This passage uses the noun 'justice' (or 'righteousness') and the verb 'to justify' as well as the a
It is my pious hope that this chapter will not prove too heavy for the ordinary reader (and my private fear that this hope will be disappointed!). The trouble is that nobody seems to have been able to make propitiation simple. To most of us the term is just plain incomprehensible. Accordingly, it does not seem to matter much what it means and the result is a pronounced disinclination to make the effort needed to see whether anything much is at stake. But there is in fact quite a lot at stake; the concept is important for biblical religion. So, if we are serious about our Christianity, we must at least make the effort to attempt to understand it.
First, let us notice that neither the verb 'to propitiate' nor the noun 'propitiation' is of frequent occurrence in the New Testament. Indeed, if you are using a modem translation the chances are that you won't find them anywhere. Favourite replacements these days are the verb 'to expiate' and the noun 'expiation' (as in RSV, NEB, etc.). To most of us the change does not seem to matter much, as we don't understand 'expiation' very well either. We tend to inquire, 'What's the difference?' 'Does anyone know what either means anyway?' And, as neither is exactly of common occurrence in everyday speech, it is not difficult to come to the conclusion that no great issue is involved, so that it does not matter greatly which alternative we choose.
But this is superficial. The two concepts are really very different. Propitiation means the turning away of anger; expiation is rather the making amends for a wrong. Propitiation is a personal word; one propitiates a person. Expiation is an impersonal word; one expiates a sin or a crime.
When we are speaking about Christ's atoning work it makes a great deal of difference which meaning we understand. If we speak of expiation our meaning is that there is an impersonal process by which the effects of sin are nullified. We may be ready to think of the process as a remedy for defilement, a means of forgiveness, or a sacrifice that takes sin away, but we resolutely refuse to see any reference to the wrath of God. But if we speak of propitiation we are thinking of a personal process. We are saying that God is angry when people sin and that, if they are to be forgiven, something must be done about that anger. We are saying further that the death of Christ is the means of removing the divine wrath from sinners. The issue is far from being superficial.
We may perhaps feel that 'propitiation' is not a good word. It is a long word, a word which most of us rarely use, which many of us do not understand, and which some of those who do readily confuse with 'appeasement'. It is natural that translators often feel that it should be replaced by something more intelligible. I go along with this, with the sole proviso that the essential meaning of the term must be preserved. My quarrel with almost all modern translations is that they do not retain the essential meaning; specifically, they adopt some rendering that glosses over the wrath of God. But this is a very important concept (as I shall try to show), and it cannot be ignored in any satisfying understanding of the work of Christ.
THE USE OF HILASKOMAI
I'm afraid that we cannot study this subject seriously without a little linguistic work. We must examine the meaning of the Greek verb that has traditionally been translated 'to propitiate' or 'to make propitiation' (for example, in RV, ASV), and which is rendered in some other way in most recent translations. This verb, hilaskomai, is in common use in Greek in general and it means the turning away of anger. As far as the general run of Greek literature is concerned, there cannot be the slightest doubt that the meaning is 'to propitiate'.
A few scholars, it is true, raise an objection. They point out that in days well before the New Testament period it was often held that the gods became angry with their worshippers and that they had to be appeased by choice offerings. But more worthy ideas were making their appearance by New Testament times, they suggest, and the older, cruder ideas were fading away. They reason that we should go along with this trend and remove 'propitiation' from our New Testament.
Now it may well be that the trend of which these scholars write did in fact exist. I am not prepared to deny it. But the interesting thing is that the scholars who hold this view do not come up with any real evidence that hilaskomai and its related words were used to express it. Wherever these words occur they have the meaning of the turning away of wrath. As far as I know there are only two passages in the whole range of Greek literature that are suggested as possible exceptions and neither of these is convincing.' The hilaskomai words consistently mean propitiation. It is, of course, quite possible that the Bible writers evolved a new meaning for some well-known words and then used the words in their new meaning, without telling anyone what they were doing and without making their new meaning clear in the way they used the words. We must look at the evidence to see whether this in fact happened. Though it is worth pointing out that if they did this they concealed what they had done very effectively, because until our day no-one has suspected the new meaning. But the first point to notice is that there can be not the slightest doubt that the word-group means propitiation in Greek writings generally. This creates a presumption that it will be used in similar fashion in the New Testament.
THE WRATH OF GOD IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
Before we look at the passages where the propitiation words occur, it will be useful to notice the way the Bible speaks about the wrath of God. It is this wrath that is called into question when people deny that the Bible speaks of propitiation, so it is important to notice that the Bible makes it very clear that this wrath is a reality and that it says a great deal about it.
In the Old Testament more than twenty words are used of the wrath of God (in addition to a number of others which are used only of human anger). The total number of references to God's wrath exceeds 580, so that it cannot be said to be an occasional topic. There is a consistency about God's wrath in Scripture which we do not find in similar expressions used about the gods of the heathen. The heathen worshipped capricious gods. The worshippers could never guess what the gods would be up to next. They could never tell when their gods would be angry or what it was that annoyed them. The Hebrews were not in doubt. They knew that one thing and one thing alone aroused God's anger, and that was sin. They knew that God was always angry with sin - the reason there are so many references to the divine wrath is that they had so much experiential knowledge of the subject! God was angry with sin generally (Jb. 21:20), or with specific sins, including the shedding of blood (Ezk. 16:38), adultery (Ezk. 23:25), afflicting the widow or orphan (Ex. 22:2224), violence (Ezk. 8:17-18), covetousness and falsehood Ue. 6:11-13). Most of all God's wrath is aroused by idolatry and this is frequently brought out (Ex. 32:8-10; Dt. 6:14-15, etc.).
The idea of the wrath of God is so widespread in the Old Testament and so strongly emphasized that one would have thought it would be taken as basic that God is angry when people sin. But no. C. H. Dodd, for example, notices that 'the wrath of God' is an expression frequently found in passages telling of disaster following sin. He develops the ingenious argument that the expression is a kind of shorthand. It is a quick way of describing an impersonal process in which sin is followed by disaster. Where we might think of an automatic process the ancients preferred to speak of 'the wrath of God'. Thus Dodd says that the work of the prophets is such that
This idea has been widely taken up. The wrath of God is not a highly popular concept and it appeals to us when an outstanding scholar suggests that we may do away with it. We like to feel that we have nothing to fear from God, whatever sins may trouble our consciences.
But the trouble is that, for all its attractiveness, Dodd's hypothesis will not fit the facts. In the Bible the wrath of God is intensely personal. The prophets did not think of an absentee God, benevolently allowing the universe to go on its way with all kinds of impersonal mechanisms in operation. They emphasized the sovereignty of God. They saw him as active in the affairs of men. Specifically they were sure that the punishment of sin was due to God himself. They could ask, 'When disaster comes to a city, has not the LORD caused it?' (Am. 3:6; cf. 'he flashes destruction on the stronghold', Am. 5:9). They spoke of a God who could say, 'I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things' (Is. 45:7). Right through the Old Testament it is implicit, and quite often explicit, that God is supreme in the affairs of men. He is active in bringing his purposes to pass, whether they are purposes of blessing on his people or of judgment on the sins of men.
This is very clear in some of the'wrath of God' passages. Take, for example, these words:
Or these from Ezekiel:
I am about to pour out my wrath on you and spend my anger against you; I will judge you according to your conduct and repay you for all your detestable practices. I will not look on you with pity or spare you; I will repay you in accordance with your conduct and the detestable practices among you. Then you will know that it is I the LORD who strikes the blow (Ezk. 7:8-9).
Or this cry from the Psalmist:
It is not easy to see how words could more clearly express the truth that the wrath of God is seen as personal. Such passages telling of the wrath of God are vivid and frequent.
It is true that in the Old Testament disaster is seen as the inevitable consequence of sin. But that is not because some impersonal process is at work; it is because a moral God will not allow man to sin with impunity. Because God is the moral God he is, he is angry when people sin, people whom he created for a higher destiny than that. Again and again it is emphasized that God is personally at work in the execution of his anger, just as he is in the showing of his mercy. Dodd distinguished between wrath and mercy, regarding wrath as an impersonal process and mercy as God's personal action, as we have seen. But the prophets make no such distinction. Micah prays, 'You do not stay angry for ever but delight to show mercy' (Mi. 7:18). Similarly the Psalmist can speak of forgiveness and wrath in the same breath: 'You forgave the iniquity of your people and covered all their sins. You set aside all your wrath and turned from your fierce anger' (Ps. 85:2-3). I do not see how it can seriously be contended that in such passages mercy is to be regarded as personal and wrath as impersonal. The same kind of language is used of both.
I repeat, such passages are frequent. We should not think that the 'wrath of God' passages represent a minor aberration, found occasionally in obscure passages not known to most writers. The idea that the wrath of God is exercised against sin runs through and through the Old Testament. I have already pointed out that more than twenty different words are used by the Old Testament writers to convey the thought of the wrath of God, with a total of more than 580 occurrences of the words. That is a large number. If we cut them all out, our Old Testament is left with quite a few holes. The statistics themselves show that the wrath of God is an important Old Testament concept. If we are to be true to the Old Testament we cannot lightly discard or overlook the teaching that God is personally angry in the face of all evil. It is one of the facts of life that God is always hostile to evil. Wrath may be his 'strange work' (Is. 28:21), with the implication that mercy is more congenial. But it is his work. We do ourselves a disservice if we shut our eyes to the fact.
The conclusion to which all this drives us is that in the Old Testament the wrath of God receives some emphasis. It is invariably aroused by human sin and, if people are to be forgiven, then the fact of that wrath must be taken into consideration. It does not fade away by being given some other name or regarded as an impersonal process. There are too many vividly personal passages for that. Perhaps we should notice that ten times God is said to be 'slow to anger' (Ex. 34:6, etc. ). He is not an irascible deity, ready to become angry at the slightest provocation. But, slow though it is, his anger is real. His wrath is certain if we continue in sin.
We should finish this section by noticing that, as the Old Testament writers see it, God's wrath is not put away by some human activity. The gods of the heathen might be expected to respond to bribes from their worshippers. Not so the God of Israel. His anger against sin is a grim reality and, if it is to be removed, its removal is due to none less than God himself. In the wilderness 'Time after time he restrained his anger' (Ps. 78:38). We might translate as the American Standard Version, 'many a time turned he his anger away' (the verb is that used in the expression, 'A gentle answer turns away wrath', Pr. 15:1; again in 29:8). So also, 'For my own name's sake I delay my wrath' (Is. 48:9). Also relevant are a couple of passages we noted earlier, 'You do not stay angry for ever but delight to show mercy' (Mi. 7:18), and 'You set aside all your wrath and turned from your fierce anger' (Ps. 85:3). The Old Testament is clear about the extent and the seriousness of God's anger. But it is clear also that God will put that anger away. There is a paradox here which must be preserved if we are to understand biblical religion. God's attitude to evil is not passive. He is vigorously opposed to it. But he is also a merciful God and it is to him that we owe the forgiveness which means that we are no longer the objects of his wrath. Wrath and mercy both belong to God.
PROPITIATION IN THE SEPTUAGINT
Dodd has another string to his bow. He examines the use of our words in the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek. It was this that was the Bible of the first Christians, so that it is to be expected that they used the words in the way the Septuagint did and with the meanings those words had in the Septuagint. Dodd's argument is that in the Septuagint the hilaskomai words do not mean 'propitiation' at all. The Septuagint translators, according to him, evolved a new meaning for the old word-group and the New Testament writers took it up.
It is not easy for anyone without a knowledge of Hebrew or Greek to follow the intricacies of Dodd's argument. But it is important to make the attempt because (a) a concept of prime importance for our understanding of the New Testament is at stake, and (b) many people hold that Dodd has settled the issue. Let me try, then, to set out the issues in such a way as to bring out Dodd's essential argument and my objections to it.
In the Septuagint hilaskomai and its related words are most often the translation of words from the Hebrew root kpr. But this is far from invariable and Dodd finds three groups of passages to consider:
1. Passages in which words from the Hebrew root kpr are translated by words other than those from the hilaskomai group.
2. Passages in which the hilaskomai words are the translation of other Hebrew words than kpr.
3. Passages in which hilaskomai and related words translate the Hebrew root kpr.
The third group is the largest group and it is clearly very important. In particular the verb from kpr occurs quite often and this is the word normally translated into English by 'to make atonement'. We have already looked at this in connection with the offering of sacrifice and there is no point in going over the ground again. We saw then that the meaning is generally something like 'to put away sin by the death of a spotless victim'. This does not necessarily mean 'to avert the wrath of God', but it is certainly consistent with it. It would be very dangerous to argue that it implies that there is no such thing as a personal wrath of God to be reckoned with. Dodd's case gets no support from this group.
