Paul and the Apocalyptic Imagination

by Ben C Blackwell

  It is in this new time, what Paul calls the “now-time” (3:26a), that “the righteousness of God is made visible,” not according to the law—it is χωρὶς νόμου—but as the “righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ” (Rom. 3:21–22). As Simon Gathercole notes, “apart from law” and “through faith” are mutually interpreting, such “that χωρίς in verse 21 is clearly the opposite of διά in verse 22.”[44] “Apart from law” is therefore a negative definition of the “righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ”: “‘by faith,’” writes Francis Watson, “means ‘apart from law.’”[45] In Barth’s words, “sola fide” is the “great negation”; it identifies the absence of law-defined righteousness, and thus names the nothingness from which God re-creates sinners as righteous.[46] This suggests that “the righteousness of God,” as “the righteousness of faith,” is not determined by the law-defined correspondence between human worth and God’s judgment. Rather, as the incongruity between human worth (“sinners,” Rom. 3:23) and God’s word (“declared righteous,” 3:24) indicates, “the righteousness of God” is characterized by creative contradiction. Just as Abraham’s faith lived where his body and Sarah’s womb were dead (νέκρωσις, Rom. 4:19) and so trusted “the one who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist” (4:17), so Paul sets faith in the vacuum created by the absence of law (χωρὶς νόμου, 3:21) and works (ὁ μὴ ἐργαζόμενος, 4:5; χωρὶς ἔργων, 4:6) and identifies the God it trusts as “the one who justifies the ungodly” (4:5). Nothingness, death, and sin—for Paul, these are the site at which God utters a creative counter-statement: creation, life, righteousness.[47]

  Faith, in the first instance, is this anthropological negation, the site of sin, death, and nothingness at which God operates out of the opposite. Defined by what it is not (i.e., law and works), faith “speaks,” as Oswald Bayer puts it, “in the via negationis.”[48] Facing the human, faith says “no”; it hears God’s impossible promise—“I will give you a son by Sarah” (Gen. 17:6)—looks at Abraham’s age and Sarah’s barrenness, and laughs (Gen. 17:7; Rom. 4:19). But faith’s focus is not the believing human; it is the “God” who is “able to do as he promises” (Rom. 4:21). And looking here, faith laughs again: “the Lord did to Sarah as he promised . . . and Sarah said, ‘the Lord has made laughter for me’” (Gen. 21:6). As Paul reads Genesis, Abraham’s “faith was counted to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6; Rom. 4:3, 22) “because” (διό, 4:22) it is this double laughter: even as faith considers Abraham’s age and Sarah’s barrenness and says, “death” (Rom. 4:19), it hears the promise and “believes the God who gives life to the dead” (4:17; 4:20–21).[49]

  This brings us back to Rom. 3:21–22. The “righteousness of God through faith,” because it is defined by the absence of law, is first an anthropological negation. With Rom. 3:20, it says “no” to the possibility of righteousness before God by works of law. But as with Abraham, the laughter of faith’s “yes” is louder than the laughter of its “no.” And if “apart from law” identifies faith’s “no,” it is the name “Jesus Christ” that defines faith’s “yes.” In Rom. 3:21–22, the contrast between “law” and “faith” is asymmetrical. Whereas “law” is joined to a preposition (χωρίς), “faith” gets both a preposition (διά) and a name, Jesus Christ. The effect of this imbalance is to “christologize” faith. It is not faith in abstract antithesis to law that defines “the righteousness of God.” Rather, “the righteousness of God” is the “righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ.” Hence, Barth’s question: “what is the sola fide but a faint yet necessary echo of the solus Christus?”[50] “Through faith in Christ” is the Pauline way of saying “Christ alone.” Defined in antithesis to “works of law,” it excludes law-defined worth as the grounds of justification; defined by the name Jesus Christ, it confesses Christ as the one by, in, and on the basis of whom God justifies the ungodly. “All sinned,” says Paul, “and are justified . . . in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:23–24).

