Retribution

Jus post bellum justice provides us with two criteria: holding aggressors responsible (punishment) and providing some form of restoration to victims (restitution). The reality of our time suggests a very limited justice.

Retribution is the form love sometimes takes when nothing else will requite injustice.

In a series of articles in the fall of 1946, Christianity and Crisis contributors offered reports based upon their travels, including from Reinhold Niebuhr and John Baillie in Germany.

Christian pacifism became untenable for me because the God who punished, killed, and destroyed in the Old Testament remains the God of the New Testament.

There may be no prudent responses against North Korea’s regime for Otto Warmbier’s murder. But such a concession to realism over justice does not invalidate the morality of the retributive instinct. It remains. And it remains deeply Christian.

The notion of retribution or punishment has long been the scourge of social science. Christian thinkers should develop the distinction between retribution and revenge or retaliation.