The Upper Register Blog

“William who?” you ask. I had never heard of William of St-Thierry (c. 1080–1148) either until I was doing some searches on iustitia Dei in the Library of Latin Texts – Series A database (by Brepols) for my dissertation. (Unfortunately, you need a subscription to access the database.) Wikipedia has some helpful information here. Apparently he was a Benedictine monk and a close friend of the more famous Bernard of Clairvaux. According to Wikipedia, William wrote his Expositio super Epistolam ad Romanos (Exposition over the Letter to the Romans) in 1137.

On Rom 1:17, he writes:  “This righteousness which justifies believers, is faith … It is therefore called righteousness, because it makes righteous those who have it. Moreover it is ‘of God,’ precisely because faith is by grace.” And on Rom 3:21:  “What is this righteousness? He says, ‘the righteousness of God,’ when faith accomplishes what the law demands:  the righteousness of God, not of men, nor of works, nor of one’s own will.” 

And a little later in the same context, he writes: 

A man comes along, who alone was born righteous (Venit homo, qui solus iustus natus est). Yet he who took no delight in sin, did not refuse the punishment of sin. And this righteousness he gave to humanity sold [in sin] and unable by the substance of his nature to redeem himself out from it, in order that on account of his [Christ’s] punishment he might free [humanity] from the certificate of his debt. And this is the righteousness of God, that, through faith clinging to him who died for us, we might have from him that of which we were not capable by ourselves (Et haec iustitia Dei, ut per fidem inhaerentes ei qui pro nobis mortuus est, ex ipso habeamus quod non possumus ex nobis). For that which is conferred on us freely is grace.

[Translations mine.] 

This is a remarkable set of quotes, for here William of St-Thierry appears to adumbrate the Reformation interpretation that the righteousness of God is the righteousness of Christ reckoned to or conferred on [but see below] the believer by faith. He speaks of Christ being “alone born righteous” and yet taking the punishment for sin that sinners deserved. He then goes on to say that the righteousness of God is that, as we cling in faith to Christ, we freely receive from Christ that righteousness which we were not capable of producing from our own resources. The righteousness of God is thus a soteriological benefit that the sinner receives by faith. It is called “of God,” according to William, because it is a free gift of God’s grace, not produced by human volition or human works.  

Now it is true that William thinks that in justification God “makes” sinners righteous, rather then imputing the righteousness of Christ to them. But prior to the Reformation, everyone made that mistake. The clear-cut distinction between justification and sanctification was the Reformation’s unique contribution (see Alister McGrath’s Iustitia Dei for proof of that thesis). I realize that there is a danger of distorting the gospel when justification is interpreted as a transformative act that makes sinners righteous. But because William places the accent on Christ and his righteousness and death, and on clinging to Christ by faith, I think he avoids that danger. For a medieval theologian, the above is a pretty good approximation of Pauline doctrine, and I dare say it is a close enough approximation that William probably had saving faith in Christ. It is certainly closer to the saving truth of the gospel than the social theory of justification taught by the NPP (i.e., that in justification God declares one to be a member of the covenant community).

In my research for my dissertation, I rejoiced to discover Origen’s interpretation of ”the righteousness of God” in Paul. Although Origen had some pretty speculative ideas in his theology, he strikes me as a rather sober exegete. He interprets Romans 3:21-22 and 10:3 in light of 1 Cor 1:30 and concludes that “the righteousness of God” is nothing less than Christ himself.

Here he is commenting on Rom 3:21:

We can now see what “righteousness” it is that has been manifested apart from natural law. It is the same which the apostle Paul says concerning Christ, that “he has been made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.”  Therefore, this righteousness of God, which is Christ, has been manifested apart from the natural law, but not apart from the law of Moses or the prophets. Natural law teaches us about equity among men or to know that there is a God. But that Christ is the Son of god, who is able to come to know this by nature? Therefore, apart from that law, the righteousness of God, which is Christ, has been manifested, testified to by the law of Moses and the prophets [Migne, Patrologiae Graecae, vol. 14, column 944].

Not only is “the righteousness of God” Christ himself, but it is given to all who believe, causing them to be cleansed of their sins, justified, and made fit for glory:

There is, he says, no distinction between Jews and Greeks, since all stand equally made under sin, as he had previously made clear, and now the righteousness of God, supported by the testimonies of the law and prophets, through faith in Jesus Christ is equally given to all … For that reason, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ coming to all who believe, whether they are Jews or Greeks, justifies those who have been purified from their prior crimes and makes them fit for the glory of God; and it makes them such, not by their merits, nor for their works, but freely offers glory to those who believe [column 945].

Contra the New Perspective on Paul, Origen interprets the Pauline lexeme “the righteousness of God” as having reference not to God’s faithfulness to the covenant but to Christ himself and the status of being cleansed from sin, justified, and qualified for eschatological glory on the basis of Christ’s atonement. “The righteousness of God” is thus a soteriological status that sinful humans receive by believing in Christ. And it makes believers fit for glory, “not by their merits, nor for their works, but freely (gratis) offers glory to those who believe.”