The strength of his case is in the other two groups. Basically the argument is that you can tell the meaning of a word from the company it keeps - words that can be linked with hilaskomai in the translation process must be of similar meaning to hilaskomai. Dodd argues from passages in the first group that the words other than hilaskomai that translate kpr have nothing to do with anger. They have meanings like'to sanctify' or'to cancel (sins)'. He reasons that hilaskomai must have a similar meaning and that it likewise has nothing to do with anger.
He has the same kind of argument with the passages in group 2, the words other than kpr which hilaskomai translates. These have meanings like 'to cleanse from sin' or'to have mercy'. They do not mean 'to remove anger'.
Both groups, Dodd says, class hilaskomai and its related words with words like 'grace' or'forgiveness', not words like 'wrath' or 'anger'. He finds that hilaskomai keeps company with the grace and the mercy words, not with the anger words. Therefore it has a meaning like'be gracious' or'forgive', not'avert anger'.
The argument sounds impressive and it is not surprising that many have been convinced. But it has some fundamental weaknesses. One is that it completely ignores the realities of translation. Any word has a range of meaning; its meaning is like the area in a circle rather than like a point. It is rarely the case that the circle of meaning of a word in one language exactly overlaps that of a word in another language. The translator will select one word for the overlapping area and other words for the areas where the two do not overlap. Dodd is arguing that where the areas do not overlap there still must be a similar meaning. But as soon as we examine the way translation is done we see that this is simply not the case. In many instances, perhaps in most, the meanings will not be similar.
Let us take an example from translation into English where the non-specialist can appreciate the point more easily. The Greek word kosmos means very nearly what the English word 'world' means and in the overwhelming number of cases we translate kosmos by 'world'. But there are some places where these two words do not overlap, where 'world' is not the meaning of kosmos. An example is 1 Peter 3:3, where kosmos is translated 'adornment' (we derive our word 'cosmetic' from this way of using kosmos and its cognates). Nobody doubts that 'adornment' is the correct understanding of kosmos in this particular passage any more than that 'world' is the normal English equivalent of the term. Dodd's method of argument would require us to maintain that in English 'world' and 'adornment' are of similar meaning; they can both be used as translations of the one Greek word. But of course they are not similar. The method is fallacious. While we can say that the English equivalent of kosmos is mostly 'world' (and that the Greek equivalent of kpr is mostly hilaskomai), we cannot say that other English words which translate kosmos are of similar meaning to 'world' (or that other Greek terms which translate kpr are of similar meaning to hilaskomai). They may be very dissimilar.
Even if we were to allow a limited validity to Dodd's method, certainly Dodd goes beyond any limits we can assign to it. We see this from the fact that he groups words with meanings as diverse as 'to sanctify' and 'to cancel'. I do not understand why he does not draw attention to the fact that these words are not of similar meaning at all. If hilaskomai has a meaning like'to sanctify', it cannot have a meaning like 'to cancel' (and so the other way round). The range of meaning is too wide to prove anything. And even then Dodd has not shown how wide the range of words involved in the translation of hilaskomai really is. Dr Roger Nicole maintains that Dodd has not taken into account quite a large number of Greek words used to translate members of the kpr group and that in fact he notices no more than thirty-six per cent of the evidence. If all the evidence is included Nicole holds that we should re-write Dodd's conclusion in these words:
This, of course, makes the statement meaningless, which is Nicole's point. He holds that the argument is so inherently defective that it proves nothing. Dodd is ignoring one of the basic truths about translation.
PUTTING AWAY WRATH
If we are to discover the meaning which the Septuagint translators saw in hilaskomai, the way to do it is to look carefully at the meaning required in the contexts in which the word is found, not to drag in the meanings of words used when hilaskomai is held to be inappropriate. The interesting fact which emerges from the examination is that quite often in the contexts in which hilaskomai is used there is a reference to the divine anger. Take, for example, its use in Lamentations 3:42. There our verb translates the Hebrew s1h and is rightly rendered 'you have not forgiven'. But the passage reads, 'We have sinned and rebelled and you have not forgiven. You have covered yourself with anger and pursued us....' The word may indeed be translated 'forgive', but the people to whom it is applied are the objects of the divine wrath. The kind of forgiveness the word denotes here is a forgiveness which includes the averting of the wrath of God. Propitiation is not out of mind.
Exodus 32:14 is another place where the Septuagint translators used hilaskomai. The NIV translates the original Hebrew as 'relented', and I am not going to quarrel with that translation. But notice that what happened was in response to a prayer of Moses in which he said, '0 LORD, why should your anger burn against your people ...? ... Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people' (verses 11-12). There is wrath in the situation. The relenting in question means that that wrath will not be given full reign. Similarly the Psalmist says of God, 'Yet he was merciful; he atoned for their iniquities and did not destroy them. Time after time he restrained his anger and did not stir up his full wrath' (Ps. 78:38). And so we could go on. Again and again we find that, however the word is translated, there is the thought of the divine wrath in the context. Let me quote my summing up after an examination of every occurrence of the verb hilaskomai in the Septuagint:
six times there is explicit mention of wrath in the immediate context, once the people are under sentence of death, twice the psalmist is greatly afflicted, and on the other occasion the action is that one above all others which the Old Testament regards as provoking God's wrath [i.e. idolatry]. We cannot say that the concept of the wrath of God is certainly absent from any of these passages, and in every one the rendering 'propitiate' is quite appropriate. In the face of all this it is manifestly impossible to maintain that the verb has been emptied of its force.'
I do not see how an examination of the way any of the words from this word-group is used can get rid of the thought of the divine wrath. Translate how you will, the words are used of situations where God's wrath against sin is being manifested, but as a result of the action this word-group denotes that wrath no longer operates. Do we have a better word than 'propitiation' for this?
I am not arguing for the crude, heathen view of propitiation as a process of celestial bribery. There is an example of that when the Moabites were in great trouble. The king of Moab took 700 swordsmen to break through the Israelites, but they could not do it. 'Then he took his firstborn son, who was to succeed him as king, and offered him as a sacrifice on the city wall. The fury against Israel was great; they withdrew and returned to their own land' (2 Ki. 3:26-27). Plainly the king of Moab believed that his god was angry with him and that the greatest sacrifice he could offer was his son. He offered him and felt that his god responded in the subsequent withdrawal of Israel. This kind of thing is absent from the religion of Israel. There is no crude propitiation of an angry deity in Old Testament religion.
But there is a recognition that the wrath of God is real. Nothing in the Old Testament allows us to hold that God is indifferent to the evil we do. He demands uprightness: "'These are the things you are to do: Speak the truth to each other, and render true and sound judgment in your courts; do not plot evil against your neighbour, and do not love to swear falsely. I hate all this," declares the LORD' (Zc. 8:16-17). His opposition to the wicked is of the strongest: 'the wicked and those who love violence his soul hates' (Ps. 11:5). We do not do justice to the Old Testament unless we see that God is an incurably loving God and a God implacably opposed to evil. And that implacable opposition is what is in mind when the Old Testament writers speak of his anger, an anger that is inseparably bound up with his love. It is because he loves us that he is so opposed to the evil in us, that evil that makes us so much less than we ought to be and cuts us off from so much blessing. The wrath of God is not a reaction born of pique at being slighted. It is God's strong opposition to that which cuts us off from the best that we can be. God's love is not a mindless sentimentality. It is a purifying fire, a force in the strongest opposition to everything that mars those whom God loves.
If we think of wrath as uncontrollable passion, then of course there is no way of applying this concept to the God of Israel. But when we see that there is a wrath that goes with a holy love it is a different matter. The old Prayer Book version of Psalm 36:4 says of the wicked man, 'neither doth he abhor any thing that is evil.' That is a dreadful condemnation. And perhaps we see what the Hebrews meant by God's wrath when we reflect that they did not ascribe that kind of moral indifferentism to God. God loves the right and therefore he is in vigorous opposition to every evil. But because God loves he provides the way whereby his beloved are delivered from the wrath that would otherwise engulf them.
THE WRATH OF GOD IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
We have noticed that there are some writers who think that the concept of the wrath of God should be removed from the Old Testament, so it does not surprise us that even more is this the case with the New. C. H. Dodd held that in the teaching of Jesus 'anger as an attitude of God to men disappears, and His love and mercy become all-embracing'. He thinks that Paul agrees with this in substance and that he uses the concept of God's wrath'not to describe the attitude of God to man, but to describe an inevitable process of cause and effect in a moral universe'.' With charming dogmatism he says of Romans 3:25, 'the meaning conveyed ... is that of expiation, not that of propitiation. Most translators and commentators are wrong.'6 Many have followed Dodd and the concept of the wrath of God is widely questioned in the Christian scene.
Let us begin by noticing that Greek has two words which are used of anger, orge and thymos. These are often used in much the same way and indeed in New Testament times it would be very difficult to find a consistent difference between them. There is a distinction in the New Testament, however, at least as regards God, for outside Revelation with its vivid imagery, the word thymos is applied to God once only; orge was evidently seen as much more suitable for the divine anger.
This word orge is connected with organ, which has a meaning like 'to be growing ripe for something'. It is used, for example, of the swelling of buds when the sap rises and of the swelling of fruit as it gets ripe. It points to that which proceeds from the inner nature of a thing and it accords with this that lexicons tend to give 'natural impulse' or the like as the first meaning of orge. It is the anger that arises from what a man is; it proceeds from his settled disposition. When it is applied to God it means that his wrath is due to his settled opposition to every evil thing. By contrast, thymos is connected with thyo, 'to seethe'. The imagery lends itself to the idea of an anger which is like a boiling over, a sudden loss of control, a passionate outburst. As I said earlier, the two words cannot be consistently distinguished, but there is certainly a different feel about them. G. Stahlin has an interesting comment on the different usages of Revelation and of Paul: 'one might very well say that thymos, to which there clings the concept of passionate outburst, was well adapted for describing the visions of the seer, but not for delineating Paul's concept of the wrath of God." I am not arguing that there is a difference between the two words on every occurrence. I do not think there is. But a consideration of the way the New Testament writers use the two words leads to an important consideration with regard to the wrath of God. What is meant is not an outburst of passion, but the settled opposition to evil that arises from the fact that God is who and what he is.
The word 'wrath' does not occur often in the Gospels. But it is there and the idea of the divine anger may be present when the word is not. John the Baptist warned his hearers of 'the coming wrath' (Mt. 3:7) and Jesus spoke of 'wrath against this people' (Lk. 21:23). In the Fourth Gospel we find that 'God's wrath remains on' him who 'rejects the Son' (Jn. 3:36). Jesus himself is said to have been angry on one occasion (Mk. 3:5). More important, however, are passages which do not use the term 'wrath' but which clearly have this in mind. Thus Jesus spoke of hell quite a number of times and this implies the outworking of the wrath of God. He referred to 'the fire of hell' (Mt. 5:22, etc.), to 'eternal fire' (Mt. 18:8), and to that dreadful place 'where "their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched"' (Mk. 9:48). He spoke of 'him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell' (Lk. 12:5). There is much more about such themes as judgment, the outer darkness, the 'weeping and gnashing of teeth' and the like. It is impossible to take the Gospels seriously and yet maintain that Jesus did not teach the reality of the wrath of God.
It is the same with the rest of the New Testament. There are passages in which God's wrath is explicitly referred to and there are places where the term 'wrath' is not used but the idea is present. Sometimes it is urged by way of objection that the expression 'the wrath' occurs quite often with no explicit connection with God. Few would go so far as to say that this means that wrath is personified, regarded as an independent entity separate from God. But some would certainly affirm that this shows that not all of the New Testament writers were happy to associate 'the wrath' closely with God. For some of them, it is said, there was a sense in which 'the wrath' operated more or less independently.
