Law and Justice

Reforming Criminal Justice: A Christian Proposal by Matthew Martens 

Darrell Bock: 

Welcome to the Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology to everyday life. And our topic today is a completely new one. We've never worked in this area before. It is the area of criminal justice. And no, I am not under arrest and I'm not headed to jail. But our guest is Matthew Martens, who's a lawyer, author, and former federal prosecutor and author of a book entitled Reforming Criminal Justice: A Christian Proposal, and just the title itself might raise all kinds of questions for people. Can you put the criminal justice system and Christian together in a way that makes sense? So Matthew, welcome to The Table and we're looking forward to this conversation. 

Matthew Martens: 

Well, thanks so much for having me on. 

Darrell Bock: 

And let me begin by asking you, basically it's the standard question I ask everyone when they're on for the first time. What's a nice guy like you doing any gig like this? How in the world did you get involved with the criminal justice system and then attach it to a theological understanding of the space? 

Matthew Martens: 

Well, I've been a lawyer for almost 28, or more than 28 years, and most of that time I've been practicing criminal law. I, as you mentioned in the intro, was a federal prosecutor in Charlotte, North Carolina and also in Washington DC for about nine years. I've been a criminal defense lawyer for longer than that, both before and after being a prosecutor. And interestingly enough, while I was working as a prosecutor, I attended Dallas Seminary Extension campus in Atlanta as a part-time student from 2007 to 2010 and got a Master of Arts in Biblical Studies. And that just made me think more theologically, helped me think more theologically and put that together with the work I do. 

Darrell Bock: 

Okay, so you've been in this area for quite some time. I'm going to quote open with some statistics that are in your book that when I read it, I had to read it like three times and say, did I get that right? And here they are. 40% of the murders in the United States go unsolved. And since 2000, 1,039 men and women have been exonerated of murders for which they were convicted. Both of those sound problematic to me. Am I missing something? 

Matthew Martens: 

They are both problematic, and that's probably why I started the book with them because I wanted to first convince people that there's something worth fixing before I spent 350 pages explaining what needed to be fixed and how it should be fixed. And you quote the statistic about 40%, some years it's 50%, it runs between 40 and 50% of murders are not solved. So somewhere between half and 60% to state conversely of murderers are never caught. 

And so that should be concerning to everyone. If you're concerned about justice, we should want not half of murderers to be wandering about 40 to 50% of murderers wandering about free to commit crimes again and not experiencing justice for the crimes that they did commit. And then at the same time, we're running a system where we're convicting a thousand people of murder who didn't commit murder. So when I talk about exonerations, I'm not talking about people who later got off because of legal technicalities or because of some legal error. In their case, I'm talking about people we convicted who didn't do it. 

Darrell Bock: 

And who we discovered later were actually innocent as opposed to guilty. Correct? 

Matthew Martens: 

Correct. Factually innocent meaning did not commit the crime and yet at times spend 10, 20, 30, 40 years in prison for murders they didn't commit. And we've identified a thousand of those, as I mentioned, since 2000. So yes, I think that there's a real concern with how the system operates in both directions, both in under convicting and in over convicting. 

Darrell Bock: 

The interesting thing here on the over conviction is that that's probably a fraction of the total of what might be going on. 

Matthew Martens: 

Well, certainly there's been modeling that's been done to say, okay, if we know this number of wrongful convictions occurred and we know it takes X number of years to figure out those errors, usually about 15 years and given them a lot of crimes, haven't aged 15 years or a number of convictions haven't aged that long, we can model statistically how many convictions are probably occurring that were not legitimate. And so there's been efforts to do that and it's certainly significantly larger. It may be twice as large. The numbers that we know may be only, in other words, half of the wrongful convictions that actually exist. 

Darrell Bock: 

Okay. So your goal was, in the book I take it, was to tell people, one, how the criminal justice system works, how to think about it, some of the elements that are involved, some of the principles that are involved in the way we've structured it, and then ask and raise questions both from within a legal standpoint, but also from a theological standpoint how we should think about criminal justice. So tell us where you started. What do you think people, this is a horrible question to ask you to start off with, but what do you think people need to know that's really important that they probably don't know in thinking about criminal justice? 

