All Justice, No Peace: October 7, the War in Gaza, and the Structural Limits of Retroactive Justice in Contemporary Liberation Theology

Abstract

This article argues that contemporary theological and transnational justice discourse has undergone a structural shift from future-oriented emancipation to retroactive moral accounting. While liberation theology originally understood justice eschatologically, as an opening toward transformed relations and shared future life, contemporary discourse increasingly organizes justice around categorical identity, historical suffering, and immediate verdict. I call this condition “all justice, no peace”: multiple claims to justice remain internally coherent yet become mutually incommensurable, making coexistence harder rather than easier. The article traces three dynamics behind this shift: the global circulation of solidarity frameworks that stabilize rather than pluralize moral categories; the closure of the hermeneutical circle around fixed identities; and digital mediation, which privileges verdict over witness. These dynamics are examined through the Israeli–Palestinian conflict after 7 October 2023, where post-Holocaust Christian theology and Palestinian liberation theology each generate powerful but structurally non-relational claims to suffering and justice. The article concludes by proposing a move from retroactive to prospective justice as the only framework capable of sustaining future-oriented political and theological life.

1. Introduction: The Paradox of Excess Justice

On 7 October 2023, and in the devastating war in Gaza that followed, theological discourse did not merely respond to events; it rapidly translated them into pre-existing frameworks of moral interpretation. This immediacy reveals not only the persistence of established theological categories, but a deeper transformation in the way suffering functions as a locus of theological meaning. Some interpretations framed the Hamas attack through the language of decolonization, at times bracketing the ethical gravity of violence. Others drew on Holocaust memory and post-Holocaust theology to justify the scale of destruction in Gaza, often rendering Palestinian suffering theologically secondary. What emerges is not simply a disagreement over moral judgment, but a structural condition in which suffering is already interpreted before it is encountered.

This article does not offer an empirical analysis of the war. It examines what such moments disclose about the theological logic of contemporary justice. I argue that within the contemporary reception of liberation theology, the concept of justice has undergone a structural reconfiguration. Categories originally oriented toward liberation, witness, and eschatological transformation have increasingly been organized around the epistemic authority of suffering and the retrospective adjudication of historical injury. This shift alters the theological function of justice itself. While liberation theologians differed in their formulations, many retained an eschatological horizon that prevented justice from being reduced to the settlement of past wrongs alone. Whether articulated through Moltmann’s theology of hope, Segundo’s open hermeneutical process, or Sobrino’s vision of the crucified peoples, justice remained oriented toward possibilities not yet realized. In significant strands of contemporary justice discourse, however, this future-oriented dimension becomes attenuated. Justice increasingly operates as a retrospective structure of moral accounting, organized around the recognition, classification, and adjudication of historical injury. It stabilizes identities, distributes authority, and evaluates suffering within fixed categories of victim and perpetrator. The result is a theological impasse. When suffering functions as an epistemic authority, competing claims to suffering cannot be held together within a shared framework. Each becomes self-validating, and the recognition of the other is experienced as a threat to one’s own moral claim.

I term this condition an ontological trap: a state of “all justice, no peace”. Here, the proliferation of absolute justice claims forecloses the possibility of moral recognition in moments of vulnerability. The events of October 7 and the war in Gaza do not create this structure but render it visible with particular clarity. This article, therefore, does not treat liberation theology as a unified doctrinal tradition. It examines a broader discursive field shaped by its categories, including academic theology, activist language, and digitally mediated moral claims. The focus is not on internal doctrinal development alone, but on the transformation of these categories as they circulate within contemporary global conditions.

2. The Theological Roots: Between Justice as Relationship and Justice as Retribution

The Hebrew concepts of tsedaqah (צדקה) and mishpat (משפט) primarily denote right relationship within the covenant rather than a legal order imposed by God (Brueggemann 1997, pp. 725–28; C. J. H. Wright 2004, pp. 253–80). Justice is measured not by conformity to abstract rules but by the restoration of relationships within the community before God (Amos 5:24; Isaiah 1:17; Jeremiah 22:3). Biblical traditions also include notions of retributive justice, such as lex talionis (“an eye for an eye,” Exodus 21:24) and the wisdom tradition’s assumption that good actions yield good outcomes (Proverbs 10:2) (Barton 2003, pp. 33–35; Perdue 1994, pp. 97–123; J. Crenshaw 2005, pp. 104–28). Yet this logic is already challenged within the biblical corpus itself. Job questions the link between suffering and guilt, while Ecclesiastes doubts any stable correspondence between justice and historical outcomes (Ecclesiastes 8:14). Prophetic literature moves further still, presenting justice not primarily as retribution but as active intervention on behalf of the vulnerable and oppressed (Brueggemann 1997, pp. 735–42; Heschel 1962, pp. 195–220).

This tension is further intensified in the New Testament. Jesus does not entirely abolish the idea of eschatological retribution, but he destabilizes its centrality as a framework for governing present relationships (N. T. Wright 1996, pp. 290–310; Hays 1996, pp. 317–46). The demand not to repay evil with evil, and even to love one’s enemies (Matthew 5:38–44), is not merely an altruistic moral instruction, but a dismantling of retributive logic as the primary structure of theological justice. Justice is no longer defined primarily by the correspondence between action and outcome, but rather by the transformation of relationships themselves. In Luke 4:18, Jesus’ mission is articulated in terms of liberation, good news to the poor, and freedom for the captives, thus continuing the prophetic trajectory in which justice is revealed as divine intervention within histories of oppression (Green 1997, pp. 209–14, Sonnet 4.6). At the same time, the tension does not disappear: the New Testament retains elements of judgment, accountability, and final recompense, which coexist alongside an ethic of grace and radical love.

2.1. The Static Order: Natural Law as Epistemic Anchor

Subsequent advancements in institutional Christian theology sought to reconcile the biblical perspectives on justice—retributive, relational, and liberative—by synthesizing them into a unified conceptual model. In the writings of Augustine (De Civitate Dei) and, later, at the height of scholasticism, in the works of Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae), the concept of justice is systematized within the doctrines of natural law (lex naturalis) and eternal law (lex aeterna). In this context, justice is characterized as the rational being’s engagement with divine reason, regarded as a universal, objective, and rational principle inherent in the structure of creation itself (Augustine 1972, pp. 19–22; Aquinas [1964] 1981, esp. q. 91, a. 1–2 and q. 94, a. 2; Calvez and Perrin 1961, pp. 112–28; MacIntyre 1988, pp. 164–208). This development can be understood as an attempt to produce coherence: rather than sustaining an open tension between different models of justice, it offers a structure in which order, retribution, and relationality are integrated into a unified normative system. Later research has suggested that achieving stability in this way leads to a change in the very concept of justice. For instance, Jan Lochman contends that although the natural law approach created intellectual certainty, it also promoted what he calls pious quietism. This attitude views human suffering as part of a predetermined cosmic order rather than as something that calls for significant change or intervention (Lochman 1981, pp. 45–67; Tracy 1981, pp. 78–92).