His comments on Rom 10:3-6 are also important. He argues that Paul makes mention of “two righteousnesses” (duarum justitiarum), namely, “the righteousness which is by the law” (justitia quae ex lege) and “the righteousness which is by faith” (justitia quae ex fide). Origen connects these two kinds of righteousness with Paul’s statement in the immediately preceding context about Israel’s unbelief (“being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own righteousness,” Rom 10:3): 

“For Christ is the end of the law,” that is, the perfection of the law, and Christ is righteousness, but to those who believe.  Those who do not truly believe, because they do not have Christ, do not have the perfection of the law; and for this reason neither are they able to arrive at righteousness. “For Moses writes that the righteousness which is by the law, which if a man does he shall live by it. But the righteousness which is by faith speaks thus.”  Already and in the preceding, the apostle made mention of two righteousnesses, when he says, for being ignorant of the righteousness of God, Israel sought to establish their own righteousness:  and here now he speaks again of two righteousnesses, one which is by the law, and the other which is by faith. But it seems to me that that righteousness which he had said above was ignored by Israel, the righteousness of God, is the same as the righteousness which is by faith. And that righteousness indeed of which he had said, “seeking to establish their own righteousness,” is the same as the righteousness which Moses here introduces with words, that “righteousness which is by the law, which if a man does he shall live by it” [column 1160].

I repeat: Origen says, “It seems to me that that righteousness which he had said above was ignored by Israel, the righteousness of God, is the same as the righteousness which is by faith,” while “their own righteousness” is the same as the righteousness which is by the law. 

I think this is significant because many scholars from Cremer to Käsemann to the New Perspective (Dunn and Wright) reject the identification of “the righteousness of God” with “the righteousness of faith.” Although they acknowledge the close connection between the two, these scholars want to emphasize the theocentric meaning of “the righteousness of God” (interpreted as God’s saving righteousness in fulfillment of his covenant promises) while allowing only the latter term, “the righteousness of faith,” to refer to the soteriological status of righteousness enjoyed by the believer. 

James D. G. Dunn and N. T. Wright agree that “the righteousness of God” in Paul’s usage really means “the covenant faithfulness of God.” But there is a perfectly good word for “faithfulness” in Greek (πιστότης) that Paul could have used. Paul does not use this exact word, but he comes close. He speaks of “the faithfulness of God” (ἡ πίστις τοῦ θεοῦ) (Rom 3:3). Three times he says that “God is faithful” (πιστὸς ὁ θεός) (1 Cor 1:9; 10:13; 2 Cor 1:18), and on other occasions he uses the adjective πιστός in reference to God or Christ (1 Thess 5:24; 2 Thess 3:3; 2 Tim 2:13).

In addition, Paul uses a variety phrases and idioms to affirm that God keeps his promises, but none of them involves the use of “righteousness” terminology: “… so that the promise (ἡ ἐπαγγελία) will be guaranteed (βέβαιος) to all the seed” (Rom 4:16); “With respect to the promise (ἡ ἐπαγγελία) of God he did not waver in unbelief … being fully assured that what God had promised (ἐπήγγελται), he was able also to perform” (Rom 4:20-21); “It is not as though the word of God has failed” (Rom 9:6); “The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Rom 11:29); “For I say that Christ has become a servant to the circumcision on behalf of the truth of God (ἀλήθεια θεοῦ) to confirm (εἰς τὸ βεβαιῶσαι = ‘in order to fulfill’ [BDAG]) the promises (αἱ ἐπαγγελίαι) given to the fathers” (Rom 15:8); “For as many as are the promises (ἐπαγγελίαι) of God, in him they are yes … Now he who establishes (ὁ βεβαιῶν) us with you in Christ and has anointed us is God” (2 Cor 1:20-21); “the Law, which came 430 years later, does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to nullify the promise (ἡ ἐπαγγελία)” (Gal 3:17).

Paul frequently uses the noun or verb for “promise” in the contexts where he wants to affirm the faithfulness of God. Yet the words for “promise” are strikingly absent from the contexts where Paul speaks of “the righteousness of God.” This suggests that the translation “the covenant faithfulness of God” is incorrect.

It significant, I think, that none of the church fathers (Greek or Latin) interpreted “the righteousness of God” in Rom 1:17 (and parallels) in Hebraic/relational terms as if it had something to do with ”God’s covenant faithfulness.” This is not to say that the church fathers were as clear on justification by faith alone as we would have wished, or that they held what would later be known as the Reformational understanding of justification. Even the best of the church fathers (e.g., Augustine in his anti-Pelagian writings) did not make the sharp distinction between justification and sanctification that would later characterize the Reformation’s central insight. 