But the conclusion being drawn from this usage is not necessarily the right one. It overlooks the fact that'the wrath of God' is certainly a New Testament expression (Jn. 3:36; Rom. 1:18; Eph. 5:6, etc.). Other expressions are also relevant, such as 'his wrath' (Rev. 14:10; 16:19) and'your wrath' (Rev. 11:18) with reference to God. 'The wrath of the Lamb' (Rev. 6:16) also links wrath with a divine person. The anger denoted by thymos is linked with God on a number of occasions in Revelation (see Rev. 14:10, 19; 15:1, 7, etc.). All in all it is pretty plain that the New Testament writers did not hesitate to speak of 'the wrath of God' when it suited them. The places where the expression 'the wrath' is used without special mention of God do not necessarily point to hesitation about divine wrath. They may mean that the men of the Old Testament had written of God's wrath so effectively that it was sufficient in New Testament times to say 'the wrath'. Nobody doubted whose wrath that was.
But it is not only a question of passages which specifically use the term 'wrath'. There are others which clearly make use of the concept, even though the word does not occur. Thus Paul writes to the Thessalonians about the day 'when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power' (2 Thes. 1:7-9). This is certainly the same stern reality as is elsewhere called 'the wrath of God' and it must be reckoned with, even though Paul does not choose to use the word 'wrath' to express it.
In view of Dodd's idea that 'the wrath of God' is used of an impersonal process of cause and effect, it is worth drawing attention to Romans 1. There Paul is speaking of the degradation of the sinner as the result of his sin. It would be the easiest possible thing for him to leave this as a natural process, to say something like 'the punishment of sin lies in being a sinner'. But he does not. Three times he says 'God gave them over' to the result of their sin (Rom. 1:24, 26, 28). In this passage Paul goes out of his way to emphasize the divine activity. He could so easily have expressed himself without this.
The wrath of God then is a topic not to be neglected in a study of New Testament teaching. It is found sometimes in express words and sometimes in the general thrust of passages. It is found in the teaching of Jesus and in that of his followers. The New Testament leaves us in no doubt but that God is vigorously hostile to sin and that he will punish the unrepentant sinner.
It is important to see that 'the wrath of God' is a significant category in the New Testament. The process of salvation must accordingly take into account this aspect of the human predicament as well as other aspects. Concepts we have looked at so far, such as the new covenant, redemption or even reconciliation, do not adequately cover the overcoming of wrath. The propitiation words do not occur very often, but in view of the widespread occurrence of 'the wrath' and the like they must be given serious consideration as we reflect on what Christ's death has done for us. We turn accordingly to passages which speak specifically of propitiation.
CHRIST SET FORTH AS PROPITIATION
The first such passage is that in which Paul tells us that God has set forth Christ as 'a propitiation [hilasterion] through faith in his blood' (Rom. 3:25, AV). The word hilasterion clearly belongs to the propitiation word-group, but its interpretation in this passage has been a subject of dispute. Nrv translates 'a sacrifice of atonement' (with a marginal alternative, 'the one who would turn aside his wrath'), RSV 'an expiation', NEB 'the means of expiating sin by his sacrificial death' (which apparently includes the reference to the blood), and GNB 'the means by which people's sins are forgiven'. We are not short of suggestions and the variety of translations shows that the meaning of the passage is not obvious. At the same time one suspects that part of the problem arises from modern objections to using 'propitiation'. These days we do not like the idea of the wrath of God, and still less do we care for propitiation with its suggestion of appeasement. The variety in the translations amounts to a number of different ways of finding a substitute for propitiation.
But whether we like it or not, it is propitiation to which the linguistics point. The word is a member of the word-group we have been examining in the Old Testament and which we have seen to denote the turning away of wrath. There is no reason, either in the Greek Old Testament or in non-biblical Greek, for seeing it as meaning anything other than 'propitiation'. The form of Paul's word in this passage could give the meaning 'means of turning away wrath' or'place of turning away wrath'. Some hold that it is the latter meaning that we should see in Romans 3 and they point to the use of the word in the Septuagint for the cover of the ark, the 'mercy-seat'. They think that this is the way we should translate it in the present passage. But there are substantial reasons for rejecting this. In the Septuagint hilasterion is used for other things than the mercy-seat, such as the ledge on Ezekiel's altar (Ezk. 43:14, 17, 20, etc.) and a rather obscure reference in Amos 9:1. In Symmachus's translation it is used of Noah's ark. We need more than the simple use of the word to convey the idea of 'mercy-seat'. The Septuagint always has something in the context to give us the clue when this is meant, but there is nothing corresponding to this in Romans 3. The word means 'propitiating thing' or the like. There is nothing in the context in Romans 3 to show that the'propitiating thing' in question is the mercy-seat. 'Means of turning away wrath' is better.
RSV's 'expiation' seems to be due to nothing more profound than the rejection of the biblical idea of propitiation. We have seen this idea in the writings of C. H. Dodd and it has been widely accepted in some circles. But the linguistics are against it. The word hilasterion is one which refers to the act of persons. It signifies the means of turning away someone's anger. It is not the impersonal expiation of a sin. NN and GNB are better, but neither reckons with the fact that the word had a recognized meaning and this meaning was linked with the turning away of wrath. None of these translations fits the essential meaning of the word or the way it is used in the Old Testament.
It is sometimes said that we should understand our passage as a reference to the Day of Atonement ceremonies. I am a little more respectful of this, but I find it not demonstrated. Basically it rests on the view that hilasterion means 'mercy-seat'. From this starting-point it goes on to the reminder that this article of tabernacle furniture was used only on the Day of Atonement. On no other day could the high priest go into the Holy of Holies where the mercy-seat was (and of course no-one else could go into it at any time). The conclusion is that Paul was using the solemn fast day and its ceremonies to illustrate what Christ did for us.
But I have already noted that there is not sufficient evidence that the word means 'mercy-seat'. Granted that the mercy-seat could be regarded as 'a propitiating thing', there is nothing to show that Paul had in mind this particular 'propitiating thing'. We should also bear in mind that this apostle does not make use of Levitical practices in the way that the writer to the Hebrews does. It would be out of character for Paul to throw in just one reference to a priestly practice without explanation and without anything to follow it up. It is not that Paul would not suddenly make use of one concept which he uses nowhere else. He does this, for example, with the Rock in 1 Corinthians 10:4. But there he can be readily understood. Here he could not be so easily understood, if the reference is to an article of temple furniture which in any case was not in existence in his day. It is last mentioned in 2 Chronicles 35:3 and it is not known what happened to it after that. But it was not in the the temple in New Testament times; it had long since vanished. The sprinkling of the blood was carried out on the Day of Atonement, but it was not the mercy-seat that was sprinkled. It was a stone on the traditional site of the ark, a stone three finger-breadths high called Shetiyah. The difficulties in the way of interpreting Paul as referring to the Day of Atonement are simply too great.
A cogent argument in favour of 'propitiation' (in addition to the normal meaning of the word) is the context. In the opening section of Romans Paul has argued powerfully that the wrath of God 'is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men' (Rom. 1:18). He proceeds to document this with respect both to the Gentiles and to the Jews and he backs up his argument with an appeal to a list of scriptural passages (Rom. 3:10-18). It is not too much to say that, after his salutation and introductory remarks, the whole of the early part of Romans is a massive indictment of all mankind with a view to showing that all people are sinners (Rom. 3:23) and accordingly that they are under the judgment of God and are the objects of his wrath.
In Romans 3:21 Paul begins a most important section in which he shows how the death of Christ deals with the problem of sin. Part of the process is his dealing with the wrath. That the wrath is important for Paul is shown by the way he has ordered his argument to show that all are the objects of the wrath (Rom. 1:18; 2:5, 8; 3:5; cf. 4:15). But unless hilasterion means 'propitiation', Paul has put men under the wrath of God and left them there. He uses other terms like redemption and justification, but these have nothing to do with wrath. These two refer respectively to the paying of a price to set people free and to the paying of a penalty. Nothing deals with salvation from the divine wrath other than hilasterion, which means 'the averting of wrath'.
If we reduce hilastPrion here to the sub-personal 'expiation', as do some modern translations and commentators, then what has become of God's wrath? Paul has undoubtedly put emphasis on it in the earlier stages of his massive argument. This understanding of the term leaves the wrath unaccounted for. Are we to understand that, though we are in some sense saved, God's wrath is still in force? Or that in the last resort God's wrath can simply be ignored? How can we fit such ideas into Paul's argument? To do justice to what the apostle is saying we must include in our understanding of this passage the idea that part of the meaning of salvation is that God's wrath is averted.
I am not concerned to contend for the word 'propitiation'. I do not find it an elegant word, nor one which is easily understood by most people today. By all means let us abandon it if we can find a better way of expressing what it stands for. But if I am not greatly concerned about the word, I am greatly concerned about the idea that it conveys. The plain fact is that hilasterion signifies 'the means of averting wrath' and the new translations miss this. And in missing it they pass over a very important biblical concept. The other words they use do not bring out the truth that in one aspect Christ's atoning work dealt with the wrath of God against sinners. This is too important a biblical theme for us simply to ignore it. So far, the alternative translations suggested do just that.
THE VERB 'TO PROPITIATE'
The corresponding verb 'to propitiate' is not common in the New Testament. In connection with the atonement it is used but once, namely in Hebrews 2:17, where the writer speaks of Christ as becoming 'a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people'. Here NIV has our verb as 'make atonement for' (with a marginal alternative, 'that he might turn aside God's wrath'), while RSV renders it 'to make expiation for', and NEB is similar, 'to expiate'. GNB paraphrases with 'so that the people's sins would be forgiven'. Again we see behind all these translations an unwillingness to recognize that the word-group has to do with the putting away of wrath.
There is one point in favour of translations such as 'to expiate' in this passage, namely that the verb has 'the sins' as its direct object. This is a very unusual construction. In all of Greek literature outside the Bible it is cited once only and in the Greek Old Testament once more. There are half a dozen examples in the apocryphal book Sirach and these are sometimes claimed confidently as part of the background of the New Testament writers and as supporting the meaning 'expiate'. The basic idea in the whole argument is that 'propitiate' has a person as its object, while 'expiate' has a sin. Since the object here is 'the sins', the reasoning runs, the meaning is 'expiate'.
But it is not easy to make the argument stand up. The passages in Sirach, for example, do not prove the point and these are important, for this is apparently the only book which has more than one example of 'sin' as the direct object of our verb. Let us look at a typical passage: 'Do not say, "His mercy is great, he will forgive [really'be propitiated for'] the multitude of my sins," for both mercy and wrath are with him, and his anger rests on sinners' (Sirach 5:6). The fact that 'sin' is the direct object of our verb does not signify that the meaning 'expiate' is in order and that the idea of wrath has been abandoned. The verse quite plainly means that if anyone goes on calmly in his sin, relying on the compassion of God to see him through, he will be in deep trouble. There are explicit references to 'wrath' and 'anger'. The evil-doer will find that God's anger is a reality resting on sinners. The passage makes no sense without the concept of the divine wrath. That wrath against a man's 'multitude' of sins cannot be held to be averted simply because God is compassionate. The passage lends no support to the view that the verb has lost its meaning of the turning away of anger. On the contrary, it requires just this meaning.
There is no point in going through the entire list. It is enough to say that in most of the other cases the context makes it clear that the verb has to do with the removal of wrath. If a passage speaks of the wrath of God as at work and then uses our verb with respect to the bringing in of a happier state of affairs, then, translate it how you will, the meaning is that wrath is averted from the sinner.
Since the meaning 'expiate' cannot be demonstrated anywhere we should understand the verb in Hebrews 2 as elsewhere in the sense 'to make propitiation', 'to turn away anger'. The passage will mean, 'to make propitiation with respect to the sins of the people.' This understanding of the word agrees with the meaning of the verb elsewhere and with the teaching of Hebrews as a whole. It should further be noted that the immediate context favours it, for Christ is spoken of as 'a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God'. If mercy is specifically required and if Christ is acting 'in the service of God' who is totally opposed to sin, then sinners are in trouble. The turning away of wrath is very much in place in a situation which can be described in these terms.
THE PROPITIATION FOR OUR SINS
The noun 'propitiation', hilasmos, is found twice in the New Testament, both in 1 John. The first passage assures the reader that 'we have one who speaks to the Father in our defence - Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins' (1 Jn. 2:1-2). Here NN translates hilasmos with 'atoning sacrifice', but has a marginal alternative, 'He is the one who turns aside God's wrath'. The other passage says, 'This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins' (1 Jn. 4:10). Again there is a marginal reading, 'as the one who would turn aside his wrath'. In both passages (as elsewhere) this version's margin recognizes the true meaning of the term.
