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 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.

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.

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.

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,

something is “right” because it is consistent with God’s character and hence glorifies God.

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

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.

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.