Paul's Understanding of Righteousness

Abstract

My area of study is a theological one: Paul's understanding of righteousness. I will explore the following questions: 1) What is righteousness? 2) How does one attain righteousness? 3) What are the results of having attained righteousness? The questions will be treated primarily through the study of three letters written by Paul: Philippians, Romans, and Galatians. Philippians provides an autobiographical and theological sketch of Paul that will be used as an entry point to the subject. Romans and Galatians, letters that elaborate more fully on "righteousness," will be used to develop some of the ideas that Philippians only begins. Since Paul is a Jew, the Jewish heritage of some terms used in his epistles will be explored to provide a background for this study. I have made two introductory assumptions, examination of which would lie outside the scope of this paper. The first is that Romans, Galatians, and Philippians are actually the works of Paul. The second is that the translation to which I have given primary attention. The New American Standard Version, is as accurate a translation as it is reputed to be. A term closely related to "righteousness" is "justify." They come together often in Paul's writings. In English the words seem quite different but in the Greek they have the same root, "dik." It would be plausible to read the words respectively as "just-ness" and "right-fy." "Righteousness" seems to be the noun form of the word and "justify" seems to be the verb form of the word. "To justify," therefore, means "to make righteous."