Theology of Hope by Jurgen Moltmann
Chapter 3: The Resurrection and the Future of Jesus Christ
11. The Future of Righteousness
Righteousness means ‘being in order’, standing in the right relationship;
it means correspondence and harmony and is to that extent akin to
‘truth’. But righteousness also means ‘being able to stand’, having subsistence, finding a basis on which to exist, and is to that extent akin to existence as such. Righteousness in the Old Testament does not mean agreement with an ideal norm or with the logos of eternal being, but describes a historic communal relationship which is founded on promise and faithfulness. When Israel praises the righteousness of God, then it
thankfully remembers his faithfulness to his covenant promises as it has taken practical shape in the history of Israel. Yahweh’s righteousness is his faithfulness to the covenant. That is why his righteousness ‘happens’, and why one can ‘tell’ it and trust in it for the future and expect
‘salvation’ from this righteousness. In trusting in God’s faithfulness to this covenant, and in living in accordance with his covenant in promise and statute, men do right by God and are set right. They are set right not only in relation to God, but also in their mutual relationships and in relation to things.(G. von Rad has shown how the righteousness of God became for Israel the summary expression of the right relationship between God and man, man and fellow man, man and world. Cf.
Theologie des Alten Testamentes, I, 1958, pp. 368 ff. [ET 1962, pp. 370 ff.]). This history of the divine righteousness is manifestly recognized not only in Israel’s own history and not only in human history, but in the history and the destiny of the whole of God’s creation. By the
righteousness of God is meant the way in which in freedom he remains true to his statutes, his word and his works and gives them subsistence.
The righteousness of God requires everything that owes its existence to the action of God, that is, the whole creation. The righteousness of God is the essence of its stability and the ground of its subsistence. Without his justice and faithfulness nothing can exist, but everything is
swallowed up in nothingness. Hence God’s righteousness is universal. It is concerned with the justification of life and with the ground of the existence of all things. If we expect the righteousness of God to set man right with himself; with his fellows and with the whole of creation, then it can become the summary expression for a universal, all-inclusive eschatology which expects from the future of righteousness a new being for all things. The righteousness of God then refers not merely to a new order for the existing world, but provides creation as a whole with a new ground of existence and a new right to life. Hence with the coming of the righteousness of God we can expect also a new creation.
In the New Testament the divine righteousness is accordingly
understood by Paul as God’s faithfulness in communal relationships, as an event brought about by God, and as an event from which there arises a new creation and new life. Paul sees this divine righteousness as revealed in the gospel (Rom. 1.17) and grasped in faith. It is the
christological gospel of the cross and of the raising of Christ by God. In this event divine righteousness is revealed for the unrighteous and justification of life (Rom. 5.18) for those who, both in a juridical and in an ontological sense, cannot stand before the wrath of God. It is the eschatological gospel, which imputes this divine righteousness ‘that
must be hoped for’ (Gal. 5.5) as now already present and as savingly at work in the wrath of God that is now being revealed. It is, finally, the universal gospel, which is oriented towards the new creation that fulfils all things, sets them right with God and so gives them status and being.
Divine righteousness ‘happens’ here, and the gospel reveals it by
proclaiming the event of the obedience of Jesus even to the death of the cross, by proclaiming the event of his surrender to this death, and by proclaiming his resurrection and his life as the coming of the divine righteousness to the unjust. The realization and revelation of a new divine righteousness for sinners thus becomes the mystery of Jesus Christ which is disclosed in the promise of the gospel: ‘delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification’ (Rom. 4.25). ‘He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him’ (II Cor. 5.21). Thus there takes place in him reconciliation of the unreconciled by God. It is important here to see that this divine righteousness has its ground both in the event of the cross and in that of the resurrection, that is, both in his death and in his life. A one-sided theology of the cross would attain only to the gospel of the remissio peccatorum, but not to the promissio of the new
righteousness whose life is grounded in his life and whose future consists in the future of his lordship. ‘In that he died, he died unto sin once () : but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord’ (Rom. 6.10-11). The divine righteousness which is here revealed finds its measure not in the sin it forgives, but in that new life in the glory of the risen and exalted Christ which it promises and to which it points.
Along with this goes the fact that since the gospel of divine
righteousness has its ground in the dying and living of Jesus, sin and death are seen together. ‘The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord’ (Rom. 6.23, cf. I Cor. 15.55 ff.). Sin is therefore to be understood as unrighteousness, as having no ground and no rights, as being unable to stand. This includes both being lost in revolt against God and in falsehood, and also dying and being swallowed up in nothingness. The divine righteousness which is revealed in the cross and resurrection of Jesus accordingly embraces both reconciliation with God and justification of life. It embraces
forgiveness of guilt and annihilation of the destiny of death. It embraces reconciliation and redemption of the mortal body. It takes place in the pledge of reconciliation and the promise of quickening. Since Jesus’
resurrection and his exaltation to be Lord is not yet the consummation of his lordship, but the ground and guarantee of his liberating and remedial lordship over all, so the divine righteousness is present in faith and in baptism, yet in such a way that it is engaged in a process which will be completed only at the parousia of Christ. In this process we have the divine righteousness here always as a gift that is pledged, disputed and subject to testing, that is, we have it in terms of promise and
expectancy.(Cf. E. Käsemann, ‘Gottesgerechtigkeit bei Paulus’, ZTK 58, 1961, p.368.) Then, however, the promised divine righteousness sets us on a path whose tension and whose goal it announces. It is this
eschatological differentiation in the revelation of Christ in gospel and promise that forms the ground of the historic and ethical statements in which Paul speaks of ‘grace reigning through righteousness’ (Rom.
5.21), of the ‘ministration of righteousness’ (II Cor. 39, cf. Rom. 6.13), and of ‘submission unto righteousness’ (Rom. 10.3). Divine
righteousness is not merely a gift that has been made manifest, but means also the power of the Giver which is at work in the life of the believer. That is why the man who is justified begins to suffer under the contradiction of this world with which he has a bodily solidarity, for he must in obedience seek the divine righteousness in his body, on earth, and in all creatures.
If the divine righteousness of God means that in communal relationships he is faithful to his promise and to the work of his hands, then
justification has finally not only the sense that the unjust is given a right to stand before God and to endure in his judgment, but it has
contrariwise also a theological sense -- namely, that in this event God attains his rights over against his creation. Luther, in his Lectures on Romans in 1516, had sought to interpret this as a reciprocal event of justificatio Dei activa et passiva: justification means that God justifies man by grace and that man acknowledges God’s justice in confessing his sins, so that in this reciprocal event not only the sinner but God, too, is given his rights.(M. Luther, Vorlesung uber den Romerbrief 1515/16, ed.
J. Ficker, 1908, II, p. 65. Cf. H. J. Iwand’s comment on this in
Glaubensgerechtigkeit nach Luthers Lehre, 4th ed. 1964, pp. 11 ff. This new insight on Luther’s part in seeing in the event of justification not only the forgiveness of sins and the right of the godless to life before God, but vice versa also the judicial realization of God’s right to lordship, has been regained for New Testament theology today by E.
Käsemann. Cf. ‘Neutestamentliche Fragen heute’, ZTK 54, 1957, pp.
13f.; ‘Gottesgerechtigkeit bei Paulus’, ZTK 58, 1961, pp. 367 ff. Only with this new insight is it possible to do away with the individualization
of the event of justification in the revelation of the divinity of God, and only where that happens does the justificatio impii come to stand within the eschatological horizon of the resurretio mortuorum and the creatio ex nihil.) If this insight of Luther’s is detached from the framework of the humilitas Christology in which he formulated it, then it can be said that because the divine righteousness is gift and power and the
communion of faith with Christ is both a dying with Christ to sin and also a living under his lordship with an outlook towards his future, therefore the event of justification is the earnest and promise of an all- inclusive setting to rights on God’s part. If in the justification of the sinner God attains to his rights, then this justification is the beginning and foreshadowing of his sole lordship. The divine righteousness which is latent in the event of Christ has an inner trend towards a totality of new being. The man who is justified follows this trend in bodily obedience. His struggle for obedience and his suffering under the godlessness of the world have their goal in the future of the
righteousness of the whole. Thus this struggle is a fragment of; and a prelude to, the coming divine righteousness, for it already gives God his due, and in it already God attains to his rights over his world.
Thus in the New Testament, too, we shall have to understand divine righteousness as promise. In this promise the promised object is offered in the present, and yet it is grasped in the believing hope which makes man ready to serve the future of the divine righteousness in all things.