In the previous issue, I wrestled with objective and subjective genitives and whether the phrase “faith of/in Christ” needs reinterpretation. This month, I do the same with a different phrase, one that is perhaps of even greater importance: “the righteousness of God” in Romans 1:17, in which “God” is in the genitive case.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” (Rom. 1:16f ESV)
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Usually, the debate is framed as being about a subjective or an objective genitive: does it tell us that God is righteous (in which God is the subject) or does it speak of a righteousness that exists, in a sense, separately from God, so that the genitive would be objective?
I have always found this distinction confusing because in both cases God is not in any sense the object. To frame the debate this way is, in fact, incorrect, as I learned from a series of posts at The Biblical Greek Forum. The noun righteousness is not derived from a verb; it is not a verbal noun. Therefore, it does not make sense to speak of subject and object, and the categories of subjective and objective genitive do not apply.
We need to think in different categories to discuss possible meanings (see Keating 2004 for an overview). Is this a possessive genitive, which may be paraphrased as “belonging to”? Or is it a genitive of origin or source, to be paraphrased as “coming from”?
Possessive (Subjective) Genitive
At first sight, most readers will probably be inclined to take this as a possessive genitive: it tells us something about God. In other words, it appears to refer to God’s righteousness as an attribute: God is righteous.
However, there are two serious problems with taking it this way. First, how is this righteousness “revealed” in the gospel, seeing it is nothing new? The Old Testament is full of God’s justice and righteousness.
Second, how can this be the gospel, or at least a significant component, as the text seems to imply? That God is righteous is not good news at all if you are a sinful human being, as Luther acutely felt in his study of Romans. He found God’s righteousness a disturbing and frightful stumbling block until he considered a different interpretation.
Genitive of Source (Objective Genitive)
What if the genitive is a genitive of source? In that case, Paul would refer to a righteousness that comes from God, righteousness as a gift. Luther designated it an alien righteousness, a righteousness that is not our own, but that is Christ’s righteousness, imputed or counted to all who believe. This explains how it is revealed in the gospel and why it is good news.
The phrase “gift of righteousness” does appear in Paul, but only once, in Romans 5:17 (but see also Rom. 4:4). Still, that is enough to establish that the idea is warranted. But is it what Paul had in mind in Romans 1?
Possessive (Subjective) Genitive, Redefined
Many interpreters today, first and foremost those supporting the New Perspective on Paul, have shifted back to a subjective or possessive genitive, but with a new interpretation. The righteousness belonging to God is no longer understood as a timeless attribute of God or a standard of justice that he incorporates and applies. It is now taken to mean “the covenant faithfulness of God”, as indicated in the title of N. T. Wright’s monumental work, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (2013). God is righteous because he keeps his commitment to the covenant, therefore “faithfulness”.
An important argument put forward for this new interpretation is the supposed nature of the Hebrew word for righteousness as positive (that is, not judgmental and punishing), relational, and even covenantal. Taken together, this turns God’s righteousness into God keeping his promise and fulfilling the covenant.
However, it is not at all clear that righteousness is always positive in this sense even in Hebrew (see Horton 2018: ii, 160-172; Irons 2015; Seifrid 2001 – or do your own word study of righteousness in the OT). It is even less likely in Greek, where terms like righteousness and justification are not relational, but belong to the legal sphere.
Besides, if faithfulness is what Paul wanted to say, he could have used different words; it is perfectly possible to say “faithfulness of God” in Greek. Of course, if God would not be faithful to his promise or covenant, he would not be righteous. Faithfulness is included in righteousness. But the latter is a broader category: it involves more than faithfulness.
A second argument is a close relationship between God’s righteousness and salvation in especially Isaiah 40-55, which is taken to support the positive, non-judgmental understanding. More on this in a moment.
The net result of redefining both righteousness and faith as faithfulness (and using it to redefine justification) can be seen in the following quotation:
For Paul in Romans 3, then, God’s righteousness is nothing other than his covenant faithfulness, not his adherence to an abstract code of law that demands he punish those who break the law. And God’s covenant faithfulness is revealed in the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, particularly in his death. Framed in this way, “justification” would refer to God’s embracing believers, Jew and Gentile, as members of God’s own people. For those who believe, God does this on the basis of their sins having been wiped clean through the sacrificial death of Jesus. (Baker and Green 2011: 120)
Three substantial redefinitions in one short paragraph. It adds up to quite a change. Notice how this is based on the New Perspective without ever acknowledging this; it is simply assumed to be the correct reading. On a side note: It leaves open how sins are “wiped clean through the sacrificial death of Jesus” – which points us to the question of the atonement, to which I will turn soon (I am working on it).
Old Testament Background
It is to be acknowledged that there is a positive side to God’s righteousness; his righteousness and his salvation frequently appear together in the second half of Isaiah (particularly in Is. 51:5-8 – three times within four verses). This is Hebrew poetry, marked by parallelism and repetition. This does not mean that righteousness and salvation are synonyms, but they are closely related. Perhaps we could say that in Isaiah, God’s righteousness is the motivating force behind his initiative in salvation. In this context, righteousness is positive.