Scholars like Dodd and the translators of the RSV (who have 'expiation' in both places) reject the idea of the wrath of God here as elsewhere. But as far as I know there is nothing to be added to the case they have made in the earlier passages. If we feel that it has not been made out for those passages, it has not been made out here. And there are some additional objections. The first is context. In the case of 1 John 2:2 even Dodd admits that 'in the immediate context it might seem possible that the sense of "propitiation" is in place'.' It seems not only possible but demanded. Christ is described as 'an advocate with the Father' (AV, RSV; NN has 'one who speaks to the Father in our defence'). If we need this kind of help, then clearly we sinners are in trouble. We are facing the opposition of God against us for the evil we have done, or, as Scripture would put it, the wrath of God. Notice further that Christ is called 'the Righteous One' and that there is a reference to his blood a few verses earlier (in 1:7). We recall that in Romans 3:25, where another 'propitiation' word occurs, there are several references to the righteousness of God in the context and the propitiation is in Christ's blood. Such resemblances strengthen the conviction that this passage too refers to propitiation.
In the case of 1 John 4:10 there is no compelling reason in the context why 'propitiation' should be chosen as the translation, though at least we can say that 'propitiation' is quite suitable. If we accept it we have another of the vivid paradoxes which lead us into a deeper understanding of Christ's atoning work. If we reduce it to 'expiation' the passage is less colourful.
CONCLUSION
From all this it seems clear that the words traditionally understood as'propitiation' should not be watered down to'expiation' or the like. They are fully personal words: they have to do with the way a person acts. They tell us of the wrath of a great Person, whereas 'expiation' operates on a sub-personal level. It means no more than the wiping out of a crime or a sin or whatever. It does not take into account the fact that persons are involved.
Suggestions other than 'propitiation' thus give an inferior sense. They overlook the personal factor which is so important with 'propitiation'. In addition they fail to square with the linguistic facts. We have seen that in both the Old Testament and the New there is good reason for understanding the relevant Hebrew and Greek words to mean the putting away of the divine wrath. The Bible is insistent that the wrath of God is the grim reality which the sinner must ultimately face. God is not neutral in the face of evil, but is strongly and personally active in opposition to it.
Probably a good part of the modern objection to the use of the term 'propitiation' arises from the widespread feeling that'wrath' is not a good word to use about God. He is above our petty angers and what he feels must be so different from human anger that we easily come to think that we should abandon the concept when we talk about God. I for one feel the strong attraction of such a view. Nobody wants to attribute to God the weakness we know so well from human anger.
But such an approach is not fully convincing. What it amounts to is no more than the reminder that we cannot attribute to God an anger like our own. With us anger always involves elements of passion and lack of self-control. We speak of losing our temper and the like. No-one wants to attribute to God the worst elements in human anger.
But whenever we say anything about God there must always be the implied qualification, 'of course, without the defects that we see in people even at their best.' This applies not only to wrath but to everything we say about God. We do not hesitate to speak of the love of God. But can anyone say that that puny thing human love is at best is really what we mean when we speak of God? And is it not the same with goodness, mercy, and indeed every quality which we ascribe to God? The use of a term in human life may well be a guide to the quality in God of which we wish to speak, but in no case can it be said that God exercises the quality with all our human weaknesses.
It is the same with wrath. We know among men a quality which we speak of as 'righteous indignation' and this gives us a glimpse of what a pure and selfless anger might be. It is something like this that is in mind when we speak of 'the wrath of God'. We mean 'wrath without the imperfections that characterize human wrath at its best'. We use the term, not because it is a perfect word, but as Augustine said long ago, 'lest we remain silent'. It is not ideal but it is the best we can do. It expresses the strong and personal opposition to evil that God shows and the alternatives so far suggested do not. We have no better word for the divine repulsion against every evil thing.
This does not mean that we should accept crude ideas about 'anger' and 'propitiation'. It is abundantly clear in the Bible that God cannot be propitiated in the way the pagans held that their deities could be. The God of the Bible is not capricious or arbitrary. He does not impose punishments without reason on bewildered worshippers who must then bribe him back into a good mood with their costly offerings. To argue that we must take propitiation seriously is not to resurrect unacceptable, subChristian ideas. It is simply to accept the idea that runs through the Bible, New Testament as well as Old, that God is vigorously opposed to every form of evil. It is to face the implication of that fact, namely that forgiveness of sin must take into account that divine opposition. Why should we think that we can ignore it?
Some find a difficulty in that they see wrath as incompatible with the fact that'God is love'. They are so sure of the love of God that they say that there can be no such thing as the wrath of God. But this is faulty reasoning. The opposite of love is not wrath. It is hate. We can say that, if God is a God of love, he will not hate those that he has made, but we cannot say that he will never be angry with them. Indeed, the opposite may well be the case. The more he loves the more he will be angry with everything that mars the perfection of the beloved, that is with every sin. God's wrath is identical with God's love. God's wrath is God's love blazing out in fiery indignation against every evil in the beloved.
I am arguing that if there is divine hostility to evil, then this must be taken into account in the process whereby forgiveness is brought about. This does not mean that we must bribe God to be kind. But it does mean that the way in which God brings about our salvation will necessarily take account of God's strong opposition to evil. He will not forgive with an airy wave of the hand. His wrath will be reckoned with.
This is all the more important in that those who reduce our term to no more than 'expiation' rarely face the questions that result. If there is no 'wrath of God', if 'wrath' is the wrong term and there is nothing corresponding to this teaching of Scripture, then the question arises, 'hy should sin be expiated?' And another question, 'What would happen if sin were not expiated?' And another, 'Would there be any unpleasant consequences?' If there are to be such consequences, yet another question must be faced, 'Would God be active in those consequences?' Unless we are prepared to say that there are no significant consequences of sin, that evil people will always get away with their wrongdoing, that in the end wickedness will triumph, it seems that we are shut up to the view that in the end God will take action to deal with sin and with sinners. Call it what you will, the wrath of God must be included in any serious consideration of the ultimate destiny of the human race.
The impersonal expiation view is up against another difficulty. By taking the personal out of the process of forgiveness it raises the question, 'What is the meaning of an impersonal process in a genuinely theistic universe?' If God made this universe and if he ordered it to run as it does, with sin being punished in one way or another, then God cannot be absolved of responsibility when this happens. If there is a process of putting away sin (expiation), then God must be in that too. We cannot bow God out of his creation. It seems impossible to get rid of the idea that salvation comes about because of God's personal activity. And that means propitiation rather than expiation. It means salvation on personal terms, not the end-product of an impersonal process.
We should also bear in mind that the idea of the wrath of God is a genuinely Christian idea. Some of those who criticize it seem to suggest that it was an idea imported into Christianity from its pagan environment. But this is not the way of it at all. Greek philosophy had long since abandoned the idea that deity could experience anger. Deity, it was held, is passionless, quite without disturbing emotions of any sort. The Christians held on to the idea of the wrath of God in spite of the criticisms that came from their environment. It was not an idea that penetrated their system from that environment and which they were unable to resist.
We should also notice that early Christian writers like 1 Clement and Hermas undoubtedly had the idea of propitiation. They use the verb with the accusative of the Deity and in the sense 'propitiate'. With this construction there is no possible doubt. I have been arguing that there is continuity of meaning, that there is the wrath of God and a forgiveness that takes account of it in both the Old Testament and the New and this, of course, goes on into the early church. But if those who hold that the Septuagint translators and the New Testament writers worked out a new meaning for the word-group are correct, then nobody understood them until our own day. Their new understanding perished with them. We do not find it in the literature of the early church or anywhere else until our own day. It is a big claim that every Christian generation but our own has failed to understand this not unimportant piece of biblical teaching.
It is difficult to resist the impression that the claim arises basically from the outlook of our generation. We do not like the concept of the wrath of God and we are happy to accept an argument that enables us to get rid of it. But the wrath of God is real and the writers of the New Testament books no less than the Old make this clear. We must reckon with that wrath. Unpalatable though it may be, our sins, my sins, are the object of that wrath. If we are taking our Bible seriously we must realize that every sin is displeasing to God and that unless something is done about the evil we have committed we face ultimately nothing less than the divine anger. God has given us every opportunity, but we have sinned. His wrath is the consequence.
But, of course, the important teaching at which we have been looking in this chapter is that the divine wrath is not the last word. Part of what Christ did on the cross was propitiation, the taking of such action that that wrath no longer works against us. He has made the offering that turns away wrath and as we put our trust in him we need fear it no more. This means a wonderful assurance of peace for the Christian. In the end we have nothing to fear, for 'he is the propitiation for our sins'.
For further study
1. Make a summary of Old Testament passages you know which refer to the divine anger. (Use a concordance if necessary.) Notice what it is that causes this anger.
2. What do you see as the meaning of 'the wrath of God'?
3. Where can you find the idea of God's wrath in the New Testament? In the concordance, look up 'wrath', 'anger', 'punish', etc.) What conclusions do you draw from this?
4. How does the concept of propitiation help us to see the meaning of the cross?
5. Carefully trace Paul's argument in Romans 1-3. Notice how it requires us to see that there is a divine wrath against sin with which Christ deals in his atoning work.
Justification has been the subject of a good deal of attention from Christian thinkers, especially from the Reformation period onwards. But these days it is more common to have people get excited about the place of justification than to give careful attention to its meaning. For some it is the be-all and the end-all of Christian salvation. Understand justification and you understand everything that matters. For others it is an irritating piece of legalism. It takes attention away from the personal categories that mean so much in the New Testament and reduces us to a discussion of hair-splitting legal quibbles. We would be better without it. There are, of course, all sorts of gradations in between. But, like it or not, it is an important biblical topic, especially in the Pauline writings.
The position is complicated by the fact that, where in English we have two word-groups to express the Concepts of 'justice' and 'righteousness' (which seem to us quite different ideas), in Hebrew and in Greek and for that matter in a number of other languages the one word does duty for both concepts. This means that if we are to study justification we must include some notice of the righteousness words as well. This entails a lot of work, for the New Testament has ninety-two examples of the noun dikaiosyne ('justice' or 'righteousness'), thirty-nine of the verb dikaioo ('justify' or 'reckon as righteous'), ten of the noun dikaioma (concrete expression of the root idea -'ordinance' or'sentence of justification'), eighty-one of the adjective dikaios ('just' or 'righteous'), and five of the adverb dikaios ('justly' or 'righteously'). A good deal of this will in the end be found to have little bearing on our understanding of the atonement, but the number of passages to be looked at is impressive. There cannot be any doubt but that this category is deserving of the most serious study.
THE ATTITUDE TO LAW
Nor can we confine ourselves to the vocabulary of justification. I have pointed out that justification is a legal term and this means that we must take notice of the way people viewed law in Bible times, for this is the context in which justification is set. In those days and in those places people did not look at law in quite the same way as we do. With us 'legalism' is a dirty word. We do not like what we see as excessive concentration on legal niceties of no great significance. We firmly believe that experts in legal matters can find all sorts of loopholes in the law to benefit themselves, but also all sorts of restrictions which the law provides to bind other people. We do not like it and we tend to become suspicious of any emphasis on law. If in a discussion we can fasten the label 'legalist' on our opponent we are home and dry. No-one these days is going to take notice of a legalist.
But we should not read this attitude back into the thinking of people in antiquity. For the men of the Bible law held a special place. They kept using legal terms in ways that we find strange. This probably arises from the fact that they were so used to oppression and tyranny. Everyone knew that there was one law for the rich and another for the poor. Indeed, this was sometimes written into the statutes. There is a well-known law code of Babylon called 'The Code of Hammurabi' (c. 1792-1750 Bc) which provides for punishment for a variety of offences. Take as an example these three sections dealing with an identical offence, the differences being in the offender and his victim:
If a citizen has struck the cheek of his superior, he shall receive in the council sixty strokes with a thong.
If one of citizen status has struck the cheek of his equal, he shall pay one mina of silver.
If a vassal has struck the cheek of a fellow vassal, he shall pay ten shekels of silver.
The immediately preceding regulations provide that, if a citizen knocked out the tooth of a fellow citizen, his own tooth be knocked out. But if it was only a vassal's tooth it is sufficient for him to pay a third of a mina of silver. W. J. Martin thinks it likely that the provisions of this code were not carried out in practice, but that they remained as the ideal.' If this was the ideal, then in practice there must have been a very great deal of injustice indeed.
