59°
~ , ~ ,¢ τῷ πιστεύοντι, ᾿Ιουδαίω τε πρῶτον καὶ Ἕλληνι.
p 2 Cor.v.21. q Ch. xvi, {
17. δικαιοσύνη γὰρ
ΡΘεού ἐν αὐτῷ * ἀποκαλύπτεται ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν, καθὼς γέγραπται,
+ Hab. Η΄ Ὁ δὲ δίκαιος ἐκ πίστεως " {ήσεται.”
meanings which have been assigned to it attempt to justify themselves as rele- vant, or inevitable, by connecting them- selves with the context as a whole. There can be no doubt that the funda- mental religious problem for the Apostle —that which made a Gospel necessary, that the solution of which could alone be Gospel—was, How shall a sinful man be righteous before God? To Luther, who had instinctive experimental sympathy with the Pauline standpoint, this sug gested that δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ meant a righteousness valid before God, of which a man can become possessed through faith; for such a righteousness (as the condition of salvation) is the first and last need of the sinful soul. In support of this view reference has been made to νετ. 18, where ἀσέβεια and ἀδικία ἀνθρώπων are represented as the actual existing conditions which the δικ. θεοῦ has to replace. No one can deny that a righteousness valid before God is essential to salvation, or that such a righteousness is revealed in the Gospel; but it is another question whether δικ. θεοῦ is a natural expression for it. The general sense of scholars seems to have decided against it; but it seems quite credible to me that Paul used δικ. θεοῦ broadly to mean ‘‘a Divine righteous- ness,” and that the particular shade ot meaning which Luther made prominent can be legitimately associated even with these words. Until lately, scholars ot the most opposite schools had agreed in finding the key to the expression δικ. θεοῦ in two other Pauline passages, where it is contrasted with something else. Thus in chap. x. 3 δικ. θεοῦ is opposed to man’s ἰδία δικαιοσύνη: and in Phil. ili. g the opposition is more precisely defined: μὴ ἔχων ἐμ ἣν δικαιο- σύνην τὴν ἐκ νόµου, ἀλλὰ τὴν διὰ πίστεως Χριστοῦ, τὴν ἐκ θεοῦ δικαιο- σύνην ἐπὶ τῇ πίστει. If this contrast were allowed to tell here, the righteous- ness of which Paul speaks would be one of which God is the source or author; we do not bring it to Him, He reveals it for our acceptance. And this also, of course, answers to the facts: Gospel righteousness zs a gift, not an achieve- ment. But then, it is said, there is nothing in the passage to suggest such a contrast; there is not any emphasis
whatever on θεοῦ to bring betore the mind the idea of a righteousness ποί due to God, but a work of man’s own. To this it may fairly be answered that the contrast did not need to be specially suggested ; if it had not presented itself instinctively to those to whom Paul wrote, they would not only have missed the point of this expression, they would not have understood three lines anywhere. We must assume, upon the whole, in the recipients of Paul’s epistles, a way of conceiving the Gospel answering broadly to his own; the in- visible context, which we have to repro- duce as best we can, may be more important sometimes than what we have in black and white. The broad sense of ‘‘a Divine righteousness’ covers this second, which may be called the histori- cal Protestant interpretation, as well as Luther’s ; and the fact seems to me an argument for that broader rendering. In view, however, of the undoubted difficulty ot the phrase, new light would be welcome, and this has been sought in
the Ο.Τ. use of δικαιοσύνη (πρ),
especially in the Psalms and in Is. xl.- Ixvi. See, ¢g., Ps. xxxv. 24, 28, li. 14; Is. ἱνι. 1, lxiil. 1; Ps. xcviii. 2. In the last of these passages we have a striking analogy to the one before us: ἐγνώρισε κύριος τὸ σωτήριον αὐτοῦ, ἐναντίον τῶν ἐθνῶν ἀπεκάλυψε τὴν δικαιοσύνην αὐτοῦ; and in others we cannot but be struck with the parallelism of ‘‘ righteousness ” and “salvation,” sometimes as things which belong to God (Ps. xeviii. 2), sometimes as things which belong to His people. On the strength of facts like these, Theod. Haring, in a stu- pendous programme entitled Δικ. θεοῦ δεί Paulus (Tubingen, 1896), argues that δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ means the judicial action of God in which He justifies His people and accomplishes their salvation. This fits into the context well enough. Put as Paul puts it—how shall man be just with God ?—the religious problem is a judicial one, and its solution must be judicial. If the Gospel shows how God justifies (for of course it must be God, the only Judge of all, who does it), it shows everything: salvation is included in God’s sentence of justification. Haring himself admits that this interpretation is