Anthony Bradley on The Elements of Social Justice

Anthony Bradley has written insightfully on 8 elements that undergird  and sustain a practical Christian view of justice. The article is very short, so I recommend that all interested would take 5-7 minutes to read it.  You’ll surely benefit.

Here are his 8 points (with some quotations):

• Love: “Love…must be the presupposition of social justice so that our conception of justice is in harmony with the will of the Triune God. (Matthew 22:36-40)”
• Human Dignity: “The truly disadvantaged should be directed toward realizing the freedom and responsibility, the spirituality, the excellence of character and holiness, the expected contribution to the social good, and the application of creativity and rationality in the arts and culture that are necessary consequences of bearing the image of the Triune God.”
• Solidarity: “…solidarity highlights in a particular way the intrinsic social nature of humans made in the image of the Trinity.”
• Flourishing Social Spheres: “…it is a violation of human solidarity and human dignity for higher orders of society to undermine and violate the functions of lower orders, as well as for spheres to extend beyond their expertise, competence, or design into other spheres.”
• Desert: “If we love people and seek their good, what people deserve are opportunities live out their vocations as human beings—having freedom to do the things that humans were created to do.”
• Reciprocity: Quoting David Schmidtz, “When people reciprocate, they teach people around them to cooperate. In the process, they not only respect justice, but also foster it. Specifically, they foster a form of justice that enables people to live together in mutually respectful peace.”
• Equality: Bradley asks the tough questions, “What does ‘equality’ mean? Do we want a society that considers equality on the basis of treatment in accordance with human dignity? Or do we want a society that orients equality materialistically in terms of how much “stuff” some people have versus others?”
• Need: “What the truly disadvantaged need is a context where they are free to be truly human and virtuous in accordance with love, human dignity, solidarity, and our social and economic interdependence—that is, economic empowerment.”