Matthew Martens: 

Well, I'm writing primarily to Christians, though not solely to Christians. I've had any number of unbelievers read my book and write me about it and come to my talks and ask questions about it. But I'm writing primarily to believers because first and foremost, I want Christians to think Christianly, so to speak about justice. What are we even talking about when we talk about justice? What do we as Christians understand the role of the state to be in enforcing morality, achieving justice? What are the principles that should guide us in thinking about that? So that was one goal, maybe the first what I'd call the first half of the book. And then the second thing is I wanted people to actually get an understanding of how the criminal justice system actually operates. Not how you see it operate on Law and Order or in a movie A Few Good Men, but how does it actually function? 

If you read chapter 11, my chapter on plea bargaining, one of the things that people are often most surprised about is that somewhere between 94 and 97% of cases are resolved through guilty pleas, through plea bargaining rather than through trials. So that's not usually how TV portrays it, but then you have to ask yourself, how is it that in a country with a constitution that twice guarantees the right to a jury trial, we're getting 94 to 97% of people to give up that right to a trial? And should we want people to give up that right to a trial if we're concerned about justice as Christians understand justice? 

Darrell Bock: 

So let's do this in the order that you have introduced it, which is let's talk first about justice and think about justice from a biblical point of view. And you really root this conversation to some degree starting with Genesis 1 and the fact that we're made in the image of God and that we're supposed to manage the creation well, that that's one of the core assignments of what is sometimes called the cultural mandate that explains who we are and that you also connect justice to the idea of love, whereas many people will put justice in some other category. They might see it as an exercise or an abuse of power or some other kind of category. So talk about that a little bit. 

Matthew Martens: 

Well, it's interesting that in Genesis 1, the creatures given the authority to have dominion were the creatures made in God's image. It's only after we're told that we're made in God's image in Genesis 1 that He then says, have dominion over the earth. I take from that ordering and that unique assignment that our dominion should be exercised in accordance with our image and likeness of God. In other words, that we should reflect His justice, His character, His righteousness in our exercise of dominion. And that remains true after the fall that all authority is delegated as Genesis makes clear, as Christ makes clear when He says, all authority is given me on in heaven, on earth, and then He delegates some of it in the Great Commission. Our authority is delegated and it's delegated, meaning it's God's justice in this instance that we're exercising. And so we have to exercise God's justice is delegated justice in God's way. 

So we have to ask ourselves, what does God's justice look like? What authority do we have? We haven't been given all authority, we've been given some authority and we have to identify what authority that is and how we exercise it in accordance with God's character. Another important point you raise is that people often view love and justice as inconsistent as intention. And I don't think that's true though I acknowledge that our ability as finite people to reconcile them may be limited. But I go back to the doctrine of divine simplicity quite simply that God doesn't have parts. God doesn't do some just stuff and do some loving stuff and because He does some just stuff and does some loving stuff, He's a just and loving God. Everything that God does is just because God is just, and everything God does is loving because God is love. And so in God, justice and love are not in tension. They're entirely reconcilable. And so if we are exercising God's justice as with delegated authority and we're supposed to exercise in accordance with his character, then we should be striving to understand how justice and love reconcile. 

Darrell Bock: 

So I imagine some people might ask this question and you also address this that, well, but justice really doesn't have much to do with the gospel and the gospel is a completely separate category. Or another way to say it might be, well, justice is an exercise of a government that is secular. It's not in the church. And so why should I be concerned about it? And then alongside that, the question of, and what am I as a Christian doing, being concerned about something that seems to fall outside what the gospel is about? And I know you addressed this by suggesting the idea of the gospel may be bigger than you think and cover more space than you think. So help us with that topic. 

Matthew Martens: 

I think one of the, I start with I'm a firmly convictionally committed Protestant, but I worry that the protest that was a just protest, that was a correct protest launched by Martin Luther against the idea of salvation by works has caused us to overcorrect in a way to where we have reduced salvation to the doctrine of justification. We've reduced the gospel to the doctrine of justification. The doctrine of justification by grace through faith is critical. I believe it. I'm committed to it. I don't doubt that. But the gospel is more than the doctrine of justification. And if you just go back to for example, John Calvin in his institutes of Christian religion, he makes that abundantly clear. He talks about the double grace of salvation, which is justification and sanctification that the same God who declared us just in Christ is making us just in Christ. I was just reading this morning, my Bible in Ephesians, and I just kept reading as it was starting a new book. 

I started in one and I just kept going and going because the argument just kept flowing. And it just struck me that Paul couldn't have made that more clear that we are saved not by good works, but two good works. And that part of the salvation is the fact that we can live as new creatures. And so again, going back to the fact that when we exercise dominion, when we exercise authority in this earth, wherever we exercise it, we're supposed to exercise it in accordance with God's character. That's what we were created to do. That's what it originally meant to be human. And as new creatures as we are more and more conformed in the image of Christ, we're more and more able and hopefully more progressing more and more and living lives of justice, whether that's one-on-one with our literal next door neighbors or whether that's in a societal sense, in a structural sense, in a criminal justice system sense where we vote for people and we seek to have them enact laws that more and more reflect the justice that God himself embodies. 

