Description: With the rise of restorative justice, one pressing question remains: should victims and offenders reconcile, and what would this mean for accountability? This book offers a theologically rich and nuanced response. Drawing on the relational vision at the heart of Christian theology, it argues that if we are made for relationship, we are also made for reconciliation. Moreover, reconciliation is not opposed to accountability. Rather, true accountability emerges within relationships that seek to restore what has been broken. Through a constructive theological framework, this book reimagines accountability as a relational practice--one that forms individuals in light of who they are called to become before God. In this vision, reconciliation and accountability are not competing ends but are both oriented toward right relationships. Without minimizing the complexity of wrongdoing or the reality that reconciliation may not always be possible, this book invites readers to consider how practices of restoration, however partial, may offer a foretaste of the fullness of shalom.
Brief description: Hannah James is an independent researcher, having earned her PhD from the University of St Andrews in 2024. More recently, she has participated in an interdisciplinary fellowship through the University of Birmingham researching interreligious dialogue and the psychology of symbolic threat.
Review Quotes: "Hannah James offers a compelling and theologically rich account of restorative justice, grounded in Barth's vision of covenantal reconciliation. With deep pastoral sensitivity, she shows how reconciliation and accountability cohere in Christ. This book is a wonderful contribution to analytic and systematic theology and a vital resource for communities seeking faithful and transformative forms of justice."
--Andrew Torrance, Professor of Theology, University of St Andrews
"Karl Barth and the Covenant Partner is constructive theology at its best. Masterfully weaving analytic precision and theological clarity with a sympathetic and sensitive treatment of topics filled with pain and anguish, readers will be plunged into the heart of Barth's covenantal and restitutive theology while also invited to attend the complex and messy realities of relationships wrecked by criminal harm, trauma, and the search for a restored identity. If restorative justice is correct that righted relationships is the telos of justice, then the Covenant Partner tells us the cosmic cause behind this goal."
--Tom Noakes-Duncan, Kaiwhakaako (Faculty Lecturer), St. Johns Theological College New Zealand