Tag Archive - righteousness of God

Righteous Because of Wrath?

April 7, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 15 Comments

One major conundrum in the book of Romans comes in 1:18.

Most commentators (wrongly, of course, but we’ll show them grace) look to the immediately preceding verses as the thesis statement of the letter:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes–to the Jew first as well as the Greek. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed from faithfulness unto faithfulness, as it is written, “But the Righteous One will live from faithfulness.”

But then, the strange part. Verse 18 begins, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people…”

“For” (γάρ)? Argumentatively, this should mean that Rom 1:16-17 is dependent on v. 18–the wrath of God revealed from heaven is the grounds for the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith.

Most often, the “for” is brushed aside as a non-specific connector.

But I wonder if Rom 3 might not help us here.

In the beginning of Rom 3, Paul is wrestling with the place of Jews in this story of God’s saving actions in Christ. What advantage has the Jew? What is the benefit of circumcision? A chapter that has just leveled the playing field, by claiming that uncircumcised Gentiles might, actually, be the heart-circumcised people of God, Paul revisits the “Jew first” element he highlighted in 1:16.

The contrast he draws is between the faithlessness of Israel and the faithfulness of God. Throughout, Paul is playing with the word “faithfulness” (πίστις, πιστεύω), the same Greek word that he builds on in 1:17: God’s righteousness is revealed from faithfulness unto faithfulness. The contrast here is between God’s faithfulness in contrast to the unfaithfulness of the Jewish people.

In fact, Paul goes on to say, the righteousness of God (again, compare v. 17–the gospel reveals the righteousness of God from faithfulness) is established by “our”, i.e. Israel’s, unrighteousness.

God’s truth, Paul says, abounds to his glory–precisely through the the untruth of Israel.

The God who will inflict wrath (cf. ch. 2!) is not unrighteous in his judgment.

The point I wish to make in drawing these passages together is that ch. 3 provides us with a similar argument to that which we find so baffling in ch. 1. It is Israel’s unrighteousness (the ultimate point of 1:18-30 as it bleeds into ch. 2 with “Therefore, you are without excuse”) that demonstrates God’s righteousness, Israel’s faithlessness that enables God’s faithfulness, Israel’s lie that enables God’s truth.

In short, I think that when he said, “For” in 1:18, Paul meant it.

Now, of course, the question is how these things are: how is it that Israel’s faithlessness is actually the means for God’s faithfulness, Israel’s unrighteousness the means for God’s righteousness, Israel’s lie the means for God’s truth?

But that’s a question for another day.

Prayers of Privilege

March 20, 2011 in Spirituality & Prayer with 13 Comments

One of my pet-peeves is the sort of piety that strives to remove our worship of and prayers to God from our everyday life. The “prayer Olympics” that many practice sometimes makes it seem as though the greatest height to which we can attain is when we praise God “just for who you are,” “for who you are in yourself”–as though this is more lofty than praise and thanks for the manifestations of God’s presence here on earth or in our own lives.

It struck me recently that the very idea that such a prayer is the most pious of all is a theology of power and privilege.

It is Sadducee piety. The Sadducees were of the priestly families. Those families had gradually come to power, and under various Greek and Roman regimes had found themselves the indigenous leaders given charge (and the wealth that comes with it) under various “temple constitutions.”

Is it any wonder they didn’t believe in resurrection? Resurrection means vindicated the oppressed, rewarding the unpaid righteous. And it means repaying the powerful tyrants as well.

Those in power don’t want a piety that will turn the world on its head.

Similarly our theologically luxurious insistence that true worship, true prayer, has nothing to do with us. This is a mistake that can only be made by people who do not have eyes to see that for God to be “who God is” the world has to be changed. The redemption begun must be brought to completion. The righteous who cry must be answered.

And when God so acts, God must be praised.

If there is one thing that I hope we will learn more and more as we who are white, western, and thus worldly privileged listen to our African, Latino/a, and Asian neighbors it is that our culture of power has distorted our understanding of theological normalcy and theological virtue.

It is only people who know that the world suffers under the hand of the unrighteous who will know that God must make justice flow like a river and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream–if, in fact, God is to be God; if, in fact, God will be “who God is” and thus worthy of thanks and praise for it.