Darrell Bock: 

So you talked about Ephesians. I like to explain it this way and that is Ephesians 2:8-9 is about as Protestant and gospel-focused as you can get salvation by grace through faith not of works lest anyone should boast. And then I say, and then you got to keep reading because verse 10 says, for we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. That's the point that you're making. And then I say, and what's the first good work we're supposed to be a witness to? And you keep reading in that same chapter and you see the new creation is God bringing together strange people. Jews and Gentiles did not get along in the first century. They were at each other's throats. And said, I'm going to make you family and I'm going to adopt all of you and you're all going to have access to the same benefits and you're going to image me. 

I tell people, we're made in the image of God so we can image God so we can reflect his character and his goodness. And that becomes a witness to the fact that God has changed who we are by grace, and so we're supposed to care about that witness in the world. That's the sanctification piece you mentioned. And as a result, this is not a sideshow. It's actually in the middle of where God is hoping to take us as people, as we live out the reconciliation we have with God, which should lead into the reconciliation we have with others, which is why the gospel's supposed to take us to a place called Shalom. Peace. And so I think Ephesians is in the middle of this conversation along with the reminder and revelation that when we get to heaven and we see the scene of who's going to God, it's going to be people from every tribe in every nation who've managed to get along. 

Matthew Martens: 

Yeah, I mean James, just reading recently in James and James says that the only thing that matters is faith working through love. A faith that doesn't work through love doesn't matter. 

Darrell Bock: 

So it's asking how I treat my neighbor and how I engage with people around and whether justice is taking place. We really haven't defined justice, but I'm assuming that one aspect of justice is the idea that it treats everybody made in the image of God in the same and in a consistent kind of way. How would you define justice? 

Matthew Martens: 

Well, I start more fundamentally than that actually. I mean, I think that where I'd start is, where Augustine starts, which is defining justice as giving to everyone they're due. And then we have to say, what's everyone do? And the scriptures answer that repeatedly, including in the two great commandments. Everyone is due my love. And so justice is giving everyone my love, that people have a claim on my love. When we use the word charity, we view it as discretionary. When scripture uses the word charity, views it as an obligation for the Christian, a duty. Everyone is due my love. And so then I have to say, well, what does it mean to love in the context of criminal justice? It's interesting when in Luke 10, when Jesus interacts with the lawyer about the… and gives the story, the Good Samaritan, He asked the lawyer, the lawyer says, "What do I have to do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus says, "You tell me. You're the lawyer." And so he quotes from Deuteronomy, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. 

And he quotes from Leviticus 19, love your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus says, you're right. Do that and you'll live. What's interesting is we know the lawyers quoting Deuteronomy 19 because that's the only place in the Old Testament where that phrase, love your neighbor as yourself appears. And it's in a passage in Leviticus 19 that begins in verse 15, do no injustice in court, but then goes on to say in verse 18, but instead, love your neighbor as yourself, that the command to love our neighbors as ourselves first appeared in scripture in the context of doing legal justice to our neighbors. That that is a prime example, a prime context in other words in which we can do, in which we can love by doing justice. So again, getting back to the notion that they're not intention, doing justice is in fact an act of love. 

Darrell Bock: 

And I go on and mention some of the texts in the prophets which basically say things like, and Micah 6 is, and Amos 5 are the two examples of this. If you do not care about justice, I don't care about your worship. And then I tell people, we tend to view our worship as pretty important. We engage in it every week. So this seems to be pretty high on the ladder in terms of what God is concerned about. 

Matthew Martens: 

Yeah, yeah, exactly right. It's just another way of saying what James says that it doesn't count, where a faith that doesn't show itself in love, to use James words, doesn't count. Whatever you think, it's not something that matters. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah, and it's not something that God is pleased about when you shove it off to the side, it's something that's supposed to be a topic of our concern. Another set of issues that you brought up are the way in which race and fear play into the reality of the way criminal justice tends to get handled and viewed. You want to talk a little bit about that? 

