The Proslogian was an idea that Saint Anselm wrote in Middle English about the concept of God and the most logical answer for why there must be a God that coincided with the sciences of the time. One of his most striking points was about the concepts of justice and mercy. “God could at once be the supreme attribute of justice and the supreme attribute of mercy…” This concept brings about many questions. Can justice coincide with mercy? What is mercy? What is justice? Is justice or mercy good?
Mercy, mercy is an important concept, and not everyone is good at it at first. I like to compare mercy with patience. It takes patience to be good at being merciful. The correct way to be merciful is to understand when a punishment, or an extreme punishment is not necessary. Mercy is to use good judgment to take the action that is the best way to move forward.
This speaks of punishment, which brings us back to justice. First of all, Anselm says that God is the supreme attribute of justice, so is justice bad? Justice itself is not bad at all, justice is necessary in life if there is to be free will and the ability to have judgment within this world. God, as Aristotle points out, is all things, but that does not include sin, or darkness, or evil, because those are all examples of the absence of good things. So if God is the supreme attribute of justice, then he is not the supreme attribute of revenge, because revenge is unnecessary and is in a sense, the absence of justice. Interestingly enough, this is one of the few cases that the absence of a concept can go hand in hand with that concept. For a room to be dark means there can be no light. But one person’s idea of justice can be another’s revenge.
A line is a form of justice, of course, rules were enforced later, but the idea to have a line at the grocery store was just common sense. A line is a just system for making sure everyone is seen to, and it is just in that the person who gets there first is seen to first. This has nothing to do with revenge, it could, but it doesn't, because revenge is unnecessary where justice is.
So justice is good, but how can that go hand in hand with mercy without being contradicted? If justice is making things right sometimes the merciful action would be what makes things right moving forward. For example, a school teacher can see a young child who has never been taught differently ripping up something of the teacher’s. The teacher has two options, punish the child like they would an older child who does know better, or explain to the child why it was wrong and move on. This is an example of justice and mercy going together correctly. It is silly to come up with a solution that makes the child feel bad and doesn’t fix the problem, it is just over exaggerating the problem and failing to prevent the same thing happen in the future because the child does not know why they were punished.
God is the supreme attribute of justice and mercy because He has the only pure, foolproof system, as to which everything is seen to with justice, and he uses his good and kind judgment to ensure the best for the future.
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