Book Review The Quest for Cosmic Justice

Coffee with a Calvinist and Daily Bible Reading

Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. This program is dedicated to helping you better understand the word of God and the doctrines of grace. The Bible tells us, do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to study along. Here's your host with today's lesson, Pastor Keith Foskey.

And welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist. Today is September 25th, 2020. And if you're reading along with us, you're going to be in 2 Peter 1. That's our daily Bible verse, daily Bible chapter rather.

We go one chapter a day through the New Testament in 2020. You read along with us and you will have read the entire New Testament this year. And if you'd like to get a copy of our daily Bible reading list, you can go to sgfcjacks .org.

That is Sovereign Grace Family Church of Jacksville. Click on posts and underneath posts, you will see our daily Bible reading list for 2020. It is Friday and Friday is the day that we do book reviews.

Why Christians Can Learn from Non-Christian Books

Now, I want to make a point before I get started. Not every book that I review is necessarily a Christian book but as a pastor, I like to point you to things that I have found helpful, whether they be specifically Christian works or perhaps other works that aren't necessarily Christian but do have a important lesson to teach or an important message to give.

And today, I want to talk about a book entitled The Quest for Cosmic Justice. It is by Thomas Sowell. Now, before I start, I want to kind of tell you how I got introduced to Thomas Sowell. I got introduced to Thomas Sowell through a quote.

Years ago, I was teaching a theology class and I was collecting my material, putting everything together for my class and I came across a great quote by a man that I'd never heard of. His name was Thomas Sowell and the quote goes like this.

The problem isn't that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is. He confuses it with feeling. I'll say it again. The problem isn't that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is.

He confuses it with feeling. I remember reading that and thinking, wow, that's very insightful because I have seen in my own experience, folks have given up the idea of thinking and they have replaced it with their feelings and just think about how your conversations go with people.

You ask them to share an opinion with you. They often say, well, I feel, and in those situations, I often stop people. I say, no, no, don't tell me how you feel. Tell me what you think because thinking and feeling are not the same things.

We need to learn to use our intelligence. Christians are not anti-intellectual. That is a myth that has cropped up that Christians turn their mind off when they exercise faith and that faith is a mindless exercise.

That's wrong. And I remember I was teaching the theology class and I used this quote. I said that we need to get away from making everything about how we feel and we need to get back to thinking about our faith and thinking about the world around us.

So again, this is how I was introduced to Thomas Sowell. I began to look in more about him, getting more quotes from him, and I began to see that he was not only an author, but he was an author of many books.

He is an American economist, he is a social theorist, and he is the senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He really is an amazing intellectual and he has taught on a variety of subjects, but most importantly and probably most specifically on the subject of economics and how the societies are affected by different trends in behavior and economics.

Again, he is a social theorist, he studies behavior and how societies function, how economies function, and he is certainly a conservative. I wanna read to you just one day ago on Twitter, he said this.

He said, people who have achieved success are often referred to as privileged, especially by the intelligentsia. Achievements used to be a source of inspiration for others, but have been turned into a source of grievance for those without comparable achievements.

That's an amazing statement, and it's true. I think it was Sowell that said that ultimately Marxism is all about seeking, or it's based on the fundamental idea of coveting. It's coveting what others have.

It's coveting the, and I don't remember if he used the word coveting. I think actually he used a different word. He used the word envy. He said that ultimately the ideas that were being put out by Marxism was ultimately, it was envy.

He said envy used to be a sin, but now it's virtuous because it's the foundation for this belief system. And so what I wanna do today is I wanna introduce you to Sowell's book, The Quest for Cosmic Justice.

Cosmic Justice, Social Justice, and the Limits of Equality

And this is something that I actually read a couple of years ago. So I came back into my mind this week primarily because of the program from Wednesday. And if you listen daily, I appreciate it. I wanna say thank you.

Our Wednesday program was our response to Tim Keller, and Tim Keller had said some things about white privilege. He'd said if you're a white person, that's worth over a million dollars over a lifetime, and ultimately you are a product of injustice because of your white skin.

And he made this strong explanation about basically the sin of being white. And I said that that was an example of cultural Marxism. And I think that this is a good time for me to point out The Quest for Cosmic Justice, which is Sowell's book.

And if you wanna understand what he means by cosmic justice, basically that's Sowell's language that he uses instead of the word social justice because according to Sowell, and I think this is true, he said ultimately all justice is social because if someone was on a desert island, they're not gonna be just or unjust.

Justice in that sense requires being part of a society. So in that sense, justice is social, but he says what it is, they're not trying to get social justice. They're trying to achieve cosmic justice.

Now I wanna let him speak for himself. This is a very short quote from Thomas Sowell where he explains what he means by cosmic justice.