Matthew Martens: 

Well, we're in the election season, so you can just look around. We're trying to… The goal is to scare people enough to get them to vote your way, pitch to them some horrible thing that's going to happen if you don't elect their party and is usually one of the things that all of a sudden there's a surge in crime every election season or so we're led to believe. And so I am trying to identify the reality that we operate at times more out of fear of our neighbors than love of our neighbors when it comes to the topic of criminal justice, that the emotion that's driving us is not the one that scripture says should motivate us. 

That doesn't mean that there's not reason to be fearful of crime. I mean, I'm not advocating that we just look the other way and allow it to go unchecked, but that what should be driving us is in addressing crime is love for our neighbors, both those impacted by crime and also love for those who commit crime because the story of the Good Samaritan is meant to convey to us that there's no one outside the neighborhood of love. Even the most despised in a culture are entitled to our love. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yes. And that parable does two things at once. It makes that point and then it exhorts us to be the kind of neighbor that the Samaritan showed himself to be, to the man who fell among the thieves. And so we're supposed to, it's interesting that Jesus takes a question about who is my neighbor, which I really think, and now I may slander lawyers for which I apologize, but my son's a lawyer and my wife was a paralegal, so I've got to have that caveat before I say this. But the question who is my neighbor was really a question about are there some people who are not my neighbor? That was really what he was pushing for and asking. You don't ask the question, who's my neighbor? If you know everyone's your neighbor. 

So in the midst of trying to do that, Jesus tells a story that makes the point, well, the question's not really to try and figure out who your neighbor is. The real question is can you be a neighbor and should you be a neighbor? And what does being a neighbor look like? And how do you show concern for the people who around you? In fact, I joke about that parable being the parable of the Indianapolis 500 because the priest and Levi come around the corner and they zoom right by the guy and pretend he doesn't even exist as fast as they can go buy him, whereas the Samaritan stops and then the text says eight different acts of compassion that the Samaritan shows to this person who fell among the thieves. And Jesus says, "Don't do what the former guys did. Do what the latter guy did." 

Matthew Martens: 

Yeah, I mean I love how it's after Jesus says, "Do this and you'll live." And I love what Luke writes next, he says, "And the lawyer seeking to justify himself says, and who is my neighbor?" That he was trying to figure out who can I exclude? I mean, okay, maybe it includes the guys who live on both sides of my house or maybe even a few houses down, but certainly it's not everybody. And you're exactly right that after Jesus tells the story doesn't say, he says, who was a neighbor? In other words, who acted like a neighbor? Not you want to exclude people from the neighborhood, you want to know who are they? I want to know who are you? What type of person are you going to be to those who you come across in life's path? 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah. I joke that lawyers can't stop asking questions. So we get the second question. 

Matthew Martens: 

It is. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah, it's a wonderful passage and it does open up this entire space to think about it theologically, et cetera. But we have a whole other half of this conversation which deals with how the actual criminal justice system works. And I think I'm just going to throw out the list of things that you discuss in this area and then I'm just going to let you go in whatever order you want. 

 So you discuss accuracy and justice, which we've already alluded to in the statistics that we quoted at the beginning. You talk about due process, you talk about accountability, you talk about impartiality and you talk about proportionality, which is I think going to be important at some point to dive into a little bit. And then you exhort us to think differently about how those things interact with each other. So I've given you a big plate and a large pool, swim wherever you want. 

Matthew Martens: 

Well, fundamentally, I think that loving our neighbors as ourselves in the context of criminal justice means judging their cases accurately, that God is a God of truth, and that He judges accurately. He tells us repeatedly in Scripture that he'll render to man, to every man according to his works, not according to somebody else's works. He judges us accurately. I think one of the passages you see this most clearly is in Genesis 18, this story where Abraham is interacting with the three angels or God, depending on how you read the passage about judging the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and they tell them that they're going to judge. And Abraham says, but what if there's 50 innocent people? Would you destroy a city, whole two whole cities of wickedness if there's 50 innocent people? 

And God says, "I wouldn't judge it in that circumstance." Abraham says, "What about 40? What about 30? 20? 10?" And God says, "I would forgo punishing two whole cities full of wickedness if doing so meant I swept up 10 innocent people." I mean, that's a compelling point that's being made there about how concerned God is about judging accurately that He would forgo judging two whole cities full of sinners if that meant He had to judge 10 righteous people. God's concerned about accuracy. 

Darrell Bock: 

What's interesting about that is it's the opposite of the way sometimes we handle the space because the way we normally handle the space is there are two or three people who are what we might call bad apples who have done bad terrible things. And now I'm going to impute that to a whole group of people. And it goes the exact opposite way. 

