinity opens a clear sense that human rights are not singular or individualistic, but relational by nature. The self-gift of God is implicit in the fundamental human right to give oneself to another, and ultimately to God.²⁰ Rights that begin with non-interference rather than a freely offered self-gift for participation in community skew the concept of human rights towards the negative and positive libertarianism of Hobbes and the Enlightenment. All rights derive their authority from the right of self-gift and support conditions for a thriving community of persons.²¹

Legal rights are sanctioned by constitutional or statutory law, but moral rights appeal to ethical reasoning, theological understanding of the will of God, and the duties of mankind in relationship to God who is active in human history. Vatican II acknowledged pluralism in Gardium et spes, “in the face of such widely varying situations, it is difficult for us to utter a unified message to put forward a solution which has universal validity. Such is not our ambition, nor is it our mission.”²² Rahner encouraged the church to be more cognizant of the pluralistic modern world at the 1971 Synod of Bishops conference on “Justice in the World.” Using human rights language allows the church to speak a universal message respectful of a pluralistic world and to support the moral imperative of human rights as a minimal social condition that all nations should respect. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ concluded, “Catholic social teaching spells out the demands of justice in greater detail in the human rights of every person. These fundamental rights are prerequisites for a dignified life in community.”²³

Moltmann asserts the church cannot avoid full participation in the dialogue promoting human rights and, in fact, has an obligation to use the full force of Christian theology to that end.

In the name of the incarnation of God for the reconciliation of the world, and in the name of the coming kingdom of God for the fulfillment of history, the church is charged with responsibility for the humanity of persons as well as for their rights and duties. . .The Christian faith has over and above the different rights and duties of humanity to esteem the one indivisible dignity of the human being in his or her life with God--without, in so doing, excluding other religious or humanistic conceptions of human rights. . .The universal goal of Israel’s and Christianity’s special experiences of God lies in the faith that the God freeing and saving them is the fulfiller of the history of the world and will actualize his right to his entire creation in the kingdom of his glory. God’s liberating and saving action in history thus reveals the true future of the human being. Image of God means the full community of God. The human being therefore has a right to future. Human rights mirror the right of the coming God and the future of humanity. The destiny of the human being to be the image of God indicates the indivisible right of God to the human being and therefore, the irreducible dignity of the human being.²⁴

Among the fundamental human rights are all the relationships that sustain life, economic, social, political, and personal. Respect for freedom of conscience is the foundation of a free society. In Christian theology, love honors the neighbor. Only in human fellowship with other people is the human person truly in the image of God. ²⁵ Human rights in the context of relationship point to a universal community.²⁶

Promoting the common good is the function of government, a form within society responsible to act in ways that insure mutual respect of human dignity. The challenge is how to resolve conflicts between individual and social goods through a responsible use of freedom.²⁷ In Dignitatis Humanae, Murray argued that it was protection of the public order, which included justice, rather than the concept held by Thomas Aquinas that government promotes the common good. Murray feared that Aquinas’ approach would encourage totalitarianism. He argued that promotion of the common good is the role of “civil society” and it’s mediating institutions, one of which is government. Thus, the institutionalization of human rights is placed within the nature of human morality.²⁸ Responsibility is contextualized in a changing culture and social structure, and human rights are conferred by society. Thus, the state must protect freedom, and create conditions that promote each person acting according to his/her conscience, and developing his/her full human potential.²⁹ Recognizing the multifaceted nature of human beings, rights is intrinsically interrelated, the rights to life, bodily integrity, food, clothing, shelter, and some minimal degree of health care. Rights that defend the dignity of the person, including the right to work, economic rights that insure a fair wage, the right to expression, assembly and social interaction, all contribute to conditions that support truly human persons in diverse societies and cultures. The Catholic rights theory is personalistic, not individualistic, consistent with the relational nature of persons and the importance of the common good.³⁰

Justice is addressed in the 1971 Synod of Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church. “Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel, or, in other words, of the Church’s mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation.”³¹ Justice is philosophically described as suum cuique – to each what is due. This understanding of justice can be interpreted variously by different systems, political structures, and individuals. A pluralistic understanding justice leads to different actions. Justice in the Christian tradition is rooted in the Aristotelian and Thomistic view of the essentially social nature of persons. “Christian faith has no stake in a specific social model, be it feudal, capitalist, socialist, or liberal democracy, unless this model either especially promotes or especially threatens the basic Christian ethical conviction concerning the normative character of social interdependence and reciprocal love.”³²

The possibility of achieving mutuality and reciprocal love in society calls for changes in personal and institutional action. Solidarity and concern for the poor requires a kind of self-gift that contradicts the self-interest linchpin of much of modern political theory. Human sinfulness and finiteness make the historical realization of justice always imperfect and partial.³³ Justice, according to Reinhold Niebuhr, is not an external constraint on love, but rather is the self-limitation of love. “We act with knowledge of our sin and so we act with an eye to justice, even as we see that we cannot perfectly realize that justice.”³⁴ A realistic system of justice must assume the continued power of self-interest. Justice must be dynamic, rather than static.