Nevertheless, as Ben Witherington (BW3) points out in his socio-rhetorical commentary on Romans (p. 54 note 15), “the righteousness of God” in the church fathers was never understood as a “cipher” for some grand concept like “God’s covenant faithfulness,” but was interpreted (in keeping with the context in which Paul uses the phrase) as “the basis of a believer’s right-standing and so ‘justification’ as well.” Here are three important quotes that show this:

Chrysostom, Homily # 17 on Romans (on 10:3):  “But this he calls God’s righteousness, that from faith, because it comes entirely from grace from above, and because men are justified in this case, not by labors, but by the gift of God” (NPNF, First Series, vol. 11, p. 472).

Ambrosiaster, in his commentary on Romans (on 1:17):  “Paul says this because the righteousness of God is revealed in the one who believes, whether Jew or Greek. He calls it ‘the righteousness of God’ because God freely justifies the ungodly by faith, without the works of the law, just as he says elsewhere: ‘That I may be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.’ He says that this same righteousness is revealed in the gospel when God grants faith to man, through which he may be justified … The righteousness is of God because what he promised, he gave.” From Romans, ed. Gerald Bray (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture; IVP, 1998), p. 31. 

(For more on Ambrosiaster, see Bray’s article in Reading Romans Through the Centuries, ed. by Greenman and Larsen [Brazos, 2005]. Ambrosiaster was a 4th century Latin writer living in Rome, probably a presbyter, who wrote a commentary on all the epistles of Paul. His actual name is unknown, but since his works were incorrectly attributed to Ambrose, he is called “Ambrosiaster” to distinguish him from Ambrose. Bray considers him to be one of the most important, though unfortunately neglected, ecclesiastical writers of this period.)

Augustine, commenting on Rom 3:21:  “He does not say, the righteousness of man, or the righteousness of his own will, but the ‘righteousness of God,’ – not that whereby He is Himself righteous, but that with which He endows man when He justifies the ungodly” (On the Spirit and the Letter; NPNF, First Series, vol. 5, p. 89). (This is the same statement that helped Luther break out of the medieval understanding of iustitia Dei as if it were nothing other than God’s iustitia distributiva, that is, the attribute of divine righteousness in accordance with which he rewards the good and punishes the wicked.)

The Cremer/Dunn/Wright view that the phrase is actually a “cipher” (to use BW3’s term) for God’s saving covenant faithfulness is radically new. It never occurred to anyone until Cremer’s book, first published in 1899. Those who were closest to the culture, language, and worldview of Paul’s milieu, i.e., the church fathers (especially the Greek-speaking fathers like Chrysostom), readily understood his references to “the righteousness of God” in a sense that was consistent with the ordinary meanings associated with the Greek word δικαιοσύνη rather than in some esoteric Hebraic/relational sense that bears no relationship to what the word actually means in Greek.

There is a perfectly good word for “faithfulness” in Greek (pistotes) but that is not the word Paul used. He used the word δικαιοσύνη and immediately followed it up with the word δίκαιος (Rom 1:17b) as an adjective describing the believer in the Hab 2:4 quotation (”He who is righteous by faith shall live”). By this means, Paul made it clear - as the church fathers rightly understood - that the righteousness of God is a righteousness that comes from God, is bestowed on believers, and is received by faith. 

In addition to some of the thoughts in my previous post, I hope in my dissertation to address the NPP from the angle of lexical semantics. This has to do with the role of the LXX in mediating a Hebraic meaning to the ΔΙΚ-group in Paul. While I do recognize some influence, particularly in the verb δικαιόω, I’m more skeptical of the sort of argument that is expressed, for example, in the Dictionary of Paul and His Letters:

“The Hellenistic idea of righteousness as a virtue, a meeting of the norm, was replaced with the idea of meeting God’s claim in this covenant relationship … Thus the semantic range for dikaios in LXX Greek was enlarged due to the influence of the Hebrew background.” (DPL, 830)

To begin with, I doubt that such a sharp contrast can be made between the Hellenistic or Greek idea of righteousness and the Hebrew, covenantal background. I agree with James Barr’s criticism of this sort of approach which makes such a strong dichotomy between Greek and Hebrew thought, especially when used to make lexical judgments. (See also Martin Hengel on the degree to which Palestinian Judaism in the first century was Hellenized.) One of the things that has struck me as odd about Dunn and Wright is that they seem to make sweeping lexical statements about the meanings of δικαιόω and δικαιοσύνη as if Barr had never written his critique of the Cremer/Kittel approach to lexicography.

I doubt that the influence of the Hebrew on Paul’s usage of the ΔΙΚ-group is as substantial as it is often made out to be. Of course, some lexical items of Paul’s Greek vocabulary do show evidence of strong Hebraic influence, mediated by the LXX. The evidence is sufficient in some cases that we can rightly speak either of strong calques (i.e., as David Hill calls them, “Greek words with Hebrew meanings,” e.g., nomos) or soft calques (i.e., Greek words with Greek meanings but containing clear allusions to OT referents, e.g., hilasterion). But I’m not sure that the ΔΙΚ-group can be classified as either.