From a different perspective, Hans Kelsen offers a critical reading of the classical concept of justice. In his analysis of the traditional formula suum cuique (to each his due), he argues that, from a logical standpoint, this is an indeterminate formula, since it does not define what that “due” actually is (Kelsen 1973, pp. 116–28; 1967, pp. 206–17). According to Kelsen, the content of such a principle is, in practice, derived from the existing legal and social order, and thus functions as a retrospective justification of that order.

2.2. The Enlightenment Revolution: Justice as Universal Reason

In modern political and philosophical thought, justice ceases to be understood as directly derived from divine order and is increasingly conceived as a product of human reason (Rawls 1971, pp. 11–22+136–42). Within this framework, justice emerges as a universal and neutral principle, intended to apply to all individuals regardless of religious, cultural, or social context (Locke 1988, pp. 269–74; Rousseau 1968, pp. 108–22; Kant 1998, vol. 4, pp. 389–432). At the same time, there is a shift from a substantive to a procedural conception of justice: the central question is no longer “what is the good?” but rather “what constitutes a fair procedure?” Justice becomes articulated in the abstract language of rights, duties, and impartial rules, increasingly detached from specific historical contexts (Kelsen 1973, pp. 304–30, esp. 323–25). Yet this transformation also introduces epistemic tensions. The distinction between “is” and “ought,” as articulated systematically by Kelsen, undermines the possibility of deriving norms directly from reality. Justice is no longer something to be discovered, but something that must be justified. Moreover, the very claim to universality becomes subject to scrutiny: is it truly neutral, or does it reflect a particular historical standpoint? Later critiques argue that the modern project sought to establish a universal language of justice but struggled to ground it independently of tradition or context (Young 1981, pp. 181–200; MacIntyre 1988, pp. 5–11, 326–48; Taylor 1989, pp. 305–9, 510–14).

2.3. The Breaking of the Paradigm: From Order to History

The transition into the twentieth century is not merely conceptual but deeply shaped by historical crises. The world wars, and especially the Holocaust, profoundly undermined confidence in the capacity of universal reason to secure a moral order. As Jürgen Moltmann argues, these events forced theology to confront the question of God’s presence within histories of suffering (Moltmann 1967, pp. 16–40, 84–102). At the same time, critical theory and postmodern thought began to apply a “hermeneutics of suspicion” to foundational concepts such as truth, morality, and justice, arguing that they cannot be understood independently of power relations (Ricoeur 1970, pp. 32–36; Foucault 1980, pp. 78–108). Within this context, the notion of universal justice increasingly came to be seen as historically constructed rather than neutral. A parallel shift occurred within theology itself. Documents such as Gaudium et Spes (Paul 1965a) from the Second Vatican Council reflect a growing recognition of history as a locus of moral truth, rather than merely eternal nature (Flannery 1996, pp. 903–1001, esp. §4 and §26; Metz 1969, pp. 107–35).1 This development opened the way for theological approaches that locate their point of departure within concrete historical realities of suffering and oppression. Thinkers such as Jürgen Moltmann and Johann Baptist Metz contributed to a broader theological reorientation in which history became the arena of God’s action, and the future became a critical category for theology itself. Moltmann’s political theology interpreted Christian hope not as a withdrawal from history but as a force capable of disrupting existing structures of domination and opening reality to a future not yet realized. Rather than legitimizing the present order, theology was called to maintain a critical distance from every political settlement, in light of the eschatological promise of God’s coming kingdom (Moltmann 1967, pp. 16–35, 328–35; 1971, pp. 8–23, esp. 8–10, 13–15).

It is within this context that liberation theology emerges. Here, justice is no longer derived solely from abstract principles but is intimately tied to the lived reality of the oppressed. The shift from orthodoxy to orthopraxis, and from right belief to right action, marks a profound transformation in the understanding of justice. Yet, as will be shown in the following section, this move does not resolve the underlying epistemic tension, but rather reconfigures it.

2.4. Liberation Theology and the Epistemology of Suffering

Liberation theology’s reorientation of the concept of justice marks a decisive break from the abstract, universal, and ahistorical understanding characteristic of classical theology. Rather than a theoretical distribution of resources within a given social order, justice is redefined as orthopraxis—active historical and political action aimed at dismantling structures of oppression through solidarity with the poor and marginalized. This reorientation, however, is not uniform: across the major streams of liberation theology, the concept of justice receives distinct formulations shaped by the specific historical conditions from which each theology emerges (Gutiérrez 1988, pp. 150–60; Cone 1991, pp. 1–29; Skotaville 1985, para. 4).

Gutiérrez wrote from within the reality of Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s: a continent marked by extreme structural poverty, military dictatorships, and a Catholic Church widely perceived as legitimating the existing order. The Medellín Conference (1968), in which Latin American bishops confronted economic disparity and political repression directly, provided the ecclesial space in which a new theological language became possible (Dussel 2003, pp. 85–87; Barger 2018, pp. 112–35). Within this context, Gutiérrez defines justice as a demand emerging from within the historical reality of the poor, not as a principle to be applied from above. To know God is to do justice in the concrete world: poverty is not fate, but a structural condition produced by capitalism and imperialism, and justice therefore requires active political solidarity to dismantle those structures (Gutiérrez 1988, pp. 88, 162). The criterion of theological truth is not abstract doctrine but the practical consequences of theology for the liberation of the oppressed. The poor themselves are not passive recipients of charity but historical agents whose experience and action become constitutive of theological knowledge. Justice, in this formulation, remains oriented toward a future not yet realized: it is always more than what has been achieved, always calling toward a horizon that has not closed. Segundo, writing from Uruguay within the same period, pressed the epistemological dimension of this move further. Not only must theology begin from the reality of the oppressed, but it must also reckon with the fact that theology itself has functioned as an ideological instrument, allowing the Church to maintain an apparent neutrality in the face of injustice (Segundo 1976, pp. 7–38, esp. 8–10). The hermeneutical circle requires the exercise of “ideological suspicion” toward traditional interpretations of Scripture that have served to legitimate the interests of the powerful. Justice is not a state to be achieved but a dynamic process: a reading of reality from the standpoint of the oppressed, followed by a rereading of Scripture transformed by that reality, followed again by renewed action. The circle is intended to remain permanently open—any closure is, for Segundo, already a form of ideological domestication.