Over against this kind of practice the observance of strict justice was a consummation devoutly to be wished. A firm administration of even-handed justice looked to people in that situation very much like mercy does to us. We tend to be critical of a regulation like 'life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot' (Dt. 19:21). But to the people of the day this must have seemed a wonderful advance. It meant that the wealthy and the powerful could not get away with crimes against the lowly. They must be punished with strict justice in exact proportion to the crimes they had committed, no matter against whom. And for poor and friendless sinners it meant that punishment should not be excessive. No more than an eye was to be exacted for an eye, or a tooth for a tooth. Strict justice was important. Especially was justice looked for in kings. It is worthy of notice, for example, that David practised justice and judgment (2 Sa. 8:15).
It is not surprising that people who thought like this did not hesitate to use legal terms when writing about their God. Abraham's question is recorded, 'Will not the Judge of all the earth do right [or'do justice']?' (Gn. 18:25). Here God is addressed with the legal title 'Judge', and in that capacity he is relied upon to act rightly (or with justice). A similar way of thinking underlies many statements about God in the Old Testament.
GOD WORKS BY LAW
It fits this way of looking at life that God is seen to work by the method of law. 'Even the stork in the sky knows her appointed seasons, and the dove, the swift and the thrush observe the time of their migration. But my people do not know the requirements of the LORD' (Je. 8:7). The word translated 'requirements' is the plural of mishpat, the normal Hebrew term for'judgment'. It is a legal term. If we translate it as 'requirements' we should under stand this in the sense 'legal requirements'. God works by the way of law. Just as he has put into the birds a 'law' that covers their migrations, so he has provided laws for his people. In both he is concerned for law.
The Old Testament writers often prefer legal to any other imagery when they are referring to what God does. His delivering of Israel from Egypt might easily have been described as a defeat of Pharaoh or as a work of power, and it sometimes is. But it is also an act of justice. God says, 'I will lay my hand on Egypt and with mighty acts of judgment I will bring out my divisions, my people the Israelites' (Ex. 7:4; so also 6:6). What God did was certainly a series of powerful acts, too powerful for the mighty Egyptians to counter or ward off. But the sacred writer sees them as 'judgments'. It was 'just' that God should smite the Egyptians and deliver the oppressed Israelites. When God struck down the first-born he was bringing 'judgment' (Ex. 12:12; Nu. 33:4).
Another well-known example of this way of thinking occurs in the Song of Deborah, when that redoubtable woman called the mighty deliverance of God 'the righteous acts of the LORD' (Jdg. 5:11). God's deliverance of his people was not arbitrary. It was right that he should overthrow the oppressor. But the same attitude meant that Israel had no immunity. The punishment of this nation was also a matter of executing judgment (Ezk. 5:8,10; 'punishment' in NIV in both verses is the translation of shephatim, 'judgments').
This love for legal imagery comes out again and again when the Israelites spoke of the acts of God. There is a tremendous judgment-scene in Micah where God is depicted as the counsel for the prosecution (or perhaps as the initiator of a civil action): 'Stand up, plead your case before the mountains; let the hills hear what you have to say. Hear, 0 mountains, the LORD's accusation; listen, you everlasting foundations of the earth. For the LORD has a case against his people; he is lodging a charge against Israel' (Mi. 6:1-2). Legal terms abound. The mountains are pictured as assessors or as a jury before whom the case will be heard. God sets forth his complaint in the accepted legal fashion.
There is a similar invitation to the nations generally: 'Let them come forward and speak; let us meet together at the place of judgment' (Is. 41:1). Or again, "'Present your case," says the LORD. "Set forth your arguments," says Jacob's King' (Is. 41:21). Or the prophet may wish to affirm his confidence and he may do this in legal language: 'He who vindicates me is near. Who then will bring charges against me? Let us face each other! Who is my accuser?' (Is. 50:8). The LORD's complaint against 'the nations' and against 'all mankind' is put in legal terms (Je. 25:31) and there are many passages like, 'The LORD takes his place in court; he rises to judge the people. The LORD enters into judgment against the elders and leaders of his people' (Is. 3:13).
This list is quite long enough, but the material is by no means exhausted. We should not think that the use of legal categories with respect to God is no more than occasional and that it is more or less accidental. It is frequent, so frequent indeed that it is plain that it corresponds to something deep-seated in Hebrew thinking. Law and the LORD went together. Law is congenial to God and it must be to his people.
THE LAWS OF GOD
It should not surprise us, then, that the actual laws given in the Old Testament are often associated with God. The great word for 'law' in the Old Testament is torah. Modem scholars usually see the fundamental idea conveyed by the word as 'instruction'. They may well be right, all the more so as the term is used of the instruction the priests give. Thus Malachi lays it down that 'the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, and from his mouth men should seek instruction' (Mal. 2:7). Again we read, 'the teaching of the law by the priest will not be lost, nor will counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophets' (Je. 18:18). But torah is frequently used of 'law' in our sense of the term, as when we read, 'The same law applies to the native-born and to the alien living among you' (Ex. 12:49).
The interesting thing for our present inquiry is that either way torah is constantly associated with the LORD. It is said to be 'the law of Yahweh' or 'his law' or, if God is speaking, 'my law'. In prayer one may say'thy law'. Sixteen times we read of 'the law of Moses' which amounts to much the same thing. No-one held that Moses originated the law; he simply passed on what God said to him (e.g. Ex. 20:1-17). As for the priestly torah, this too came from God, as we see from some words in Hosea, 'Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests; because you have ignored the torah of your God...' (Ho. 4:6). Constantly torah is associated with God. The word occurs 220 times in the Old Testament and there seem to be no more than seventeen occasions when it is clear that it is not God's torah that is in mind.
This phenomenon is repeated with other law words. There are a couple of words for 'statute'; hoq, which is linked with the LORD in eighty-seven of its 127 occurrences, and huqqah which is so linked in no less than ninety-six cases out of one hundred and four. The term mishpat is the usual term for 'judgment', but it may also be used in the sense 'law'; it is usually in the plural when used in this sense. The word is linked with Yahweh about 180 times and it agrees with this that the participle of the corresponding verb is used to refer to God as 'Judge'. In this or in some other way the verb is used of God over sixty times.
The list could be continued with other law terms, but there is scarcely the need. Enough has been cited to show that the Old Testament writers did not regard law as a burdensome requirement, devised by human ingenuity to make life difficult. Rather it was the wise provision of a loving God to ensure that his people had the guidance they needed to enable them to live well-adjusted lives, lives pleasing to God and which fulfilled the best purposes for men.
In an earlier chapter we saw that covenant was a dominant concept among the Hebrews. It should not be overlooked that covenant is another legal term. A covenant was a legal document. The centrality of the covenant puts law in an important place. Qualities like goodwill (even love) and loyalty were looked for in those who made covenants, but this should not blind us to the fact that a covenant was not an informal expression of goodwill. A covenant was essentially a legal arrangement. This is illustrated by what Joshua did when he brought the people into Canaan: 'Joshua made a covenant for the people, and there at Shechem he drew up for them decrees and laws' (Jos. 24:25). Or again, of the covenant God made with Abraham we read, 'He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree, to Israel as an everlasting covenant' (Ps. 105:10). The parallelism makes 'decree' (or'law', hoq) very close in meaning to covenant.
All this shows plainly that the Old Testament writers delighted to apply legal categories to the working of God. We cannot say that this is confined to a few writers or a small section of the Old Testament. It is widespread, indeed practically universal. This has important consequences for our understanding of Hebrew religion. Israel's neighbours appear to have had no such concep tion. Their gods were capricious beings who might act in bewildering ways. They were completely unpredictable. But the linking of law with God delivered the Israelites from such moral and religious chaos. It was not that they thought of law as hanging over God in some way, as something to which he must submit. Such an idea is nonsense. God is superior to everyone and everything. Rather law was seen to be, so to speak, part of God. It was the way he worked. God is essentially righteous. He is just. He may be relied upon. He will always act in accordance with justice.
It is important to bear all this in mind as we approach the subject of justification. Justification is not to be viewed as an isolated topic which is to be studied as a self-contained concept. It belongs to a whole way of viewing God and the acts of God. If a God like the God depicted in the Old Testament is to save men, then he will do so in a way that is right, a way which takes due notice of the place of law and justice. We cannot dismiss the New Testament references to justification as so much superficial legalism which may be discarded without loss. The use of legal categories in the Old Testament as a means of setting forth religious truth, followed up as it is in the New Testament with its references to justification, means that we must take with full seriousness the legal way of setting forth what God has done to bring salvation to his people.
THE MEANING OF JUSTIFICATION
In the light of our examination so far it should not surprise us that righteousness, as the Old Testament writers understand it, is closely connected with justice. Indeed the one word does duty for the two conceptions. Traditional education in the modern English-speaking world perhaps makes it more difficult for us to grasp this. Much of our understanding is derived from the classics, and in the classical Greek writers righteousness is an ethical virtue. Something like this may, of course, on occasion appear among the Hebrews. The man who had right standing with God will always have a deep concern for ethical uprightness and the Hebrews might express this with the righteousness terminology. But it still remains that for them the basic meaning of these words is legal rather than ethical. Long ago J. Skinner wrote, 'the forensic element preponderates' in the Old Testament idea of righteousness and he went on to explain:
It is conformity to the law of God that is in mind, not conformity to an ethical norm. It is a religious, not an ethical term.
The legal basis is plain in such a passage as Isaiah 5:22-23, though our translations do not always reflect this. NN has it that the prophet says: 'Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine and champions at mixing drinks, who acquit the guilty for a bribe, but deny justice to the innocent.' The words rendered 'deny justice to the innocent' more literally mean 'take away the righteousness of the righteous from him' (as AV). Now it is not possible to take away righteousness in the ethical sense. If a man is ethically righteous he is ethically righteous, no matter what corrupt judges do. What Isaiah is saying is that certain judges who are mighty drinkers refuse to give the verdict according to justice. They take away the 'right-standing' from the man who has justice on his side; they rob him of the acquittal to which he is entitled.
Similarly to justify the wicked and to condemn the just are both abominable to the LORD (Pr. 17:15); the one is the wrong conferring of a status, the other the wrong removal of a status. The procedure that ought in justice to be followed is given: 'When men have a dispute, they are to take it to the court and the judges will decide the case, acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty' (Dt. 25:1). The verb translated 'acquitting' could be rendered 'they will justify'. In this verse justification and condemnation are set over against one another as contrasting legal terms. Justification means much what we mean by'acquittal' (which is the basis of the translation in NIV). We see the legal basis again when we read in Isaiah, 'Let them bring in their witnesses to prove they were right ['that they may be justified', RV]' (Is. 43:9). The ground of the justification is the bringing forward of witnesses to establish the legal proof.
Many passages could be cited. The legal basis of justification is clear. This is not to minimize the importance of passages in which the word-group is used in a non-legal way. There are many such. The situation is not unlike the way we use the English word 'judge'. Both the noun and the verb are used for a wide variety of non-legal activities. But that does not alter the fact that 'judge' is a legal term, nor that it is the legal use that gives us the clue to all the other uses. What I am saying is that, while 'justify', 'justification' and the like may well be used in a variety of ways, including the ethical, the basic meaning is legal and it is the legal that gives us the clue to all the other uses.
Take, for example, the prayer of the Psalmist: 'Do not bring your servant into judgment, for no-one living is righteous [=will be justified] before you' (Ps. 143:2). The writer is facing the important question: 'How can sinful man be accepted by a just God?' The Psalmist recognizes his limitations, his sheer inability to reach the standard God requires of him. He looks for mercy (verse 1), he relies on God's 'unfailing love' (verse 8). And in the verse in which we are primarily interested he puts his plea in legal terms. He asks that he be not involved in a lawsuit with God, for he knows that he has no way of getting the verdict in such a lawsuit. Clearly he is not thinking of a literal lawsuit, but he uses the legal metaphor as a way of bringing out his deep conviction of his unworthiness. And this, he says, applies not only to him. No-one on earth will ever be accepted before God on the ground of his merits. We are all sinners and our sins prevent us from ever being justified in God's sight.