It also means that the connection between salvation and God’s righteousness is not an invention of Paul. In fact, the similarity in language is even greater. In the following verse, we get close to Paul’s “the righteousness of God is revealed” in Romans 1:17:
Thus says the LORD:
“Keep justice, and do righteousness,
for soon my salvation will come,
and my righteousness be revealed.” (Is. 56:1 ESV; emphasis added)
We find similar language in Psalm 98:
Oh sing to the LORD a new song,
for he has done marvellous things!
His right hand and his holy arm
have worked salvation for him.
The LORD has made known his salvation;
he has revealed his righteousness in the sight of the nations.
He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness
to the house of Israel.
All the ends of the earth have seen
the salvation of our God. (Ps. 98:1-3 ESV; emphasis added)
In the context of Psalm 98, we even find a reference to faithfulness and steadfast love. All these terms are related – but not synonymous, and therefore, although God’s righteousness should not be reduced to an objective standard of justice, neither should it be limited to faithfulness. Especially not in Romans 1-3, where the problem is not exile or the future of the covenant but the utter moral failure of both Jews and Gentiles.
In Psalm 98 and other OT texts, God’s righteousness leads him to establish justice in the earth and to set things right (so Seifrid 2001: 441). “He comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity” (Ps. 98:9 ESV). In the Psalm, this results in an outbreak of joy (Ps. 98:4-9); it is good news.
It shows that God’s righteousness is not only expressed in righteous judgement but also in coming to the rescue of those who are his, or, in Isaiah 56:1, those who “keep justice, and do righteousness”. But who can claim that? Based on Romans 1:18-3:20, no one. How can God’s righteousness do anything but condemn?
My Take: A Third Way
Assuming we are indeed dealing with a possessive genitive in Romans 1:17, it tells us something about God: it is his righteousness that is revealed, but in yet another sense than either that of the traditional views (God’s standard of justice or his gift of righteousness) or that of the New Perspective (covenant faithfulness).
The righteousness of God revealed in the gospel is the surprising way in which God is righteous and yet “justifies the ungodly”, to use Paul’s phrase in Romans 4:5.
That phrase is a shocking paradox, one that uses the language of the legal, not the relational sphere. Is this not a perversion of justice? How can anyone declare the ungodly righteous and call it righteousness?
The answer to this question is revealed in the gospel and explains how salvation has been made possible, the very subject of Romans.
Finding Confirmation in Romans 3:21-26
Romans 1:16f, the thesis statement or propositio of Romans, has a parallel in Romans 3:21-26, where Paul repeats what he is arguing for in Romans. Four times he refers to the righteousness of God:
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness [literally: his righteousness; here and in the next occurrence, it cannot mean a gift of righteousness], because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Rom. 3:21-26 ESV; emphasis added)
If Paul means, here and in Romans 1:16f, righteousness as a gift from God, he does not make this very clear. (If he means, as the New Perspective has it, the faithfulness of God, he is even less unintelligible: four times he uses one term, righteousness, while meaning faithfulness! I somehow think Paul expresses himself better than that.) Revealing or manifesting righteousness does not sound like making a gift of righteousness.
Admittedly, Paul does speak of a gift in verse 24. If this gift is righteousness, “righteousness of God” would be a genitive of source. However, “as a gift” refers to being justified by grace, not to righteousness.
The concluding two verses make obvious, in my opinion, that Paul is indeed using a possessive genitive. At stake is how God is righteous. How could he have passed over former sins, that is, in the era before Christ? And how does he show that he is righteous “at the present time”? How can he “be just and the justifier of the one who has faith”?
The answer is a dense statement of the atonement in Romans 3:24f – as already mentioned, the topic I want to write on next.
I see therefore no need to redefine God’s righteousness. Righteousness here does not mean faithfulness but, well, righteousness. God is righteous even if he forgives sinners and – gasp! – justifies the ungodly.
Attribution
AJEL. 2015 <https://pixabay.com/photos/lady-justice-case-law-right-scale-677945/> CC0
References
All Bible quotations from: The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2001 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles)
Baker, Mark D., and Joel B. Green. 2011. Recovering the Scandal of the Cross: Atonement in New Testament and Contemporary Contexts, 2nd ed (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic)
Horton, Michael Scott. 2018. Justification, New Studies in Dogmatics, 2 vols (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan)
Irons, Charles Lee. 2015. The Righteousness of God: A Lexical Examination of the Covenant-Faithfulness Interpretation, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament. 2. Reihe, 386 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck)
Seifrid, Mark A. 2001. ‘Righteousness Language in the Hebrew Scriptures’, in The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism, Justification and Variegated Nomism, 1, ed. by Donald A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck), pp. 415–42
Keating, Corey. 2004. ‘Common Uses of Genitive Case’, Version 2.1 <https://www.ntgreek.org/pdf/genitive_case.pdf> [accessed 4 June 2020]
Wright, N. T. 2013. Paul and the Faithfulness of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God, volume 4 (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge)