Justice by Faith

Justice by Faith August 3, 2015

Eugene Boring reviews Herman Waetjen’s Letter to the Romans in the Review of Biblical Literature (July 2015). According to Boring, Waetjen sets Paul’s gospel in the context of a biblical story stretching back to Adam and including the promise to Abraham:

“Adam (= humanity) was created in God’s image and infused with God’s breath/spirit. Hamartia entered the world by Adam and Eve’s disobedience, representing their lack of trust (as Waetjen consistently translates pistis). Hamartia (which Waetjen refuses to call ‘sin’) is an infection that is not transmitted biologically but culturally. Humans no longer live a life of trust in God and each other, so that defensive structures of security are devised: purity codes, dualistic systems of good and evil, attempts at justice by establishing laws that punish evil. Law cannot create justice, and the corrupt infection is transmitted from generation to generation. Abraham represents a new beginning toward the reestablishment of God’s justice (Waetjen’s understanding throughout of dikaiosynē theou, usually translated ‘righteousness of/from God’). This new beginning was based on promise, not law, functioning by trust, which was credited to him toward the doing of justice (Gen 15:6). Abraham himself, and those who shared his trust in God, could not, however, establish God’s justice. ‘If God’s promise to Abraham is to be realized and if Abraham’s offspring are to inherit the world through the actualization of reconciliation and justice, the terms and conditions of the original testament that God established with Abraham must be fulfilled by the work of Abraham’s second testamentary heir, Jesus Christ’ (134).”

God’s plan thus moves from the faith of Abraham to the faith of Christ, “from faith to faith.” But it doesn’t move directly “because neither Abraham nor the world at large realized its need for a trusting relationship to God, since he and they were unaware of the infectious power of sin that perverted humanity’s best efforts at establishing justice. The infection continued, universal and unrecognized, until the coming of the law. The law was given through angels, not by God directly, and served to make humanity aware of their need of an entirely new way of life not based on punitive law. The law was not given to make sinners aware of their need of grace, as in the (‘bankrupt’) Reformation understanding, but to reveal the power of the infection of hamartia and thus the inability of all human law to establish God’s justice, not only the defect of the Mosaic law from Sinai. This second use of the law was the slave that brought its adherents safely to the teacher, Christ, who could deliver them not only from the Jewish law but from law itself. With Christ, the Second Adam, there is a new creation, a truly human being whose life of trust in God fulfilled God’s purpose in creating Adam, and with his death and resurrection a new humanity was created. This Second Adam was a life-giving spirit.”

On this understanding, “God’s justice is thus social, corporate, and cosmic, not individual (although Waetjen understands the ‘new creature/creation’ of 2 Cor 5:17 individualistically, not apocalyptically, as individuals are baptized into the body of Christ and become ‘lifegiving spirits’). God’s justice/salvation is not vertical but horizontal, ‘this side of the grave’ (a phrase often repeated). Dikaiosynē theou is not acquittal in the forensic sense, not a matter of being ultimately accepted by God because of God’s act in Christ. This salvation will finally be universal, as the life-giving spirits communicate their love and trust in God to others, effecting ‘a gradual metamorphosis into the image and glory of Christ … the justice of God in human society’ (376). The universal infection will be eradicated, and all humans will live a life of trust and love with no need of law.”

Though commending the book as a “machine to think with,” Boring focuses on a number of controversial claims: According to Waetjen, Paul’s is a realized eschatology; salvation is this-worldly, and has to do mainly with the establishment of social justice; Waetjen thinks there are several interpolations in Romans.

In addition, from Boring’s summary (not having read the book), I’d highlight some other issues: The scheme makes it sound as if Torah were purely negative (“defensive structures of security are devised: purity codes, dualistic systems of good and evil, attempts at justice by establishing laws that punish evil”). Paul consistently commends the law, though, and for all its limitations sees it as a necessary part of the realization of God’s justice. Further, there’s no reason to set a forensic view of dikaiosune in opposition to one focusing on just social order, nor any reason to abandon classic terminology of “sin,” though Waetjen is right to see that “sin” doesn’t merely describe discrete immoral actions.

Having said that, Waetjen’s book (on Boring’s summary) has much to commend it. For Paul’s gospel is exactly that: The good news that in the faithful Jesus Christ, God has fulfilled His promise to Abraham and re-founded justice among the nations.


Browse Our Archives