THE JUSTIFICATION OF GOD
Now and then there is a striking use of the terminology when it is God who is said to be justified. There is the well-known prayer in which the Psalmist addresses his Maker in these terms: 'you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge' (Ps. 51:4). There is no question of anyone putting God on trial. But the Psalmist can use the imagery of the lawcourt to make his point. When anyone is acquitted in a court of law he is shown to have right on his side. So whenever God engages in judgment one result is that he is invariably shown to be in the right. He is 'proved right'; he is 'justified'. There is no question here of the verb having a meaning like 'make righteous', as some suggest. It cannot have such a meaning in this passage. The process of judgment shows that God is just, or perhaps is a vivid declaration that he is just.
The same essential meaning of 'justify' is seen elsewhere, as when Elihu accused job of 'justifying himself rather than God' (Jb. 32:2). His complaint was not that Job had in some way 'made' himself righteous instead of making God righteous. Rather he is complaining that, whereas Job should have been concerned to declare that God is righteous, to show that God is just, he had instead been preoccupied with showing that he himself was just. Whether Job or God is the object of the verb the context makes it clear that it is a declaratory process that is in mind.
God's activity as judge and his character as just are often before us. 'The heavens proclaim his righteousness, for God himself is judge' (Ps. 50:6); the LORD 'comes, he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his truth' (Ps. 96:13). In an interesting linking of legal terms 'the LORD Almighty will be exalted by his justice (mishpat), and the holy God will show himself holy by his righteousness (ts'daqah)' (Is. 5:16). The two legal terms are joined with holiness in an impressive statement about the character of God. For our present purpose the significant thing is that, even when speaking about the divine holiness, it was quite natural for the prophet to express his meaning in legal terms.
RIGHTEOUSNESS AND SALVATION
A further feature of this terminology is the way it is linked with salvation. It is a just, a righteous thing with God that he bring salvation. The Psalmist can sing, 'The LORD has made his salvation known and revealed his righteousness to the nations' (Ps. 98:2), where the parallelism makes 'salvation' and 'righteousness' very close in meaning. The Psalmist is speaking about essentially the same thing in both parts of the verse, but he brings it out in two different ways. God's righteousness may well be exercised (and recognized) in his delivering of his people. So is it when the LORD says, 'my salvation will last for ever, my righteousness will never fail' (Is. 51:6). Or when the Psalmist prays, 'My mouth will tell of your righteousness, of your salvation all day long' (Ps. 71:15).
We may fairly infer from such passages (and there are many of them) that righteousness and salvation go together. Where there is true righteousness, salvation follows. It would not be going too far to say that in one aspect God's righteousness brings salvation. We may also infer that salvation, as the Bible writers understand it, is right and just. They do not see God as delivering his people quite apart from moral considerations. The gods of the heathen might be thought of by their worshippers as mighty deliverers who would rescue their devotees quite irrespective of their moral worth. But for Israel God is just. When he delivers the people it is because it is just and right that he should do so. If they continue in sin they can look for no deliverance, only punishment. But when they are fulfilling their role as the people of God they can confidently look to God to save them.
This is not the way the terminology is used in the New Testament. There we have the thought that God saves sinners. In the Old Testament the righteousness terminology is not used to bring out this thought. The two do not contradict one another. It is a question of terminology. And the fact is that in the Old Testament the righteousness terminology is used of the way God delivers his people, not of the salvation of sinners. That is expressed rather by terms like 'mercy'.
An important idea in the New Testament is that righteousness may be imputed. There are grounds for imputation in an Old Testament passage, that in which we read, 'Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness' (Gn. 15:6). This presents a problem to some modern people, because we so firmly believe that righteousness is an ethical quality. It is'being good'. In that sense it is nonsense to talk about righteousness being imputed. Everyone who aspires to this kind of righteousness must merit it for himself, by right living. It cannot be 'credited' or 'reckoned' or 'imputed' to him other than in some fictitious and fanciful sense. But when we see righteousness as basically legal, as 'right-standing', it is another matter. A standing or status can be conferred. The narrative says that God conferred this status on Abraham because of his faith. Paul uses this as his classic example of justification by faith. Abraham received his 'right-standing' not on account of any meritorious action but simply because he trusted God.
Phinehas was another to whom righteousness was imputed: 'Phinehas stood up and intervened, and the plague was checked. This was credited to him as righteousness for endless generations to come' (Ps. 106:30-31). There is this difference from Abraham, that Phinehas performed a rather vigorous action, namely the slaying of the two chief sinners at Baal-Peor (Nu. 25:6-8). He can scarcely be cited as a convincing example of righteousness on the grounds of faith alone. But his attitude was not unimportant and he was commended on the grounds of his zeal for the LORD's honour (Nu. 25:11).
MERCY AND TRUST
Those who read the New Testament can scarcely refer to justification without adding 'by faith'. This has become one of the great doctrines which Christians discuss endlessly. As far as the terminology goes it is a New Testament doctrine. We never find it explicitly set forth in the Old Testament. But that does not mean that in those days God saved people by a different method. The way of expressing it is different, but the basic thought is the same. It is just as clear in the Old Testament as it is in the New that people are accepted by God because of his forgiving grace and mercy. They are exhorted to godly living, but it is God's mercy that is decisive. A great passage in Isaiah makes it clear that God's good gift is not earned by human merit: 'Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost' (Is. 55:1). The prophet goes on to an exhortation, 'Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon' (Is. 55:6-7). Such a passage makes it very plain that the sinner may look to God for mercy and salvation. Salvation comes by God's grace. This conviction is widespread.
Thus Micah exults in God's forgiveness: 'Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry for ever but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea' (Mi. 7:18-19). There is no room for human merit in such a view of forgiveness. And when Micah goes on to say, 'You will be true to Jacob, and show mercy to Abraham, as you pledged on oath to our fathers in days long ago' (verse 20), he is taking us back to the days of the patriarchs as one who would say, 'God has always dealt with men in mercy. We may rely on him who showed mercy to Jacob and to Abraham.' A very moving expression of trust comes from the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem: 'Because of the LoRD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness' (La. 3:22-23). The pious man of the Old Testament could rely on God's compassion even in the ruins of his beloved city.
The Old Testament says little in set terms about faith. There is the well-known passage in Habakkuk, 'the righteous will live by his faith' (Hab. 2:4). Most recent scholars emphasize that the Hebrew here means faithfulness rather than faith. They see it as indicating the man who can be relied on rather than the one who relies. Let us grant the point. But it still remains that for the prophet (and indeed for the Old Testament saints generally) faithfulness in trying circumstances arises from a trustful reliance on God. The two concepts are not really far apart. Habakkuk is certainly not envisaging a self-made man, proud in his selfreliance. He is speaking of one who walks humbly with God.
This thought is explicit in the frequent references to trust. If 'faith' is not a common Old Testament word, 'trust' is and the two are not so very different in meaning. 'I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation' (Ps. 13:5). So again, 'Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. The LORD, the LORD, is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation' (Is. 12:2). Or consider these words of comfort: 'You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you. Trust in the LORD for ever, for the LORD, the LORD, is the Rock eternal' (Is. 26:3-4). It would not be difficult to compile a lengthy list of such passages, for trust in God is one of the leading Old Testament ideas.
Sometimes the trust words are linked with the righteousness words. Thus the Psalmist exhorts his readers: 'Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn...' (Ps. 37:5-6). We have just noticed the 'trust' saying in Isaiah 26:3-4; it is worth adding that these words are introduced with 'Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, the nation that keeps faith' (verse 2). Again, 'Those who trust in the LORD' appear to be identical with 'the righteous' to whom the land is allotted (Ps. 125:1, 3). Negatively, the man who 'trusts in his righteousness' will be in great trouble (Ezk. 33:13).
From all this it is clear that in the Old Testament period it was made quite plain that people must trust in God. The way of acceptance depends on his saving activity and the attitude for which he looks is one of trustful dependence. While the actual expression 'justification by faith' does not occur in the Old Testament, the essential doctrine is there. God saves people. They do not save themselves. And the attitude they should bring is faith (or trust). They did not know the terminology of the New Testament, but they did know that trustful reliance on God is the essence of the matter.
JUSTIFICATION IN JUDAISM
In the rabbinic writings it is everywhere assumed that men are accepted before God on the grounds of their merit. The legal language we have seen in the Old Testament is often used to express this conviction. It is God's judgment that determines whether a man is righteous or not, but there are various ways in which this judgment is manifested. A number of times it is said that God judges the world four times a year: at Passover there is judgment in respect of produce, at Pentecost of fruit, at Tabernacles of rain, while at New Year God weighs men's merits and assigns rewards and punishments. They then have until the Day of Atonement (a period of ten days) to repent of their sins; if they have not done so by then, God's decree becomes unalterable.
God appears to be bound by these decrees and there are some extraordinary provisions to meet cases where he would prefer not to be. Thus if the nation was adjudged wicked at New Year's Day and allotted scanty rain as a result, but repented after the Day of Atonement, there was a problem. God's decree could not be altered. But could God withhold blessing from his penitent people? The Rabbis did not see this as a possibility. They taught that in this case God so arranged things that the scanty rain fell at the best time and on the places that needed it, so that it did maximum good. On the other hand if the people were adjudged righteous on New Year's Day and had good rain allotted to them, but subsequently backslid, then God saw to it that the abundant rain fell at the wrong time and on barren land (Rosh Hashanah, 17b).
But it is final judgment at the end of the world that is most significant. There are many references to this judgment and it is clear that among the Rabbis it was accepted without question that men will be judged on the basis of their deeds: if a man has done good he will enter Paradise, but if his deeds were evil Gehenna awaits him. We might cite some words from R. Eliezer:
When R. Eliezer fell ill, his disciples went in to visit him. They said to him: Master, teach us the paths of life so that we may through them win the life of the future world. He said to them: Be solicitous for the honour of your colleagues, and keep your children from meditation, and set them between the knees of scholars, and when you pray know before whom you are standing and in this way you will win the future world.
(Berakoth 28b)
This Rabbi is dated around the end of the first century and the beginning of the second, so he is not far from the New Testament period. The attitude of the man and of his students shows plainly that it was not doubted that the way of acceptance with God was the way of human merit. There might be dispute about the way merit was accumulated, but that this was what was required was not in doubt.
Every deed meant a certain quota of merit or demerit. Judgment day saw a weighing of the merits and demerits and often the imagery of the balances is employed. When the good deeds outweighed the bad the man was righteous and when the bad were too heavy the man was wicked and went to Gehenna. What happened when the scales were evenly balanced? The learned were not agreed. R. Eliezer (or perhaps R. Eleazar) maintained that God then pressed down the merit side of the scales in accordance with Micah 7:19, 'he will press down our iniquities' (this is not the way our translations run, but it is a possible understanding of the Hebrew). But R. Jose b. Hanina taught that God raised the demerit side of the scales, for which he quoted as scriptural support Micah 7:18, 'raising iniquity' (Rosh Hashanah 17a). It is easy to get lost in the wonders of this learned debate and overlook the fact that is significant for our inquiry, namely that both sides accepted without question that to be righteous meant to get the verdict on judgment day, just as to be wicked meant to miss it. Clearly for such scholars 'righteous' is a legal term and the obtaining of the verdict on the day of judgment was all-important.
One consequence of this whole system was the impossibility of assurance. Nobody knows how much weight is attached to any good deed or bad deed and thus nobody can know whether his celestial account is in credit or in debit. The great Hillel said, 'trust not in thyself until the day of thy death' (Aboth 2:5). One may be in good standing at this moment, but who can tell what sin one will subsequently commit and what weight of demerit it will carry? When R. Johanan b. Zakkai was on his deathbed his disciples came to visit him and they were distressed because he began to weep. They asked why this was and he replied, 'when there are two ways before me, one leading to Paradise and the other to Gehinnom, and I do not know by which I shall be taken, shall I not weep?' (Berakoth 28b). He was simply taking seriously the creed by which he had lived. To be righteous was not to have attained certain known ethical standards but to get the verdict before God. And R. Johanan had no idea whether he had lived well enough to get the verdict or not.
The Rabbis built their teaching on the Old Testament. We may fairly comment that at many points they misinterpreted it and in particular that they did so at this point of overestimating the saving power of human effort. But for our present purpose the important thing is their terminology. They certainly carried on and developed the Old Testament legal use of terms like 'righteousness' and 'justification'. They helped establish the way these words were used by the New Testament writers.
JUSTIFICATION IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
Some have gone astray in their understanding of the New Testament teaching on justification because they have ignored the Old Testament and rabbinic background. Assuming that'righteous', 'righteousness' and the like have the meanings we commonly give them, they have not uncommonly gone on to see justification as a process whereby men are rescued from their sin by being 'made righteous'. It is, of course, true that all Christians understand salvation in part as making people righteous. But it does not follow that the justification terminology is used to express this aspect of Christ's saving work.