  To say, then, that “the righteousness of God” is “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ” is to say that God’s eschatological act of judgment and justification is irreducibly and exclusively singular—it is Jesus Christ. As Luther puts it, “faith justifies because it takes hold of and possesses this treasure, the present Christ,” and therefore, “the true Christian righteousness” is not the human act of believing; it is “the Christ who is grasped by faith . . . and on account of whom God counts us righteous.”[51] Rather than qualifying this christological singularity (solus Christus), sola fide is the apophatic affirmation of the “gift” that is “the redemption which is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24): διὰ τοῦτο ἐκ πίστεως, ἵνα κατὰ χάριν (Rom. 4:16).[52] To borrow Thomas Cranmer’s image, “faith” is the finger of “St John Baptist,” pointing away from the self and to “the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.”[53]

  Paul’s definition of “the righteousness of God” as “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ” is thus an instance of what Käsemann calls “applied Christology.”[54] “The righteousness of God” is a description of the eschatological demonstration of righteousness and the eschatological declaration of righteousness that is God’s gift of Jesus Christ. This means that Paul does not look in the lexicon of apocalyptic Judaism to define δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ; he deduces his definition from the gift of Christ that makes God’s righteousness visible by demonstrating it in the enactment of eschatological judgment that both judges unrighteousness and justifies the unrighteous. For Paul, “the righteousness of God” is not a “feste Formel” that Paul “takes over” from apocalyptic Judaism. Rather, God’s gift of Jesus Christ is the apocalypse—the event that unveils “the righteousness of God.” Käsemann, in this sense, reads Paul backward: Paul does not employ a traditional concept to interpret what God has done in Christ; for Paul, “the righteousness of God” is what God has done in Christ. It is not “use and custom” that define the Pauline phrase δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ. Rather, “Christ’s pure veil presents th[e] sight” of divine justice. As Origen put it, the “iustitia Dei . . . est Christus”—“the righteousness of God” is the gift of Jesus Christ in whom “we become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21) and who himself is “our righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30). For Paul, δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ is not just a concept from apocalyptic Judaism; δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ is what is apocalypsed in the gospel of Jesus Christ. An apocalyptic definition of “the righteousness of God” is, therefore, a christological definition: Jesus Christ, as both the eschatological demonstration and gift of God’s righteousness, is the revelation of “the righteousness of God” and thus the one who defines δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ.

  The Pauline definition of δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ is a christological redefinition—it is deduced from and descriptive of God’s gift of Jesus Christ. Barth captures this:

  The Christian message does not at its heart express a concept or an idea . . . it recounts a history . . . in such a way that it declares a name. . . . This means that all the concepts and ideas used in this report [δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ, for example] can derive their significance only from the bearer of this name and from his history, and not the reverse. . . . They cannot say what has to be said with some meaning of their own or in some context of their own abstracted from this name. They can serve only to describe this name—the name of Jesus Christ.[55]

  Victor Hugo’s description of the merciful Monseigneur Bienvenu, however, seems the more fitting conclusion. “He had his own strange way of judging things,” Hugo writes in Les Misérables, “I suspect he acquired it from the Gospels.” For Paul, God has his own strange way of judging; he reveals it in the Gospel.

  * * *

  M. Luther, Preface to the Complete Edition of Luther’s Latin Writings, in LW 34, ed. L. W. Spitz (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1960), 336–37. ↵


  Ibid. For Luther’s christological understanding of “the righteousness of faith,” see my “The Christo-Centrism of Faith in Christ: Martin Luther’s Reading of Galatians 2:16, 19–20,” NTS 59, no. 4 (2013): 535–44. ↵

  The above lines are all from a poem entitled “Justice II” that occurs in “The Church” section of Herbert’s The Temple, Sacred Poem and Private Ejaculations (New York: Paulist, 1981), 265–66. ↵

  E. Käsemann, ‘“The Righteousness of God” in Paul,” in New Testament Questions of Today, trans. W. J. Montague (London: SCM, 1969), 168–82. Käsemann’s lecture-turned-essay crystalized the earlier work of A. Oepke (“Δικαιοσύνη Θεοῡ bei Paulus,” TLZ 78 [1953]: cols. 257–63) and was subsequently expanded, defended, and adapted by C. Müller, Gottes Gerichtigkeit und Gottes Volk, FRLANT 86 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964); K. Kertelge, ‘Rechtfertigung’ bei Paulus (Münster: Aschendorff, 1967); P. Stuhlmacher, Gerechtigkeit Gottes bei Paulus, FRLANT 87 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1965). ↵

