Did the Bible Really Say...?

In Tom Wright's book on Justification -- a book I imagine him to have written during a lunch break (and I mean that as a compliment) -- he makes the bold statement that you cannot understand Paul if you read the NIV.

There is a school of thought -- one which I admire in some ways -- whose mantra is "The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it." So simple, so sure. Forget all this fiddlin' about with hermeneutics, forget all of the overly complicated theologizing that seems only to confuse. Let's just put as many Bibles as possible into the hands of Christian lay people and tell them to go nuts. This was one of the tasks of Reformation people (slightly sensationalised, of course) - We need to get everyone a Bible so they can read and understand the Scriptures for themselves.

Now I'm not questioning the value of this task. I'm not about to go around knocking on people's doors saying "Actually, change of plan - can we have those Bible's back, please?" Scripture is not a code book for the initiated. You don't have to have read Anthony Thistelton in order to read the Bible for all its worth. "Simplicity is beautiful", according to philosopher John Giles, and we read the Bible best when it comes to us as something simple.

Now back to that mantra. So what does the Bible actually say? According to Wright, the Bible does not say what the NIV says it says, at least when it comes to sections of Paul's epistles. So we can read our Bible, believe it, and settle the question, but in reality we have believed and settled something that was never intended to be believed and settled. We have fallen at the first hurdle - the Bible doesn't actually say it!

One of the NIV passages Wright laments is Romans 3:21-26. The term dikaiosyne theou is translated in the NIV as "a righteousness from God", when a more faithful translation might read "the righteousness of God" or "God's righteousness". What's the difference? The NIV's translation shoehorns the text into a scheme that goes like this: We lacked a thing, a moral quality called "righteousness", and so the good news is that God gives us his "righteousness" or perhaps the "righteousness of Christ" (a phrase you won't find in the New Testament) to make up for our short-comings. What we need, and what we get, is "a righteousness from God".

Translating dikaiosyne theou as "righteousness of God" or "God's righteousness" leads us to conclude that what we need is for God to reveal his own righteousness. This could mean many things, but God told me that it is closely linked with his will to salvation; his committment to make things right and restore justice to the world (which, lest we forget, was always intended to happen through Israel). Books like Psalms and Isaiah certainly back this up - books that Paul's imagination was steeped in.

If my limited knowledge of Church history is correct, Martin Luther was terrified at the thought of God revealing his righteousness. He wondered how on earth that this could be good news. And so a scheme was formed that the NIV has echoed - a scheme that bent Scripture out of shape in order to make it say things that it didn't actually need to say at all. Because in biblical thought, what could be better news than hearing that God had revealed his righteousness!?

But now, a revised version of the NIV has been revealed apart from the 1984 edition, although the 1984 edition testifies to it. Is this good news? Here is its translation of Romans 3:21-22a:

But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in (or "the faithfulness of") Jesus Christ to all who believe.

I think Tom Wright would say amen to verse 21, but that 22 undoes all of its good work. That word "given" is a leftover from the old scheme, with no basis in the actual text. It is a word included because of a misunderstanding of the law.

The law was not given so that people could keep it perfectly and get into heaven when they die. The law was not a series of hoops that need to be jumped through. In short, the law was never intended as a means of our salvation. When we think that it was, then the Lutheran scheme makes sense: What we need to be saved is a perfect moral record. Since we are sinners we can't achieve that, so Jesus has acheived it in our place. This "righteousness" is then given to us when we have faith in Jesus.

The irony of this scheme is that for all its proponents' antagonism for works righteousness, it is an utterly works righteousness scheme. Sure it might not be our works of the law that save us, but we are still saved by the works of the law.

Yet Romans tells us that God's righteousness has been revealed "apart from the law". There must be another means of salvation other than Law, vicariously kept or not. But what?