But back to 3.22. What verb is implicit in this verse? It is a continuation of 3.21, and just as in 1.17, the verb is not “imputed,” but revealed. It is this righteousness of God that has been witnessed by the law and the prophets – bringing us back again to biblical passages Paul cites.

And certainly, Paul is concerned with both the righteousness of God and the righteousness of men – but that doesn’t mean that it is the same thing (which, in effect, imputation boils down to). They do, however, meet in the same act – not imputation, but the act of Christ’s sin offering at the cross, referred to in vv 24-25 in the language of redemption and propitiation. God demonstrates (cf similarity to “reveal”) His righteousness by setting forth Christ as a propitation. It is in this way that He is both righteous and “righteouser” (“just and justifier”), v 26.

P.S. Your “set” analogy isn’t all that apt – we’re not talking about an individual word, but a phrase which has a relative degree of specialization.

Again, I understand the importance of not reading every “righteousness of God” phrase as imputation to us, and accept your point on the context of Psalms quoted in Rom 3:9-18.

Yet it is hard to ignore vs 22 – “righteousness of God EIS all who believe.” This is different than “God’s own righteousness revealed/shown to” those who believe (which is in vss 25-26). Especially when the same word in verbal form is used to describe our redeemed condition 2 verses later – justified.

I think you overstate, saying a certain phrase couldn’t be used in a different way in one passage. Language allows for this to a degree. “She set the table as the sun set.”

Agree faith is instrument by which God accounts us righteous. But is faith the objective ground of our justification? I realize I’m talking systematic language, which is a different dialect from Scriptural language, often.

No need to deny the valid inference of imputation from Scripture, just to say that there is more going on than imputation…

The righteousness of God and the righteousness of men (i.e. granted via justification) are interconnected, just as the pistis (faith/faithfulness) of Christ/God is interconnected with the pistis of men. But that doesn’t mean that God’s pistis is imputed or even imparted to us; rather, human pistis is responsive to divine pistis. As the divine pistis is essentially synonymous with (or better, explicative of, in the case of “the faith[fulness] of Jesus Christ”) “the righteousness of God,” we can see why this is so: the proper response to the righteousness of God embodied and enacted in Jesus is faith, which, as Paul says in the next chapter, is what God counts as righteousness. That, in a nutshell, is how the righteousness of God in the gospel is revealed from faith to faith (1.17) – the righteousness of God is ek – from, out of, by way of – the pistis of Christ, and directed to those who believe.

#2
“I think the only place that “righteousness from [ek] God” appears in the NT is in Phil. 3:9. But I may be mistaken.”

Doesn’t the phrase in Romans 3:22 refer to God’s righteous in which we share? Seems it is linked with justified a few verses later.

I agree with Tim, though, that much of the context is God’s own rightousness, not that imputed to us.

More musing and absorbing than anything else.

Also, as always, Jim, you spark my thoughts with a single sentence. I really have to think about your separating “Greek” from “Gentile.” This is certainly worth exploring.

Wondering, though. Do you make the “Greeks” or “Hellenists” (same word, I understand, in Greek) of Acts 6:1 part of this group?

Those promises were to Israel, but also to the “Greek” (Oikumene dweller, I’m still convinced) and to the Gentile. We see the promises to the “Greek” in Jonah and Daniel, and to the whole Gentile world in Noah.

With regard to (4), of course I haven’t got to the verse you’re mentioning (i.e. v 19, which is drawing out the implications of the catena), so I didn’t want to get too far ahead of myself. :)

Re (5): Yes, that’s a great deal of the burden of this post, albeit more specific: the bulk of the texts from which Paul draws here employ divine righteousness, and they are not referring to something imputed. Which makes a very strong case that he isn’t using it that way either (as I note in the final point of my concluding observations). But yes: the texts quoted in the catena are wholly consonant with the usage of the concept elsewhere.

So yes, we’re definitely on the same page. It almost seems amazing to me that the commentators I’ve read have really paid no attention to these sorts of intertextual issues, which are so important – and even decisive – to the way we need to interpret Paul.

If there are no precedents for finding imputation in the term, there is no basis for claiming it as a pre-understanding, and Paul would have to demonstrate and justify his new understanding of the same – which he does not!

More fuel for the fire.

It is worth noting too that the wicked here are mostly Israelites, not so? What the law says it says to those who are under the law, no? Paul is using these quotes to shut the mouths of Israelites re their boasting.

So, yes, Phil 3.9, but see also 1 Cor 1.30. Christ has become for us wisdom from (apo) God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.