Can justice be saved? The question invites a host of others, each more bracing than the last. Can justice be saved—from whom, or from what? Should we cast a shadow over justice, as the question does by presuming it might be insufficient for the world around us? Is not justice itself the tonic the world needs? And perhaps most difficult of all: which justice? This question is the theme of Plato’s Republic. My encounter with that text many years ago at Biola’s Torrey Honors Institute made me a Christian. In his attempt to rescue justice from Thracymachus’ assertion that it is the power of the strong over the weak, Plato discovered that the more fundamental question is whether we can be saved. To this Plato had no real answer: the world would wait some four-hundred years for that.
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