Where Segundo developed the methodological implications of liberation theology, Sobrino confronted its human cost directly. A Jesuit priest in El Salvador, he lived through the assassination of Archbishop Romero (1980) and the murder of six of his Jesuit colleagues at the Central American University (1989) (Tombs 2023, p. 274; Sobrino 1994, pp. 1–30). Within this context of martyrdom and political violence, the poor are the “crucified people” of history, and solidarity with them in their struggle for justice is a necessary condition for grasping the salvific significance of Jesus’ life and death. Justice is the moral imperative to take the crucified people down from the cross—to restore humanity and the possibility of life to those upon whom the system has pronounced a sentence of social and physical death.

A parallel yet distinct form of theological development occurs in the North American context. Cone wrote at the intersection of the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power, confronting a white theology that appeared structurally incapable of speaking to the experience of racial oppression (Cone [1970] 2010, pp. 1–30; 1997, pp. 98–115). Where Latin American liberation theology located the primary site of injustice in class and economic structure, Cone located it in race. God stands unequivocally with the oppressed, and justice, therefore, cannot permit a neutral or universal position. Justice demands total conversion—a willingness to relinquish the position of the oppressor—and the embrace of the liberation struggle as the site of God’s salvific action in the present. Cone’s eschatology is accordingly immanent: he criticizes futurist eschatology as a mechanism by which dominant groups have encouraged the oppressed to remain docile in servitude in the hope of a future reward (Cone [1970] 2010, pp. 240–42).

Palestinian Christian theology inherits this methodology but redirects it toward a different configuration of power. Emerging from the experience of military occupation following 1967, and given its systematic theological voice particularly through the First Intifada (1987–1991), it articulates a response to a situation in which theological narratives linking biblical promises to modern Zionist claims became intertwined with the experience of dispossession and occupation (Raveh 2025, pp. 83–90; Raheb 2014, pp. 115–16). Ateek reads the story of Naboth’s vineyard as a mirror of Palestinian dispossession, and draws on the book of Jonah to articulate a universalist justice that refuses religious exclusivism, granting land to one people at the cost of displacing another (Ateek 1989, pp. 87–89; 2008, pp. 67–78). Raheb sharpens the internal critique through a distinction between victimhood and witness: victimhood—the persistent experience of having suffered—generates moral authority, but it also carries a structural risk of being appropriated to justify the exercise of power and ongoing oppression in the name of past suffering (Raheb 2014, pp. 114–16; 1994, pp. 1–20; Raveh 2025, pp. 111–16). Christian justice, in his formulation, requires the adoption of the position of witness—a prophetic bearing of a message of peace and justice grounded not in suffering as authorization but in presence as responsibility.

The transformation of justice within liberation theology was not merely normative. It also involved a transformation in the conditions of moral knowledge itself. The question was no longer only what justice requires, but who can perceive injustice and from which position. This shift leads directly to what may be called the epistemology of suffering (Sung 2023, p. 3; Martin 2003, p. 70; Gutiérrez 1973, pp. 9–10).

3. The Epistemology of Suffering in the 21st Century: Transformations and Structures

In the twenty-first century, the epistemic tensions generated by liberation theology’s privileging of the oppressed acquire a concrete institutional form through the convergence of digital mediation and transnational justice discourse (Omer 2009, pp. 497–518; Harcourt 2019, pp. 112–45). This transformation in the concept of justice corresponds to a parallel shift in its epistemic conditions. Although liberation theologians differed in their formulations, many situated justice within an eschatological horizon. Following Moltmann’s theology of hope, justice was not conceived as the settlement of past debts but as the anticipation of a future not yet realized: a horizon that opened history rather than closed it (Moltmann 1967, pp. 16–40, 84–102; 1968, pp. 369–86). The digital age, together with the consolidation of global identity politics, has altered its internal mechanics in significant strands of contemporary justice discourse: from a theology of witnessing and hope to a theology of verdict and epistemic closure.

3.1. The Conceptual Shift: From Witnessing to Verdict

Within liberation theology, the concept of witness acquires an explicitly epistemic dimension that transforms it from a mode of reporting into a mode of knowing. The question is not only what can be known, but who is entitled to know, and from which position. Presence within suffering is not merely a condition for knowledge but a form of knowledge in itself. Theology emerges as a reflection rooted in historical praxis rather than abstract speculation. This epistemic weight of witness is grounded in a deep theological history. In the biblical tradition, the apostles were witnesses not merely because they observed events, but because they lived them. Their authority derived from presence, participation, and fidelity. The martyr extended this logic. By suffering and dying for the truth proclaimed, the martyr transformed testimony into a form of embodied knowledge whose credibility rested on the willingness to bear its cost (Raveh 2025, pp. 176–81; Bauckham 2006, pp. 1–11). The witness therefore occupies a unique epistemic position: one does not merely speak about reality but from within it. Liberation theology inherits this structure and relocates it within contemporary struggles for justice. The witness is no longer primarily the martyr facing imperial persecution, but the believer who remains present within the reality of oppression and speaks from within it. The authority of theological knowledge derives not from distance but from solidarity, accompaniment, and the willingness to bear the cost of testimony. As Gutiérrez formulates it, “the authenticity of the preaching of the Gospel message depends on this witness.” (Gutiérrez 1988, p. 162). Theological truth emerges not through detached observation but through participation in the lived reality of those who suffer injustice.

In the African American context, Cone translates this structure into the language of race and culture. The spirituals and the blues function as acts of testimony that preserve the reality of suffering, resistance, and hope in forms that resist abstraction and erasure (Cone 1991, pp. 1–29; 1997, pp. 17–20). Their authority derives not from institutional recognition but from the cost of survival and the persistence of memory.

Palestinian Christian theology adopts this tradition of witness and situates it within the realities of occupation, dispossession, and historical continuity in the Holy Land. Palestinian theologians repeatedly interpret their experience through the language of crucifixion, endurance, and resurrection, presenting the continuing presence of Palestinian Christians in the land as a form of testimony in itself (Raheb 2014, pp. 114–16; Raveh 2025, pp. 162–65). The Kairos Palestine document therefore defines the Palestinian Church as a “witnessing Church,” whose vocation is not merely to preserve doctrine but to embody truth through steadfast presence, endurance, and prophetic speech (Kairos Palestine 2009, para. 3.1).

