This post is the second in a series designed to help you to get to know and love some of the important words used in the Bible. Today we’ll clarify the meaning of ‘forensic’, and then look at what ‘righteousness’ means in the forensic setting.
To recap
This post assumes that you’ve read and understood the first post. Here’s a summary:
Righteousness = being in line with a standard.
Now what does ‘forensic’ mean? Technically,
Forensic = relating to a law court.
Forensic
At this point, there’s a bit of confusion. There’s a more popular use of the word ‘forensic’, which you’ll see on TV shows like CSI. On these shows, the word ‘forensic’ is actually a shorthand for ‘forensic medicine’ or ‘forensic science’. The ‘forensics’ team is the group of scientists or medical experts who conduct their scientific or medical work for the purpose of presenting evidence in court. But technically, everybody in the court is ‘forensic’ because they’re all related to the law court—the judge, the prosecutor, the defendant, the jury, and so on. And it’s this more technical definition of ‘forensic’ that is used when talking about the Bible.
Law courts
In the Bible, the word ‘righteousness’ often appears in a forensic context—that is, the context of a law court.
As an aside, righteousness is not always ‘forensic’. For example, the book of Proverbs is full of references to the ‘righteous’ man, whose is called ‘righteous’ simply because he lives in line with God’s created moral standards (e.g. Proverbs 10:32).
However, the law court setting appears in the Bible whenever a person’s righteousness is called into question. The job of the court is to determine, in a specific instance, whether or not the defendant has been ‘righteous’ (often translated as ‘innocent’). The court must ask the question, “Is this person in line with proper standards?” The standards the court uses are legal standards, but these legal standards are supposed to be based on the righteous moral standards that God has set up in the creation itself.
This is true of a human court—for example,
If there is a dispute between men and they come into court and the judges decide between them, acquitting the innocent [literally, ‘righteous’] and condemning the guilty … (Deut 25:1)
A judge is said to be ‘righteous’ when he judges properly, according to righteous moral standards, and doesn’t take bribes or act with prejudice to the rich (e.g. Deut 1:16, 16:18).
Summary
To summarize, here’s what forensic righteousness means:
Righteousness of a defendant = being in line with a legal and/or moral standard.
Righteousness of a judge = making decisions in line with legal and/or moral standards.
Significantly, the Bible often speaks about a specific but extremely important forensic context: the law court of God. There is a heavenly law court, before which each individual in creation must stand. When God acts to set the world to rights, he primarily does so by acting as a righteous judge of individuals (e.g. Gen 18:25, 1 Kgs 8:32, Psa 1:5-6, Isa 51:5, etc.), who passes judgement in perfect agreement with his own righteous standards, and who carries our his sentences righteously, without fear of favour of man. As the Bible continues, we see that this task of righteous judgement is delegated to God’s perfect future king (Isa 11:4).
Errors
We’ll finish with a couple of examples of errors that can crop up when speaking about forensic righteousness.
Firstly, there is the error of saying too much. John Piper, for example, in his otherwise excellent and very insightful book The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright, when speaking about forensic passages in Romans, says, “the deepest meaning of God’s righteousness is his unwavering commitment to act for the sake of his glory” (p. 68).
I can see why John Piper might say this. God’s righteousness is inextricably caught up with God’s glory; God’s glory demands that he act righteously; indeed, God’s righteousness is a (if not the) key means by which God acts for the sake of his own glory. But it’s not actually what the word ‘righteousness’ means. God’s righteousness—particularly in the forensic context—is his commitment to setting the world to rights—primarily by judging individuals perfectly according to his created standards of righteousness.
But secondly, there is the error of saying too little. Tom Wright, in a response to John Piper’s response,1 speaks about the defendant’s righteousness as merely a status granted to him or her by the court:
‘Righteousness’ within the law court setting … denotes the status that someone has when the court has found in their favour. Notice, it does not denote, within that all-important law court context, “the moral character they are then assumed to have”, or “the moral behaviour they have demonstrated which has earned them the verdict.” (p. 69)
According to Wright, righteousness is not something that a person brings to the law court; it’s simply a status conferred by the court. As we have seen, this just doesn’t fit with the biblical use of the word. According to the biblical understanding, a righteous person is righteous before he or she comes to the court; and this righteousness is indeed related to the person’s moral character. The job of the court is not to ‘confer’ a status of righteousness on the person; it is to work out whether the person is, indeed, righteous, and then declare its finding.
Next time we’ll examine the meaning of a closely related word that appears in the forensic context: ‘justification’.
1 NT Wright, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s vision, SPCK, London, 2009.
This post is the second in a series designed to help you to get to know and love some of the important words used in the Bible.
Is ‘Forensic’ a word used in the bible? Law Court as an image, yes. Legal justice as a concept, yes. But the word ‘forensic’? If we’re shooting for accuracy, let’s be accurate with what we’re claiming!
I think it’s helpful to discuss things like this, so no problems there.
But, like Martin, I don’t think you can call the series “Biblical Word Power” if you are going to be looking at extra-biblical phrases such as “Forensic Righteousness”, or “Verbal Plenary Inspiration” or whatever.
Perhaps you need to come up with a new name for the series?
I think Lionel’s intention was to define a biblical word (righteousness) in a particular biblical context (forensic). I don’t think he’s suggesting that forensic is a biblical word.
