Righteousness: Volume 1: History of Interpretation

By Jeffrey J. Niehaus

The first volume of this three-volume work reviews the history of efforts to define biblical righteousness. Modern views are engaged and critiqued, from the seminal article (1860) by Ludwig Diestel (God's righteousness as the agreement of his will and purpose) to others in the theological stream known as the "New Perspective." Scholars discussed include Walther Eichrodt, Gerhard von Rad, Elizabeth Achtemeier, James D. G. Dunn and N. T. Wright. Other perspectives are also engaged, including H. H. Schmid's definition of righteousness as conformity to the created order (Weltordnung), John Piper's view that God's righteousness is God's concern for his own glory, and the traditional view, championed by C. L. Irons, that God's righteousness is his iustitia distributiva. The author examines these views, all of which have been supported by inductive studies, in light of a proposed alternative: that righteousness is conformity to God's Being and doing. That definition will be explored further in Volumes II (OT) and III (NT). Unlike previous studies, the present work proceeds deductively and experimentally, and thereby seeks to avoid the pitfalls of a dogmatic approach. Extra-biblical, patristic, medieval, and reformation views of righteousness are also considered as background to the modern study of righteousness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Release date: Oct 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666798197

Jeffrey J. Niehaus

Jeffrey Jay Niehaus is a poet and Senior Professor of Old Testament at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He has written a number of scholarly works, including God at Sinai, Ancient Near Eastern Themes in Biblical Theology, a three-volume Biblical Theology, and a monograph, When Did Eve Sin? Niehaus received his PhD in English literature from Harvard University in 1976 and is the author of Preludes: An Autobiography in Verse, Sonnets Subtropical and Existential, Sea Grapes and Sea Oats, and God the Poet: Exploring the Origin and Nature of Poetry.

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Righteousness

Volume 1: History of Interpretation

Jeffrey J. Niehaus

Righteousness

Volume 1: History of Interpretation

Copyright © 2023 Jeffrey J. Niehaus. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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paperback isbn: 978-1-6667-3801-8

hardcover isbn: 978-1-6667-9818-0

ebook isbn: 978-1-6667-9819-7

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: Niehaus, Jeffrey Jay [author].

Title: Righteousness : volume 1: history of interpretation / by Jeffrey J. Niehaus.

Description: Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2023 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: isbn 978-1-6667-3801-8 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-6667-9818-0 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-6667-9819-7 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Righteousness—Biblical teaching. | Bible—Criticism, interpretation, etc.—History. | Justice—Biblical teaching. | Religion and justice. | Bible—Old Testament—Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Classification: bs1192.5 n54 2023 (print) | bs1192.5 (ebook)

10/06/23

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.comThe NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Scripture quotations marked (NKJV) are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NASB) are taken from the New American Standard Bible Copyright © 1971, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NRSV) are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Prolegomena I

Chapter 1: L. Diestel

Chapter 2: A. Ritschl

Chapter 3: H. Cremer

Chapter 4: German Scholars

Chapter 5: Anglo-American Scholars

Chapter 6: H. H. Schmid

Chapter 7: C. L. Irons

Afterword I: Summary Review

Appendix: Antiquity–Reformation

Bibliography

Ἰησοῦς Χριστός δίκαιος

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the few human helpers who have made this long and patient work possible, or at least have greatly facilitated my composition of it. First of those has to be Robert McFadden, the head Librarian at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. Bob has searched and found books whenever I have emailed him with a request—a practice that began during the pandemic and has continued up to the time of submission of the manuscript to the publisher. He has been as helpful as any research assistant could have been. My friend Jonelle Weier has been an indispensable help in preparing the Scripture Index. I would also like to publish here a statement of gratitude for the prayers of members of my online study groups—groups which began just before the pandemic and which have come to include believers in Bulgaria, Greece, and Peru and, closer to home, in Texas, Florida, and Massachusetts, some of them in formal ministry, some not, but all of them blessed with the righteousness that renders a person’s prayer powerful and effective. Above all I express my thanks to Jesus Christ the Righteous, that life-giving Spirit without whom no good work can be. Whatever merit these volumes may have is owing to him.

Abbreviations

ANETBT Ancient Near Eastern Themes in Biblical Theology

AUSSt Andrews University Seminary Studies

BDB Brown et al., A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament

BHT Beihefte zur Historischen Theologie

BT Biblical Theology

CT Christianity Today

DCH Dictionary of Classical Hebrew. Edited by David J. A. Clines. 9 vols. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 1993–2014.

FRLANT Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testament

GP God the Poet

HALOT The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Ludwig Koehler, Walter Baumgartner, and Johann J. Stamm. Translated and edited under the supervision of Mervyn E. J. Richardson. 4 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1994–99.

HTR Harvard Theological Review

IDB The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. Edited by George A. Buttrick. 4 vols. New York: Abingdon, 1962.

IVP InterVarsity Press

JETS Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society

JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

LCL Loeb Classical Library

LSJ Liddell, Henry George, et al. Greek-English Lexicon. 9th ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996.

NBD New Bible Dictionary

NIB New Interpreter’s Bible

NICOT New International Commentary on the Old Testament

PNTC Pillar New Testament Commentary

RB Révue Biblique

RGG Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Edited by Hans Dieter Betz. 4th ed. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998–2007

TDNT Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Edited by Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich. Translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley. 10 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964–76.

TWOT Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament. Edited by R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke. 2 vols. Chicago: Moody, 1980.

VT Vetus Testamentum

VTh Vox Theologica

WBC Word Biblical Commentary

WTJ Westminster Theological Journal

ZEE Zeitschrift für evangelische Ethik

ZTK Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche

Prolegomena I

A Deductive Approach

He remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself.

(

2

Tim

2

:

13

)

One set of ideas guides the present work:

1.Righteousness is conformity to a standard.

2.The standard is God.

3.God’s righteousness is his conformity to that standard.¹

I propose this set of ideas as an experimental venture. I hope to follow the ideas through the Bible and test whether they have the greatest explanatory power for the biblical concept of righteousness. However, this study of biblical righteousness will begin by taking into account what thoughtful interpreters who have studied the topic have thought, proposed and concluded about biblical righteousness.

The first step therefore will be to understand and interact with other views that have contributed to the idea of righteousness in our theological history. I hope to do justice to those views not only by summarizing them but also by engaging ideas and arguments on their own ground, as space allows, and trying to evaluate them on their merits. Everything written on the topic so far has something to teach us. That is the task of Volume I.

The next step will be to study every case in the Old Testament and the New Testament where the term, righteousness, occurs. The study will test whether the understanding of righteousness proposed in this work deserves to be accepted and seen as the one that underlies every use of righteousness in the Bible. That is the task of Volumes II and III.

I. Approaches and Definitions

The major focus of past work on righteousness has been the OT and what righteousness has been understood to denote within that compass, because the term, righteousness, appears most often in the Old Testament. The present volume takes into account what interpreters have said about righteousness in both Testaments. In all cases the proposed understanding—that righteousness is conformity to God, who is the standard—is used experimentally as a foil to historically proposed definitions of righteousness.

A. Righteousness and the Lexicons

Hebrew lexicons give the fundamental meaning of righteousness as conformity to a standard/norm or the like.² The origin of the word (e.g., straight/to be straight) is not always apparent, but in every case it may be sensed in the background. As Harris notes,

Perhaps the origin of the word is not so clear or even significant. Words having a secular origin often are baptized into special meanings and a word originally meaning straight may develop easily into a moral term just so canon rod, measuring rule becomes a standardized list of sacred books. ṣedeq, then, refers to an ethical, moral standard and of course in the OT that standard is the nature and will of God. "The Lord is righteous (ṣaddiq) in all his ways and holy in all his works" (Ps

145

:

17

).³

The present work aims to show that this sense of the term—namely, the nature and will of God, or, as I would put it, God’s Being and doing—is the applicable standard, and may be seen to play out or fulfill itself in every occurrence of righteousness in the Bible. In other words, the approach is deductive. If, on the other hand, the proposed sense or definition of righteousness could not reasonably apply in any instance, such failure would raise doubts about the proposed definition and possibly about the entire deductive approach. If the proposed understanding applies well in every case, the accumulation of successful instances or exemplars would commend both the understanding and the approach. One could affirm the same of the entire word group, צדק/צדקה ,צדיק and associated verbal forms. To cast the net beyond the basic terms for righteousness (צדק/צדקה) in the OT, however, would require a much larger work than is here attempted. On the other hand, if the present attempt were successful at commending the proposed understanding of biblical righteousness, then study of the associated terms in the word group along the same lines—including the major issue of justification—would seem to be indicated and commended as well.⁴

B. Hebrew and Greek

A valuable twentieth-century contribution has clarified and distinguished the Hebrew terms for righteousness. A. Jepsen has shown that the Hebrew words צדק and צדקה (the masculine and feminine forms of righteousness) have different nuances. The masculine form denotes the idea itself. The feminine form denotes the idea put into action.⁵ Following this lead, the present work translates צדק as righteousness and צדקה as righteous action. The difference does not appear in the single Greek word, δικαιοσύνη. More will be said on this score later. For now we note that discussions of δικαιοσύνη in the NT will rely on this dual understanding of righteousness which appears in the Hebrew nominal forms.

C. Historical Views of Biblical Righteousness

The quote from Harris (above) shows an academic awareness that God is or could be the standard or norm that defines biblical righteousness, and the idea is not new. A German OT scholar, Emil Kautzsch, took it as a key idea over a century ago, but his efforts did not prevail and the mainstream understanding of biblical righteousness has taken a different direction.⁶ That direction was for the most part set by three German theologians: Ludwig Diestel, Albrecht Ritschl and Hermann Cremer.⁷ Their work led to what has been called the New Perspective.⁸

Kautzsch’s attempt to understand biblical righteousness, like the work of others before and after him, was inductive. The present work proposes that God is the standard of righteousness, as Kautszch hoped to demonstrate, but unlike Kautzsch it proceeds deductively. It assumes that all biblical righteousness has God as its original and archetype.

1. Inductive—Deductive

Theologians and interpreters exploring biblical righteousness have almost always proceeded inductively, and an inductive approach seems to commend itself. To take the OT as an example, righteousness (צדק/צדקה) and righteous (צדיק) occur in many contexts and one could expect one occurrence to illuminate another. By comparing all occurrences one could hope to arrive at a fundamental understanding of biblical righteousness. A theologian who dealt with the topic put the matter well:

An investigation of a concept usually proceeds thus, that it places the different meanings and nuances of meaning of a Hebrew word group next to each other and seeks after an idea or a concept in our language which encompasses as much as possible all Old Testament instances. In this way a basic meaning of the concept is won; the individual occurrence or rather the individual nuance of the concept will then be explained as a concretization or modification of this one basic meaning.⁹

Yet, although such an approach at first blush commends itself, history shows the matter is not so straightforward. The history of interpretation has established three facts: (1) Interpreters who take an inductive approach agree on the basic philosophy of the approach. (2) As they deal with the Bible they all work with the same data set. (3) The first two facts notwithstanding, the interpreters reach different conclusions.

The resultant state of affairs suggests a problem, not with the inductive process itself but with the human use of the process. It is important to understand that induction per se is not a flawed process. For example, an inductive study of a biblical term for righteousness is different from an inductive proof in mathematics. An inductive study of righteousness involves interpretation, which in turn involves a subjective element in the interpreter. An inductive proof in mathematics, by contrast, does not involve a subjective element.¹⁰

A deductive approach may have a built-in safeguard against the subjectivity of an interpreter: it insists upon one standard to which the data will conform if the standard is to prove true. Whether or not the data conform to the standard in any one case can be shown in fairly short order.¹¹

II. Righteousness: A Deductive Approach

The proposition that guides the present study is that biblical righteousness is conformity to God’s Being and doing.¹² If that is true, an important corollary follows: righteousness must be the same for God (who always conforms to his own Being and doing) and people (who should conform to God’s Being and doing).

