• WTren Mt 72' is quoted in 2 Clem. iv. 2, ' righteousness * is similarly substituted for ' the will of my Father in heaven.'
t Thus Clem. Rom. xxx. 3 can even say, ' we are justified by deeds (ep-yots) not words.'
I For a dilTerent view, cf. B. Bartmann's paper on 'St. Paulus und St. Jacobus uber die Rechtfertigung * in liiblischf. Studu-n, ii. [Freiburg i. B., IS'J") 30 f., 146 f., and S. Harbent's discussion in J. M. A. Vacant and E. Mangenot's Dictionnaire de th^oiogie catholigue. In. [19131701.
374
lUGHTEOUSNESS
RIGHTEOUSNESS
acteristic of personal religion, and the peace is primarilj' luirniony witli His purpose, an ulisciioe of friction and freUing, altliou^Oi tlie furtliHi- tlioufjlit of harnidny witliin tliecoiiinniiiity is souii develoiied (v."). Neither liere nor elsewliere in Hebrews do we find Sikoioitwt; used outside the non-technical range of meaning. In IP^ 'wrought righteous- ness'means 'administered justice," and in 5'^ the term is not far from what a modern would call moral truth,* as the context proves (v."). Simi- larly in Ac 24^ : wlien St. Paul made Felix uneasy by preaching ' about Sixaioffui'T; and self-mastery and tlie future judgment,' it was not tlie SiKaioaiVi; of Ko 1" but tlie morality demanded by God (cf. Ko'J^'). The only exception is the isolated echo or adaptation of the I'auliue phraseology in He 1 1', where Noah is .said to have inherited ' the right- eousness tiiat follows faitli ' {t7}S Kara iriuTiv StKaio- <TiJi>ris). Noali is passed over by St. Paul, but Philo had already noted tliat he was tlie first man to be called SiKatoi in the OT, and althougli the writer of Hebrews carries back this title of honour to Abel (v.''), he signalizes the faith of Noah as the reason why he obtained the po.sition of Si/toios before God. The non-technical use of Pauline language here tallies with the fact that the writer does not work elsewhere with the Pauline categories of faith and justification. Noah had faith, acted on it, and thus was entitled to the position of SUaios. The idea is closer to St. James than to St. Paul.
In Kev 19' the white linen in which the Bride of Messiah is allowed toarray herself for the marriage is dehned as ' the righteous conduct (SiKaici/xara) of the saints,' i.e. of the faithful who are persimihed as the Bride. The plural is curious ; it recalls the plural use of Swaiocrwai, e.f/. in (the Greek of) Sir 44'° and Pss.-Sol. ix. 6 (cf. 2 Es 7''^), as acts of righteousness (charity). But St. Paul uses the singular in Ro 5"* of a righteous act, and the plural actually occurs in Bar 2'", the famous protest against the doctrine of the zeciith of the Fathers (see below). The absence of the doctrine of justi- fication by faith from the Apocalypse made it less difficult for the writer to adopt such language without fear of being misunderstood. He em- jjliasizes as usual that moral purity and activity are the conditions of future bliss, but no one who read his pages could suspect him of reducing the religious life to moralism. The figure of speech is as old as Job 29", Is 61'", Pss.-Sol. xi. 8, and Sir 27*, but the words of Bar 5-'- ('O Jerusalem . . . cast round thee the tunic of the righteousness that is from God') are a specially apt parallel. The last-named passage, which predicts that in the Messianic Age Jerusalem's name is to be ' the peace of righteousness,' illustrates the original background of allusions like He 12" ; vindicated Israel, triumphantly justilied by God over her persecutors, will enjoy peace. It was a short step to the moralization of this, and to its application to the religious experience of Sixaiocrwi) in the present.
In 1 Peter, the just judgment of God brings out the thought of the moral order as a warning against careless conduct on the part of Christians (1") and as a consolation for the innocent who may have to suffer unjustly, like Jesus (2-') ; but the term ' righteousness ' t is employed only in its general, non-technical sense (2-'' 3"), as repeatedly in the Apostolic Fathers (e.g. Barn. iv. 12, etc.). The
* The present writer prefers this interpretation of Xdyoc Sneaio<rvio)s to the interpretation of von Soden (' richtiper Rede ') and Reuaa (' l'enseig:nement complet '), though the latter can also support itself on Greek usage.
t In Ac 17^1, the only place where it occurs in St. Paul's speeches, it is in a quotation from the Psalter (Ps 9*^)—' he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world justly (e'c BLKaiotrvirfi) by a man whom he has destined for this' (i.e. Jesus).
same is the case * in 2 P 2' and 3" (apocalyptic sense), but in 1' it denotes the 'eijuity ' of God in granting the same privilege and quality of faith to tJentiles as to Jewish believers, or to ordinary Christians as to apostles. Justin Martyr (Dial. 93 f.) quotes On 15" for the same purpose as St. Paul does in Ko 4'"- — to prove that Abraliam's faith was prior to his circumcision — and concludes that God cannot be shown to have acted capriciously or unfairly in history, since the condition for right- eousness has been the same (as Clem. Kom. xxxii. 3f. ) from the first. But, when he comes to define righteousm^ss, he echoes the definition of Jesus rather than that of St. Paul, quotes Mt 223', and adds : ' since all righteou.sness is divided into the two branches of love to God and love to one's neighbour, whoever loves God with all his heart, and with all his strength, and his neighbour as himself, is truly a righteous man.' This is pre- cisely the definition of the comiuandmeut of 6i/caio- <rw7) given by Polycarp (ad P/iil. iii. 2).