KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 25 May
“Have you condemned a daughter of Israel without examination
and without learning the facts?”
The conclusion to the outstanding short story of Susanna and the elders read in the two senior Chapels this week following the May long weekend is dramatic and powerful. Daniel speaks up and identifies the problem: the arbitrary misuse and miscarriage of justice not only by the judges in their wickedness but by the assembly itself. The assembly has condemned Susanna simply on the authority of the judges without an examination of the case. Such is injustice and a betrayal of Israel itself in ignoring the Law.
This complements the famous ‘myth of Gyges’ in Plato’s Republic which launches the inquiry into the nature of justice. Instead of just one ring of invisibility, we are asked to imagine two rings, one in the possession of someone who is just and one who is unjust. Show us, Socrates, Glaucon asks, why justice is better than injustice in all cases. The idea of the ring of invisibility raises the perennial question: wouldn’t we all cheat and lie if we could get away with it? In other words, power without wisdom, without virtue, leads to injustice in the individual and in the community. “The state is the soul writ large” is Plato’s equally famous analogy.
The assembly allows Daniel to examine the judges who have falsely accused Susanna. The approach is classic. He separates them from each other and asks them under which tree did they see Susanna and the purported young man she was supposed to be with. There is a wonderful ironic wordplay in the Greek about the two trees, perhaps best rendered in English as a clove tree and a yew tree, suggesting the verbs ‘cutting’ or ‘cleaving’, and ‘sawing’ or ‘hewing’ apart. The point is that they are caught out in a lie and in so doing become subject to the very same penalty which they had wrongly sought to inflict upon Susanna. We might call it poetic justice. They have betrayed Israel and themselves in seeking to harm Susanna.
We might note, too, how the argument brings out the significance of empirical evidence in the way the wicked judges are caught out. This kind of tree, says the one; that kind of tree, says the other. The empirical – what belongs to sense perception – goes together with the rational. Their own words convict them.
The deeper ethical principle is that justice cannot be arbitrary. The deliberate misuse of justice for their immediate self-interest comes back upon them. They are caught in the web of their own deceit and evil. They have, as the text makes explicit, betrayed the idea of the love of neighbour which we learned about from the Book of Leviticus which goes together with the love of God.
We have read the conclusion to the story of Susanna in Ascensiontide. In the Christian understanding, the Ascension of Christ to the right hand of God the Father is the homecoming of the Son having accomplished all that belongs to human redemption. As the Fathers of the early church emphasize, this is “the exaltation of our humanity,” an image of the dignity and virtue of our humanity as found in God. The Ascension is not a flight from the world as if it were evil. It points us to the reconciliation of spirit and matter and reveals the greater truth of our humanity as found in communion with God.
Perhaps, just perhaps, the story of Susanna serves as a counter to our cynical despair about our institutions and political life. It recalls us to the principles that properly dignify and ennoble our lives, the principles that make us truly human.
(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, Head of English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy
