This course brings to students the rich knowledge on the importance of acknowledging that biblical reflection on justice takes place within a larger cultural and religious worldview. It opens the door for students living and seeking to build the kingdom of God in the modern secular society they live in and to understand that God’s justice is fundamentally a restoring and renewing justice.
Being an advanced course, students benefit from it as they enter into the task requiring considerable hermeneutical sophistication on the relevance of contemporary restorative justice. This exercise gives them the ability to personally apply what they learn to their own ministry contexts and help others in their communities to understand and experience the joy of justice.
Living in the modern world today where justice is tempered on every now and then, this course is crucial for students because opens up their minds and give them courage to discover what role Christian individuals and communities play in restorative and other justice practices.
This course guides students to understand that biblical justice, interpreted as shalom, is a significant element in much restorative justice discourse as underscored by the fact for Christians, knowing God means doing justice (Jer. 22:15-16). From this biblical point of view, and by crossing over into a very different spiritual, social, political, and economic world than our own, this course helps students answer questions such as, but not limited to, what actually is justice and restorative justice and how we should define these.
The course prepares students to become missional justice pioneers in their respective communities. They understand what divine justice, divine character and divine purpose speaks of them in the world they live in.
By a careful reflection on fairness and equality what does the essence to justice mean and how do we then decide what to take that is pertinent to our world today, students are enlightened to the fact that any talk of justice can be challenging because of the multiplicity of approaches and the widely different contexts we live in - meaning, by and large, restorative justice is usually deliberately and unavoidably contextual.
The course broadens students' understanding of modern systems of justice, discern and act on the basis of justice in a gospel linked culturally appropriate, conditioned, sensitive and critical social embodiments and apply it bearing in mind that justice is as diverse as human culture itself.
This course helps students to understand the connection between biblical conviction and faithful practice of justice. It broadens their vision for justice as they become aware that key issues like the relationship between justice and reconciliation, the importance of practical disciplines and the role of the Christian community are crucial in the biblical witness to Jesus Christ and convictions about Christian practice as a way of life.
This course intends to build students’ capacity so that they are able follow Jesus who directs our attention to the transformed relationship anchored on the Good News of God’s kingdom, a kingdom that is ordered and ruled justly, a kingdom in which people are saved, reconciled and transformed so that they can love and serve faithfully.