Matthew Martens: 

The exact opposite, where God's willing to forgo judgment in order to protect the innocent. And I think at times we're willing to let the so-called, let chips fall where they may, even if that means they fall on some innocent people, even if they fall on those thousand innocent people who were convicted of murder in the last 24 years in our country. And so I think that you have to start with God's concern about accuracy. I mean, He says elsewhere in the Old Testament, stay far away from the false charge. 

God is deeply concerned about accuracy. And again, going back to where we started, if we're going to reflect His justice in carrying out the delegated authority, we need to be equally concerned about accuracy. And accuracy is how we love both our neighbors. In the criminal justice system, no one's loved by a false conviction. The victim is left with a lie, having been lied to, that justice has been accomplished for the wrong they suffered. The person who is wrongly convicted hasn't been loved, having been punished for something they can't repent of. Society isn't loved because society is left exposed to the wrong as the wrongdoer remains out there and the person who actually committed the wrong hasn't been loved because they've been denied the corrective force of the law that it's supposed to provide. And so it's a wholesale failure to love all our neighbors if we're not committed to accuracy. 

Darrell Bock: 

And out of- 

Matthew Martens: 

Accuracy- 

Darrell Bock: 

Go ahead, I'm sorry. 

Matthew Martens: 

No, no, go ahead with your question. 

Darrell Bock: 

I was going to say, then accuracy obviously leads into due process? 

Matthew Martens: 

You got it. Exactly. There's a flow there because as a finite person, you have to say, well, how do I accomplish accuracy? I'm not a mind reader. I don't have a time machine. I can't see through walls. I'm not clairvoyant. And so if I'm going to as a finite human being, achieve accuracy, I have to do that through a process that surfaces and tests the relevant evidence, and I can get to that point of due process through reason as a derivative of accuracy. I can also see it in scripture where it talks about he who's first in his own cause seems just, but then his neighbor comes and searches him out. Or you can see it in Deuteronomy with the commands to have the witnesses tested in the gate by the judges that you see in scripture, this concept or the idea of, on the testimony of two or three witnesses, and you test those witnesses. 

You see throughout scripture this idea that our accuracy depends on our commitment to process. And if we're not really committed to a process, then we're not really committed to accuracy. You can't just say, well, we only convict on proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but then describe a process perhaps that doesn't actually try to get to the truth. If I told you we only convict on proof beyond reasonable doubt, but the prosecution will have a lawyer, you can't have one and you can't cross examine any of the witnesses and the fact finder will be biased, you'd be like, "Well, I don't think you're really that committed to accuracy." You're like, "No, no, no. We only convict on proof beyond reasonable doubt." You're like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but your process belies your claimed commitment to accuracy." And so a commitment to due process is how we get to accuracy. But process would be useless if we then employed that process in front of biased fact finders. And so impartiality is critical that we judge cases not based on personalities, not based on who's being judged, but based on what they did. 

And then accuracy also entails the idea of judging proportionally. You mentioned proportionality. I could rightly identify who committed a wrong and then punish them disproportionately either too leniently or too severely, and in the process tell a lie about the severity of the wrong they did. If I convict somebody of murder and give them a traffic ticket, I have judged inaccurately. I have told a lie about the severity of the wrong. And likewise, if I convict somebody of jaywalking and execute them, I've told a lie about the severity of the wrong. And so proportionality is critical to judging accurately. And then lastly, you mentioned accountability. Accountability is just the idea that when those in authority judge inaccurately, when they abuse the authority they have that they too must be held accountable. As Irenaeus put it in Against Heresies, when the magistrate acts unjustly, he too must perish. 

Darrell Bock: 

So I'm thinking about the idea of someone being presumed innocent and their guilt has to be established. And established, you mentioned one standard which is beyond a reasonable doubt. And then I think in civil cases the standard is slightly different. There's a proportionality in how that- 

Matthew Martens: 

Proponderance. 

Darrell Bock: 

Proponderance of the evidence. And in saying that the person is presumed innocent until proven guilty, that's actually not a statement that they are innocent. It's just a question of can I show that someone performed the illegal act that I am examining? 

Matthew Martens: 

Yeah, the presumption of innocence isn't to deny those who are wronged a hearing. It's actually just the opposite. Provide them a hearing. We're going to hear you out. You claim that you were wronged in some way, that this person committed some crime. We're going to hear them out. We're not going to prejudge the matter for you or against you. We're going to give you an opportunity to be heard, and we're likewise going to give the person who's accused an opportunity to be heard. And I think again, that's bound up in the notion of due process. The process would be meaningless if we started with a presumption that the person did it and the person then is not getting the opportunity, they're not getting the process, we're not giving an opportunity in that instance for them to test the evidence. If we're starting with the assumption that they did it and no proof is necessary, then in that circumstance to convict them. The presumption of innocence means we have to have proof, people have to come forward with accusations and then we give you the opportunity to test them. 