A. A Qualification

At this point an important qualification is necessary: the proposed approach is not dogmatic. Diestel long ago sounded a warning against a dogmatic approach in his important article:

During the treatment of these biblical questions one usually laid out a dogmatic theme of the concept that was to be explored and thereupon collected biblical passages so as, by means of them, to allow each point of the conceptual picture to substantiate and display itself. Such a beginning already misses the question, completely the answer; it derives the main concept from dogmatizing reflection (Nachdenken), not from the religio-historical object.¹³

Although Diestel was arguably correct, his critique does not describe the deductive method proposed in the present work. Our procedure is not to decide on a definition of righteousness as a matter of dogma and then find biblical examples that substantiate the definition or make it appear to be correct. Instead a definition is proposed in an experimental way. The present investigation considers every biblical occurrence of the terms for righteousness to see if the proposed definition has the simplest explanatory power for all of them compared with other definitions. If it has such power then, under the Occam’s razor principle, the proposed definition would likely be the best definition. In short, the procedure is not dogmatic, but experimental. Because it is experimental, it is free to explore a deductive approach, rather than an inductive approach, without being dogmatic.

B. An Application of the Definition: Lev 19:36

If the proposed definition is true, it should underlie every biblical occurrence of righteousness.¹⁴ The underlying meaning would be detectable, even if the nuance of the term for righteousness (צדק/צדקה/δικαιοσύνη) could be different in a given case. God’s instruction about weights and measures in Leviticus can illustrate the point:

You shall have just balances [lit., balances of/characterized by righteousness, [צדק מאזני], just weights [lit., weights of/characterized by righteousness, צדק אבני], a just ephah [lit., an ephah of/characterized by righteousness, צדק איפת], and a just hin [lit., a hin of/characterized by righteousness, צדק הין]: I am the

Lord

your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. (Lev

19

:

36

)

It is not obvious that just (or righteous) balances, weighs and measures are those that conform to God’s Being and doing. But the law comes from God and shows something of his nature.¹⁵ This standard is what God wants for his people: it conforms to God’s idea of what balances, weights and measures should be. They are balances, weights and measures characterized by righteousness. That means they conform to a standard, and the standard is God’s idea of what they ought to be.

The command also implies how God wants them to be used. If God were an Israelite handling such things, he would not only make sure that they were conformed to his idea of them—he would also make sure that they were used according to his standard of usage.

In sum: their nature would conform to God’s Being (more particularly, to ideas included in God’s Being) and their use would conform to God’s doing (more particularly, how God would employ those ideas, and how he wants those ideas to be employed among his people). Conformed thus to God’s Being and doing, both their nature and their use would be qualified as righteous.

God implies the rootedness of this command in himself by crowning it with the statement, I am the Lord your God. That makes the law authoritative and also implies its source and archetype in the mind of God. Israel of course failed to live up to this standard, and to all the other laws in the Law that expressed something of God’s nature. The best human illustration of conformity to God’s Being and doing was yet to come: Jesus. God’s Son declared his conformity to his Father’s Being when he said I and the Father are one (John 10:30; cf. John 5:26). He declared his conformity to his Father’s doing when he said: the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing (John 5:19) and The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works (John 14:10; cf. John 6:63). Jesus conformed to his Father’s Being and doing, and so he is called Jesus Christ the righteous (1 John 2:1).

Another observation should be made at this point. At the outset of this section we asserted an important principle: righteousness must be the same for God (who always conforms to his own Being and doing) and people (who should conform to God’s Being and doing). If we want to give a name to this principle, we may call it symmetry: if righteousness is conformity to the standard of God’s Being and doing, then righteousness should be the same for everyone, God included. Since God claims to be righteous there is no presumption in the statement.