The dynamics of the digital sphere encourage a shift toward a fundamentally different epistemic model: that of moral verdict.2 Within this model, information and visual imagery do not serve as a basis for dwelling in reality but as evidence in a rapid process of normative judgment (Harcourt 2019, pp. 112–45). The digital environment produces conditions of constant exposure in which individuals are compelled to react and judge with increasing immediacy, generating a structure of accelerated trial in which the historical complexity of witness is replaced by the demand for rapid, binary judgment (Sunstein 2017, pp. 67–92; Han 2017, pp. 33–51).

When the verdict displaces the witness, the authority to claim justice undergoes a structural transformation. The witness derives moral authority from the cost of presence, and that claim may be acknowledged or denied. The one who issues a verdict, by contrast, already holds authority: the capacity to judge is not derived from proximity to suffering, but from a position of institutional, discursive, or symbolic power that precedes the act of judgment (Arendt 2003; Táíwò 2022; Felman and Laub 1992). Within digital justice discourse, this asymmetry is intensified: the platforms that amplify verdicts are not themselves accountable to the suffering they adjudicate. Authority migrates from those who bear the weight of reality to those who possess the tools to classify it. In this migration, suffering must be translated into communicable, digestible formats to be recognized—and in that translation, its normative force is partially lost (Omer 2009; Han 2017).

The distinction between witness and verdict reveals a deeper transformation in the organization of knowledge. Witness presupposes duration, uncertainty, and the bearing of reality’s weight. It assumes that moral truth exceeds what can be communicated as raw data and requires historical and embodied continuity. Verdict, by contrast, presupposes sufficient information, necessary judgment, and binary distinction. It demands reducing reality to forms that can be decided upon, treating complexity as noise that delays judgment (MacIntyre 1988, pp. 9–10; Arendt 2003). This structure is not merely conceptual but embedded in the architecture of digital platforms. Empirical studies show that expressions of moral outrage are systematically amplified in social media environments and that algorithmic systems privilege emotionally charged content (Brady et al. 2021, p. eabe5641; Crockett 2017, pp. 769–71). As a result, decisive moral claims receive greater visibility than nuanced interpretations, and what has been termed “moral grandstanding”—the use of moral discourse to achieve social status—becomes structurally rewarded (Tosi and Warmke 2020, pp. 1–25). Justice, within this configuration, is no longer a horizon to be approached through sustained engagement but a verdict to be issued and performed.

3.2. Intersectionality, the Globalization of Justice, and the Erasure of Context

Every claim to justice involves, at some level, a moral distinction: between what is and what ought to be, between those who suffer wrongly and those who bear responsibility for that suffering. This is not a pathology of justice discourse but a constitutive feature of it. The question is not whether such distinctions are drawn, but under what conditions they become rigid—when the complexity of historical experience is rendered in categorical terms that shape, rather than follow from, sustained engagement with reality (MacIntyre 1988, pp. 17–31). In contexts of conflict, where two or more communities simultaneously advance competing claims to justice within the same discursive space, this pressure toward categorical stability intensifies. For solidarity to be mobilized, for moral authority to be distributed, and for a claim to justice to become legible within a global audience, each party must be positioned within a recognizable moral framework. The mechanism through which this positioning is achieved—and through which local conflicts are rendered legible within global justice discourse—is what Atalia Omer terms the “transferability of protest.” (Omer 2009, pp. 499–503).

The concept of intersectionality, originally developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw to describe overlapping structures of discrimination within specific legal and social contexts, has increasingly been deployed as a broader organizing principle within transnational justice discourse. While the concept itself has remained influential, its scope and application have expanded far beyond the context in which it was originally formulated (K. Crenshaw 1991, pp. 1241–99; Omer 2019, pp. 32–45). It has increasingly come to function as a broader organizing principle of global justice discourse. This transformation operates through the “transferability of protest”—a mechanism by which a local conflict undergoes universalization in order to align with a global moral framework. This transfer is not merely the dissemination of information but a process of cultural and political translation involving a structural reconfiguration of the conflict itself (Tarrow 2005, pp. 59–86). Within this dynamic, three structural stages can be identified. First, de-contextualization: elements of the struggle are translated into broader abstract categories—such as “liberation,” “colonialism,” or “justice”—in order to become legible within wider networks of solidarity, a process that involves some degree of distance from the specific historical, theological, and collective memory frameworks from which they emerged. Second, alignment with a global justice grid: the local conflict is reframed through shared global categories, which may only partially map onto the lived realities on the ground. Third, the production of epistemic capital: the suffering of a local group becomes a symbolic resource through which broader collective identities are constituted, such that the conflict comes to function as an instance within a wider moral structure—often framed in terms of relations between oppressor and oppressed (Omer 2009, pp. 503–9; Baumgart-Ochse 2017, pp. 1177–91).

This process requires categorical stability. For the transferability of protest to function, each actor must be classified within a fixed moral position. On this classification depends the legitimacy of voice, the entitlement to solidarity, and the authority to claim justice. Yet, as postcolonial theory has emphasized, such stability often stands in tension with historical reality. As postcolonial theory has itself recognized, such categorical stability often stands in tension with historical reality. Ahmad observes that the concept of colonialism risks becoming so expansive as to be “always present and always in a process of dissolution,” such that, in his words, “everyone gets the privilege, sooner or later, at one time or another of being the colonizer, colonized, and post-colonial—sometimes all at once.” (Ahmad 1992, pp. 36–38). Within the logic of binary judgment, the recognition of ambivalence—of “both/and”—tends to be experienced as undermining the validity of the moral claim itself, rather than as a more adequate description of reality. Once a group is classified as “oppressor,” its own claims to suffering risk being rendered illegible; conversely, classification as “oppressed” may confer a form of epistemic authority that resists critique (Young 1990, pp. 39–65; Táíwò 2022, pp. 15–38). This does not imply that experiences of oppression are equivalent or interchangeable. Rather, it points to the difficulty of accounting for situations in which communities simultaneously carry histories of victimization and occupy positions of power within particular political contexts. The historical experience of antisemitism and the Holocaust, for example, does not disappear when Israeli Jews are discussed in relation to contemporary structures of power, just as Palestinian experiences of occupation do not disappear when attention is directed toward Jewish historical vulnerability (Goldberg and Bashir 2018, pp. 1–18).