One criterion that contemporary scholars working in the area of LXX lexicography (e.g., John A. L. Lee, Albert Pietersma, and Cameron Boyd-Taylor) have developed recently is that a calque can only be determined to be such if it is used with a Hebrew meaning in Jewish literature composed in Greek (in other words, not merely in translation literature like the LXX). Thus, I plan to check the writings of Josephus, Philo, 2-4 Maccabees, the Wisdom of Solomon, Joseph and Aseneth, Pseudo-Phocylides, etc., to see whether the ΔΙΚ-group is used in a so-called Hebraic/relational sense. Cameron Boyd-Taylor, for example, argues that “the only unassailable evidence for a calque will come from non-translational documents” (”Calque-culations: Loanwords and the Lexicon,” BIOSCS 38 [2005]: 90). Albert Pietersma also delivered a very helpful paper at the 2007 SBL in San Diego on this issue titled “Context is King in Septuagint Lexicography - Or is It?”

Some additional thoughts regarding my incipient dissertation.

NPP scholars often cite verses where the terms “righteousness” and “faithfulness” (or “salvation”) occur in parallelism. Such verses are common in the OT. Here are just three of the texts that can be cited:

Ps 143:1: “Hear my prayer, O Lord, give ear to my supplications! Answer me in Your faithfulness, in Your righteousness!”

Isa 56:1: “My salvation is about to come; and my righteousness is about to be revealed.”

Hos 2:19-20: “I will betroth you to me forever; yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in lovingkindness and in compassion, and I will betroth you to me in faithfulness.”

Those following in the Cremer line would then argue that the term “righteousness” can itself denote “salvation” or “covenant faithfulness,” and that this OT background has influenced Paul’s usage. On this reasoning, Dunn and Wright argue that “the righteousness of God” means “God’s saving activity as an expression of God’s covenant faithfulness.”

But consider the poetic parallelism in Isaiah 3:8:

“Jerusalem has stumbled,
and Judah has fallen.”

Clearly the parallelism here does not mean that “Jerusalem” and “Judah” are synonymous terms. It only indicates that there is a close relationship – Jerusalem is the main city within Judah. But it would be a mistake for a lexicographer to write an entry on “Jerusalem” in which he cited this verse as if it proved that in some cases the word “Jerusalem” means ”Judah.” 

Likewise, faithfulness is an important sub-category within righteousness. As Mark Seifrid argues in Justification and Variegated Nomism, faithfulness is covenant-righteousness. The way God is “righteous” within the terms of a (promissory) covenant is by being faithful to keep his promises and delivering his people. But this does not mean that the lexical denotation of “righteousness” is “faithfulness to a promissory covenant.”

Just as everyone who is in Jerusalem is in Judah but not everyone who is in Judah is in Jerusalem, so all instances of faithfulness to a promissory covenant may be termed ”righteousness,” but not all ”righteousness” is faithfulness to a promissory covenant.

This is important, because von Rad argued that “righteousness” (when applied to God) in the OT never has a penal meaning. Von Rad (following Cremer) thought God’s righteousness always means God’s saving activity as an expression of his covenant faithfulness.

But von Rad’s claim is easy to disprove. For example, Psalm 7:11:  “God is a righteous judge, and a God who has indignation every day.”

Hebrew parallelism does not always mean that the two members of the parallelism are synonymous. The relationship can be more nuanced. In this case, “righteousness” is the broader category, of which “faithfulness” is a non-exhaustive subset. God is righteous when he keeps his promises. He is also righteous when he judges the wicked.

Thus, when we encounter Paul’s phrase “the righteousness of God,” we cannot assume that it means God’s covenant faithfulness. It could. But it could also have other meanings. The OT usage is not uniform. How do we decide which OT passages Paul has in mind? As Francis Watson argues in Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith, a good place to start would be to look at the OT passages Paul himself quotes when using the phrase.

The phrase δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ occurs several times in Paul’s letters, but the key occurrence is the first: Romans 1:17 (together with 3:21ff):

(a) δικαιοσύνη γὰρ θεοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ ἀποκαλύπτεται ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν, (b) καθὼς γέγραπται, Ὁ δὲ δίκαιος ἐκ πίστεως ζήσεται.