Aquinas’ moral theory, natural law, is built around a set of natural and theological virtues. The distinction between rights and virtues correlate with perfect and imperfect duties. A perfect duty is one owed to another specified individual, although it is unenforceable. Virtues pertain to attitudes or dispositions that inspire individuals to act in ways that are supererogatory. In the Ancient Greek Aristotelian concept of virtues, justice is the most important. Thus Aquinas, consistent with Aristotle, distinguishes virtues from duties. Rights imply duty as a claim for equal position of each person within humanity. Duties posit obligations that yield authority over others by protecting or granting a benefit to a person as a right. The willingness to yield some benefit of self for the good of another is not a requirement, perfect duty, but a permissible choice of an imperfect duty. An imperfect duty marks out a standard of behavior that is needed to continue existence in community. A virtue is a good personal disposition or a will to give to the common good.

International conventions often identify what rights are important, including civil and political rights, the right to life, freedom from slavery, fair trial, respect for family life, freedom for religious practice and expression, assembly, and prohibitions against discrimination, all of which protect individual freedom and support some form of community life. However, culture is so individualistic and reliant on autonomy, that the concept of rights are often used to insulate the individual further from community based values and dialogue about the common good.³⁵ Rights language is good when it promotes legitimacy for the dignity of persons, but deficient if it rests on individual good over the life of the community, a functional reality for individual flourishing. In a pluralistic postmodern society the debate often separates politics from ethics. Philosophically, post modernism tends to deny all possibility of universals.³⁶ Lack of consensus over universals often leads to denial of human rights claims that are intended for all persons in all cultures. Pragmatically, human rights rise to speak in the midst of distress, oppression and conflict, sometimes urgent and critical, such as the abolition of Apartheid in South Africa.³⁷

The blanket acceptance or refusal of human rights claims is inadequate. A way is needed to resolve conflicting claims and the authority to protect and enforce social rights in circumstances where resources are limited and distribution among persons is unequal and unjust. Human rights discourse among Christians, members of other religions, and nonbelievers, makes it imperative that members of contemporary cultures find common ground. Human rights language provides that common ground. The Christian must be bilingual, speaking the idiom of human rights, and simultaneously recalling the ancient and sacred message of kergyma.³⁸

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 has acquired the status of international law as equal rights for all persons, and inalienable rights.³⁹ The declaration sets forth the meaning of human rights, which trump authoritative claims of states and cultures in favor of the human person. From a human rights perspective, the legitimacy of the state is a function of the extent to which it respects, protects, and realizes the “natural” human rights of its citizens. “Human rights are required to civilize both democracy and markets by restricting their operation to a limited, rights-defined domain. Free markets, like pure democracy, sacrifice individuals and their rights to a ‘higher’ collective good. Only when the pursuit of prosperity is tamed by economic and social rights, such as when markets are embedded in a welfare state, does a political economy merit our respect.”⁴⁰

Human Rights and Natural Law

Liberty, rights, and the dignity of a person arise from the naturally sacred things, thus a person possesses dignity because of his/her relationship to the absolute, God.⁴¹ Common good is the aim of society. Social constructions are intended to promote justice as they appropriately support the common good.⁴² While the structure of society depends on justice, the vital dynamism and internal force of society depend on communities, which exist politically to promote movement toward liberation or emancipation consistent with reaching the full potential of each person’s talents and abilities. Natural Law is a heritage of Christian classical thought (Aquinas): “the recognition that all persons share a common human nature, and can discover by reason an order in nature, and resolve by reason and the human will to act in order to pursue the purpose of being human.”⁴³ The human person possesses rights because he/she is an end, not a mere means. If a person is morally responsible to fulfill his/her destiny, he/she must have the right to those things necessary for this pursuit.⁴⁴ Human rights, from the perspective of natural law, identify our duties because we are part of a universal order, sharing a common spiritual nature. According to natural law, we all have the right to existence, freedom, and moral will. The right to private ownership of goods belongs to the civil law, as do economic and political systems of government. The fundamental rights necessary to sustain life are consistent with the tenants of natural law. Framing these rights in the American Declaration of Independence transforms natural law into a code of justice inscribed in nature and deciphered by reason.⁴⁵

The Preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 states that there is a common standard of achievement for all people and all nations and that these rights are universal.⁴⁶ Human rights for the individual have limited effect in the context of promoting life for all of nature and thus may be shortsighted unless such rights are placed in the context of community and ecology. After World War II, the North Atlantic States formulated human rights for individuals against the powers of states and society. Socialist states emphasized economic and social human rights. Spokespersons from nations experiencing abject poverty call for the right to existence. Therefore, there are protective rights to the necessary conditions needed to survive, such as liberty and security. Social rights to work and housing pertain to economic rights. The full integration of all persons into the community requires participatory rights of engagement in political, social, and economic spheres. Only when human rights and the rights of nature are in harmony can human life be fully protected and insured. When that balance is achieved, human rights can claim universality.⁴⁷

Theologically, human beings made in the image of God provide the foundation for human dignity. The capacity to be in relationship with a transcendent God, a Triune relationship of being, promotes human sociality and participatory rights with equal fervor as personal rights in promoting a just society.⁴⁸ Greek and Roman derived civilization tends to set human beings as dominant over nature rather than as stewards of it. Postmodern worldview assumes human life is linked intimately to all of creation and places greater concern on ecological protection. Destruction of the ecosystem for economic short-term gains is myopic and self-defeating. An ecological revolution is needed to integrate human culture once more into the nature of the earth, the human spirit into the nature of the body, and modern instrumental reason into the wider cohesion of wisdom.⁴⁹ Moltmann is right to stress the ecological concerns related to economic development because the exploitation of resources by one generation leaves future generations without resources to sustain development and threatens the ecosystem upon which all life depends.

Ruether also combines hermeneutical retrieval with democratic socialism and environmental politics. She and other liberal feminists see a common humanity for which human rights are only one part of a larger issue of reform needed in political systems too preoccupied with rights and overlooking social inequality. Socialist feminism seeks to break hierarchies of race, class, and gender that liberal feminists leave unchallenged.⁵⁰ Democratic socialism is no more than utopian vision if it does not address inequalities that are real for the poor and oppressed. Women account for too large a proportion of this vulnerable group in all races and cultures. Ruether claims gender oppression is a modern form of slavery. She advocates for a total transformation of patriarchal laws and social customs for a new consciousness. Liberation of women, the poor, and the oppressed must be embedded in human rights for them to attain universal status.⁵¹

Justice

In political and moral theory Christian realism cautions us to take all factors in a situation into account, to acknowledge all resistance to established norms, especially factors of self-interest and power.⁵² Niebuhr’s justice requires we understand what it takes for real persons to live well and requires we understand the intersections between justice and the human good while recognizing the distortions created by self-interest.⁵³ A person may feel impelled to act on behalf of others in ways that exceed a computation of merit or need, therefore all moral action is not a product of reason alone.⁵⁴ Absolute justice according to Niebuhr is love, but realism recognizes it is impossible to do everything for everyone that love requires. Thus absolute justice renders to each person what is required for full participation in the human good, but it is always relative in history, never perfect.⁵⁵

Lebacqz observed “relative justice involves the calculation of competing interests, the specification of rights and duties, and the balancing of life forces.”⁵⁶ For Niebuhr “equal justice is the approximation of brotherhood under the conditions of sin.”⁵⁷ “Thus we are responsible for making choices between lesser and greater evils even when our Christian faith illuminating the human scene, makes it quite apparent that there is no pure good in history and probably, no pure evil either.”⁵⁸ Niebuhr and Lebacqz share the recognition of the partial and imperfect nature of earthly justice. For Niebuhr, only perfection in love has the potential to yield true justice, but the praxis of justice for Lebacqz is liberation and the biblical notion of Jubilee. ⁵⁹ Moral obligation for Niebuhr is an experience that exceeds reason: one may feel impelled to act for another without computing the relative need or merit. Love can move human beings beyond self-interest.⁶⁰

Christian symbols are ways we shape our ideals and attitudes. Symbols identify values and virtues informing real choices. The first task of ethical reflection is to establish connections between human experience, social fact, and biblical symbols that make judgements possible.⁶¹ Moral realism faces the fact and experience of human sin and acknowledges the power of love within existing communities.⁶² Niebuhr connects human good with justice, despite the distortions created by self-interest. Realism, recognizing the “impossible possibility” of love, achieves progress toward justice through the dialectic of affirmation and negation.

