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The Righteousness of God in Psalms and Romans

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2010

Geoffrey Turner
Geoffrey Turner*
Affiliation:
175 Leeds Road, Harrogate, HG2 8HQ, England, [email protected]
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Abstract

Paul quoted extensively from scripture, especially in Romans. Many of these citations are from the Psalms, using the Septuagint. Paul could have found all his vocabulary and concepts for ‘justification by faith’ in the Psalms. The Psalms contain a doctrine of ‘righteousness through faithfulness’: God is righteous by forming a covenant with Israel, and proves his righteousness by remaining faithful to that covenant despite Israel's failings. He will remain faithful to the end by vindicating his righteous ones when they are oppressed by the ungodly. Israelites are righteous by having been elected to the covenant and will remain righteous through faithfulness to God, the marks of which are the avoidance of idolatry and keeping the law. Far from rejecting this Old Testament inheritance, Paul takes over this doctrine of ‘righteousness through faithfulness’ as it stands in the Psalms (Romans 1:18–3:20) and then christologises it (from 3:21). The mark of faithfulness to God now is no longer the law, however, but faithfulness to Christ, who is himself the model of faithfulness and what it is to be righteous. This understanding of how one becomes righteous is located by Paul himself within his fivefold scheme of salvation at Romans 8:30: foreknown, predestined, called, made righteous and glorified.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , August 2010 , pp. 285 - 301
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2010

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References

1 ‘A reader unfamiliar with 2 Samuel and Psalm 51 would read right past, recognizing that a prooftext had been quoted but missing the more complex resonances between Davidic psalm and Pauline kerygma’, referring to Romans 3:4. Hays, R. B., Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 50Google Scholar.

2 But not obvious to all. Andrew Das aims at Solving the Romans Debate (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007) by arguing for an exclusively Gentile readership in Rome. Even if this were true, it would hardly lead to ‘solving the Romans debate’. For a balanced summary of the reasons for writing the letter see Schnelle, U., Apostle Paul, his Life and Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), pp. 308ffGoogle Scholar. Of course, it is always possible that the Roman church, still predominantly Gentile after the exclusion of the Jews in ad 49, received the letter, read it and did not understand it. Stanley, Christopher, Arguing with Scripture, the Rhetoric of Quotations in the Letters of Paul (London: T & T Clark International, Continuum, 2004) wonders whether Paul misjudged the Roman church's knowledge of scripture (p. 179)Google Scholar.

3 Ellis, E. E., Paul's Use of the Old Testament (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1957), pp. 150–2Google Scholar. Stanley, C. D., Paul and the Language of Scripture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, explains that the count of quotations varies among authors because of differences of criteria of what counts as a citation. Stanley adopts narrow criteria and accepts only thirteen citations from Psalms in Romans. In view of the styles of citation in ancient literature I would adopt less strict criteria to allow a total of twenty-four: fifteen quotations (some with Paul's own modifications) at 2:6, 3:4, 3:10–14, 18, 20, 4:7–8, 8:36, 10:18, 11:9–10, 15:3, 9 and 11; 5 adaptations, sometimes quite loose, at 1:16, 23, 3:14, 5:5 and 9:5; and four showing loose connections at 2:21, 3:2, 7:14 and 8:30.

4 However, see Harmon, Allan M., ‘Aspects of Paul's Use of Psalms’, Westminster Theological Journal 32:1 (1969), pp. 1–23Google Scholar, which is a summary of his doctoral dissertation for Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, 1968.

5 Richard Hays affirms this in Echoes, pp. 16 and 30: ‘The vocabulary and cadences of scripture – particularly the LXX – are imprinted deeply on Paul's mind’ and ‘His practice of citation shows that he was acquainted with virtually the whole body of texts that were later acknowledged as canonical within Judaism’.

6 Stanley, Paul and the Language of Scripture, pp. 359ff., argues against faulty memory and in favour of Paul having deliberately but understandably and justifiably altered texts for his own ends.

7 Watson, F., Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith (London: T & T Clark International, 2004), p. 53Google Scholar.

