For several reasons, it is difficult to trace the precise lines of this difference, but the broad fact emerges from the apocalyptic literature and even from the sources of contemporary Rabbinic the- ology, that an alteration had taken place during the 1st cent. B.C.
There are signs that during the period of the later Judaism the old confidence in God's righteous- ness as His loyalty to Israel's interests and His gracious intervention on their behalf had be^un to wane in certain circles, and that the rise ot indi- vidualism and the deepening sense of personal sin as more or less connected with racial guilt tended to suggest condemnation and punishment when ' righteovisness ' was spoken of as an attribute of God (cf. W. Bousset's Die Religion des Judentiims im neatest. Zeitalter-, Berlin, 1906, pp. 358 ff., 435 tt'.).* The Divine righteousness became more forensic and distributive. The pious no longer appealed to it with the same naive conlidence. They dreaded it, as their conscience was troubled by transgression. Touching appeals to God's mercy and compassion fill the religions literature of the period ; the pious plead their weakness, acknow- ledge that He is just in punishing them for their offences, and beseech His giacious fa\our on various grounds, but not usually on the score that He is a 'righteous' God in the sense of primitive Israel. t It is possible to over-estimate the extent of this change of mood, but not to deny its reality. And unless we are prepared to take tlie short and easy method of excluding tlie apocalyptic literature from a historical appreciation of Jewish popular piety during the NT period, we must take this factor into account in estimating the contemporary sig- nificance of a term like ' righteousness ' for St. Paul and his age. As he found it and used it for his special dialectic on justification, it bore traces of the later as well as of the earlier connotation ; neither exactly corresponded to the significance which he attached to it, but the change of meaning through which the term had passed helped to mould it for his purpose. He did not regard God's righteousness as a dread attribute which had to be supplemented by His grace, but he was still further from the older view that the Divine righteousness could be counted upon to succour and deliver the faithful people. The contemporary expression of this reliance assumed a certain right on the part of the pious, which was more or less modestly urged, to receive the benefits of God's justitia distributiva, on the score either of what they were able to do in the way of keeping the Law,
* Also H. Cremer's Die paulin. Rechtfertigungslehre, p. 96 f., though he fails to differentiate the prophetic current from the 'legal,' which made faith, i.e. adherence to the true cultus and doctrine of the Torah, the basis for Israel's assurance of favour.
t The devout confidence in the Divine Sixaiotri'iTj as protect- ing favour and guidance is voiced, however, in the combination of ' mercy and righteousness ' (Ju6. xxxi. 24-25 and Bar 59) most expressively.
KIGHTEOUSNESS
KlGllTEOUSNESS
379
or of their reverence for the Lawgiver. Even in the apocalyptic escliatology, a certain moral recti- liuie, as compared witli tlie Gentiles, is assumed. Only thus did the JKstitia dUtrihutimt hccome justitla sahdifcra* This is wluit was anatlieina to St. Taul ; it is the position that he attacks in his criticism uf rixhtcuusness by works. As aj^^ainst the tendency to make repentance and amendment deserve forgivinj: mace,t he revived tlie phrase about justifying, which had ceased to be used commonly of men, and he turned it into the utterly un-Jewish + expression, * justify the ungodly/ pleading that (iod was ' rigliteous' in treating men so, because the death of Clirist enabled Him at once to punish sin justly and to * justify' sinners, i.e. freely to forgive them as a gracious God. In the Cross of Cliiist, God shows that He has the right as well as the will to pardon the ungodly. The Atonement is, therefore, not a compromise between righteousness and love in God, unless * righteous- ness ' is taken in its narrower sense. St. Paul recog- nized its broader sense, and usually expressed the punitive element otherwise, e.g. by the conception K)i the Divine anger, just as he sometimes expresses the action of the Divine righteousness by the more positive term ' giace,' and its effect by the warmer term * reconciliation.*
Two features in the current Rabbinic view of righteousness are conspicuous by their absence from St. Paul's re-statement. (1) One is the combination of God's gracious favour with His judicial verdict on a man's record, the beautiful idea that when a man's good and bad actions left his status doubtful before the juntitia distfibutiva of the Lord, He threw His mercy into the scales. Contemporary Judaism must not be dismissed off-hand as a merely legal, bargaining religion. The religious conscious- ness was far too large for any theory of personal righteousness simply on the score of works, and demanded this recognition of a God who was at liberty to favour and forgive, in doubtful cases, a God whose mercy did not require any prompting § to season His justice. But St. Paul did not conceive of God'a righteousness in such a way that it required His grace to temper it for sinful man. Neither could his view of justification as a synthetic verdict, on what man is, not on what he does, admit the allied notion that a man's faith might be taken generously as the guarantee, supplement, or equivalent of riu'hteousness. The remark in the Mechilta on Ex 12^ is characteristic : ' Have they fullilled the Passover command already? No, but from the instant that they undertook to perform it, God reckons it to them as if they had fulfilled it.' It is erroneous to under- stand St. Paul as valuing faith thus in justification, although ethical interests have led some interpreters to this conclusion. What faith means in this connexion for the Apostle is not any intention which God, who takes the will for the deed, niaj' be pleased in His mercy to accept. The Pauline view of righteous- ness, no less than the cognate view of faith, rendered it im- possible for such a conception to enter into his tlieology. (2) The other element ignored by St. Paul is akin to this. It was occasionally felt that the Divine mercy at the Judgment might be set in motion by the intercession of the righteous— an ex- tension of the principle of solidarity, by which the righteous- ness of the living saints was considered to have merits availing for the erring members of the nation. But the idea that the righteous could intercede on behalf of the ungodly at the Last Judgment is entirely ignored by St. Pau!,|! and expressly re- pudiated not long afterwards by the author of i Ezr. (vii. 102- 105) : ' And I answered and said : If I have found favour in thy sight, show this also to thy servant — whether at the day of Judgment the righteous shall be able to intercede for the un- godly or to entreat the Most High on their behalf, fathers for sons, sons for parents, brothers for brothers, kinsfolk for their nearest, friends for their dearest. And He answered and said : . . . None shall pray for another on that day, neither shall one lay a burden on another ; for then everyone shall bear his own righteousness or unrighteousness' (of. 0. H. Box's note in