Equity and freedom provide “regulative principles” to approach justice.⁶³ All persons have equal dignity although not equal talents, capacities or circumstances. To approach equality requires being attentive to individual circumstances, compensating for different abilities, and correcting past injustices. “Rights are not simple claims to be attributed to individuals apart from community. Because human beings are social by their very nature, human dignity will be addressed in social relationships. Justice is not simply a matter of proper distribution of goods but also of permitting and indeed requiring each person to participate in the production of those goods (social justice).”⁶⁴

Listening to the voices of the oppressed and marginalized as experiences of human beings beyond the world of white, well educated, middle-class, academics, exposes injustice which reason will not illuminate de novo. Niebuhr cautioned that reason is not immune from sin.⁶⁵ “Our truth is never the truth because knowledge is always tainted with ideological interests.”⁶⁶ Lebacqz agrees regarding the limits of human reason and asserts the poor have an epistemological privilege.⁶⁷ Injustices feed each other, political injustice reinforces economic injustice, and verbal injustice increases ethnic and sexual injustice. Ethnic injustice undergirds political injustice leading to a web of injustice that ensnares and destroys its victims.⁶⁸

Rawls’ contract model of justice assumes parties will bargain fairly for the distribution of goods if they construct the rules for distribution without knowing the position they hold in the social order. The assumption of Rawls’ “original position” theory is that the least advantaged will be protected from overriding self-interest.⁶⁹ Logic, rationality, and consistency characterize the distributive justice theory of Rawls. Nozick opposes the Rawls formulation because it violates freedom of choice. For Nozick, justice is a free exchange of goods among individuals.⁷⁰ Lebacqz rejects both theories because each justice theory incorporates the historical conditions of injustice that are realities of human experience. “Ethical reasoning guiding distribution of goods in the justice theories of Rawls and Novick are inadequate because they ignore the ugly historical reality, support individualism, and promote the status quo.”⁷¹

Lebacqz suggests a new form of logic that begins with a “hermeneutic of suspicion” directed at the reasons offered by the oppressors for their policies.⁷² Passions of those at the bottom use different logic as attested by Cone “some things must be lived before they can be understood.⁷³ Black and white Christians look at Jesus Christ and see a different reality.⁷⁴ Schussler-Fiorenza also stresses experience by listening to stories of the lives of persons in real situations so that we can create new approaches to justice that correct injustice.⁷⁵ Thus the poor and oppressed have an epistemological privilege of experience that reason alone cannot justify.⁷⁶

Recognizing that justice will be imperfect, it does not necessarily follow that the new justice is limited by old injustice. The beginning point is the experience of injustice, processed through the political and economic restructuring required to break the stranglehold of injustice. This strategy provides for a future that is independent of the past. Justice in an unjust world brings new beginnings in the ongoing struggle against injustice.⁷⁷

Lebacqz suggests reflection on how God responds to injustice and oppression. In scripture we find Jesus on the side of the poor, and in Exodus, God frees the people from slavery. As God has shown us, we are called to rebuke injustice, and are accountable for correcting wrongs. This approach requires us to hear the cry of the oppressed, create strategies for liberation.⁷⁸ Absolute rules of justice fail to open us to the experience of the poor or require that we give preference to the oppressed. At the same time, being contextual does not mean being simply relative.⁷⁹ Justice is not strict fairness in exchanges alone, but a commutative justice complemented by requirements of distributive justice emphasizing the needs of the poor, and by contributive justice, which requires productive participation in society. The common good demands social justice in this full sense. Thus, justice begins by taking injustice seriously and making a commitment to mutual responsibility in which the entire human community experiences covenant to restore the proper order of relationships in community.⁸⁰

Moltmann reminds us the horror of human depravity is not time sensitive by exposing the evil of which we are all capable. The horror of Auschwitz is not that they could, but that what was a reality once is always a possibility again.⁸¹ The sufferers may well ask “Where is God in this?” but the too often unasked questions may well be “Adam where are you?” and, “Cain, where is your brother?”⁸² Christian theology after Auschwitz meets God in silence, as though God averts his eyes from such evil. We must remember, in order to prevent social frigidity found in remoteness from God and our neighbor, that God is always on the side of the victim, present with them in suffering as one eternal community.⁸³ It is the indwelling of God himself, which eats at the conscience and will not let us stay asleep to injustice but makes us cry out for the oppressed. It is a mystical interruption of our slumber to see the suffering and God present in their lives.