Dr. Sowell, when you talk about cosmic justice in intellectuals and race, what do you mean by that?

I guess I mean what some people mean by social justice, which is justice for groups, an initial opportunity to have the same life chances. But I call it cosmic justice because no society is able to do that or has ever done that in any country.

And so what you're asking for is for the whole life chances to be the same. When you think of all the differences, it's virtually impossible. Some kids may be raised in families that are the same economic level, but one family will have one set of attitudes toward education and the other will not.

And the one who's in the family that does not have that same attitude, he may be a fine fellow, he may be bright, all of that. He doesn't have the same chance. There's almost no way he could have the same chance.

The Dangers of Social Justice Thinking

So that's an example, according to Thomas Sowell, of what he means by cosmic justice. And ultimately, this is where I bring it back to a theological perspective. The goal of social justice, which Sowell calls cosmic justice, is a form of equality which would really only be able to come from God.

But there is not that equality from God. We are all born with certain inequalities. I mean, we could discuss the reality of severe inequality, such as those who are born with certain inabilities to maybe speak or see or hear.

There are disabilities that we would refer to as saying those are difficulties, and we know those do happen. But there are also, where you were born is certainly something that would reference either a advantage or disadvantage.

And that's what he said. He said that somebody can be extremely bright, somebody can be smart, but if they are raised in a home where education is not seen as a value, then they may not have the same advantage as someone who may not be as bright, but is raised in a home where education is set at a premium and education is encouraged and rewarded.

And so that creates all kinds of distinctions among people. And so the idea of social justice is trying to find a specific type of equality that is, it's not really possible. And it's not even really, it's not only that it's not possible, it's not even really good in the sense that what it does in the attempting to get it is actually very dangerous.

And he talks about this in the book. He talks about the idea that, I wanna read this quote. Now, this is not from the book. This is actually from a article from the Hoover Institution, but this is by Sowell, but on the same subject, he says this, in its pursuit of justice for a segment of society in disregard of the consequences for society as a whole, what is called social justice might more accurately be called anti-social justice, since what constantly gets ignored or dismissed are precisely the costs to society.

What are we seeing all around us? We are seeing the dangers of people who are bent on social justice, and we're seeing extreme examples of it right now with the mob violence and looting and things like that.

Certainly we're seeing extreme examples right now, but he's saying that there are dangers to society with thinking like this, because ultimately, and going back again to his tweet just from a day ago, he said, used to achievements were a source of inspiration, but now they have turned into a source of grievance.

I don't look at someone who achieves and I say, good for them, and I want to seek to be that successful. Rather, I look at someone who has achieved, and I am upset because I don't have the same achievements that they have, and it's caused untold harm to how we understand our world.

The Quest for Cosmic Justice and the Quiet Repeal of the American Revolution

And so this is the book. This is, again, the book is called The Quest for Cosmic Justice. It's only four chapters. It is a relatively short read. It's around 200 pages. The four chapters are The Quest for Cosmic Justice, The Mirage of Equality, where he talks about this mirage that people are seeking to get, which is this idea of equality, The Tyranny of Visions.

That one is great. He mentions, he talks in that one, there's a quote in there about Lenin, and he said, you know, Lenin never visited a factory. He never set foot on a farm. He had a vision, but he was insulated from how that vision actually affected people, and that's so important.

And then, of course, in chapter four, he talks about the quiet repeal of the American Revolution. So, again, today is my recommendation, my review of this book. It is not a theology book. It is a book that talks from an educated man about the subject of social justice and the seeking out of what he says is not really social justice, but is cosmic justice, and how ultimately it is not only a bad thing, but it's a very dangerous thing that people are thinking in this direction and going in this direction.

So, I would recommend to you, if you've never heard of Thomas Sowell before, look him up, look at his Twitter page, look at his quotes. He has some wonderful things to say, and again, he is not speaking necessarily from a Christian perspective, so I can't endorse everything that he's ever said, and you may know of some things that he has said that I would disagree with, and that's certainly possible that he has said some things that I would disagree with, but on this program, I have an opportunity to share with you things that have benefited me, and one of the things that benefited me over the last few years was reading The Quest for Cosmic Justice by Thomas Sowell.

So, that is my recommendation and my review, and I hope that you have found it to be helpful to you today. Thank you for listening to Coffee with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey, and I have been your Calvinist.

May God bless you.

Closing Remarks and Podcast Sign-Off

Thank you for joining in for today's episode of Coffee with a Calvinist. Keep in mind, we have a new lesson available every weekday morning at 6 .30 a .m. on YouTube and Facebook. If you enjoyed this lesson, please take a moment to respond by hitting the like button, leaving a comment, and subscribing to the channel.

On behalf of Pastor Foskey, thank you for listening. May God bless you.