And only they will know how to write the songs and pray the prayers that properly praise the God who, in the Gospel of the dead and risen Christ, has revealed God’s righteousness to the world.

The Righteousness of God (3b of 4)

October 1, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 3 Comments

This is where attempting to dissociate “righteousness” from God’s work on behalf of God’s people starts to fall apart. It’s not that there is a quality of God that needs to be lived up to. Romans 3 tells us that God reveals his righteousness when he makes a way to vindicate/acquit people who affiliate with Jesus.

It’s not just that God has to live up to a standard. It’s that the standard to which God desires to live up is the one in which people are vindicated before him. When we talk about righteousness, we are talking about God’s ability to vindicate people who are not worthy of vindication.

And here’s where the surprise comes into the Jewish story: the act that God judged worthy of vindication was Jesus’ death on the cross. And, acquittal looks like being associated with that death so as to be joined to that resurrection-vindication.

In all this:

  1. I think that Wright, Piper, and the Reformed tradition generally agree that God is being seen as a judge who acts justly in the vindication of humanity. The “courtroom” idea is common to all of them.
  2. Wright insists, and the Reformed Tradition should have room for, the idea that the standards of the courtroom are the stipulations of the covenant that God established with Israel. Wright does not think “relationship” is all that helpful a term unless paired with the notion of covenant membership.
  3. Wright, Piper, and the Reformed tradition more generally all agree that the death of Jesus makes God able to do what he could not do based on mere humanity: justify just sinners.
  4. By making the basis of justification a “righteousness” of God or of Christ that is a character trait, the Reformed tradition has had to further talk about the idea of “imputation” so that the “stuff” of God or Christ could be transferred to us in order for us to be justified.
  5. By making righteousness an appropriate response to the covenant, Wright has set God’s righteousness as something that does not get “imputed,” but rather “revealed” in the self-giving death of Jesus that enables God to vindicate.
  6. By making righteousness an appropriate response to the covenant, Wright makes Jesus’ obedience in death the act that God sees as righteous so that Jesus can be vindicated and, in turn, those who are in Christ can be vindicated also.
  7. By making the faith that reveals God’s righteousness our own rather than Christ’s, the traditional Reformed perspective is developing the mechanism by which the righteous “stuff” that is Jesus’ or God’s can be transferred (imputed) to believers. Wright’s Christ-faith interpretation functions within a different framework, within which no such mechanism is needed.
  8. The Reformed tradition (and Lutheranism as well) have a strong means of connection with Wright on the centrality of Christ’s death as the justifying principle without reference to imputation. It’s called “union with Christ”. If someone is in Christ, they are baptized into his death–which is the action that God is pleased to receive as the faithful act of obedience that finds vindication. If someone is in Christ they are baptized into his resurrection and participate now in that vindication, are little righteous ones who live by faith.

The Righteousness of God (2 of 4)

September 29, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 18 Comments

It’s time to pick up on yesterday’ post on the Righteousness of God. The current debate between Piper and Wright is tied to how we understand this concept. Is “righteousness” tied to covenant (Wright) or is it more an atemporal idea, tied simply to God (Piper).

Piper is adamant that righteousness is not connected to anything in history. He says, “The essence of the righteousness of God is his unwavering faithfulness to uphold the glory of his name.” This connection to God’s name is seen as an alternative to Wright’s construal that ties it more specifically to the people of Israel and God’s covenant with them.

Appeal is made to numerous passages in support of this position. Psalm 145 says that the Lord is righteous in all his ways–not just his covenant relationship with Israel (p. 64). This means that God’s allegiance to his own glory is more basic than covenant keeping. Piper will further connect this to passages in which God speaks of the importance of glorifying God’s name.

Piper suggests that expounding righteousness as “covenant faithfulness” puts too much historical specificity into the word that has a much more general meaning.

Wright turns the tables on him.

“I am not aware of any other scholar, old perspective, new perspective, Catholic, Reformed, Evangelical, anyone, who thinks that tsedaqah elohim [=righteousness of God] in Hebrew or dikaiosune theou [=righteousness of God] in Greek actually means “God’s concern for God’s own glory.”