The principle is important because not all scholars agree with it. N. T. Wright for instance thinks that God’s righteousness and his people’s righteousness are two different things. That is, he thinks of righteousness asymmetrically.¹⁶ We will argue that this asymmetrical thinking about righteousness is flawed, and that God’s righteousness and his people’s righteousness are the same, with all due regard to the finite nature of the imago Dei—since it is, after all, the imago Dei. But the best way to understand righteousness in the imago Dei is to explore its archetype.¹⁷

III. The Ground of Righteousness

If God is the standard of righteousness and righteousness is conformity to God, God’s own righteousness would be his conformity to himself in his aseity. That is, every reiteration of God’s Being would conform to the standard of God’s Being. That should be the most fundamental example of the righteousness of God. In order to see how that might be, we turn to the one moment in which God identifies the nature of his Being—his encounter with Moses, the shepherd of Midian, on Mt. Sinai. The discussion required to explore this point will have to be somewhat technical because of certain Hebrew possibilities inherent in the consonantal text.

A. Righteousness and Aseity

1. The Divine Self-Naming in Exod 3:14

¹⁸

When Moses encountered the Lord on Sinai and asked for his name, the Lord graciously responded. God’s answer has commonly been translated I AM who I AM (Exod 3:14a NIV) or the like. The Lord adds: This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you’ (Exod 3:14b NIV). If that is the correct reading (in other words, if the Masoretic tradition accurately represents what Moses heard in this encounter) it is curious that the Lord tells Moses in the next verse, "Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you’ (Exod 3:15 NIV, emphases added). Those are parallel statements. But before considering the parallels it should be noted that the Lord here is Yahweh, and Yahweh is a causative form of the verb to become (הוה). That verb is a parallel form of the verb to be/become (היה, translated I AM" in the previous verse).¹⁹

These two verses taken together seem to present an inconsistency. In the first (v. 14) the Lord identifies himself as I AM and tells Moses to tell the people, I AM has sent me to you. In the second (v. 15) he identifies himself as He causes to be/become (i.e., Yahweh) and instructs Moses to tell the people, Yahweh has sent me to you.

Perhaps the name, Yahweh (in v. 15), meaning he causes to be/become, implies a causative understanding, or as one would say nowadays a subtext, for the name given before, in v. 14a. To see that possibility, one would have to remove the traditional vowels in Exod 3:14a. In that case both or either of the verbs in v. 14a (and the one in v. 14b) could be read in a causative sense. Depending then on the vowels assumed, the divine self-identification in v. 14a could be understood in three ways:

1.I AM what I AM

2.I CAUSE TO BE what I AM

3.I CAUSE TO BE what I CAUSE TO BE

The first statement is the traditional rendering. It is usually taken as an affirmation of absolute Being, and so LXX translated it, I am the Being (᾿Εγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν).²⁰ The third statement is an emphatic affirmation of the Lord as Creator; to paraphrase: I will create what I will create. The second statement may be the most intriguing since it would affirm what theologians call God’s aseity (literally, God’s by-means-of-himselfness, from the Latin, a se, by means of himself): "I will cause to be what I will be." This understanding tells us that God constantly recreates himself, which is another way of saying he sustains himself and has no need of any outside means of sustenance. Jesus said the same thing in different words: For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself (John 5:26 NIV).²¹ God constantly renews his own Being, and as he does so every new iteration of his Being conforms to what he was before. That is God’s aseity.²²

God’s aseity is also God’s righteousness, if righteousness means conformity to God. God always conforms to himself. God conforms to the standard of himself as he recreates himself.

It is important not to lose sight of the fact that the Lord spoke, as far as we know, only one name to Moses in v. 14a, whichever of the three above mentioned possibilities it was. However, God also left a consonantal text that could be read in three different but related ways. The Masoretes in due course added the vowels handed down by tradition and their work deserves the highest respect. Nonetheless, it remains true that a pre-Masoretic reader of the consonantal text could have imagined any of the three meanings of the Lord’s self-identification in v. 14a or all of them at the same time, especially after reading v. 15, which parallels אהיה in v. 14b with יהוה, each name preceded by the command, say to the Israelites, and each followed by the affirmation, has sent me to you:

a b c

V.

14

b say to the Israelites, ‘אהיה has sent me to you.’

a b’ c

V.

15

say to the Israelites, ‘יהוה . . . has sent me to you.’

The parallel statements could be an example of God’s wittiness. God said one thing to Moses, but he gave following generations a consonantal text that could (in v. 14a) mean three things. Perhaps he gave us two divine names, אהיה and יהוה (in vv. 14 and 15 respectively) to encourage such a thought. Moreover, each of those three possible meanings is true. God is absolute Being, he does create whatever he will, and he is the creator/sustainer of himself or, as theology says, he has the incommunicable divine attribute of aseity.²³

Our study of Exod 3:14–15 has exposed a possible statement of divine aseity underlying the Masoretic vocalization of Exod 3:14a. However, no matter what biblical text one uses to show the doctrine, God’s aseity means God is always true to himself, since (for example) we are told that the Son is the same yesterday and today and forever (Heb 13:8). Because the Son is always constant in his Being—true to the standard of divine Being—as he is true to the standard of divine doing, he is called Jesus Christ the righteous (1 John 2:1).

2. Aseity and the Spirit

If one allows that God’s aseity is foundational to his righteousness another question may naturally arise: How does God self-exist? That may seem to be a bold—if not foolhardy—question. The Bible may nevertheless provide some elements of an answer.

A few years ago I proposed a paradigm of God’s activity as he created the world through the Word and subsequently worked through human beings made in his image:

Kingdom Creation Paradigm

In each case, the Father causes his Spirit to work through someone—either the pre-incarnate Son (or the incarnate Son); or a prophet (or a king who may partake of this prophetic dynamic) in the OT, and subsequently members of the Church in the NT. But how can this relate to God’s aseity?

What the Bible says about the Holy Spirit may offer some clues. The Bible makes a profound association between the Holy Spirit and life. Jesus says, "the Spirit gives life (John 6:63 NIV, emphasis added). Paul similarly tells us, If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you (Rom 8:11 NIV, emphases added). Moreover the author of Hebrews, speaking of the resurrected Jesus’ priesthood that is superior to the Levitical priesthood of the old covenant, tells us that Jesus has become a priest not on the basis of a regulation as to his ancestry but on the basis of the power of an indestructible life" (Heb 7:16 NIV, emphasis added). Apparently—in light of the comments made by Jesus and Paul—that sort of life is the power of the Spirit.

Applied to God’s manner of working, then, the data suggest that God’s Spirit is instrumental, not only in the work of creation and in the works of prophecy and royal anointing and kingdom administration in general, but also, and primordially, in the work of God’s aseity.

This line of thought produces the following schema, consistent with the Kingdom Creation Paradigm displayed above:

Proposed Dynamic Of God’s Aseity

Father



Spirit



Son



Work of Aseity

According to the proposed schema, the Father causes the Spirit to work through the Son to produce the ongoing work of aseity—in other words, to produce/sustain himself, as having eternal, or as Hebrews puts it, indestructible life. If our proposal is correct, it puts the Kingdom Creation Paradigm proposed before in a new light: God constantly re-creates himself, and at some point God creates the universe and works through those made in his image, in that universe, to produce his kingdom advance—all according to the same dynamic. This appears to be how God works by his Spirit.

So the dynamic of God’s aseity becomes the archetype to which the pattern of God’s creation and the pattern of God’s ongoing work in the created order conform. God not only rules the world in righteousness (Ps 9:8) and judges the world in righteousness (Ps 96:13), he also created us to be like himself in righteousness (Eph 4:24) because he always recreates himself in righteousness—as Paul says, the Spirit is life because of righteousness (Rom. 8:10b).²⁵ God, then, always re-creates himself in a way that is true to himself (i.e., righteous) by his Spirit.

B. Righteousness, Aseity, and Love

A final remark is in order regarding God’s aseity, because John says, God is love (1 John 4:8). What does John’s statement mean? Put another way: If God, ontologically speaking, is righteousness, how do the statements God is love and God is righteous (or God always conforms to his own Being and doing) relate to one another?

The first step to answering the question is to know what the term, ἀγάπη (love) means. It can denote a love or a quality—usually defined as brotherly love or charity—that wants the best for the other.²⁶ Understood in that way, God’s identity as love means he is the One who always wants what is best for the other.