8 Ellis, Paul's Use, p. 13.

9 Hays, Echoes, p. 53.

10 It is important to read the Book of Psalms as Paul would have done, so far as we are able to judge this. So quotations from the Psalms in this article are normally from the LXX and the book of Psalms is read as a block without a historical-critical sense of their development and original context. They are simply ‘scripture’ written by ‘the Psalmist’.

11 In the introductory section of Romans, this certainly works at 1:8 ‘your faithfulness is proclaimed throughout the world’ and at 1:12 ‘so that we may be encouraged by each other's faithfulness’. The real test is whether it works on Paul's programmatic statement of 1:16–17, though I think this statement has as much to do with rhetoric as substance: ‘For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has [shows] faithfulness, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faithfulness for faithfulness; as it is written, “The one who is righteous will live by faithfulness”’ (adapted NRSV).

12 While he comes at the translation of pistis in Paul from a different direction – he is more concerned with the influence of Philo and Josephus than the LXX – this is broadly the conclusion of Campbell, Douglas, The Quest for Paul's Gospel (London: T & T Clark International, 2005), pp. 178–207Google Scholar, ‘The Meaning of “Faith” in Paul's Gospel’.

13 ‘For he will repay according to each one's deeds’ (2:5) etc.

14 Campbell, Quest, ch. 11, ‘Reading Romans 1:8–3:20’, pp. 233–61.

15 In this respect we see something of the covenantal nomism of Sanders, E. P., Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

16 Ps. 14:1–2; 53:1–2; 5:9; 140:3; 10:7; 36:1; and Isa. 59:7–8.

17 Paul's uses Ps. 117/118 in Romans at 15:11 and he refers to ‘the stone of stumbling’ at 11:9 from Ps. 69, but he missed a turn by not using the reference in Ps. 117/118:22–3 to the stone which the builders rejected that has become the cornerstone. If one tracks back three verses in that psalm to vv. 19–20 we find that this cornerstone is the cornerstone of ‘the gate of righteousness’ through which one enters the Temple. (von Rad, G., Old Testament Theology, vol. 1, Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1962, pp. 377–8Google Scholar, refers to a pre-exilic Temple liturgy of the gate.) Who may enter through this gate to stand in the holy place? ‘He who is innocent in his hands and pure in his heart, who has not lifted up his soul to vanity, nor sworn deceitfully to his neighbour . . .’ (Ps. 23/24:4) – i.e. the one who has kept the law: ‘he shall receive a blessing from the Lord, and mercy from God his saviour’ (23/24:5). Of the gate of righteousness, the psalm says, ‘This is the gate of the Lord, the righteous shall enter through it’ (117/118:20) but for Paul, Christ is the Lord, rejected but now the cornerstone of the gate of righteousness. Formerly one entered the holy place through the gate of righteousness by keeping the law; now one enters through Christ, through devotion to him who is that gate.

18 Dunn, J. D. G., Jesus, Paul and the Law (London: SPCK, 1990), pp. 191–5Google Scholar, and The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1998), pp. 354–66; N. T. Wright, ‘New Perspectives on Paul’, a paper from the 10th Edinburgh Dogmatics Conference, Aug. 2003, sect. 4 ‘Ordo Salutis’, on www.ntwrightpage.com.

19 If an objective genitive, it would mean ‘faith in Christ’; if a subjective genitive, it would mean ‘the faith/faithfulness of Christ’. For the two sides of the debate see Hays, Richard, ‘PISTIS and Pauline Christology’, in Johnson, E. Elizabeth and Hay, David M. (eds), Looking Back, Pressing On, vol. 4 of Pauline Theology (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1997), pp. 35–60Google Scholar, for arguments for the subjective genitive (one might also read the more recent Campbell, Quest, pp. 208–32), and for the objective genitive J. D. G. Dunn, ‘Once More: Pistis Christou’, in Johnson and Hay (eds), Looking Back, Pressing On, pp. 61–81, and also the more accessible Theology of Paul the Apostle, pp. 379–85.

20 Schnelle, Apostle Paul, pp. 300–1, 326–33.