“(a) For in it [viz., the gospel], the righteousness of God is revealed by faith to faith; (b) as it is written, ‘But the one who is righteous by faith shall live.’” [translation mine]

I’ve emphasized the words “righteousness” and “righteous” because this is the key to understanding the verse. Once the connection between the two parts of the verse — (a) and (b) — is grasped, it is difficult to see how the NPP interpretation can be made to fit the sense of the verse as a whole. Whatever “the δικαιοσύνη of God” means, it must relate in some way to the quotation of Hab 2:4 concerning the one who is δίκαιος by faith, since Paul quotes Hab 2:4 in support of his claim in the first half of the verse. Clearly, Paul is relating the term δίκαιος (righteous) in 17b back to the term δικαιοσύνη (righteousness) in 17a.

And how does part a (”for in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed”) relate to part b (Hab 2:4)? Paul seems to be saying that the gospel reveals the righteousness of God because it reveals a way for sinners to be δίκαιος before God by faith (and, as he will explain later, ”by faith” means ”not by works”).

If “the righteousness of God” is God’s saving activity or God’s covenant faithfulness, it is difficult to see how this relates to the concept of being δίκαιος by faith (Hab 2:4). Why would Paul cite Hab 2:4 to support the notion that God keeps his promises and saves his people? These things are true but not germane. The logical connection between 17a and 17b on the Cremer/NPP view is strained. I doubt Paul intended to be heard as saying that in the gospel is revealed the covenant faithfulness of God, just as it is written, he who is faithful by faith shall live.

Against the NPP, I would argue that “the righteousness of God” refers to the righteousness of Christ which is received as a gift, by faith. It is not a divine attribute or activity, but a gift from God, as Rom 5:17 and Phil 3:9 make clear. Also Rom 10:3 and Phil 3:9 contrast “the righteousness of God” with one’s own righteousness, thus indicating that it is a righteousness that comes from God. Thus, I interpret the genitive “of God” as a genitivus auctoris, not a subjective genitive. This is the traditional Reformation view, and it also has roots in the Greek and Latin fathers.

As I’ve mentioned before, I passed my comps last August and now I’m entering the dissertation phase of my Ph.D. work at Fuller. When I last blogged about this, I said that I wanted to do something in the whole area of the New Perspective on Paul (NPP), but that I needed time to do more reading and narrow down my topic to one particular aspect of the NPP. I think I’ve finally zeroed in on my topic, and I will explain what it is in a minute. But first, let me say that I’m convinced that the NPP is fundamentally a distortion of Paul’s gospel. Although the Reformation tradition certainly is not perfect and has areas that need sharpening and refinement in light of modern biblical scholarship, I am in agreement with Stephen Westerholm when he famously said that any NT scholar who thinks they have nothing to learn from Martin Luther should consider a career in metallurgy. The Old Perspective on Paul is not without its imperfections and blind spots at certain points, but it is far closer to the truth than the New Perspective.

What is needed is a rehabilitation (and, where necessary, refinement) of the Old Perspective on Paul on a solid foundation of painstaking, objective exegetical labor informed by deep knowledge of Paul’s first century Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts. As I have been immersing myself in the literature of the NPP, I have come to think that there are two main issues that need to be addressed if we are to accomplish this goal. First, we must answer E. P. Sanders’s claim that the Judaism of Paul’s context was not a legalistic religion that taught salvation by works of merit. Second, we must investigate the notion, defended by James Dunn and N. T. Wright, that Paul’s “righteousness” language (verb, noun, and adjective) is informed primarily by a relational or covenantal significance due to its origin within an OT/Jewish matrix.  

Some very good work has already been done in response to Sanders and critiquing his notion that the Judaism of Paul’s day was “covenantal nomism” (e.g., Elliott, Das, Gathercole, and many others), but to my knowledge little has been done on the second issue which has more to do with lexical semantics. Therefore, I have chosen to tackle the second problem by writing a dissertation that will subject the Hebraic/relational interpretation of Paul’s “righteousness” terminology to critical examination.

The Hebraic/relational view goes back to a seminal treatise by Hermann Cremer published in 1899 (second edition, 1900) titled Die paulinische Rechtfertigungslehre im Zusammenhange ihrer geschichtlichen Voraussetzungen. I translate this as The Pauline Doctrine of Justification in the Context of its Historical Presuppositions. By “historical presuppositions,” Cremer means primarily the usage of “righteousness” in the Old Testament and in post-biblical Jewish literature. Cremer was one of the first to argue that Paul’s usage of “righteousness” is not governed by standard Greek usage but by its usage in the OT, where it has a relational or covenantal meaning as opposed to the alleged abstract, ethical meaning in secular Greek. The idea is that “righteousness” does not signify conformity to an abstract norm but the fulfilling of one’s obligations as defined within a particular relationship. When applied to “the righteousness of God,” God’s righteousness is his faithfulness to the covenant. In German theology, scholars tend to speak of God’s Gemeinschaftstreue (faithfulness to the community, i.e., Israel) or his Bundestreue (covenant faithfulness). 