What I am contending is that righteousness, justification and the associated words are to be understood from the way they are employed in the Old Testament and developed in the usage of the Rabbis. G. Schrenk emphasizes the difference from the Greek approach, 'There is a deep gulf between the NT dikaios and the Greek ideal of virtue, which isolates man in independent achievement'; 'In content, dikaios in the NT is very largely determined by the OT.'4 The first Christians were Jews and took a good deal of their terminology from accepted Jewish usage. Immersed in the teaching of the Old Testament from their earliest years as they were, and accustomed to the way the Rabbis used concepts like righteousness, we should expect nothing else. Specifically they started from the Old Testament with its legal understanding of righteousness, a usage accepted without question among their contemporaries. They rejected the particular way in which the Rabbis saw people as justified, the way of human merit, but they retained a good deal of the terminology. They were familiar with the concept of judgment day, a day when all people will be tried before God with the result that some will be adjudged righteous (i.e. be justified) and others condemned.
I am not arguing that every occurrence of the 'righteousness' terminology in the New Testament is of this kind. There are passages in which the words are used in much the normal Greek way. For example, both Pilate's wife and the centurion at the cross refer to Jesus as 'righteous' (Mt. 27:19, where Nrv translates 'innocent', and Lk. 23:47). Pilate himself calls Jesus 'righteous', according to many manuscripts (Mt. 27:24). But these are all Romans and we should not expect them to use the words in the typical Hebrew way. The early Christians were another matter, and they preferred to follow the Old Testament and Jesus himself.
We see the way Jesus used the terminology when he spoke about what will happen on judgment day. 'I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned' (Mt. 12:36-37). Justification (= acquittal) and condemnation are seen to reflect the judicial process. It is a question of getting the verdict when tried before God.
Another good example is in the passage in which Jesus refers to the judgment that will take place when he comes 'in his glory, and all the angels with him'. Then 'he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory' and judge the nations, putting some people on his right (for acceptance) and some on his left (for condemnation) (Mt. 25:31-33). Those who thus get the verdict are called 'righteous' and the culmination is expressed in these terms: 'Then they [i.e. the wicked] will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life' (Mt. 25:46). Quite clearly the 'righteous' in this passage are those who get the verdict, those who have 'right-standing' when tried before God.
The same kind of usage is found in the Pauline writings. Thus the apostle writes, 'through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous' (Rom. 5:19). The many'righteous' are obviously the multitude of the saved, those accepted by God. And the ground of their acceptance is the work of Christ.
The legal thrust of this language is seen from a somewhat different angle in passages in which the adjective 'righteous' is applied to God. Thus Paul looks for the crown (the crown, moreover, 'of righteousness') which 'the Lord, the righteous judge' will award him on judgment day (2 Tim. 4:8). There are also the words of the angel, 'You are just in these judgments' (Rev. 16:5). In both cases it is the activity of judging in which God is seen as 'righteous' or 'just'. One of the very important passages in the New Testament includes the term, namely when Paul says that God brought about salvation in Christ'to demonstrate his justice [other translations have 'righteousness'] at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies the man who has faith in Jesus' (Rom. 3:26). The passage has the thoughts of redemption and of propitiation, but at this point there is strong emphasis on justification. No explanation is adequate which does not see God as shown to be just or righteous, legally in the right, in the way in which he provides salvation for sinners.
Do you see? The question that is worrying Ryder Smith is, 'How could God be righteous if he did not forgive?' But the question that worried Paul was just the opposite, 'How could God be righteous if he did forgive?' He has just said that God 'presented him [Christ] as a sacrifice of atonement [the expression means 'propitiation'], through faith in his blood'. He goes on: 'He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished' (Rom. 3:25). Often and often people had sinned. You would expect that a just God would punish them. That is what justice means. Paul is arguing that sinners deserve to be punished for their sins; but in the past God has not invariably punished sin. Sinners have gone on living, just as they were. Now you can argue that this shows God to be merciful, or compassionate, or kind, or forbearing, or loving. But you cannot argue that it shows him to be just. Whatever else the absence of punishment of sins shows, it does not show us justice. Because God had not invariably punished sinners, people might be tempted to think that he is not a just God.
Not any more, Paul is saying. The cross demonstrates the righteousness, the justice of God. In the very act by which sin is put away decisively, the death of Christ on the cross, God is seen to be just. It is not the fact that God forgives that shows him to be righteous, but the fact that he forgives in a certain way, the way of the cross. It is the cross that shows God to be righteous in the very act of forgiveness.
Traditionally this has been taken to mean that the cross represents the paying of the penalty of sin. The law has no more claim on those whom Christ saves. Paul does not say this in set terms, but it does seem to be the meaning of his words. After what Christ has done the law has no more claim on those whose trust is in him. What is beyond all doubt is that Paul is saying that God forgives in a way which accords with right. God does not set aside the moral law when he forgives. It can never be said that he forgives simply because he is too strong for the devil. That would mean that in the end with God might is right. The language of justification is a perpetual protest against any such view. It provides an emphasis on the truth that our God is just, is righteous, that he has regard to moral considerations even when he saves people who do not deserve salvation. God saves in a way which is not only powerful but which is right.
On a number of occasions Paul speaks of 'the righteousness of God' and this has caused a good deal of discussion. Some hold that the expression points to a quality in God himself, while others suggest that it means rather'a righteousness from God' (a meaning which the Greek construction might well have). It seems that in some contexts the former meaning is needed, for example, when Paul asks, 'But if our unrighteousness brings out God's righteousness more clearly, what shall we say?' (Rom. 3:5). Here there can scarcely be doubt that 'righteousness' is a quality of uprightness in God.
But on other occasions the expression signifies the righteousness or 'right-standing' that God gives. Thus Paul writes, 'But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe' (Rom. 3:21-22). Once again we see that Paul delights to express the Christian salvation in terms of justice. We see this again when he refers to 'the gift of righteousness' (Rom. 5:17), for in the sense of an ethical virtue righteousness cannot be a gift. Ethical virtues must be earned by moral achievement in daily life. Paul is clearly referring to a legal status, a standing before God. A status can be given and the apostle says that this status is given.
Justification then means the according of the status of being in the right. Sin has put us in the wrong with God and justification is the process whereby we are reckoned as right. In one way or another all religions must face the ultimate question: 'How can man, who is a sinner, ever be right with a God who is just?' Most religions answer, in some form, 'By human effort.' Man committed the sin, so man must do what is required to put things right and undo the effects of his sin. It is the great teaching of the New Testament that we are justified, not by what we do, but by what Christ has done. Paul puts it simply when he says that we are 'justified by his blood' (Rom. 5:9). He links our justification directly with the death of Jesus.
FAITH
But if Paul can argue strongly that sinners do not obtain right standing before God by their own efforts, he can argue just as strongly that it is necessary that they exercise faith. Thus he contrasts the way the Gentiles entered salvation with the Jews' struggle, a struggle which left them lost, and stresses the place of faith as he does so: 'What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works' (Rom. 9:30-32). Faith is the one way into this God-given righteousness. Indeed, in the culmination of what most students hold to be the statement of the thesis of the epistle to the Romans Paul cites the prophet Habakkuk: 'The righteous will live by faith' or perhaps better, 'He that is righteous by faith will live' (Rom. 1:17).
In view of Paul's emphasis on the inability of works of any sort to bring about salvation, it is perhaps unnecessary to labour the point that faith is not being depicted as a different kind of work. Paul is not saying, 'To be saved by works is too hard. So God allows you to produce something easier - faith.' He does not see faith as a merit at all. Rather it is the abandonment of all reliance on merit. Faith is the recognition that there is nothing in the sinner that can avail to bring him salvation. Faith is the casting of oneself wholly on God. Faith is the hand that reaches out to God for salvation. Faith is no more than the means through which salvation is received.
Let me try to illustrate this. In my youth there were Sunday Schools in most churches and each Sunday School normally had an annual picnic. In its way it was the highlight of the year. On one occasion at one such picnic it fell to my lot at the time of the midday meal to move around among the children with a fourgallon can of a cool drink and ladle out portions to the thirsty. I came to a small boy who had evidently had a busy morning. He was red in the face, sweating profusely, obviously quite hot. I would think at that moment he probably had Australia's no.1 thirst. And there I was with four gallons of the reviving liquid and the single desire to get rid of it speedily. Nothing would have given me greater pleasure than to give my young friend all he could drink. But he had no mug. He had no way of receiving what I was offering freely. Fortunately someone was able to come up with the necessary utensil and the lad did not die of thirst in the midst of plenty. But the mug he eventually held out in no way merited the gift. True, it was indispensable. Without it he could not receive the cooling drink. But the mug was no more than the means by which he received it.
Faith is something like that. It is not a merit. It is the means by which we receive the gift. It is the abandonment of all reliance on self, all attempts to achieve salvation by our own endeavours. Faith is the hand stretched out to receive God's good gift, stretched out in the assurance that God will not fail to keep his promises.
JUSTIFICATION AND THE LOVE OF GOD
Some object to the whole concept of justification on the grounds that it does not fit in with the basic idea of the love of God. A God who loves people, it is argued, will not go through all the nonsense of complying with some law before he forgives. It is further argued that the whole idea of justification is unsatisfactory. It rests salvation ultimately in legal categories and yet it involves something like a transfer of penalty, which is legally impossible. So, the argument runs, it is better to abandon the whole concept and concentrate on the fact that God loves us and saves us as the outworking of his love. He has no need of penalty or satisfaction. He simply loves and forgives.
To this a number of things could be said. One is that those who follow the teaching of the New Testament in this matter have often harmed their cause by the way they have argued it. They have stressed the analogy with the kind of law they know and have even used police court analogies. I have heard now and then the illustration of a judge who finds before him a former classmate who has become guilty of a serious crime. Because he is just the judge imposes the full fine demanded by the law. But because he is still a friend he pays the fine himself.
There is this in the illustration that it shows that even on our level it is sometimes possible to combine a sense of justice with the love of friendship. But it overlooks some important truths. One is that our legal systems differentiate between the kind of crime for which a fine is the suitable penalty and those for which imprisonment, in some jurisdictions the death penalty, is laid down. With a fine it does not matter much who pays the money. I have known cases in which a man very much wanted to go to prison so that he could be a martyr for his cause, but who could not because some enemy paid the fine. The requirement of the law is satisfied no matter who pays the fine. When once it is paid there is no more penalty.
But with imprisonment or the death penalty it is another matter. There no substitution is allowed. It is not only a matter of the penalty being paid; it is important that the right person, the guilty person, pays it. In this matter of sin the penalty is death (Rom. 6:23). This is the kind of penalty which in our legal systems is not transferable. The offender must bear it himself. Our police court analogies break down.
But our salvation is not a matter of conforming to the legal system of some modern country. The law in question is the law of God. Our systems may find no place for the exercise of love and compassion, but God's certainly does. In fact with God love is the very basic thing (1 Jn. 4:8, 16). But God's love does not mean that God's law is set aside. The two work together. And in this matter of justification we must bear in mind that the Saviour is one with the Judge and one also with the condemned. God wills that the penalty be borne, but he wills also to bear it himself. And the sinner is forgiven, but not any old sinner; it is the one who is 'in Christ'. The situation is complex. What the New Testament writers are saying when they use the justification terminology is that our salvation has a legal aspect as well as other aspects. From this point of view it is the payment of penalty, the assurance that the law has no more claim on those whose trust is in Christ.
That justification and love go together is seen in the fact that it is Paul who uses the two concepts most frequently. He is far and away the most frequent user of the term justification. Indeed, there are some who think that justification is a purely Pauline concept. But Paul also puts great emphasis on love. It is not always realized that Paul has more to say about love than has any other New Testament writer. He uses the noun agape seventyfive times, the verb agapao thirty-four times and the adjective agapetos twenty-seven times. This makes a total of 136 uses of the three words out of 320 in the New Testament. John is usually thought of as 'the apostle of love', but the three words occur a total of 112 times in the five Johannine writings.
It is the writer who emphasizes the importance of justification who makes most use of the words for love. Why should we think the two are in opposition? Love is surely the mainspring of justification. It is because God loves as he does that he provides the means whereby sinners may be justified.