  E. Käsemann, “Die Anfänge christlicher Theologie,” ZTK 57, no. 2 (1960): 162–85, at 180; ET, “The Beginnings of Christian Theology,” in New Testament Question of Today, trans. W. J. Montague (London: SCM, 1969), 82–107. ↵

  On this shift, see D. V. Way, The Lordship of Christ: ErnstKäsemann’s Interpretation of Paul’s Theology, Oxford Theological Monographs (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 122–24. ↵

  See, for example G. Ebeling’s call for a definition in “Der Grund christlicher Theologie,” ZThK 58 (1961): 227–44, at 230. Cf. David Congdon’s observation that Ebeling’s search for the “Grund” of Christian theology, together with Fuchs’s identification of its “Aufgabe,” is the scholarly context for Käsemann’s claim about the “Anfänge” of Christian theology (“Eschatologizing Apocalyptic: An Assessment of the Present Conversation on Pauline Apocalyptic,” in Apocalyptic and the Future of Theology: With and Beyond J. Louis Martyn, eds. J. B. Davis and D. Harink [Eugene: Cascade, 2012], 118–36, at 119–20). ↵

  E. Käsemann, Exegetische Versuche und Besinnungen, ii (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964), 105n1. ↵

  See, for instance, ibid., 94, 104n1. Because apocalyptic carries this constellation of features, Käsemann’s history-of-religions claim is able to do theological work: apocalyptic is, for Käsemann, a “twofold ‘correction’” to Bultmann’s theology, emphasizing “the ‘theology’ pole of the theology-anthropology dialectic” and interpreting “both theology and anthropology in light of the lordship of Christ” (Way, The Lordship of Christ, 138). ↵

  H. Cremer, Die paulinische Rechtfertigungslehre im Zusammenhange ihrer geschichtlichen Voraus-setzungen (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1899). ↵

  Käsemann, ‘“The Righteousness of God,”’ 172. ↵

  Ibid., 172–73. Several passages from the Hodayoth are also noted (1QH 4.37; 7.14, 19; 11.17–18, 30–31; 13.16–17; 15.14–15; 16.10), but none of them contain the precise phrase. Stuhlmacher’s attempt to supplement this list could only cite 1 (Ethiopic) En. 71.14; 99.10; 101.3; 4 Ezra 8:36 as definitive (Gerechtigkeit Gottes 11, 98). ↵

  E. Käsemann, “Gottesgerechtigkeit bei Paulus,“ ZThK 58, no. 3 (1961): 367–78. The claim of Oepke, Käsemann, and (the earlier) Stuhlmacher that δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ is a terminus technicus is seriously problematized by the limited number of Old Testament and early Jewish texts that actually contain the formula and the linguistic flexibility with which Paul expresses the correlation of δικαιοσύνη and θεός (Rom. 1:17; 3:5, 21, 22, 25, 26; 10:3; 2 Cor. 5:21; Phil. 3:9); see especially, E. Güttgemanns, ‘“Gottesgerechtigkeit’ und strukturale Semantik: Linguistische Analyse zu δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ,” in Studia linguistica Neotestamentica, BEvTh 60 [München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1971], 5–98). ↵

  E. Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, trans. G. W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), 94. ↵

  Käsemann, Exegetische Versuche und Besinnungen ii, 183, 185; ET from New Testament Questions of Today (London: SCM, 1969), 172. ↵

  This is a modified translation of Käsemann, Exegetische Versuche und Besinnungen ii, 192 provided by Way, The Lordship of Christ, 201. For a discussion of this theme, and Käsemann’s reading of justification more generally, see especially, P. F. M. Zahl, Die Rechtfertigungslehre Ernst Käsemann (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1996). ↵

  The influence of Cremer on Käsemann’s interpretation of the meaning of righteousness in the Old Testament and early Judaism is evident in his insistence that in this “field . . . righteousness does not convey primarily the sense of a personal, ethical quality, but of a relationship,” (“‘The Righteousness of God’ in Paul,” in New Testament Questions of Today, trans. W. J. Montague [London: SCM, 1969], 168–82, at 172). It is notable that Käsemann does see Paul expanding or editing the received definition of divine righteousness, interpreting it not as God’s saving action in reference to the covenant with Israel, but as the creator coming on the scene of his creation in power to establish his right (see, e.g., Romans, 35, 56, 93, 123; Exegetische Versuche und Besinnungen ii, 100). ↵

  Way, The Lordship of Christ, 201. For recent examples of this methodological tendency, see M. F. Bird, The Saving Righteousness of God: Studies on Paul, Justification and the New Perspective (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2006), 15; G. Turner, “The Righteousness of God in Psalms and Romans,” SJT 63, no. 3 (2010): 285–301, and N. T. Wright, “The Book of Romans,” in NIB, vol. 10 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002), 403. For review of research on δικαιοσύνη, especially but not only in Paul, see chapter one of C. L. Irons, The Righteousness of God: A Lexical Examination of the Covenant-Faithfulness Interpretation, WUNT 2/386 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015). ↵

  “The Heidelberg Disputation” (1518), LW 31, 35–70. ↵

  For a critique of defining δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ on the basis of the concept’s “prehistory,” see H. Conzelmann, “Current Problems in Pauline Research,” Int 22 (1968): 170–86, at 80; cf. S. K. Williams, “The ‘Righteousness of God’ in Romans,” JBL 99, no. 2 (1980): 241–90, at 244. ↵

  Cf. the discussion of Paul’s “localizing” reference to the “righteousness of God” that is revealed “in the gospel” in M. A. Seifrid, Christ, Our Righteousness: Paul’s Theology of Justification, NSBT 9 (Leicester: Apollos, 2000), 46. A full discussion of “the righteousness of God” would include a consideration of “the law and the prophets” as witnesses to this righteousness, both in terms of Paul’s explicit references to Hab. 2:4 and Gen. 15:6, and in the way Paul hears Scripture “promising beforehand” (Rom. 1:2) and “pre-preaching” (Gal. 3:8) the gospel in which the righteousness of God is revealed. For Christ and Scripture as mutually-interpreting, though with Christ as scripture’s “now of legibility,” see my God, Grace, and Righteousness in Wisdom of Solomon and Paul’s Letter to the Romans: Texts in Conversation, NovTSup 152 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 177–226; idem, “Not the End: The History and Hope of the Unfailing Word in Romans 9–11,” in Has God Rejected His People? Essays on Romans 9–11, eds. B. R. Gaventa, T. Still, and B. Longenecker (Waco: Baylor University Press, forthcoming). ↵

  K. Barth, Der Römerbrief (Erste Fassung) 1919 (Gesamtausgabe II: Akademische Werke; ed. Hermann Schmidt; Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1985), 23. ↵

  Richard Hays (Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989], 85) suggests taking περὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ with γραφαῖς ἁγίαις rather than εὐαγγέλιον θεοῦ, but the christological focus of 1:3–4 indicates that περὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ identifies the subject matter of the gospel (so most commentators, e.g., Calvin, Cranfield, Dunn, Käsemann). ↵

  See Origen’s even stronger claim: “Haec ergo iustitia Dei, quae est Christus” (Migne, Patrologia graeca [PG] 14.944. Cf. Käsemann’s observation that “Paul” “in [Rom.] 1:16f. interpreted the christological statement of 1:3f. soteriological” and that this also runs “conversely” (Romans, 95). This mutually interpreting
christology-soteriology dialectic problematizes N. T. Wright’s claim that the gospel is “Jesus Christ is Lord,” and thus not “you can be saved” (“New Perspectives on Paul,” in Justification in Perspective: Historical Developments and Contemporary Challenges, ed. B. L. McCormack [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006], 243–64, at 249). ↵

  M. Luther, Disputatio de divinitate et humanitate Christi (1540; WA 39/II, 94, 17f.). ↵

  E. Jüngel, Justification: The Heart of Christian Faith, trans. J. F. Cayzer (London: T&T Clark, 2001), 78. ↵