In the Pseudepigrapha, speaking generally, the 'righteousness of God ' is, as a rule. His judicial righteousness, as seen in tlie rewarding of the righteous and the punishment of the wicked. But we do also occasionally find its merciful side put forward, as in 4 Ezra (ed. Bensly-James) 8^ : In hoc eniin adnuntiabilur iusticia tua et bonitas tua, domine, cum 7ni<tertus ftieris eis qui non habent substantiam opcrum bonorum.
It is to be noticed also that in connexion with the righteousness of God there arises the idea of a righteousness in man derived from God. Thus in Is 54" ' This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness which is of me, saith the Lord.' And a like use is found in Bar 5^- ' ' Cast about thee the robe of the righteousness which Cometh from God (tti^ irapb. toO d(oS oiKaioadrr]^) ; set a diadem on thy Iiead of the glory of the Everlasting. . . . For God shall lead Israel with joy in the light of his glory with the merc^ and righteousness that cometh from him ' (Ji/c. rf Trap' aiiTov).
There do not seem to be any instances in NT of a use of the ' righteousness of God ' quite on the same footing with that in Dcutero-Isaiah and the Psalms. But when we consider the collection of passages just quoted from these and from other books, we seem to be upon the line of antecedents of a very marked and cliaracteristic doctrine, which is associated specially with St. Paul.
(d) The Pauline doctrine. We have spoken of this doctrine as still constituting a problem in the exegesis and theology of NT. It is a problem which has been sharply accentuated in recent years, but, if not yet wholly solved, it would
appear to have been at least placed on the road to solution.
In Ro 1" St. Paul formulates the thesis of the Epistle. It is an announcement to the world of the ri^hteousne.ss of God revealed in the gospel from faith to faitli (diKaLoffOi'tj yap dtoO 4v airri^ [sc. T<p fuayyeX/y] diroKaXinrTeTai 4k Trlirrfujs els ttIixtiv). Here the key-plirase is evidently Six. 0eou ; but what exactly does it mean ?
A few years ago tliere seemed to be a strong consensus of the best exegetes (Meyer, Weiss, Lipsius, Godet, Oltramare, and in England, Vaughan, Liddon, Beet, Moule, unequivocally, and Gill'ord with rather more qualification) in favour of taking Sik. OeoO as a righteousness, which though in some sense or other God's ('a righteous- ness of which God is the author,' most Comms.), yet denotes more directly a state of man ('of which man is the recipient'). And whatever may be urged against this view, the arguments for it are so strong that it seems impossible to regard it as devoid of a substantial basis of truth. St. Paul appears to make his own meaning more ex[)licit in Ph 3', where he substitutes tlie jjlirase ttjj' ix OeoC SiKaioffipTiv 4tI tj irlarfi. And if it is said that this is the view of a later Epistle, and tliat it is dillor- eiitiated from Ro by the insertion of iK, the same antithfsis of 15 toO BeoO Six. and i) 15la 5ik. occurs in Ro 10^, where in spite of the absence of ix tlie former phrase can hardly be ambiguous. And other arguments derived from the transition from SiK. 0. to 6 StKatos in the quotation from HabakUuk in Ro 1", and from the evident parallel in 3-'--" (wliere 5lk. 0. is delined by Sik. S. Sii. Tlcrewi, K.T.X.), are hardly less cogent.
We must therefore include in the conception a righteousness which, whatever its origin, at least ends by denoting a state of man. IJut, on the other hand, it is no less impossilde to explain SiK. 6. as in the first instance anything else than the personal riij)iteousnexs of God. This is the sense of the phrase in the immense majority of the cases in which tlie word is used in OT and In other writings outside the Epp. of St. Paul. A phrase so familiar and so deeply rooteil in the common language of men could not be violentlj' wrenched from its usual associations and trans- ferred to otliers without more explicit warning than any that is given.
At the .same time those appear to be equally wrong who (like Hiiring in the treati.se mentioned below) insist that the phrase can only have one meaning in such a way as to compel a choice between the two alternatives. When thej' speak of 'one meaning,' what they have in view is a definite logical tying-down of that meaning which is not nece.ssitated by language. The array of logical po.s.sibilitie8 set out by Haring (pj). 14-17) certainly was not present to the mind of St. Paul, nor was he compelled to discriminate everything that may be capable of discrimination. Language has in its earlier stages an ehisticity of use which it may l)y degrees lose.
'I'o understand the real drift of St. Paul, we ought to bear in mind, not so much the distinc- tions wliioli we can draw, as those which had been ectually drawn when he wrote. He really sums up a long [irevious development. He sums it up, and the language which ho uses bears traces through- out of its several pha.ses ; but at the same time he puts upon it a new stamp ; he focuses, con- centrates, and defines it in a new sense of his own.