Abstract
Dr Brendan Case, Associate Director for Research at Harvard’s Human Flourishing Program, writes what he calls a Christian theological account about human accountability. His view of accountability is both backward-looking, in that human beings are to render impartial justice to one another for past wrongs, and forward-looking, because human beings will certainly face God’s final judgement. One of the strengths of this book is its interdisciplinary approach to theology. Case has drawn on an impressive range of disciplines (including the social sciences, classical studies, and several discrete branches of philosophy), and sometimes seeks to make contributions to their development.
Influenced by the work of Nicholas Wolterstorff in particular, Case regards accountability as a virtue, an important part of recognizing moral obligations and for developing what he calls ‘full moral personality’ (p. 7) – which he explores in personal, interpersonal and corporate settings. Accountability is, he argues, a subtype of the virtue of justice that involves rendering to each person his or her right; accountability goes, he says, ‘to the heart of what is distinctive about the human way of being’ and is ‘a necessary condition for full human social and moral development’ (p. 13, 14).
Case traces the moral vision of the Old Testament about the justice of accountability to God and to one’s neighbours, and shows how Ezekiel develops these twin themes to show that, although God judges each according to works, God can also empower and transform human works through the Spirit. Case carries through this idea into his interpretation of Romans, where he faces head-on the tension between human accountability and the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith. He highlights this tension from passages such as Romans 2.6, 2.13, 3.20, 3.24 and 4.5, and argues that the tension can be resolved if we treat ‘works of the law’ in Romans 3.20 as a subjective genitive: that is, as meaning ‘what the law does’. The ‘doers of the law’ (Rom. 2.13), in contrast, are those whose works are empowered by the Spirit and thereby fulfil the law (Rom. 4.5, 8.4). He concludes that Paul is ‘as clear an advocate of a final judgment according to works as any New Testament author’ (p. 87): in other words, justification does not override accountability for sin. As for the afterlife, in Chapters 6 and 7 Case argues for post-mortem purgation of sin (perhaps universally – Case leaves this open) as a necessary consequence of the nature of being accountable for sin. The forgiveness of sins does not do away with the notion of accountability for sin. In his view, everlasting torment for sin is not accountability for sin because it is not a proportionate response to the just deserts of the sinner.
The word ‘animal’ in the title as referring to human beings does not, to my mind, do justice to the developed, moral and subtle view of being human that Case sets out. In the Acknowledgements, Case thanks Paul J. Griffiths for writing ‘an exceptionally generous foreword’ to the book, but the foreword has been omitted by the publisher.
This is a wide-ranging, demanding and impressive book that faces difficult questions of how justice, judgement and accountability cohere in the economy of God and in human thought.