The Upper Register Blog

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.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 11:58 am and is filed under Justification, Ph.D., Rom 1:17, NPP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.