Paul's Concept Of Justification [Hardcover]

The Greek family of words characterizing the doctrine of justification by faith (as it is known in English) is most prominent in the writings of the Apostle Paul. It was this doctrine that lay at the heart of the sixteenth-century Reformation; Martin Luther and his followers considered it to be at the very center of the gospel. Protestants came to understand justification differently from the Catholic Church they had left. Instead of the Catholic realist view, in which God makes a sinner righteous, they came to a forensic understanding, by which God, as judge, declares a sinner righteous. During the nineteenth century a third, relational view began to emerge: it viewed justification as God's gift of a right relationship to a sinner. This monograph examines Paul's concept from three perspectives: the New Testament data; the way the doctrine has developed historically; and how the doctrine has been expressed in English translations of the Scriptures. The author concludes that it is the relational view that most accurately depicts Paul's concept of justification. Richard Moore's three-volume work on 'justification' in Paul, in historical development, and in English translations has been available for over a decade, yet too few scholars seem aware of it. In this fresh distillation of his magnum opus, Moore restates his case for interpreting Paul's distinctive concept of 'justification' as context-specific, non-forensic (in key contexts), and relational, which is also illustrated in the author's annotated translation of Romans. A learned and lucid book. --David J. Neville, Associate Professor of Theology, St. Mark's National Theological Center, Canberra, Australia In this important study of translations and interpretations over the centuries of dikaiosyne and its cognates in Paul's letters, Moore has demonstrated how an inadequate translation of a rich theological concept has led to distortions in meaning, which became entrenched in churls.