Wright goes on to suggest that righteousness means conforming to a norm, and God’s righteousness is God’s conforming to the norm God himself has established. Wright invokes the ultimate New Perspective poster child </sarcasm> J. I. Packer to illustrate this position (64-65).

Both Piper and Wright actually agree that “righteousness” in and of itself, its lexical definition, is not going to solve this conundrum. The question is, what sort of biblical / theological framework helps us understand what it means for God to do what is right.

The challenge that faces both exegetes as they turn to Paul is that the larger frameworks are often what must come into play when the specific term “righteousness” or “righteousness of God” appears.

Thus, Piper will turn to Rom 3:23 and say, “All sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” and there show how God’s own glory must be to make up for the deficit of glory-rendering due his name. So God will manifest his righteousness in the death of Jesus, condemning him representatively for all who failed to glorify him.

Alternatively, Wright will ask us to take stock of how all of chs. 3-4 or Romans (and reaching back into ch. 2 at points) are about how God will fulfill the promise to Abraham to make one world-wide family. Within this covenant promise, God has to overcome Israel’s own faithlessness to be a missionary people, and provide an alternate means for the blessing of Abraham to come to the nations.

That, in fact, is the covenant that Wright sees controlling so much of Paul’s “righteousness of God” language: God promised Abraham in Genesis 15 that he would be the father of many nations. And this obligation upon God is fulfilled when “Christ becomes a servant, on behalf of the truth of God, to confirm the promises given to the fathers and for the gentiles to glorify God for his mercy” (Romans 15).

Romans does couch the problem of humanity as a failure to glorify God. And, it recounts the righteousness of God as the divine provision to make up for this lack.

As I read these two dueling theologies, it suggests itself repeatedly that Piper’s concerns about God’s glory, and the preservation of the name of God, are met precisely through God’s meeting God’s covenantal obligations to Israel, as Wright proposes.

Romans begins with Paul saying that the gospel he proclaims was prepromised by God in the scriptures concerning God’s son, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, appointed son of God with power by the resurrection of the dead by the Holy Spirit, and this gospel is what Paul is entrusted to take to the gentiles so they will obey with faith.

These verses present a cluster of themes that Paul takes up in the so-called thesis statement later on: the gospel is for Jew first but also for the Greek; it concerns the faithful son who now lives having been raised from the dead, and it is the story in which God’s righteousness is revealed (Rom 1:16-17).

What, then, is this righteousness? In the context of Romans 1 we have already been told: God’s fidelity to bring about what was promised beforehand in the prophets.

Although I sometimes fear that Wright makes too much of “covenant” as a category for making sense of Paul, nonetheless he is correct that what is “right” for God to do is, in the biblical story to which God has bound Godself, nothing less than fulfilling the promises made in scripture. This is how the letter begins (1:1ff; and this is how its argument is drawn to its conclusion (Rom 15:7ff.).

Deliverance of God Wrap Up: The Good–Pt 2, The Delivering God

May 7, 2010 in Book Reviews with 0 Comments

As I indicated yesterday, I am doing a final wrap-up of my impressions of Douglas A. Campbell, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul.

Once again, I’ll summarize with what is sure to be a huge disappointment to my readers: I agree with everyone else. The book is fantastic in its positive program of the apocalyptic reading, especially from Romans 3:20 onward, and unpersuasive in what precedes.

Today I want to cover two topics: the connotation of δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ (righteousness of God) and Campbell’s discussion of Abraham in Romans 4. Unfortunately, however, this “want” is not fulfilled. Only the first is covered!

1. δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ

Campbell begins by suggesting that the notion of God’s righteousness is simultaneously a statement about God’s being and God’s action–and that the action tied to God’s righteousness in this case has to do with Christ (680). Taking this angle, Campbell is able to argue that there is little significance in the shift from “righteousness of God” and “righteousness from God” inasmuch as both pertain to Christ. God’s righteousness is a single, saving, liberating, life-giving and therefore eschatological or resurrecting act.