And we weigh at the end of the day whether or not the crime has been proven. And again, I think going back to the Old Testament but also repeated in the New Testament is this idea of only on the testimony of two or three witnesses can you punish. You see that not only with regard to people who commit crimes in the Old Testament, you see it repeated as to allegations in the church in the New Testament. And there's an interesting concept in there which is that God hasn't given us authority to address all wrongs. God hasn't given us authority to address one witness wrongs. He hasn't given us the authority. He didn't give it. In Old Testament, Israel didn't give it in the church to punish one witness wrongs. Those, we have to trust Him with. And I think that there's an interesting concept there that the justice that we can accomplish in this world is intermediate, it's temporary, and it's ultimately pointing us to and probably and should make us long for ultimate justice in which the only just judge will set all wrongs right. 

Darrell Bock: 

So all this assumes the role of the state and overseeing this, the pursuit of justice, if I can say it that way. And what I'm hearing from you, which is interesting to me, because I don't think I've thought about it quite this way, is that the state is really representing the unlawful or unrighteous act that has taken place and is trying to determine who's responsible for this act. The state comes on behalf of the victim. I guess I could say it that way in ways what's going on while at the same time have a concern because of the accuracy that you've mentioned, that the case be legitimately adjudicated. And so both the person, the state is representing and prosecuting the case and the defendant who's put in the dock as a result of the charges are both, the attempt is to try and handle them with some level of balance. Is that the premise underneath our legal system? 

Matthew Martens: 

Well, I think I would say it a little differently, slightly differently. I would say that the state is coming on behalf of God. That's what I understand as a Christian, whether or not the state understands what they're doing. 

Darrell Bock: 

All right. Fair enough 

Matthew Martens: 

In Romans 13, Paul describes him literally as ministers diaconos of God that they are bearing his sword. This is just another way of restating what was in Genesis 1 is that the dominion is being exercised on a delegated basis from God to reflect his justice. And so they're coming as a terror to evildoers and as a protection of the innocent, but they're not presuming what happened here. They're not actually presuming whether the person to be protected is the accused or the accuser. They're going to sort that out. And when the state sorts that out, they're then going to bear the sword against the wrongdoer and the wrongdoer as we in Scripture, and again in the Old Testament could be the accuser if it's a false accuser. 

And Scripture talks about bearing the sword against that person. And so I think the Christian understanding is that the state is acting on behalf of God to accurately judge in that subcategory of cases that is delegated to the state to judge. And by that, I mean ones that have more than one witness in that subcategory, the state is acting as God's minister to render justice by accurately judging the case. 

Darrell Bock: 

Okay, so that's actually raises a good question because obviously, you've got people who think about this theologically and clearly you have people who don't. So you've got that. And I think what's being said by what you're saying, which is a good qualification is, is that God cares about good and evil about how we treat one another. That fundamentally when you're saying you're representing God and God's way of living, there's something about being a human being in the way human beings are supposed to treat one another that sorts out good from evil, if I can say it that way. And that means that the state is delegated as being an instrument of justice that is properly rendered. 

Matthew Martens: 

It is one of God's means of reflecting His justice in the world. It's not the only means. There's lots of other institutions, family and churches, other sources of authority, teachers, employers, professors who can be means that God uses to reflect His justice in the world. Whether we eat or drink or whatever we do, we do all to the glory of God and we glorify God by reflecting His character in whatever we do. And one of those means means explicitly detailed in Scripture, both in Genesis 9:6 and the Noahic Covenant in Romans 13 in Paul's writing on this and elsewhere is that the state, the governing authorities are one means of reflecting God's justice in the world. An intermediate means, but an important means. 

Darrell Bock: 

And because at the base of this is this relational treatment between people, this is where the issue of injecting love into the conversation finds itself. 

Matthew Martens: 

There you go. 100%. 

Darrell Bock: 

Because in the end we're asking, are we taking due consideration of my neighbor, both the person who's alleged to have committed the crime and the victim in the midst of trying to sort out where the good and the evil and the act actually lie? 