Conclusion

Justice as an intervention on the side of the poor and oppressed places the community of all human beings in the center of the relatedness found in the Christian symbol of the Trinity. For meaningful discourse in a pluralistic society, we must find common ground for building community such that every person is granted a viable opportunity for biological and social life. To begin with injustice and to correct the cause is to promote justice. Caution and attention will be needed to ensure that corrections of injustice do not create new injustices. The lingua franca of human rights as embraced by the church has potential for defining the common good. The values of equality, mutuality, and cooperation are necessary elements in creating policies, and framing rights in the context of a community and environment that sustains and enhances all life.

The church is obligated to hear the cry of the poor and oppressed, and to advocate for policies that approximate justice. For communities of faith, abandoning politics to the state, and taking a separatist position, fails to follow the master, Jesus Christ, who was more likely to be found among the stranger and alien than the members of the local church/synagogue. All persons are created in the image of God and deserve dignity and respect by virtue of being persons. “Love one another as I have loved you” is a profound command. The Triune God, however, is love. Faith in God, as revealed in the Christian symbol of the Trinity, requires the common good exceed the pride of place of individual rights. The community is the context of human life because persons are relational, consistent with being made in the image of the Triune God. Human rights discourse offers an opportunity for Christians to bring the full weight of theology through the hermeneutic of the Trinity to witness love in the form of justice.

Contemporary social ethics reveals the technological impact of medicine, business, global economies, and tele-communication. A debate about the meaning of the common good is evolving in contemporary scholarship in ethics. An example is the communitarian stance of Alasdair MacIntyre arguing that the ability of people to identify what is good depends on their being part of a community with a shared tradition of virtue, although this element of modern society is seriously lacking.⁸⁴ The idea of the common good is difficult for liberals and communitarians alike. The pluralism of contemporary society makes a single vision of the good society difficult, but jettisoning the project altogether is more threatening.

The common good that is achievable in history is a pluralistic ensemble, rather than a collection of absolutes. Human nature requires individual freedom to be moral agents in the context of community, because all persons are social beings. The freedom and dignity of persons are achieved in communal relationships, not in isolation. Personhood and community are mutually implicating realities, as the supreme exemplification of the Trinity demonstrates. Human rights discourse pertains to the common good as the recognition of the fundamental rights of the person and an interdependent life in community. The interrelationships and interdependence of persons in society cannot be accounted for by secular justification of human rights if they are individualistically understood. Christian symbols, i.e. the Trinity, provide a conceptual framework for mutuality and solidarity, giving ultimate meaning to the relational nature of persons, created for community.

The information and technology spawning from the human genome project illustrate how the common good, justice, and human rights intersect in ways that profoundly effect individuals and communities. We may well imagine it possible to test for a particular gene for breast cancer within a few years. When such a test is perfected, will it be universally available to help all women, or will it be sold to individuals and insurance third party payers? The information gained from the test may provide useful knowledge for the individual woman, in ways that affect her future, but without curative intervention, some individuals may not want to know about a fatal gene lurking in their bodies. Do the female children of the breast cancer victim have any rights to information about her cancer? Access to testing and genetic information about individuals and families is a pressing issue in justice. If new diagnostic modalities and treatments are not universally available, are they just? Human rights from an individualistic attitude claims each person can pursue genetic information for his/her personal use without disclosing the information to anyone else, including family members. A communitarian perspective looks beyond the benefit to one person toward the broader effects on family and communities. Justice and the common good place higher priority on relationship than on individual autonomy, therefore, policies emerging in the field of medical genetics will provide an interesting case study to evaluate the hermeneutic of the Trinity in promoting social justice.

The interrelationships and interdependence of persons acquires the full concept of imago Dei through the symbol of the Trinity. Therefore, human rights pertain to the full person within the community of persons. The challenge is to achieve a balance in which the good of the one is understood in the context of community, without sacrificing autonomy. Justice and autonomy may represent polarities of a necessary dialectic in human rights discourse. The Christian symbol of Trinity provides a conceptual value of mutuality and emphasizes the relational nature of persons, created for community.

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