I’m with Nick. In his first post in this series Lionel wrote: <cite It’s important to realize that, in different contexts, different standards are in view. But next time we will look at a critically important context where ‘righteousness’ appears in the Bible: the courtroom. Stay tuned!</cite>.
So then, it is clear that the biblical word under discussion is ‘righteousness’ but a proper understanding of what ‘forensic righteousness’ refers to is very important in understanding this key word (righteousness) as it is used in a key way in the Scriptures.
It was helpful for Lionel not only to suggest where N.T. Wright is wrong, but also where an advocate of the reformed, traditional view of God’s righteousness like Piper has argued for a definition that claims too much.
Nick and Philip, you’re entirely correct about my intention in this post. I want to talk about the way a biblical word (righteousness) in used in a particular biblical context (the lawcourt).
Martin and Craig, I apologise for the evident lack of clarity in my title and subsequent confusion.
Lionel- thanks and looking forward to further posts. However, I don’t think you should dismiss Piper’s views on this issue so quickly. You speak of “righteousness” as “conformity to a standard”- so what is the standard? Where does it come from? Piper in his excellent book makes a case that cuts across the old debates by being firmly rooted in the Bible: the standard to which righteous behaviour conforms is whatever will lead to the glory of God. That to me is the only view that makes sense of the data in Romans, esp sin being a “falling short of the glory of God”.
Hi Neil. I do agree that Piper’s book is excellent. Indeed, it’s pretty hard to take issue with a man who is seeking to ascribe as much glory to God as possible, and who sees God’s glory as the centre, purpose and ground of righteousness!
In fact, Piper makes a more detailed and thorough case for his view of God’s righteousness in his earlier book on Romans 9. The great insight and strength of Piper’s work in both of these books (the one on Romans 9 and the response to Tom Wright) is that he highlights that God’s glory is a profoundly central but often neglected topic in discussions of Romans.
Nevertheless, I still think he has been imprecise, and that this imprecision is very unfortunate. Piper has highlighted for us the deep and inseparable connection between God’s righteousness and his commitment to his own glory. But he has mistakenly identified the two.
To put it another way, Piper has failed to distinguish between what God’s righteousness is and what it is for. Yes, God is righteous because he is committed to his own glory – he makes a good argument that this is the chief end of God’s righteousness. Nevertheless the standard to which God’s righteousness refers in the Old Testament is not merely “whatever will lead to the glory of God” (which in fact isn’t a standard but a means to an end), but good old plain “justice”, particularly in vindicating the righteous person and punishing the ungodly person. This justice does indeed lead to the glory of God – in fact, you could argue convincingly that the glory of God is the ground and cause for God’s righteousness. But the two are not the same.
This is a fine distinction, but it is very important, because Piper’s opponents are hammering him at just this point, and dismissing him based on what they see as an idiosyncratic and unbiblical view of righteousness.
Thanks Lionel. I need to think about this some more. One comment, though. You seem to suggest that “righteousness” is “vindicating the righteous person and punishing the ungodly person”. (We will ignore for the moment where this needs to go with penal substitution on the cross, which I assume will be the topic of a later post.)
But if we are being precise, “righteousness” cannot mean “vindicating the righteous”, as that is totally circular. Who are the righteous? Those who glorify God as Creator and Lord.
If “justice” means “giving to each person as they deserve”, we still need a standard of desert. The philosophers debated whether something is “right” because God says so, or because of some inherent “rightness” (the Euthyphro debate, as I recall).
Piper’s view allows us to get out of that dichotomy and say that something is “right” because it is consistent with God’s character and hence glorifies God.
But I need to go back and read both Piper and the Bible more carefully to see if this is what they are saying.
Hi Neil, happy to clarify more.
Firstly, if you read my comment again, you’ll notice that I didn’t suggest that “righteousness” actually meant “vindicating the righteous”, etc. What I said was that the particular standard in view when we are speaking of God’s “righteousness” (understood in the forensic setting) is “justice”, and that “justice” is “vindicating the righteous”, etc. An important distinction.
Secondly, you said,
I agree – that’s what I was getting at when I spoke about the righteous moral standards that God has set up in the creation itself.
But Piper’s definition of righteousness goes beyond this. Piper doesn’t merely say that righteousness always glorifies God because it is consistent with his character (I agree with that 100%). Piper goes too far by saying that righteousness means being committed to glorifying God. That is taking two connected yet distinct concepts (i.e. righteousness and commitment to God’s glory), and making them equal. The two are inseparable, granted. But we still need to distinguish them, not to collapse them into a flat equivalence.
I said in my previous comment that
I believe that your subsequent comment has done just that. It has argued convincingly (albeit briefly) that the glory of God is the ground and cause for God’s righteousness. I agree with what you say there.
But you have not actually shown that the two are the same. That is, you have not proved Piper’s definition of righteousness. You’ve proved mine. And of course, I can only agree
Of course, this definition isn’t my own. I’m just trying to reflect and summarise what any decent Biblical lexicon could tell you. Piper’s definition of righteousness, while exhilarating and interesting, won’t be found in a lexicon. That’s because, while he has seen the profound theological connection between righteousness and God’s glory (yay for Piper!), he has made the mistake of turning this connection into a lexical equivalence.