Within liberation theology, this dynamic manifests in a specific way. Liberation theologies were developed precisely to give voice to those marginalized and rendered invisible by dominant theological frameworks—the poor, the colonized, the racially oppressed. Their insistence on the epistemological privilege of the oppressed was a corrective to what they see as centuries of theological discourse that had served the interests of the powerful. Yet this corrective carries within it a structural tension. By grounding epistemic authority in categorical identity—in being oppressed rather than in sustained presence within particular suffering—liberation theology introduces a logic vulnerable to the same pressures that shape broader justice discourse: the demand for stable classifications that determine in advance who is entitled to speak and on whose behalf. Moltmann recognized this particularity early: each culture and region, he argued, arrives with its own distinct experience of injustice—the Holocaust for European theology, slavery and racism for North American Black theology, colonialism and poverty for Latin American liberation theology—and each generates a liberation theology adequate to its own context (Cone 1997, pp. 98–115; Moltmann 2015, pp. 3–4; Raveh 2025, p. 105). The implication is that no single liberation framework can claim universal jurisdiction over the categories of oppressor and oppressed; each framework reflects the specific historical location from which it speaks. In their original contexts, this particularity was a strength: Cone’s insistence that theological truth is mediated through the experience of racial oppression was a response to a specific and bounded historical situation, as was Palestinian liberation theology’s location of theological discernment within the experience of life under occupation (Ateek 2017, p. 36; Kairos Palestine 2009, para. 2.1). Each framework was developed to address a concrete configuration of power and suffering in which the relevant categories were, to a significant degree, locally legible. The structural tension emerges not from within these frameworks themselves but from their subsequent deployment within a globalized justice discourse that applies them across contexts—including contexts in which the categories of oppressor and oppressed do not map cleanly onto any single group, and in which competing communities each advance claims that, within their own historical logic, are internally coherent (MacIntyre 1988, pp. 499–503).

Within digital environments, these dynamics are intensified. Transnational justice discourse operates through attention-based platforms that structurally reward clarity, speed, and emotional intensity. Empirical research demonstrates that expressions of moral outrage are systematically amplified in online networks, while more complex or ambivalent positions receive less visibility (Brady et al. 2021, p. eabe5641; Crockett 2017, pp. 769–71). As a result, the epistemic structure of justice discourse shifts: what was originally developed as a framework for recognizing the multiplicity of lived experience increasingly functions, in digital contexts, as a mechanism of reduction. The logic of intersectionality, rather than expanding interpretive space, is reconfigured into a system that demands rapid categorization. The result is a form of verdict without witness: moral judgment detached from embodied, historical presence. From a theological perspective, this constitutes a reversal of the order that liberation theology insisted upon: rather than judgment emerging from presence, presence is now required to conform to prior judgment (Volf 1996, p. 29; Gutiérrez 1988, p. 162).

3.3. The Structural Encounter: The Subordination of Linear Eschatology to the Hermeneutical Circle

The epistemic stagnation that characterizes contemporary justice discourse rests on a structural tension between two theological paradigms: linear eschatology, oriented toward a future horizon of reconciliation, and the hermeneutical circle, which centers on the interpretation of power relations within shifting historical contexts. The encounter between Moltmann’s eschatological horizon and Segundo’s dynamic hermeneutics is a key to understanding the epistemic stagnation of global digital justice discourse (Moltmann 1967, pp. 16–40, 84–102; Segundo 1976, pp. 8–38; Bauckham 1987, pp. 85–90).

Within twentieth-century theology, these paradigms largely operated in parallel. Eschatology functioned as a distant horizon of hope, preserving the possibility of rupture within cycles of suffering, while the hermeneutical circle served as a tool for immediate social and political critique. This separation enabled theology to sustain both a radical critique of the present and a commitment to a transcendent future order. The specificity of the twenty-first century lies in the collapse of linear eschatology into the logic of the hermeneutical circle. Within digital environments, these dynamics are intensified: attention-based platforms structurally reward categorical clarity over ambivalence, and expressions of moral outrage are systematically amplified while more complex positions receive less visibility. The result may foster a discourse on justice that restricts rather than expands opportunities for transformation. Firstly, the concept of time becomes flattened: within digital environments, the eschatological notion of “not yet,” which Moltmann identifies as crucial to the structure of hope through deferred fulfillment, is diminished. In this context, anticipation of future justice gives way to an expectation for immediate and definitive outcomes. Empirical studies on moral outrage and remonstrance indicate that algorithmic systems tend to amplify prompt expressions of moral judgment, while discouraging postponement, reflection, or nuanced interpretation (Brady et al. 2021, p. eabe5641; Crockett 2017, pp. 769–71). Consequently, justice transitions from being viewed as a transcendent ideal to a mechanism of instantaneous adjudication. Secondly, there is a closure of the hermeneutical circle: while Segundo conceived this circle as a dynamic and contextually responsive process, contemporary discourse increasingly tends to solidify it around fixed identities (Segundo 1976, pp. 7–38; Luhmann 1995, pp. 320–42; Táíwò 2022, pp. 15–38; Young 1990, pp. 39–65). Within digital environments, this reduction takes the form of rigid categorizations—oppressor and oppressed—that enable rapid judgment but constrain interpretive flexibility.

This shift results in a transformation of theological focus. Eschatological judgment, previously considered deferred and indeterminate, is now situated within the hermeneutical process itself and brought into the present. As a result, individuals are classified as victims or perpetrators not due to historical circumstances, but rather as enduring, nearly inherent identities. Such a development risks reducing eschatology to an immanent framework of moral positioning (Hauerwas 1997, pp. 112–15; Milbank 1990, pp. 390–416; Scott 2004, pp. 189–207). The consequence is a structural problem that extends beyond any particular context. When justice discourse operates through stabilized binary categories, and when multiple communities—each bearing genuine historical grievance—are positioned within those same categories, the framework encounters a limit it cannot resolve from within its own logic. Recognizing one claim tends to reframe the competing claim rather than opening a space in which both can be examined on their own terms.

This structural tension becomes particularly visible in the Israeli–Palestinian context, where competing claims to justice, history, and legitimacy are articulated within the same discursive space. What distinguishes this case is not only the intensity of the conflict, but the way in which multiple temporal and theological registers—historical memory, claims to justice, and future-oriented expectations—are continuously brought into direct confrontation.