(Once again, the affinity between Campbell’s work an my own is evident, as the sub-title of my book, Resurrection and the Justification of God, indicates such a connection between the eschatological, life-giving act of God in Christ and the righteousness of God. Though Campbell will take this in a somewhat different direction. The affinity is particularly seen when Campbell talks about the importance of ζάω and its cognates as indications of “resurrection life,” especially throughout Rom 5-8 [686], and when he ties the notion to Rom 1:4 and a Christological reading of Hab 2:4 in Rom 1:17 [686]. Indeed, when Campbell goes on to say, “If interpreters approach Paul and Romans with ears freshly attuned to the importance and integration of Jesus’ messiahship, resurrection, and exaltation to lordship, then the textual surface of the letter begins to shift in some interesting new directions,” once an imagine that I nod in hearty agreement.)

As he works this out, Campbell appeals to Rom 1:1b-4 as the signal Paul gives as to his intention to connect such themes as God’s action and kingship throughout the letter: this is the story of Paul’s gospel (695-6). At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I say, Yes, this is what I’m on about–and why I argue that we need to take more seriously the function of letter openings in laying out the thesis/themes of Romans. These themes are then linked with God’s reconciliation of the world (Rom 5:1-11; cf. Unlocking Romans, 84-97); our own adoption as God’s children (Rom 8:15-17; cf. Unlocking Romans, 133-38); and Isaiah’s proclamation of Jesse’s seed in Rom 15:12 (cf. Unlocking Romans, 49-55) (696-7).

After combing through the letter as a whole, Campbell comes back to the messianic reading of Hab 2:4 in Rom 1:17b. Picking up on “the gospel” as defined in 1:1-4, and this Christological reading, “The letter’s auditors are thereby prompted to find some connection between the gospel (i.e., the announcement of the divine King’s good news through his appointed representative), Jesus’ resurrection, and God’s δικαιοσύνη (698).  Or, for those of you who prefer Kirk, “This conjunction of Paul’s gospel message, the resurrection of Jesus, and the justification of God is not a complex that we are left to assemble on the basis of Rom 1:2-4… We have as corroborating evidence what has often been read as the letter’s thesis statement [Rom 1:16-17]… There, Paul works out some further descriptions and implications of his gospel message–a message whose content he has already parsed in terms of Jesus’ resurrection-kingship… We therefore meet in 1:16-17 a parallel claim to that of 1:1-4: the gospel reveals God’s righteousness… God’s righteousness is unveiled, not in a general resurrection of the just… but in the resurrection of the one who showed his justice by becoming faithfully obedient unto death (Unlocking Romans, 46, 47).

Because in Rom 1:17 God is not judging or condemning Christ but raising him from the dead, Campbell suggests that “deliverance of God” is a nice approximation of Paul’s “righteousness of God” language.

Campbell does much in these passages to connect God’s own kingship with the kingship of God’s human representative. I think that this is well done and important, but perhaps overdone for the context in Romans. Yes, God is king, but is God’s deliverance tied to working out the function of saving, kingly power? Further, I think that Campbell too quickly skips past something like “covenant faithfulness” by not wrestling with the connection between raising Jesus from the dead and the scriptures of Israel. Ok, so maybe “covenant” is too specific, but “Israel-faithfulness” or “scriptural-faithfulness” seems to be a necessary component. Of whom is God king? What does it look like for this particular king to act justly? There are some under-developed angles of the context that I think shade the data in a slightly different direction.

As is clear from this discussion, Campbell’s reading and my own are on much the same track. One of the reasons I appreciated his reading of Romans so much is that he takes seriously the Christological narrative that determines the content of Paul’s descriptions of faith, righteousness, God, etc. His perception of the resurrection as a key component means that many of his arguments correlate well with ones I made or attempted to make in my own work. Thus, when I think of the reviewer who rather dismissively asked of my argument, “Does Hab 2:4 really refer to Jesus’ resurrection?” I can now say, “Yes, and now you have two of us to deal with.” I, of course, like that!

Next up: father Abraham.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of Deliverance of God from the publisher, but with no stipulation either that I would review it or review it positively. I also received a free copy of Unlocking Romans, but you probably already knew that.