Cremer further argued that not only does God’s righteousness refer to God’s covenant faithfulness, but that in many instances, particularly in the Psalms and Deutero-Isaiah, it refers specifically to God’s saving activity (Heilshandeln) by which he intervenes in history to redeem his people, thus fulfilling his obligations to the covenant. Taking this concept and applying it to Paul, Cremer argued that in the key Pauline texts that speak of “the righteousness of God” (Rom 1:17; 3:5, 21ff; 10:3; 2 Cor 5:21) the “of God” is a subjective genitive and that the whole phrase refers to God’s covenant faithfulness as manifested in his saving or justifying activity in Christ.

Cremer’s revolutionary argument has had a deep and lasting impact on theological and biblical studies throughout the 20th century. His ideas were well received by OT scholars, in particular Gerhard von Rad and Walther Eichrodt, both of whom devote sections in their OT theologies to the Cremer theory. On the NT side, Adolf Schlatter wrote a commentary on Romans titled The Righteousness of God (1935) which relied on Cremer’s interpretation. The next major appropriation of Cremer’s theory by a major NT scholar was the brilliant contribution of Ernst Käsemann in his famous 1961 essay, “‘The Righteousness of God’ in Paul.” Käsemann argued that the righteousness of God must not be reduced to the gift-aspect, which is the dominant theme in Luther’s interpretation, i.e., the gift of imputed righteousness given to the believer. Rather, Käsemann spoke of “the power-character of the gift” (der Machtcharakter der Gabe) and argued that the righteousness of God is his covenant faithfulness, not merely to Israel but to the entire creation, by which he engages in his saving activity to reclaim the world for himself and to bring it under his lordship. Salvation is not merely a reception of a divine gift but a change of lordship (Herrschaftswechsel) by which we are transferred out of the lordship of sin under the reign of the first Adam into the lordship-realm of Christ the second Adam. Justification and sanctification are therefore indistinguishable, merely two sides of the same coin.

All of this flows from his fundamental presupposition that the phrase “the righteousness of God” was a technical term or fixed formula in apocalyptic Judaism that Paul radicalized and universalized in light of the Christ event. Käsemann himself did not spend a whole lot of energy trying to prove this point, but his student, Peter Stuhlmacher, filled in the lacuna by writing his dissertation on the subject in 1965 (second edition, 1966), although Stuhlmacher would later admit that he had overstated his claim that δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ was a fixed formula. 

There are many other lesser scholars to be noted along the way, but I think you get the picture. There is a more-or-less direct line from Cremer to Käsemann to the NPP as articulated by Dunn and Wright. There are, of course, some important differences where the NPP takes the Cremer theory in new directions. For example, Dunn and Wright not only argue that “the righteousness of God” is his covenant faithfulness, but they interpret the verb “to justify” to mean “to declare someone to be a member of the covenant.” This is a new application or extension of the Cremer theory but it is perfectly consistent with it. Furthermore, both Dunn and Wright have added the new twist that “the works of the law” refers to Jewish boundary markers. In so doing, they interpret Paul’s slogan that “one is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Christ” to mean that one is not reckoned as a member of the covenant people by the badge of Jewish practices. This is what leads the NPP to reinterpret Paul’s Rechtfertigungslehre as a fundamentally social doctrine calling the church to be radically inclusive.

(In my view this is dangerous because it denies or at least downplays the soteriological and eschatological significance of justification as God’s act - on the basis of Christ’s atoning obedience unto death - of reckoning individual sinners as righteous in God’s sight and thus worthy of attaining eternal life in the age to come. In the NPP, and despite recent attempts to have their cake and eat it too, sociology and ecclesiology have trumped soteriology and eschatology. The fundamental human problem has switched from guilt before a holy God to the problems of racism, social exclusion, and ecumenical relations. This plays right into the hands of the renewed social gospel that we are now seeing in the emergent community.)

My dissertation, then, will be a critique of the Hebraic/relational interpretation of Paul’s righteousness terminology from Cremer to the NPP, with a special focus on the underlying lexical semantics of the question. Can the word “righteousness” mean “covenant faithfulness”? Can the word “to justify” mean “to reckon someone as a member of the covenant”? I don’t think they can bear these meanings, and that, in fact, the traditional understanding does a much better job of explaining all of the data, including the usage of these terms in Paul’s OT and Jewish context.

Denny Burk’s comments here. He concludes:

To say that the basis of the final judgment is instrumentally and exclusively good works is to render God’s grace null and void. The interpretation twists the ordinary meaning of so many Pauline texts that it’s difficult to imagine VanLandingham’s thesis winning many converts at all.

See my review here.

D. A. Carson has written a good review in RBL of Chris VanLandingham’s book, Judgment & Justification in Early Judaism and the Apostle Paul (Hendrickson, 2006). I’ve read the book and found it to be helpful and disappointing at the same time.