Matthew Martens: 

Yeah, exactly right. This is where love comes back in. I mean Martin Luther King Jr. said that justice is love ruling well, and I think that that's exactly right, that that's what… Let me strike that. I don't think it's Martin Luther King. I think it was actually Augustine. So I think that's exactly right that Augustine said that justice is love ruling well, and that justice is a manifestation of love. Ultimately, Jesus meant it when He said all the law and the prophets hang on the commands to love God and love our neighbors. And so one way in which we manifest love to our neighbors is providing them with the earthly justice that God has delegated us to provide. 

Darrell Bock: 

That raises another question because we're actually in part discussing the centrality of justice as a value in the scripture and how it relates to how God calls on us to treat one another. And so I'm thinking about when God holds nations accountable, He holds them accountable really for two fundamental things. One is idolatry, the idea that you're chasing after wrong gods. And the second, and it might be as discussed if not more discussed, is the issue of justice and whether you're treating people justly in the world. So if we were to ask, I almost hate to do this, what the mega sins are at a corporate level in our society, one is going in the wrong direction in terms of where the spiritual base of our activity lies. That would be idolatry. And the other would be in treating people so poorly or so unjustly that God is offended by the lack of concern that we show for those whom he has made. 

Matthew Martens: 

Yeah, I mean again, you could see that in Genesis and it's made clear through the rest of scripture. The first sin was refusing, was trying to put ourselves above God, elevating ourselves, inverting the created order by elevating ourselves above God, just another form of idolatry. And then the second sin was killing somebody else. It devolved quickly. It was a failure to love literally brother between brother between brother. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah. It was a devolution. 

Matthew Martens: 

Exactly. 

Darrell Bock: 

And with the effects still being with us because it helps to create a tribal world. I tell people the reconciliation of the gospel, we're back to how the gospel fits into all this. I tell people that the reconciliation of the Bible is an anti-tribal message in a tribal world. 

Matthew Martens: 

Yeah, sure. That's really true. 

Darrell Bock: 

And so there's a sense in which the transnational nature of the gospel is a very important part of its message. And because we tend to think so individualistically in the west, we tend to miss this corporate dimension of what it is that God is doing in reconciling peoples to one another. 

Matthew Martens: 

Yeah, I mean I think this is back to where I really think that too much of how we think about Christianity as Protestants is too narrow that we're offering good news. That's good. But there's actually great news. I feel like that we've… The great news is that God has not only just declared us to be just people, but He's reconciling us to one another as we were originally created to be. That won't be perfectly achieved in this life, but it should be. Romans tells us more and more achieved every day in this life. Romans 6 is every bit the Gospel as Romans 3, that He has given us new life. 

Darrell Bock: 

You're doing this as a lawyer and as a theological conservative, but you're messing with systems. And so I- 

Matthew Martens: 

I'm reclaiming systems. I mean, I'm citing Calvin on this. Calvin said that the double grace of salvation is justification and sanctification. I think we've moved away from that in a harmful way. 

Darrell Bock: 

Wonderful point. And actually you're going in the direction that my question was going to go, which is something that God designed to be together and seen as a whole got broken apart and in breaking it apart, we have done God's message and God's calling for us a disservice. I tell a story about how I still think we're now living in the shadow of the fundamentalist modernist controversy in which my story goes in the middle of the 19th century. As I look back on history, liberals came along and said, "We like the ethics of Christianity, but we don't believe the theology underneath it, and we're challenging the Bible as a part of that." And they broke it apart. Conservatives looked at that and they went, "I like that deal, but we're going to do it in the reverse direction. We're committed to anything that's about the Bible. Anything in social space and social gospel is problematic." And they both got divorced. 

And then my next line is what God has joined together? Let no man put asunder. So we need to put it back together. But the trouble in putting it back together is everyone sees it as an inherent divide. And so the ability to build the bridge to pull it back together becomes harder. And I think what you're doing in the legal area is to remind people, no, no, no, no. This all is connected. It belongs together. It doesn't belong separate. We should disavow any thinking that separates the two things and sees one as sacred and the other is secular or something like that. Or one as conservative and the other as liberal. No, if we're going to be biblical, we're going to keep these things connected to one another. 

Matthew Martens: 

That's exactly what I'm pressing at, and nobody asked me to say this, but Dallas Seminary more than anything else helped me see that. Glenn Kreider, more than anybody else, helped me see that the gospel is bigger. I remember sitting in his Doctrine of Man's sin and angels class in January of 2008. I write about this in the book. And I'm listening to him and I'm like, this sounds different than what I feel like I've understood the gospel to be. And there was a student who in the front row, I still remember where the person was sitting. I can't picture them. Maybe they're listening and remember who they are, but they raised their hand and said, "So what you're saying is that the gospel is about redemption." 

