It is imperative, at the outset, to realize this vital character of the Divine righteousness in Paulinism.
of producing life, righteousness would have been really due to law.' But it is written over all his letters. AtKai'ucri; means ^wojroiTjcri?, and this comes out {f.g. in Col 2i3f.) even where the 6i»caio(rur7j idea is replaced by another.
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rightp:ousnk8s
RIGHTEOUSNESS
But it is easy to misinterpret it. ' Righteous- ness' and ' rijjliteous' are already OT terms for the action and character of God, and (he suggestion has been made * that St. I'aul employs lliom as the psalmists and i)ropliets did, that by ' righteous- ness ' in (Jod, e.g., he means not inexorable retriiiu- tion but the self-consistent and undeviating .action of God on behalf of the .salvation of His community, and tliat he posits no opposition between grace and righteousness, t the two being for him as for the OT e.ssentially identical. As ' righteous,' God champions the interests and vindicates the character of His own people against threats and accusations. Probably tliis is the sense in which the Johannine theology occasionally applies the term ' righteous ' to God, e.g. in Jn 17-* and 1 Jn 1", where it denotes, not any rigorousness, but, on the contrary, the gracious loyalty of God to His people.J But it is less easy to agree that such a meaning covers the entire range of the special usage in St. Paul. Its reality for OT religion is veiled from the reader by the misleading associations of ' righteousness ' in English. In Deutero-Isaiah, particularly, the Divine 'righteousness' and salvation are closely associated : ' There is no God beside me — a God who is righteous and saving ' (45-') ; ' I bring near my righteousness, it shall not be far ott', and my salvation shall not tarry ' (46") ; ' My rigliteousness is near, my salvation is gone forth . . . my salva- tion shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished ' (51'"^). ' Righteousness ' here means active aid ; if there is any punishing to be done, it is not Israel but her enemies that are punished. But what of St. Paul's position 1 ' These passages,' it is .said, ' seem to have made a deep impression upon St. Paul.'§ Perhaps they did. But we have no evidence for it. He never quotes any of them, never even alludes to them — a fresh proof, according to Holtzmann, of the slighter emphasis laid by St. Paul the ex-Pharisee, as compared with Jesus, on this great prophetic sec- tion of the OT. The truth is, that the sharp factor of human sin reset for St. Paul the older idea of righteousness as a Divine characteristic. In the OT, it denotes God's ' consistent adherence to his revealed line of action, wliich involves deliverance to faithful or at least repentant Israel, and destruc- tion to those who thwart his all-wi.se purpo.ses' (T. K. Cheyne, The Prophec.ie.i of Isaiah'', London, 1889, ii. 29, note on Is 51*). He vindicates His own people openly ; if He did not. He would be unjust. But in the central passages of St. Paul, the two parties are God and sinners. St. Paul's problem starts from the time ' when we are still enemies.' || It is no longer a people who are faulty but still in touch witli Him and requiring vindication before the hostile world ; it is humanity, people who even as Jews have no claim on God. Those who need God's righteousness are not wronged but wrong. IT When St. Paul is at the heart of his argument on sin, it is not to God's righteousness as loyalty and faithfulness that he appeals ; his gospel is addressed
* By Ritschl in Die christtiche Lehre von der Rechl/ertigung und Versoknung^, Eng. tr., ii. 473 f., and after him, on ijidepend- ent lines, bv Cremer, Sabatier, and C. Bruston (Rente de Thio- tog-ie, i\. [Wm] 299 f. ; ZNTiV vii. (1906] 77 f.) espeoi.ill.v.
t In Gn lO'y ('thou hast magnified thy mercy, which thou hast shewed unto me in saving my life '), Ex 34' (' keeping mercy for thousands '), and other passages, the usage of Stxaioaiivri by some LXX translators is significant.
t With 1 Jn ly compare Wordsworth's apostrophe : • The best of what we do and are. Just God, forgive ! ' (Memm-ials of a Tour in Scotland,, iii. 65 f.).
I Sanday-Headlam, ICC, ' Romans ' «, Edinburgh, 1902, p. 35.
II I.e. exposed to the Divine wrath. In Ro 6i» (' when we were enemies *) it is God's hostility to us, not ours to Him, that is meant bv cx^poi (as in Ro ll-**).
"K It is a different matter when St. Paul appeals to God's moral equity ('- Th 16*"-) in punishing the persecutors of the loval Church. This is a further stage, not the initial stage of making it possible for such a church to exist at all.
to men who need to be delivered not from their enemies but from themselves, to men who are enemies of God, alienated from Him, by their dis- obedience ; and it is a gospel, not because it reveals the Divine righteousness as a spontaneous force dittusing it.self among men, or as a vindication such as is contemplated even in Ps 73, but because it reveals that righteousness as God in Christ reconcil- ing unfaithful men to Himself and enabling them, when they have nothing to say for themselves (Ro 3'"), to be right with Him. Ritschl's interpreta- tion is correct in protesting against any exclusively punitive view of the Divine righteousness, which would oppose it to grace, and in bringing out the positive, life-giving element in the Pauline concep- tion. But it fails by transferring language from the OT situation to a situation which differed materially and formally.