4. The Holy Land as a Site of Collision—Between Parallel Liberation Movements

The discourse on the Holy Land constitutes a central case study for understanding the tensions within contemporary justice discourse, as it brings into direct encounter two “liberation movements” that seek to apply a parallel moral and theological language to the same historical reality. Although they share similarities, the twenty-first century’s epistemic structure shows how hard it is to fit both into one concept of justice, turning them into rivals over its very definition.

4.1. The Parallel Structure of Liberation Claims

Both the Jewish national movement and the Palestinian national movement present themselves as liberation movements seeking to rectify historical injustice marked by displacement and loss of sovereignty (A. D. Smith 1986, pp. 192–221). At the theological level, one can identify a parallel structure of concepts organizing their respective claims to justice. For both movements, the land is not merely a political arena but a condition of identity. The attachment to territory is articulated as a deep theological relation in which place constitutes the self. Sovereignty over the land is thus understood as the realization of a historical and spiritual vocation, rendering territory resistant to exchange within the language of justice (Scholem 1971, pp. 1–36). The paradox lies in the fact that precisely because both movements share this theological framework—land as covenant, return as redemption—they are unable to accommodate one another: the redemptive capacity that one attributes to the territory negates the possibility for the other to attribute to it the same status (Walzer 1985, pp. 3–32).

Both movements ground their claims to justice in a structure of “return.” For Zionism, this entails the rectification of a condition of historical exile and persecution; for Palestinians, it entails the rectification of modern displacement and the restoration of an indigenous interrupted presence under occupation. In both cases, theology functions as a legitimating framework that situates historical processes within a broader narrative of redemption or retrospective justice. Yet the chronological asymmetry is decisive: the return of one is defined as a return to a space already inhabited by the other, such that one return necessarily appears as the displacement of the other. Historical suffering—the Holocaust on the one hand and the Nakba and continued occupation on the other—functions as a central source of moral authority. It is not merely a past event but an active memory that continues to shape the present. In Metz’s terms, it constitutes a “dangerous memory” that demands action (Metz 2007, pp. 105–8). Suffering thus becomes the basis for claims to retrospective justice, while also establishing the boundaries of legitimacy: those who have suffered are authorized to speak in the name of justice, while those perceived as responsible for suffering are deprived of claims to neutrality. The structural impasse emerges when two communities ground their epistemic authority in suffering without a shared framework for evaluating or hierarchizing it, such that each claim is experienced by the other as a negation of its own (Margalit 2004, pp. 147–52; Alexander 2004, pp. 1–30).

The confrontation between these movements is mediated through internal transformations within Western Christian theology following the Holocaust. The recognition of Christianity’s historical complicity in anti-Jewish persecution led to a profound theological reconfiguration. Supersessionism—the doctrine that divine election had passed from Israel to the Church—was increasingly recognized as a theological root of antisemitism. As Ruether argued, anti-Judaism is not a marginal element within Christian thought but may be embedded deeply in its foundations (Ruether 1974, pp. 246–64).

The retreat from this framework took institutional form—most notably in Nostra Aetate (Paul 1965b) and the Synod (1980)—and later developed into a broader theological reorientation within post-Holocaust theology.3 The recognition of the enduring validity of the covenant with the Jewish people, acknowledgment of Christianity’s role in enabling the conditions of the Holocaust, and a commitment to oppose antisemitism in the present (Paul 1965b; Synod 1980; Cunningham 2015, pp. 210–25). Within this paradigm, justice is defined primarily as atonement for past wrongdoing and as recognition of Jewish sovereignty as an expression of that ongoing covenant. As Metz formulated it, no historical truth can be defended “with one’s back turned to Auschwitz” (Metz 2007, pp. 88–109).

It is against this background that Palestinian Liberation theology developed its own distinctive voice, particularly from the late 1980s onward. The publication of Naim Ateek’s Justice and Only Justice in 1989 marked a turning point: for the first time, Palestinian Christians articulated a systematic theological response to their situation from within their own context, rather than through the mediating frameworks of either Western post-Holocaust theology or secular Palestinian nationalism (Ateek 1989, pp. 1–20; Raveh 2025, pp. 83–90). The emergence of this voice was itself historically conditioned: the First Intifada (1987–1991) created the political and ecclesial space in which Palestinian Christians could speak publicly as a distinct theological community, naming their experience in theological rather than merely political terms (Raheb 1994, pp. 60–61). The central claim of this emerging theology was that the post-Holocaust theological consensus had effected the displacement of Palestinians, not only territorial but epistemic. Raheb articulates this through what he terms “displacement theology”: Western Christianity had, in his view, theologically replaced the Palestinian people as the land’s original inhabitants, suppressing the Palestinian narrative in the process. As he writes: “What in a normal context could be seen as Orientalism, neo-colonialism and racism, was baptized in a theological discourse and became divine intervention” (Raheb 2011, pp. 9–11). Ateek observes that biblical interpretation has increasingly been mediated through Zionist frameworks, rendering the shared sacred text estranging for Palestinian Christians (Ateek 1989, p. 77). The Kairos Palestine (2009) translates this theological alienation into an explicit moral and political claim, defining the occupation as “a sin against God and humanity” and calling on the global Church to recognize it as such (Kairos Palestine 2009, para. 2.1). Justice, within each framework, is thus oriented toward the past—but toward a different past, and with a different understanding of what that past demands in the present. In post-Holocaust theology, the historical catastrophe of the Holocaust generates an ongoing obligation: the debt incurred by Christian complicity in Jewish persecution has not been discharged, and the continued existence and sovereignty of the Jewish people constitute both its partial repayment and a guard against its recurrence. In Palestinian liberation theology, the historical experience of displacement and occupation is similarly understood not as a closed chapter but as a living condition: the Nakba is not a past event to be commemorated but a structure of ongoing dispossession that demands present transformation. Both frameworks thus understand historical wrong not as something that happened but as something that continues—as an existential condition, not merely a historical fact. What divides them is not their temporal orientation but the historical event each identifies as the constitutive wrong, and the community each places at the center of the moral claim that follows from it.

