PAUL ON JUSTIFICATION (or something)

The problem of translation                                                     

When I first started thinking about Paul’s message of justification in Romans, I thought the task would be fairly straightforward.  I soon realised that it was almost impossible!

The problem is LANGUAGE!  Here is how one verse, Romans 1.17, gets translated.  Can you spot the differences?

“In it (the gospel) the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, ‘The one who is righteous will live by faith.’” (NRSV)

“The justice of God is revealed therein (in the gospel), from faith unto faith, as it is written: The just man liveth by faith.”  (Douay-Rheims Catholic Bible)

“(The Gospel reveals) God’s way of righting wrong, a way that starts from faith and ends in faith (or It is based on faith and addressed to faith), as Scripture says, ‘he shall gain life who is justified through faith’”.  (John Robinson in “Wrestling with Romans”)

There are three problems here:                                                    1  ‘Righteousness’  and ‘Justification’.  (and also ‘justice’) all translate the same Greek word, ‘dikaiosuné’ (noun) or ‘dikaios’ (adjective).   It is really hard for us to get our heads around another language when the same word has several distinct meanings in our own.  In English righteousness does not mean the same as justice.  So what did Paul mean?

2  The same word may in Paul’s mind refer to the Hebrew equivalent, which has a whole penumbra of meanings.  So the Hebrew word in Judges  5.11 is translated in various Bible versions as:  righteousness, righteous acts, triumphs, victories, blessings and just deeds.  A good English equivalent could be ‘vindication’.  But that does not mean the same as righteousness, or justice!

3  Who is “dikaios”?  God?  Us?

So when we read in Romans 1.17 about a “dikaios” person, we could read it as someone who is morally virtuous, or someone who acts fairly, or someone who gets God’s stamp of approval.  Confused?

Getting it right(wised)                                                             

A solution may be in the very oldest English translation of the Bible.  In  1382 John Wycliffe (mid-1320s – 1384), an Oxford philosopher,  translated the Bible into English.  (It was swiftly declared heretical).  He translated Romans 1.17 like this:  “for the rightwiseness of God is showed in it, of faith into faith, as it is written, For a just man liveth  of faith.”

This was adopted by the German Lutheran theologian Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) in his ‘Theology of the New Testament’ (1951) and by the American theologian E.P. Sanders in ‘Paul and Palestinian Judaism’ (1977).  In modern English we would use the phrase, ‘setting right’ or ‘making right’.

The crucial point is that this makes ‘dikaiosune’ an activity rather than a state.  So the rightwiseness of God is his action/activity in putting someone into a right relationship with himself.  A ‘dikaios’ person is someone who has been placed in a right relationship with God.  Everything is about our relationship with God.  It is not about being virtuous, or one-up on other people.  Ultimately it is about God’s saving act of opening up for everyone a relationship with him through Christ’s death and resurrection.  The rightwising has the effect of a person being rightwised, a bit like righting a yacht that has capsized.

Let’s see how that works out in some verses in Romans.

1.17 For in it (the gospel) God’s way of rightwising/setting us right (with him) is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, ‘The one who is rightwised/set right will live by faith.’

3.23-26   Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now rightwised/made right with him by his grace as a gift…  He did this to show his rightwisedness/action in setting us right with him, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; it was to prove at the present time that he himself rightwises/sets people right and that he rightwises/sets right with him the one who has faith in Jesus.

Note: the normal translation of 3.26, e.g. in the NRSV, makes almost no sense.                                                                          He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.                      Why is it “righteous”, or indeed “just”, to overlook sin?

3.28 For we hold that a person is rightwised/put right with God by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.

4.3 ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as being rightwised/put into a right relationship with him.’

4.25 (Jesus) was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our rightwising/being set in a right relationship with God.

Not the whole answer 

This re-translation makes sense to me, but it is not the complete story.  Where Paul talks about those who deserve condemnation, ‘dikaiosune’ still has the meaning of justice and judgement, specially in Romans 2 and 3, e.g.

2.5 But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous/just judgement will be revealed.

But by and large, Paul makes much more sense if we translate “righteous” as an activity, of “being put in a right relationship with God,” so:                                  

5.18 Therefore just as one man’s trespass (Adam’s) led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of rightwising (i.e. Jesus’ obedience) leads to rightwising/being put in a right relationship with God, and life for all.            

And that’s good news!

The next big question

Justification/righteousness is not the only tricky word in Paul.  Another is ‘faith’.  I will tackle (an appropriate Rugby football analogy) this in September.