VanLandingham is helpful in responding to E. P. Sanders’s conception of Judaism as a religion characterized by ”covenantal nomism,” that is, the notion that nomism (Law keeping) is subordinate to the covenant (God’s gracious election of Israel). On Sanders’s construction, most Jews will be eschatologically saved by means of this “covenant/election” at the day of judgment except for those that consciously opt out by apostasy. If they sin, that is to be regretted, but they will not perish as long as they repent and renew their intention to be obedient. 

VanLandingham falls into a line of recent authors such as F. Avemarie, Andrew Das, Simon Gathercole, Mark Adam Elliott, and others, who have shown the inadequacies of Sanders’s construction of Second Temple Judaism. Although these authors do not all agree in the exact nuances of their positive model for describing the soteriology of Judaism in this period, they all agree that Sanders misses or downplays the eschatological role of obedience to the Law as the central soteriological mechanism in Judaism. In other words, while Judaism was not a religion devoid of grace, and while a very important role is ascribed to “covenant/election,” most Jews ultimately believed that one must be righteous and thus obtain a favorable verdict at the day of judgment by keeping the Law, repenting when needed, and recommitting oneself with even more zeal to the Law. By an examination of many Jewish texts like Enoch, the DSS, and so on, Van Landingham reminds us of the crucial role played by actual Law-keeping in Jewish soteriology. It is not sufficient, as Sanders would have it, to have the intention to obey. Judaism taught that one must be a Law-keeper in order to be eschatologically vindicated as “righteous” and thus in some sense worthy of entering eternal life.

Even here, though, VanLandingham is not totally helpful. For example, he goes too far in attributing this works-based soteriology to the religion of Israel as found in the pages of the Old Testament (e.g., even the Abraham narrative!). He even uses the terms “earn” and “merit” in this connection. Such language, when properly circumscribed so as to recognize the role of repentance and atonement, may be legitimate in describing the religion of Judaism in this period, but it must be used cautiously so as not to give the impression that Judaism denied the possibility of forgiveness and mercy granted to those who are repentant and who have re-committed themselves to Law-keeping.

Whatever value we may see in his critique of Sanders, when it comes to VanLandingham’s interpretation of Paul, he becomes doubly disappointing and, to be blunt, even shocking in his radical deviation from the Pauline gospel as normally understood by Protestants. He thinks Paul essentially agreed with the works-based soteriology of his Jewish contemporaries! Appealing to Rom 2:6-16, he believes that Paul taught that eschatological deliverance from wrath and entrance into the age to come will be decided on the basis of one’s obedience or works. VanLandingham has little to say about the many passages in Paul’s letters (e.g., Rom 9:30-10:13; Gal 1:13-17; 2:15-21; Phil 3:1-11, to name just a few) where Paul seems to place his soteriology of grace in stark contrast with the works-based soteriology of his Jewish contemporaries. 

How does VanLandingham get around the passages where Paul teaches that a person is not justified by works, you ask? He explains these by redefining the verb ”justify” to refer to the initial act by which a person is forgiven of their past (not future) sins and is also made ontologically or ethically righteous by the Spirit. On this interpretation, Paul’s ”not by works” slogan simply means that a person cannot receive this initial transformation by doing good works but only by faith in Christ and by the Spirit. Once initially transformed, however, a person must continue to obey and persevere to the end, otherwise they will lose their salvation and perish at the day of judgment. Justification, so defined, does not secure eternal life. It only clears the past record of debt and puts one on the path of sanctification and good works necessary to obtain or even earn eternal life (again, VanLandingham is not shy about using the word “earn” in reference to the eschatological reward).

One lengthy section of the book that will need to be examined more closely is his argument, based on the LXX, that the verb “justify” means “to make righteous.” I suspect that his work relies on the previous work of John Ziesler, The Meaning of Righteousness in Paul (SNTSMS 20; Cambridge, 1972), who came to a similar conclusion, although not as extreme as VanLandingham. Ziesler argued that, “God’s saving righteousness does two things for men and does them simultaneously:  it restores their relationship with God, and it makes them new (ethical, righteous) beings” (p. 189). In coming to this conclusion, Ziesler was influenced by Käsemann. In any event, VanLandingham continues the tradition of confusing justification and sanctification, but turns it in an even more perverse direction by inserting notions of “merit” into the eschatological verdict — and this, not only in his description of the soteriology of Paul’s Jewish contemporaries, but in that of Paul himself. It just goes to show what great theological debates can hang on the lowly spadework of Greek lexicography.