4.2. The Collision: The Category Trap and the Digital Verdict

The tension between these two liberation movements intensifies when they are compelled to operate within the binary structure of justice that dominates the twenty-first century. Within this framework, complex historical subjects are read through stabilized categories of power and suffering: Palestinian theological articulations are frequently marginalized through a mirror-image stabilization, dismissed as a “theological mask” for political interests or as a re-ignited form of replacement theology (R. O. Smith 2013, pp. 166–72; Raheb 2014, pp. 115–18). Isaac argues that Palestinian theologians are being asked to construct their theology in a way that will fit the paradigm of Western theology—in order to solve what he identifies as the Western problem of antisemitism (Isaac 2015, p. 377). The “guilt” that brought the West to search for a solution for the Jewish people, in this reading, led not only to support for the establishment of the State of Israel but to a structural incapacity to hear the Palestinian claim on its own terms. In this register, the Palestinian subject is denied the possibility of a legitimate religious and national synthesis, being reduced instead to an instrumentalized category within Western theological debates about antisemitism and post-Holocaust guilt. Conversely, the Jewish–Israeli subject is frequently interpreted primarily through the lens of power, while the Palestinian subject is more readily framed through the lens of victimhood. Within a discourse organized around the opposition of oppressor and oppressed, the party that exercises territorial sovereignty and military force is categorically assigned to the former position, regardless of the historical conditions that produced that sovereignty or the vulnerabilities that accompany it.

The Jewish–Israeli subject thus enters the discursive field already classified—a classification that operates not through explicit exclusion but through the structure of the framework itself. The post-colonial reading of history as a constant struggle between oppressor and oppressed tends to remove the Jewish people from the center of the biblical story and replace them with the oppressed of today: the emphasis on the universality of the divine message functions simultaneously to diminish the theological significance of the particular covenant between God and the Jewish people (Gallagher 2009, p. 285; Gregerman 2004, pp. 315–42; Raveh 2025, pp. 104–7). Levine argues that the tension between post-colonial theology and the Jewish tradition lies in the former’s approach to historical criticism: any historically based critical reading of the biblical text tends, within post-colonial frameworks, to be treated as colonial in origin and therefore suspect. The consequence, in her analysis, is that the rejection of ideological readings slides into ahistoricism, and “anti-Judaism appears in its wake.” (Levine et al. 2004, pp. 96–98). The requirement to read the Bible as a post-colonial text structurally excludes Judaism from its own history, while, conversely, reading the biblical text as the particular history of the Jewish people disconnects other non-Western groups from their scriptures. In each case, the universalist claim that was intended to open space for the marginalized functions simultaneously closes space for the Jewish particular.

The outcome is a form of discursive deadlock, particularly evident in extreme events such as those of October 2023, where reality demands the capacity to hold contradictory claims simultaneously, a capacity that the current structure of discourse struggles to sustain.

4.3. Fractured Justice After Gaza: Parallel Theological Frameworks and the Closure of Moral Recognition

The events of October 7 and the devastating consequences of the war in Gaza mark not only a political and humanitarian rupture, but a profound theological fracture. Within the epistemic structure outlined above—characterized by the logic of the Verdict, structured silencing, and the inflation of justice—these responses do not function as contributions to an ongoing moral conversation. Rather, they stabilize judgment under conditions of crisis.

Within Palestinian Christian theology, the war in Gaza is understood not merely as a political crisis but as a theological rupture—an event that brings to a point of extreme visibility the condition that Palestinian theology has named and analyzed for decades. The Kairos Palestine (2025) document, emerging in continuity with the Kairos Palestine (2009) A Moment of Truth, deploys the category of genocide as a framework for theological interpretation: the destruction in Gaza is read as the culmination of a process of displacement that Palestinian theologians have consistently described in terms of structural sin against God and humanity (Kairos Palestine 2025, §2; 2009, para. 2.1; Isaac 2025, pp. 1–30; Raveh 2025, pp. 161–63). Palestinian existence in the Holy Land faces conditions of ongoing and deepening precarity—demographic erosion, displacement, loss of access to sacred sites, and the progressive narrowing of the physical and cultural space within which the community can sustain itself (Sabella 1999, pp. 32–49; Raheb 1994, pp. 1–20). Presence itself is the organizing theological category: the continuous inhabitation of the land since the earliest centuries of Christianity constitutes a form of witness that cannot be replicated from elsewhere. This claim generates a form of existential urgency of a community whose very survival is in question.

Within circles influenced by post-Holocaust European theology, theological discussion remains primarily guided by the moral necessity to address the Holocaust’s legacy and ongoing calls for historical accountability. This perspective is driven by a significant theological and existential assertion: that Jewish existence in the modern world had no reliable refuge, that the structures of Western civilization had proved incapable of protecting the Jewish people, and that the threat to Jewish life was not a historical episode but a recurring structural vulnerability (Fackenheim 1978, pp. 19–24; Greenberg 1977, pp. 7–55; Metz 2007, pp. 184–99; Ruether and Ruether 1989, pp. 100–2). The establishment of a Jewish state was understood, within this framework, not as a geopolitical preference but as the minimal condition for Jewish survival as a people. This claim does not disappear with the passage of time; it is renewed, in the perception of those who hold it, each time antisemitism resurfaces or Jewish communities face violence, including on October 7. Statements issued by Protestant bodies such as the EKD after October 2023 frequently emphasize the recognition of Israel within a broader framework of moral accountability grounded in this past (Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) 2023; Assmann 2016, pp. 45–67).

In both cases, interpretive closure precedes engagement with the full complexity of the present, establishing the conditions under which moral recognition becomes possible—and, simultaneously, constrained. The encounter between these frameworks does not produce a synthesis but a structural deadlock. Each generates internally coherent claims to justice, yet neither contains the conceptual resources necessary to recognize the other’s claims without destabilizing its own foundations. The consequences of the war in Gaza are mobilized as confirmation of one side’s Verdict, while the events of October 7 serve as foundational proof for the other. Justice thus operates less as a horizon of transformation and more as a mechanism of retrospective validation.

The dynamics described here become particularly visible in the contemporary invocation of the category of genocide. Within international law, the term functions as a highly specific legal designation, tied to questions of intent and evidence. Critically, its unique standing derives from the 1948 Convention’s mandate of an immediate obligation to intervene and prevent (United Nations General Assembly 1948, Art. I–II; Schabas 2009, pp. 25–40). Consequently, the classification of genocide acts as a procedural trigger; its invocation is structurally tied to the logic of the Verdict, as the legal requirement for urgent action necessitates a prior, decisive categorical determination. When deployed within contemporary moral discourse, the designation of genocide does not merely describe events; it reconfigures the conditions of interpretation. Because genocide carries a mandate for immediate global intervention, its invocation compels discourse to move rapidly toward a definitive categorical determination—and in doing so, it activates the logic of the Verdict in its most acute form.