And Dr. Kreider walked over and he shook the person's hand and he's like, "You got it." And I felt like, yeah, it's bigger than just declared just. Not that that's not important. That was a central part of the reformation and important part, but the stories bigger than that. I'm also being made just. Things are being put back together. Dr. Kreider played in that class, the song, Everything Is Broken. And everything is broken, but he's going to fix everything. The curse went down to the dirt and all creation groans, but it's waiting for its restoration. Everything's going to get fixed. 

Darrell Bock: 

You ended up in Romans 8, which is where I was going to go next, which is that the redemption that we're participating in doesn't stop at Romans 4 and 5. It goes to Romans 6, 7, and 8. And in fact, it involves people. So it also puts us in Romans 9, 10, and 11, which people want to treat as a parenthesis, but it's actually a part of the argument. And so we see that God deals with individuals on the one hand, but he deals with peoples on the other. He seeks that people would treat people well, if I can say it that way. And that's what you have been contending for. 

Our time is running out. So let me bring up two other topics that I wanted to be sure we covered, and let me do them in the reverse order that I have on my list, which is you talked about bail and plea bargaining is an important part of the justice system, which most people don't appreciate. So I want you to take a few minutes so that we might appreciate it. And then the second part of it then is, and then you call on people at the end of the book to think differently. So why don't you tackle those two, bail and plea bargaining first? 

Matthew Martens: 

Well, as I said earlier in our discussion, about 95% of criminal cases are resolved through guilty pleas. And you say, how do we get all of those people to waive the right to a jury trial and plead guilty instead of going to trial and trying to, if nothing else play for fumbles. Even if you're guilty, why would you plead guilty? The answer to that is multifaceted. But part of the answer to that is bail. That by denying people bail before they are convicted, meaning we jail people before they've been convicted of anything, that's used as a mechanism to try to extract guilty pleas out of people. It's not the only method used, but it's one of the methods used because without sufficient defense counsel for the poor, it can be many months before their lawyer comes to see them. 

And because the right to a speedy trial has been whittled away such that you could wait in jail for, I kid you not, eight to 10 years at times before you get to trial on certain charges, that creates the enormous leverage for a prosecutor to say, to come to you and say, "I will give you a plea offer to a lesser charge and time served, but you have to admit that you did this particular crime and I'll let you out today." And so bail is used as a means to extract the sentence before a guilt is determined. That is part of how we accomplish 95% of criminal cases being resolved through guilty pleas. And what I raise is questions about whether or not that accomplishes accuracy. Maybe you think, well, the person admitted they did it, that means they did it. And that might be true if it was uncoerced, and it might be true if you believed in prosecutorial infallibility, but that was not one of the doctrines that I learned at Dallas Seminary. In fact, I learned just the opposite human fallibility. 

And so I think the American system of plea bargaining, as I explain in greater detail in the book, raises real questions about Christian Justice. But all of what I'm trying to accomplish, as you pointed out, is to encourage folks to think differently because that's what Romans 12 says. The gospel should result in a transformation of the mind, a renewal of the mind that we bring every thought into captivity to Christ. We might come to the Christian life with an ideological view about criminal justice that's been informed by our experiences or by our environment or by news stories or movies we've watched, or whatever the case may be. And Christ calls us to bring every thought captive to ask ourselves is what we believe about justice, what He believes about justice. And that's what I'm hopeful that I've maybe added something to that conversation to help us all think more like Christ in that respect. 

Darrell Bock: 

Well, Matthew I to thank you for your time and your willingness to talk with us about this area. I dare say most people, if they don't work in the legal profession and have a legal background and even a criminal justice background, probably don't think about this very much. And so you've given us categories that we need to think about, particularly those connected to our relationship with God as believers. And I found the conversation fascinating on the one hand and quite informative on the other. So I just want to express my appreciation to you for giving us your time. 

Matthew Martens: 

Well, thanks so much for having me on, and I'm grateful for my time at Dallas Seminary and hopefully people who are familiar with Dallas will see some of that influence throughout the book. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah, well, our motto is teach truth, love well, and we want to do both. I sometimes tease the seminary, do we have it in the right order? But nonetheless, it's an important point to say this touches every area of life. Sanctification touches every area of life, even the way we go about our legal business. 

Matthew Martens: 

For sure. Yeah. 

Darrell Bock: 

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