Christopher D. Marshall > Quotes

“Charity must be accompanied by efforts at structural and systemic transformation.”
― Christopher D. Marshall, Compassionate Justice: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue with Two Gospel Parables on Law, Crime, and Restorative Justice

“Present injustices must never simply be tolerated or accepted as inevitable. We are not meant to resign ourselves to the evils of the world, while waiting passively for God's coming to sweep them away. Instead, we are to work tirelessly in partnership with God for the greater attainment of justice her and now, knowing that God shall ultimately bring our efforts to fruition in the renewal of creation. God's coming justice is the culmination of no a substitute for, human string for greater justice here and now.”
― Christopher D. Marshall, The Little Book of Biblical Justice: A Fresh Approach to the Bible's Teaching on Justice

“Significantly, “compassion” in Luke’s Gospel is used only of God (1:78, cf. 1:50, 54) and of Jesus (7:13), and of the two most extraordinary parabolic characters of all: the father of the Prodigal Son (15:20) and the Good Samaritan (10:33).21”
― Christopher D. Marshall, Compassionate Justice: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue with Two Gospel Parables on Law, Crime, and Restorative Justice

“Justice is not a static ideal; it is not the maintenance of some steady state in society. The accent in biblical justice falls on positive action, the exercising of power to resist the oppressor and set the oppressed free. This is why Amos pictures justice as a thundering river that than as in the Western tradition, a neatly balanced set of scales [Amos 5:21-24].”
― Christopher D. Marshall, The Little Book of Biblical Justice: A Fresh Approach to the Bible's Teaching on Justice

“Contrary to what many people think today, punishment as such is not what satisfies the demands of justice. Justice is satisfied by repentance, restoration, and renewal. Punishment serves as a mechanism for helping to promote such restoration.”
― Christopher D. Marshall, The Little Book of Biblical Justice: A Fresh Approach to the Bible's Teaching on Justice

“Compassion is a manifestation of the relationality that binds people together in community and that constitutes the very essence of their humanity.”
― Christopher D. Marshall, Compassionate Justice: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue with Two Gospel Parables on Law, Crime, and Restorative Justice

“When Jesus concludes the parable by asking the lawyer, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the one who fell among robbers?” (v. 36), he is indicating that the question, “Who is my neighbor?” is really a victim’s question, which can only be answered from a victim’s point of view.”
― Christopher D. Marshall, Compassionate Justice: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue with Two Gospel Parables on Law, Crime, and Restorative Justice

“No political system or economic order can ever be regarded as the full, or even as an adequate, realization of justice. All human social structures and centers of power are denied ultimate significance. Every human attempt to create justice, when measured against the perfect justice of God's coming kingdom, is inescapably partial and limited.”
― Christopher D. Marshall, The Little Book of Biblical Justice: A Fresh Approach to the Bible's Teaching on Justice

“It seems clear from the wider gospel tradition that Jesus considered love to have hermeneutical precedence in the interpretation of the Torah and to be the lodestar for his own activity,12 and, as T. W. Manson observes, in the oral culture of the day, “the only way of publishing great thoughts was to go on repeating them in talk and sermons.”13”
― Christopher D. Marshall, Compassionate Justice: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue with Two Gospel Parables on Law, Crime, and Restorative Justice

“True insight comes from standing in solidarity with victims.”
― Christopher D. Marshall, Compassionate Justice: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue with Two Gospel Parables on Law, Crime, and Restorative Justice

“Justice flows from God’s own being and designates the way God intends the world to be. But things have fallen into disorder; the shalom of creation has been ruptured. God responds by seeking to restore the world to the way it ought to be.”
― Christopher D. Marshall, Little Book of Biblical Justice: A Fresh Approach To The Bible's Teachings On Justice

“What social justice requires, King assumes, cannot be discerned in the abstract from the safe distance of a policy analyst or an academic theorist. It can only be found by looking at the actual, embodied suffering of the victims of oppression and injustice, and questioning the structural arrangements that perpetuate their suffering.”
― Christopher D. Marshall, Compassionate Justice: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue with Two Gospel Parables on Law, Crime, and Restorative Justice

“Nothing is said about the need to catch and punish the offenders (most muggers never get caught anyway); all emphasis is placed on the need to restore and heal the victim.”
― Christopher D. Marshall, Compassionate Justice: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue with Two Gospel Parables on Law, Crime, and Restorative Justice

“But the distinctive concern of biblical justice is not to punish sinners, but to restore shalom by clarifying and dealing with the damage caused by wrongdoing. Punishment was a tool for helping to achieve this.”
― Christopher D. Marshall, Little Book of Biblical Justice: A Fresh Approach To The Bible's Teachings On Justice

“We are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway.”
― Christopher D. Marshall, Compassionate Justice: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue with Two Gospel Parables on Law, Crime, and Restorative Justice

“Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord GOD, and not rather that they should turn from their ways and live?”
― Christopher D. Marshall, Little Book of Biblical Justice: A Fresh Approach To The Bible's Teachings On Justice

“From a Christian perspective, justice must have a real objective existence, because justice derives from God, and God exists apart form human speculation. Justice is real because God is real. But our capacity to know God's universal justice is unavoidably conditioned by the ways of looking at life and the world which we receive from the particular historical and religious traditions to which we belong. This is where the Bible comes in.”
― Christopher D. Marshall, The Little Book of Biblical Justice: A Fresh Approach to the Bible's Teaching on Justice

“A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth . . . and say: “This is not just.” . . . A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of spiritual uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
― Christopher D. Marshall, Compassionate Justice: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue with Two Gospel Parables on Law, Crime, and Restorative Justice

“Biblical hope - that confident expectation of a better future - is rooted in the knowledge of God's justice and faithfulness. Because God is the source and champion of justice, and because God is utterly reliable, there is always hope for positive change.”
― Christopher D. Marshall, The Little Book of Biblical Justice: A Fresh Approach to the Bible's Teaching on Justice

“The best vantage point for clarifying one’s moral responsibility when harm has occurred is in the dirt and blood alongside the wounded party, not at the safe distance of a detached jurist debating the details of the relevant legislation.”
― Christopher D. Marshall, Compassionate Justice: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue with Two Gospel Parables on Law, Crime, and Restorative Justice