What makes genocide structurally significant in this context is that both sides of the conflict invoke it, though in different temporal registers and with different referents. Within Jewish historical consciousness, genocide is the foundational category through which the Holocaust is understood—the paradigmatic event that established Jewish vulnerability as a recognized moral claim and generated, within post-Holocaust theology and international discourse alike, the commitment to Jewish survival and sovereignty as non-negotiable imperatives (Bauman 1989, pp. 83–90; Alexander 2004, pp. 1–30; Fackenheim 1978, pp. 19–24). The contemporary application of genocide to Israeli actions in Gaza is therefore experienced not merely as a legal or political claim, but as a displacement of this foundational position: it reconfigures the Jewish subject from paradigmatic victim to perpetrator, and in doing so is experienced as an attempt to neutralize the moral authority that the memory of the Holocaust has historically conferred (Assmann 2016, pp. 45–67; Hirsh 2018, pp. 120–35).

Within Palestinian Christian theology and broader Palestinian discourse, the same term functions as the only category adequate to name what is described as the systematic destruction of a people’s existence in its land—a process understood as continuous from 1948 through the present, of which the war in Gaza is the most acute expression. The Kairos Palestine (2025) document deploys the term precisely as a claim to recognition: to name what is happening as genocide is to insist that Palestinian lives are grievable, that Palestinian suffering meets the threshold of the most serious moral category available, and that the global Church is obligated to respond accordingly (Kairos Palestine 2025, §1.1–2.1; Isaac 2025, pp. 1–30; Butler 2009, pp. 1–32). From this perspective, resistance to genocide—whether from European churches shaped by post-Holocaust obligation or from Jewish voices—is experienced as a denial of that recognition: as implying that Palestinian lives do not qualify for the protection that genocide mandates, and that the moral community that determines such qualifications excludes Palestinian claims by definition (Omer 2013, pp. 203–8; Raheb 2014, pp. 115–20).

The dispute over genocide reflects a deeper structural dynamic: for each community, refusing the other’s foundational claim is experienced not as disagreement but as denial—the most serious moral failure within the framework. To refuse the designation of genocide as applied to Gaza is experienced, within Palestinian discourse, as a refusal to recognize the destruction of a people as such—a denial equivalent in its moral weight to Holocaust denial. To refuse the theological and political legitimacy of Jewish sovereignty grounded in the memory of the Shoah is experienced, within Jewish and post-Holocaust Christian discourse, as a denial of the historical crime that made that sovereignty morally necessary. Each refusal thus carries the weight of the ultimate moral transgression: not merely disagreement about facts or law, but the erasure of a people’s most catastrophic experience from the ledger of recognized suffering. Within a justice framework organized around the Verdict, there is no available position between full recognition and denial—no discursive space in which one can acknowledge the claim without appearing to concede the entire moral case. This is the ontological impasse: justice, as currently structured, does not open toward reconciliation but deepens the very wound it claims to address.

5. Toward Prospective Justice: Responsibility for Tomorrow

What is revealed in the encounter described in the preceding chapter is not merely the coexistence of competing frameworks, but their structural incompatibility under conditions of epistemic closure. The deadlock is therefore not contingent but systemic: it arises from the internal logic of frameworks that cannot accommodate the claims of the other without destabilizing their own foundations.

When justice becomes the exclusive paradigm for theological and political reasoning, it produces a form of operational closure that limits the possibility of transformation. The problem does not lie in the centrality of suffering itself: as Metz has argued, suffering constitutes an unavoidable locus theologicus of theological reflection. Rather, the pathology emerges when retroactive accounting becomes the exclusive form through which truth is articulated. Within such a structure, there is no internal mechanism for determining when moral claims have reached their limit, or when the pursuit of justice itself generates new asymmetries. The argument for prospective justice is therefore not grounded in a moral preference for reconciliation, but in a structural observation: frameworks oriented exclusively toward past redress lack internal criteria for termination, and therefore risk perpetuating the very conflicts they seek to resolve.

The call to suspend the immediacy of the verdict is not a rejection of justice but a transformation of its form: a shift from retroactive justice, focused on settling past debts, to prospective justice, oriented toward the conditions for future coexistence. Such a shift does not abandon the insights of liberation theology but reinterprets them. The question is not whether historical suffering should be remembered, but how memory can remain a source of moral critique without becoming the sole framework through which political and theological possibilities are imagined. The eschatological horizon that liberation theology inherited from Moltmann was never a horizon of restitution but of anticipation: the expectation of a future that is not reducible to the past.

Prospective justice, in this sense, requires three structural transformations. Firstly, the de-essentialization of categories: the recognition that positions of power and vulnerability are dynamic and relational rather than fixed—that a subject may simultaneously carry historical trauma and exercise structural power, as Ahmad’s analysis of postcolonial identity has emphasized. Secondly, the mutual recognition of dangerous memory: a willingness to allow the memory of the other’s suffering to interrupt one’s own narrative—not in order to produce a false equivalence between incommensurable histories, but to break the operational closure that prevents any engagement across the divide. Thirdly, the prioritization of a livable horizon: the recognition that the concrete requirements of a sustainable future impose constraints on the pursuit of past claims, and that justice which forecloses the future is structurally self-defeating. As Volf formulates it, the will to encounter the other precedes any construction of what justice between them might require.

The events of October 7 and the war that followed exposed these dynamics with particular clarity. Two communities carrying profound histories of suffering, two theological frameworks grounded in memory, and two competing claims to justice entered the same global discursive space. Yet that space proved far more capable of assigning moral positions than of sustaining engagement with competing forms of suffering. Rather than facilitating an encounter between different narratives of injury, it increasingly translated them into stable categories of oppressor and oppressed, victim and perpetrator. The confrontation between post-Holocaust theology and Palestinian liberation theology, therefore, reveals not only a political conflict but a structural limitation within contemporary justice discourse itself.

The challenge that emerges from this analysis is not how to abandon memory, suffering, or claims to justice. It is how to preserve their critical force without allowing justice to become trapped within an endless accounting of historical wrongs. If twentieth-century liberation theologies sought to open history toward a future not yet realized, significant strands of contemporary digital justice discourse tend instead to close the future within the past. In this sense, the present crisis is not only a crisis of peace but also a crisis of theological imagination: a difficulty in envisioning a shared future not wholly determined by the wounds of history. This is the condition described throughout this article as “All Justice, No Peace”.