Iustitia Dei (Part II)

The doctrine of justification is linked closely to the concept of righteousness, both semantically and theollogically. It is the concept that God is righteous and acts according to his righteousness, therefore, how then can a righteous God justiy a sinner. The conviction is that God is righteous, man is a sinner and God justifies man. God in his righteousness justifies sinner. The question is how is it possible for a righteous God to acquit/justify a sinner?Modern theological vocabuilaries contain a host fo Hebrew, Greek and Latin words. The words cannot be translated in which it still holds its richness within its own linguistic culture and context. Hence, the transference of the concept of justification in its Hebraic context to that of western Europe pose a great difficulty.The primary source of Christian theology is teh Bible. Therefore, a lot of Christian theology contains many important concepts orginating from the Hebraic context, and the transference of these concepts from Hebrew soil to Greek or Latin soil pose great problem. The western Europe's understandning of justice and righteous is often employed to articulate the doctrine of justification which is unsuited for the discussion of God's righteousness. Here we will look at the Heb., Gk. and Lat understanding of 'righteousness' as a preliminary to our discussion. First is the grapheme, sdq, examined using other ancient oriental language carries the idea of 'donforming to a norm' which is confirmed by the dominant sense of sedeq and sedaqah as 'right behaviour' or 'right disposition'. While Barr criticised the use of etymology to determine the meaning of words, it is acceptable in an attempt to establish their early meanings (McGrath). The oldest menaing of sedaqa is in Judges 5:1-31 which means 'victory'. God demonstrated his righteousness by defending Israel against her enemy. This is undergirded by the framework of covenant whereby God fulfils his covenant obligations to Israel (Israel was to fulfil her obligations to God) and thus a state of righteousness is establshed - 'as they should be'. The 'righteousness' of teh covenant was not threatened within Israel herself until the time of the prophets. The threat becomes increasingly apparent with the appearance of teh concept of 'conditional election'. The continuity of teh covenantal relationship btween God and Israel is based on sedaqa (righteousness). The Heb. sedaqa's conontation of 'right order of affairs' cannot be subsumed under iustitia distributiva (distributive justice) - an impartial judge who administer justice according to which a person has broken the law.Cremer gives us the fundamental insight that the basic sense of sedaqa refers to actual relationship between two person, and implies behaviour corresponding to, or is consistent with, whatever claims may arise from or concerning either party to the relationship. In the Heb. context it is teh relationship between God and Israel. Hence in Heb. sedaqa is characterised as iustitia salutifera.This soteriological tone is brought out in several passages, particularly Deutro-Isaiah. This shade of menaing cannot be brought out by the Lat. iustitia distributiva. This shows that the translation of the Heb. to a second language is very difficult. This is because the semantic field of a word includes not only it synonyms, but also its antonyms, homonyms and homophones. Hence the translation of a word into a second language will inevitably distort the semantic field, so that certain naunces and association present in the original word is lost and new nuances and association not already present make their appearance. The words used already have their own associations and nuances in their original language.This difficulty is present with the translation of sedaqa --> iustitia and hasdiq -->iustificare.(McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 4-9.)