That is good news for us. It also means, however, that when God himself is the other—that is, when God himself is the object of his love—God must always want what is best for himself. Since God is the ground of all being, the best thing for God would be his ongoing self-existence or aseity. Only on that condition could he be ἀγάπη for all that he has created—that other other. Thus, the proper ongoing work of aseity would be for God to re-create himself true to himself—that is, true to his own Being and doing—so he may continue always to be righteous and love.

Just as God’s exercise of ἀγάπη toward the cosmos means that God sustains the cosmos in righteousness—in a manner true to his own Being and doing—so God’s exercise of ἀγάπη toward himself means that God sustains himself in righteousness—in a manner true to his own Being and doing.

IV. Righteousness, Faith, and Sin

No discussion of righteousness can be complete without a biblical understanding of faith and sin. (1) Faith. The first time the Bible mentions faith it does so in connection with righteousness: Abram believed [האמן] the Lord, and he [the Lord] counted it to him as righteousness [צדקה] (Gen 15:6; cf. Heb 11:8–12). I have argued elsewhere that faith is amening or agreeing with God’s Being and doing.²⁷ Closely related: righteousness is conforming to God’s Being and doing. (2) Sin. Sin is the opposite. Paul says that whatever is not of faith is sin (Rom 14:23).

A. Righteousness and Faith

One could say that righteousness and faith are two sides of the same coin. A display of definitions can illustrate their connection:

1.Faith is:

amening—owning/embracing as true—God’s Being and doing

2.Righteousness is:

the inner state (צדק) of conforming to God’s Being

or

the act (צדקה) of conforming to God’s doing

The display shows how closely faith, righteousness and righteous action are related. That close relation can clarify a number of biblical statements about the terms, as we hope to demonstrate.

B. Righteousness, Faith, and Sin in Two Statements

A closely related matter is the relation between righteousness, faith and their opposite, sin. Paul and John give dispositive definitions of these concepts, and the relationship between them can be illustrated when they are set in parallel:

1.All that is not of faith is sin

πᾶν δὲ ὃ οὐκ ἐκ πίστεως ἁμαρτία ἐστίν (Rom 14:23, my translation)

2.All unrighteousness is sin

πᾶσα ἀδικία ἁμαρτία ἐστίν (1 John 5:17)

In these statements not of faith and unrighteousness both equate to sin, the term for which is ἁμαρτία. It is important to understand this term because ἁμαρτία fundamentally means missing the mark, which is another way of saying "not conforming to the standard"—the standard being, we propose, God himself. A syllogistic diagram makes the correspondence clear:

1.All that is not of faith = sin (ἁμαρτία)

2.All unrighteousness = sin (ἁμαρτία)

3.All that is not of faith = unrighteousness

Implicitly then

4.Faith = righteousness

If the syllogism is true (as it obviously is) then its contrapositive is also true: if non-faith = non-righteousness, it follows that their opposites also form an equality: faith = righteousness. This expression harks back to Gen 15:6, where the Lord first announces it.

Faith however—amening God’s Being and doing—is an action of the inner person. As such, it is an act that conforms to God’s Being and doing, with the important added nuance that the act of amening (האמן) God is itself צדקה, a righteous action as Gen 15:6 tells us. It is also evidence that an inner state of conformity (צדק) to God’s Being and doing exists in a person.²⁸ Only Jesus amened his Father’s Being and doing with perfect faith and perfect righteousness—and so he was without sin [χωρὶς ἁμαρτίας] (Heb 4:15; cf. 1 Cor 5:21) and was Jesus Christ the righteous (1 John 2:1).²⁹

V. Afterword: Justification and Justice

A. Justification and the Present Work

Although a discussion faith and righteousness treads dangerously close—one might say—to the topic of justification, and although the topic of the righteousness of God (δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ, as in Rom 3:21–24) treads even closer (because it has been understood to mean God’s iustitia distributiva), justification is not the object of our study.

If we compare God’s salvation construct to a house, we may say that justification is the roof, while faith (the amening of God who amens himself) is the foundation and righteousness is the rising structure. We hope, by faith, to understand the development and significance of the rising structure.

B. Justice and Righteousness

Although we do not discuss justification, we do take up the matter of justice as it relates to righteousness because the two occur often as stock word pairs ("righteousness