This is a follow-up on my previous post. In that post I said that Shepherd appeared to belong to “the Old Perspective.” But I want to clarify that I was speaking from the NPP point of view. NPP scholars tend to define “the Old Perspective” broadly and lump together views that ought to be distinguished. Historically, there are two main positions that can both be called “Old  Perspective” in the chronological sense that they are both older than the New Perspective: 

(1) The authentic Old Perspective of classical law-gospel, solafidian Protestantism which holds that Judaism was a legalistic religion in the sense of teaching a Law-based soteriology (salvation by Law-keeping), thus recognizing that at points Paul’s guns are aimed at legalism, but which also qualifies this by noting that ”the works of the Law” (e.g., in Rom. 3:20, 28) doesn’t mean “legalism” but “good and moral deeds done in obedience to the Law.” Thus, when Paul says that we are justified by faith, apart from ”the works of the Law” he is simply saying that justification does not come by moral behavior because such moral behavior is not forthcoming from fallen Adamic humans. It is not as if the true soteriology is by means of Law-keeping, as long as the Law is kept in reliance on God’s grace apart from legalistic, merit-mongering, boastful attitudes. The overriding message of Romans 1-5 is not that the Law would be soteriologically effective if boasting were removed, but that there is no one who is righteous before God, and yet God has provided an extraordinary righteousness in Christ, received by faith alone, so that sinners can be righteous in God’s sight by imputation even though they aren’t actually righteous in their own persons.

(2) A more recent Old Perspective which holds that Judaism was a religion of legalistic merit-mongering, based on a Jewish misunderstanding, and that this is what Paul was up against when he denied that a person is justified by the works of the Law. In other words, “the works of the Law” means “legalistic attempts to merit God’s favor.” This reading of Paul dominated NT scholarship from the 19th century but was especially dominant in the theology of Rudolf Bultmann. Interestingly, Shepherd appears to agree with Bultmann, at least on the meaning of “the works of the Law.” The fatal flaw of this approach is that it reduces Paul’s objection to justification by works to an objection to the attitudinal problems associated with Law-keeping rather than with the soteriology of Law-keeping itself. On this approach, Law-keeping can be redeemed as a soteriological mechanism as long as such Law-keeping is shorn of legalistic, boastful, merit-mongering attitudes. One is then justified by faithfulness to God, defined as non-meritorious, trusting-and-obeying which leads to eschatological deliverance. Needless to say, this second Old Perspective eviscerates the Pauline gospel and is diametrically opposed to (1) above.

Unfortunately, NPP-ers tend not to see any distinction between the two Old Perspectives. Since they are New Testament scholars with little training in historical theology, they tend to be more familiar with (2), specifically in its Bultmannian incarnation. Then, without taking the time to study Luther, Calvin, and post-Reformation scholasticism, they assume that Bultmann and the historic Protestant position can be placed in the same “Old Perspective” basket. They argue that Luther and Calvin misinterpreted Judaism through the lens of their contemporary battle with medieval merit-mongering, a misinterpretation that Bultmann inherited unquestioningly as part of his German Lutheran context. As a result, they claim, the Reformers and Bultmann distorted what Paul was actually up against (it wasn’t legalism but Jewish ethnic exclusivism) and hence they failed to grasp Paul’s response (namely, that faith in Christ is the true badge of covenant membership, rather than the boundary markers of Judaism). So NPP-ers think they are correcting the Reformers’ distorted reading of Paul, but the straw man they are attacking is really Bultmann dressed up to look like Luther. Ironically, the NPP-ers have done the very thing they accuse the Reformers of. Whereas they accuse the Reformers of misinterpreting Judaism through the lens of their battle with Rome, the NPP-ers have arguably misinterpreted the Reformers through the lens of their battle with Bultmann.

Why do I want to separate out these two positions that NPP-ers lump together as one monochromatic “Old Perspective”? Because it highlights the fact that the New Perspective and Old Perspective version (2) have a good deal more in common, when set over against (1), than many assume. As I said in my previous post, both Shepherd and Wright hold that Paul is merely responding to a Jewish misunderstanding of the Law. They merely differ on the precise nature of that misunderstanding. For Shepherd, the Jews misunderstood the Law by viewing it as a means of earning God’s favor and thus creating a ground for boasting before God. For Wright (and Dunn), the Jews misunderstood the Law by turning into a means of keeping themselves separated from the unclean Gentiles, thus restricting God’s grace to the Jews alone. But if Paul is merely responding to a Jewish misunderstanding, of whichever variety, then the law-gospel contrast is blurred, if not altogether lost, and one ends up entertaining the Law, freed from Jewish misunderstandings, as a soteriological mechanism.

Only position (1) is able to articulate a clear doctrine of sola fide, because it sees “the works of the Law” that Paul rejects as a neutral description of moral deeds performed in response to God’s commands, irrespective of any misunderstandings or bad motives. The reason why people are not justified by doing what the Law requires but by faith in Christ, is not because God dislikes legalism or racial exclusivism (though of course he does), but because in Adam, all people are in bondage to sin and thus incapable of doing what the Law requires. Since heaven must be earned by righteousness, and since no flesh in Adam can produce that righteousness, righteousness must come from the outside, from God who has provided it in his Son. A sinner’s only hope of heaven, then, is to receive the imputed righteousness of Christ as a gift.