Justice and Righteousness

But, in the Bible they are the same word, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament. One Hebrew and one Greek word is used for both, and seldom translated into any other word.

Hebrew/Greek word	Tr. as 'Justice'	Tr. as 'Righteousness'	Tr. as other
H: tsedeq	102	394	14
Other Hebrew words	5	11
Gk: dikaios	38	135	7
Other Greek words	0	1

What do these figures tell us? First, it implies very strongly that, to both Hebrew and N.T. Greek thinking justice and righteousness are the same thing. Second, it implies that our conception of 'justice' and 'righteousness', by which we give them different meanings, is likely to be wrong.

So what is the real meaning of both words? I like the definition of 'justice' given by Paul Marshall:

Justice is: right relationships among all things in the created order of things.

Now, that definition is different from both of our conceptions above. Our conventional conception of righteousness is centred on an entity (a human being); Marshall's conception is centred on relationships. Our conventional conception of justice is centred on a legal framework, whereas Marshall's conception is centred on our 'dwelling' amongst all created things. Our conventional conception of justice is of a balancing act; Marshall's conception is of quality of relationship.

Why have we got it so wrong? As e.g. the late Lesslie Newbiggin discussed at length in his book Foolishness to the Greeks, Western thinking tends to divorce the public and private spheres of life. We tend to assume a fundamental difference between 'fact' and 'value'. We tend to put state, business and academic life on one side and family life on the other. This is dualistic thinking, which splits reality down the middle into two mutually exclusive parts. He traced this tendency to dualism to the presuppositions of the old Greek academic thinkers like Plato and Aristotle. Our thinking also shares with those academic Greeks a fascination with existence more than with meaning. (Note: New Testament Greek language that we referred to above differs from the classical Greek. And note that Plato himself was not so dualistic, but his ideas led towards dualism.)

So we tend to split the integated, relational concept embodied in tsedeq and dikaios into two different things, attached to what we think of as the public and private spheres of life, and in both, centre the meaning of the concept on entities rather than relationships. A pretty fundamental error; no wonder we have long got it wrong!

If you want further 'reading' on this, see:

• The idea of Ground Motives of the philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd, from which Newbiggin developed his ideas.
• A 'New View' that places our relatedness with, and responsibility to, the rest of creation at the centre of an evangelical theology.

Created: 1999. Last updated: 29 March 2004 some typos corrected and rewrote para on dualism, in response to comments by Kim McCall, to whom many thanks are due. Also .nav, .end and two links. 19 November 2006 unet.