We should also bear in mind that love does not in fact necessarily make forgiveness easy. Even among us love can complicate the process of forgiveness. Let us suppose that some passing tramp breaks into your home and steals something you value highly. In due course he is arrested. He denies that he robbed you, but his guilt is clear. He is caught with the goods, let us say. There is no doubt whatever.
You say to yourself, 'Perhaps this poor fellow has never had much of a chance in life. I am a Christian. I have been forgiven much and I ought to forgive.' So you forgive him. It is as easy as that.
But suppose that the person who robbed you and lied to you was not a passing tramp, whom you have never seen before and will never see again, but your best friend. Now the way of forgiveness is harder. And the thing that makes it harder, the thing that complicates the situation is just the fact of your love. Your whole being cries out for the restoration of the earlier state of fellowship. With all your heart you want to forgive. But precisely because you love your friend so much the way to the forgiveness you are so ready to offer is not easy. And if instead of your friend the one who robbed you and lied to you was your son, one to whom you owe the duty of showing the best way in life as well as one whom you love with all your heart, then the way of forgiveness may well be very complicated indeed. Love will make forgiveness certain, but it will not make it easy.
So when people suggest that this talk about justification is a needless beclouding of the issue, we can only retort that they have not thought the problem through. When we have the authority of the Bible for the statement that from one point of view the salvation Christ brought about is a process of justification, it is better for us to try to understand what this means than to persuade ourselves that we know a better way. There is no better way than the way God has provided, the way of the cross. In deep humility let us accept what God has done.
Justification is a way of looking at the cross which says chiefly three things to us.
1. Guilt
The first is that before God we are guilty people. Each of the ways of looking at the cross we have seen starts from the premise that people are sinners. Without sin there would be no problem. But there are different ways of looking at sin. Redemption sees it as an enslaving force from which we need to be liberated. Reconciliation makes it the cause of a quarrel. Justification sees it from a legal point of view. Sinners are people who have broken the law of God, and the verdict on them must be 'Guilty'.
2. Penalty
The Bible has a good deal to say about law, the law of God and the like. It sees the sinner as under the divine condemnation. But because of the cross believers have nothing to fear. The requirements of the law have been met. From this point of view the cross represents Christ's receiving of that penalty of sin that was our due. The result is that those who come to Christ receive the gift of 'right-standing' or 'righteousness' before God.
2. Faith
And the third thing is that this justification is not something given indiscriminately to all. It is 'those who are in Christ Jesus' for whom'there is now no condemnation' (Rom. 8:1). Faith is not simply a desirable adjunct to the Christian way. It is fundamental to that way. It is the indispensable means of receiving God's gift of justification.
Justification reminds us that there is a legal aspect to our salvation. In the last resort the law of God is not swept aside as though it did not matter. It mattered so much that Jesus died to bring salvation in a way that is right (Rom. 3:26). This needs emphasis in a day like ours when many people have lost touch with the moral values we see in the Bible and deny that there are moral absolutes. If all morality is relative, then righteousness has little to do with salvation, and sinners are not really blameworthy. 'To understand all is to forgive all' is the kind of maxim that appeals to our generation.
But it does not square with the New Testament. To understand and to make due allowance is important, but it does not make right what is wrong. The Bible is clear that some things are right and some things are wrong. Those who do not reach God's standards are sinners and deserving of punishment. The Christian way does not become meaningful to us until we see this and recognize ourselves for what we are - sinners who have not attained God's standards, sinners who are 'without hope and without God in the world' (Eph. 2:12). We are in trouble because God really means us to live up to the highest and best we know, not simply to find good excuses for not making it.
But when all the evidence goes to provide a verdict of 'Guilty' on Judgment Day, God intervened. This way of looking at salvation makes the cross indispensable, for it was there that the claims of God's law were fully discharged. God's salvation accords with right. God is just in the means whereby salvation is accomplished.
But the New Testament writers are clear that this salvation does not come to all indiscriminately. Sinners refuse God's good gift, shut themselves up to disobedience, and remain in the group of those on whom the verdict at the end of the day must be 'Guilty'. To be justified we must come in faith, believing, trusting. As we put our trust in Christ and only as we put our trust in him we are justified, for 'a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law' (Rom. 3:28). Justification touches our lives by bringing home to us two great truths. One is that we are saved in a way that is right, for the new and living way does not sit loose to moral realities. The other is that Christ's justifying work is a challenge to us to believe. 'It is with your heart that you believe and are justified.'
For further study
1. Using a concordance, make a list of ways in which the Old Testament writers bring out the 'rightness' or justice of God's actions.
2. What do you see as the basic meaning of justification? Write out your own definition.
3. What can you find out about the way of salvation from the book of Micah?
4. What influence does the Old Testament background have on the meaning of the justification terminology in the New Testament?
5. How does the cross bring about justification?
6. How do you relate faith to justification?
This study has brought before us some of the richness of New Testament teaching about the cross of Christ. We have seen it as the making of a new covenant: it completely superseded the old way and opened up an entirely new way which brings people to God. It means the appearing of a new people of God, an idea which comes out under some of the other figures also. We have seen that Christ's death is a sacrifice, fulfilling what all the old sacrifices hinted at but could not do, and this whether we think of sacrifice in general or of particular sacrifices like the Passover or the Day of Atonement. With the expression'the Lamb of God' there seems to be a novel way of referring to sacrifice, a way which brings out from an angle peculiar to the Christians the fact that Christ has fulfilled all that sacrifice means. Then there are expressions which point to cleansing from sin, to access to God, to the freedom that the people of God enjoy. Sometimes the thought is that the sin of man had aroused the wrath of God or estranged man from God and there are thoughts of averting the wrath and of bringing about reconciliation. The concept of the law of God is not lacking and we are reminded that Christ saves us in a manner that is right.
There are many facets to the atonement. It may be viewed from any one of a number of angles, each of which brings to us an individual insight into the way of salvation. Some of them emphasize that Christ took our place. We are the sinners. We deserve the punishment. But we do not undergo it. Christ stood in our place and we are free. The New Testament witnesses to a multi-faceted salvation, one which may be regarded in many ways and which is infinitely satisfying. In whatever way our need be viewed, Christ has met it fully.
The great thing about the cross is that God saves us by his grace. We do not merit our salvation, but receive it as a free gift. But every one of the categories at which we looked reminds us that this has implications for the way we Christians are to live. The cross is the making of a new covenant, but this means that we are to live as the people of God. It is the perfect sacrifice, but we are to present our bodies as living sacrifices. If Christ died for us, we are to live for him. He has carried our sins away, as the Day of Atonement reminds us, and won for us access into the presence of God. And this means that we have a great privilege. We must neither neglect it nor use it carelessly. Christ our Passover has been offered for us so that we, the church, constitute the people of God, and so that we should cleanse out every evil thing. Passover warns us against complacency. The Lamb of God brings us back to the thought of the perfect sacrifice with all that that means.
When the New Testament writers use the language of redemption they are bringing before us the important point that a great price has been paid to set us free from evil. We are to live in freedom, a more demanding programme than many of us care to think. Or we can look at the problem of sin from the point of view of the enmity between God and man that it arouses. Reconciliation is a process in which we are not to be passive, even though we do nothing to bring it about. We receive it as a free gift, but this way of looking at the cross reminds us that it must be received. And when Paul thinks of the making of peace between God and man he thinks of the consequent necessity that there be peace between man and man, specifically between Jew and Gentile. There is a divine wrath against every evil thing and when that has been put away by what Christ did we must have a due horror of arousing it again. And in our final study we saw that Christ has won our salvation in a way which is right, a way which takes due account of the law of God. And if we are saved in a way which takes due account of the divine law, it is imperative that we live in a way which takes account of that law.
Each of the ways of looking at the cross then underlines the fact that the way of salvation is not a way of human merit. All is of grace, for all is of God. But also each of the ways of looking at it brings home to us the truth that the new and living way Christ has won for us makes demands on the believer. Christ has given all, including his very life, to open up the new and living way. It is demanded accordingly that we give all for him, so that we enter by that new and living way.
It is important to be clear that an understanding of what the cross means has effects on the way we live. It is easy to get the impression that studies of the atonement belong to some ethereal, far-off world of the academic theologian, interesting as intellectual exercises no doubt, but having nothing to do with the business of living here and now. That is not the way of it at all. I have tried to show in this book that the cross is relevant, that it speaks to our need and challenges us to new adventures of faith. We must not miss the truth the Bible writers are conveying to their readers because they use old-world imagery to convey it. It is easy to stay with the imagery and to dismiss what the writers are saying as old hat, interesting probably in an earlier day, but of no practical use to us in our very different circumstances. When we take the trouble to find out what these ancient writings mean we find that the cross speaks to twentieth-century people just as loudly and just as clearly and just as challengingly as it did to any previous generation.
It is a true instinct that has led Christians to see the cross as at the heart of their faith. It is at the heart of their faith for two reasons. The first is that it is by way of the cross and no other way that Christ brought about their salvation. That alone is enough to make a study of the cross a significant undertaking.
And Jesus said that if anyone, anyone at all, wanted to follow him, he must take up his cross daily (Lk. 9:23). The Christian way is the way of the cross. It means something markedly different from and something vastly better than the heartless selfcentredness and the callous indifference and the violence and the lust and the oppression that are so much part of the modern scene. The cross is a denial that self-assertiveness can ever be a satisfying way. It is an affirmation that one must lose the life to gain it. The cross is many-sided, and one thing this book has done has been to show that, look at it which way you will, it challenges us still. Each of the great picture-words that we have examined tells us something important about the meaning of the cross for Christ and for our understanding of the way he has secured our salvation. It shows that the content of the Christian salvation is rich and satisfying. Whatever our need, Christ met it. But each of these words tells us, too, something about the meaning of the Christian life. The way of the cross is a way that reaches into every corner of the way we live. Those who have come to understand it know that Christ's new and living way puts meaning into every facet of life.
'We have confidence to enter... by a new and living way...let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith ... and let us consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds....'
' A. Jeremias, The Old Testament in the Light of the Ancient East, vol. ii (London, 1911), p.49.
2 R. B. Y. Scott, The Relevance of the Prophets (New York, 1944), p.210.
4 Ibid., pp.337f.
' A. Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East (London, 1927), p.337.
3 W. Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament, vol. i (London, 1961), p.14.
F. C. N. Hicks, The Fullness of Sacrifice (London, 1946), p.242.
T Vincent Taylor, Jesus and His Sacrifice (London, 1939), pp.54-55.
' During the early centuries of our era there were many scholarly Jewish Rabbis. They taught orally, but about the end of the second century their teaching was committed to writing in a compilation called the Mishnah (which means 'Instruction'). From this and later Jewish writings we get valuable information about the ideas and practices of the Jews during the New Testament period.
I Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, Book iii, 242-243.
' Cited from The Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. ii, p.286.
' Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, Book iii, 241.
2 Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, Book ii, 312.
4 Ibid.
' Josephus, The Jewish War, Book vi, 423.
2 B. F. Westcott, The Epistle to the Hebrews (London, 1892), p.296.
' Cited from Jack Finegan, Light from the Ancient Past (Princeton, 1946), p.246.
2 E. H. Gifford, The Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans (London, 1886), p.114.
' I have examined these passages in The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (London, 1965), pp.145-147, and have, I think, shown that neither demands a meaning other than the usual 'propitiation'.
Z C. H. Dodd, The Epistle of Paul to the Romans (London, 1944), pp.22-23.
' Westminster Theological Journal, xvii, 1955, p.129.
' L. Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (London,' 1965), p.158.
6 C. H. Dodd, The Bible and the Greeks (London, 1954), p.94.
C. H. Dodd, Romans, p.23.
8 C. H. Dodd, The Johannine Epistles (London, 1961), p.26.
' Cited from D. Winton Thomas (ed.), Documents from Old Testament Times (London, 1958), p.34.
2 Ibid., p.28.
' In James Hastings (ed.), A Dictionary of the Bible, vol.iv (Edinburgh, 1904), p.273.
G. Kitel (ed.), Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. ii (Grand Rapids, 1964), pp.187, 188.
5 C. Ryder Smith, The Bible Doctrine of Salvation (London, 1946), p.218.
I Josephus, The Jewish War, Book vi, 424-425; in Book ii, 280 he puts the number at 3,000,000.
' Cited from A. Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East (London, 1927), p.323.
' G. Friedrich (ed.), Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, v (Grand Rapids, 1967), p.422.