RE: justified.

 

"δικαιοω... 2. to do one justice, to condemn, punish, to have justice done one's self, to suffer justice, condemn, execute judgment " (Thayer's Lexicon, page 151); "Secure justice " (TDNT);  "bring to justice " (LSJ); "chastise, punish " LSJ; "do justice [to/for]" BDAG, 3rd edition, def. 1; "to do one justice " (Abbott-Smith).  Please see Lexical entries at:

 

 http://www.torahtimes.org/Greek_database/greek_words_index.htm#dikaioo

 

comment1: The English word "justified" as used in Christian theological contexts is utterly and totally corrupted.  It  is useless due to theological overloading.  I don't mean that it cannot be understood in some good senses.  It has been by many believers.   However, it does not communicate the intended message due to the fact that conflicting theologies are built on different interpretations of the word.  For example, the Catholic automatically assumes that it means "made righteous," and the Protestant assumes it means "declared righteous".   In a negative context such as "one is not justified by law" it makes good sense if one interprets it as "acquitted", which sense is in the popular usage of "justified", i.e. "he justified himself [showed he'd done no wrong]".  However, Protestants automatically interpret "justified" as "declared righteous", a forensic meaning for which Catholic Theologians rightly excoriate them.  Of course if one does right, then he is declared righteous by God or others for doing the right thing.  But that is not what the Protestant colored glasses see.  What they see is declared righteous in spite of the fact that the person is not righteous.   Catholics, on the other hand, see a Gnostic sort of infused perfection when they hear or say "justified", i.e. "made righteous" in a past tense or inward sense of perfection.

 

comment2: Messianic believers should not continue to countenance the use of the word "justified".   It is poisoned by 19 centuries of theological warefare.  The word itself is not even native to English.  It was coined from the Latin term iustificare by bible translators.   It never had a native English meaning either.  From the get go it was loaded up with antinomian theology.   Do a linguistic analysis of "justified".  It is based on the noun "justice" [<iustitia] with an ending that turns it into a verb "-fied" [<ficare].  If we could coin a new word in English we could defuse all the theological overloading by modifying the verbal ending to "-ed", i.e. "justiced".   Now go up to the Lexical citations at the top of this page.  What would "justiced" mean?   "The murderer was justiced  in a public hanging".  "1. In its classical usage, δικαιουν with a personal object almost invariably seems to be applied to someone whose cause is unjust, and thus bears the meaning of 'to do justice to'—i.e., 'to punish'." (Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 2nd edition, Alister E. McGrath).

 

comment3: While the sense "to do justice to/for " [someone] is native to Greek, it is not native to the Hebrew term הצדיק or הוצדק.  Only in Paul [and apparently Ecclesiasticus too] does the native Greek sense of δικαιοω occur, because he was a native speaker of Greek writing to native speakers of Greek.  Similar is Paul's usage of νομος.  The sense "norm" occurs only in the Greek.  We cannot understand all his usages of νομος through the Hebrew term תורה. 

 

From McGrath: "In classical Greek, δικαιουν [δικαιοω] with a personal object applied to a person whose cause is unjust invariably assumes the negative meaning 'to punish'.  The Septuagintal use of the verb in an identical context demands that it assumes a positive meaning—i.e., 'to justify', 'to declare to be in the right', or 'to acquit'. For example, Isaiah 5.22-3 (LXX) follows both the wording of the Massoretic text very closely, giving the following translation: ουαι...οι δικαιουντες τον ασηβη ενεκεν δωρων και το δικαιον του δικαιου αιροντες.  [Woe...to those justifying the ungodly for the sake of rewards, and the righteousness of the righteous taking away! = הוי...מצדיקי רשע עקב שחד וצדיקים יסירו ממנו׃] ...The substance of the complaint is that certain men are, for the sake of financial considerations, δικαιουντες τον ασηβη [justifying the ungodly].  This complaint does not make sense if the classical sense of δικαιουν (e.g., as it is encountered at Ecclesiasticus [Sirach] 42.2 [και περι κριματος δικαιωσαι τον ασεβη = and concerning judgment to do justice to the ungodly]) is presumed to apply: if the unjust are punished—i.e., have 'justice done to them'—there can be no cause for complaint.  The complaint does, however, make sense if the term is presumed to have a Hebraic background, in that the substance of the complaint is then that certain men have been bribed to declare the guilty to be innocent.  It is clear that the term διακαιουν, although of classical Greek provenance, has assumed a Hebraic meaning as a consequence of its being used to translate the ṣdq-words.  The Greek reader of the Old Testament, unfamiliar with the Hebraic background to such material, would find passages such as the above highly perplexing.  The locus classicus for the secular Greek use of the verb is Book V of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, in which the passive form of δικαιουν, (δικαιουσθαι) [to do justice to/for] is clearly and unequivocally understood to be the antithesis of αδικεισθαι [to do injustice to/for] and  the passive equivalent of the active δικαιοπραγειν [to act justly], as may be seen from the statement αδυνατον γαρ αδικεισθαι μη αδικουντος [for it is not possible to do injustice to one who is not just], η δικαιουσθαι μη δικαιοπραγουντος [the one to do justice to is not the one acting justly]. It is clear that the passive meaning of the verb is 'to have justice done to one'.  If this classical Aristotelian understanding of δικαιουσθαι [to have justice done] is applied to the Septuagintal translation of Isaiah 43.26, an apparent absurdity results....A similar conclusion must be drawn in the case of Micah 6.11 (LXX) ....It is therefore clear that, under the influence of the Hebrew original, the Septuagintal verb δικαιουν came to assume a meaning quite distinct from its classical origin.  Furthermore, such a meaning must have become widespread and accepted within the Greek-speaking Judaism—otherwise, the Septuagint would have been incomprehensible at points" (Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 2nd edition, Alister E. McGrath, page 12-14, my translations in [])

 

comment3: Except for the explanation above by McGrath, scholars would be at a loss to explain the use of δικαιοω in the LXX.  However, in giving the the correct explanation, McGrath also tells us what δικαιοω really means in normal Greek!   It's usage in the LXX is a sort of Hebraized Greek dependent on הצדיק, and unique to that connection.   If Paul were writing to Palestinian Jews or Aramaic speaking Jews with just a working knowledge of LXX Greek, then of course he would be totally misunderstood.   However, that was not his audience.  He wrote in Greek to Greeks, doubtless with a lot of Hebrew influence, but Paul also knew the Greek terms, and he used them effectively.

 

comment4: We may expand on McGrath's comments above by noting that Exodus 23:7 says: και ου δικαιωσεις τον ασεβη.  "And you shall not justify the ungodly".  On the other hand Paul has God as τον δικαιουντα τον ασεβη in Romans 4:5 which in standard Koine is "who does justice upon the ungodly", but which is rendered in the translations as "who justifies the ungodly" as is a direct contradiction to the Torah.  The only way to vindicate Paul is that he meant it in the usual Greek sense that God does justice to  the ungodly, and that is the gospel, because in Messiah, God has done justice to us by substitutionary atonement.

 

comment5: One must distinguish when the Greek word δικαιοω  is to be informed by the Hebrew הצדיק and when it is not.   In non-Pauline texts, it means, "make righteous", "acquit" or "declare righteous", but in the latter sense only when the subject to be declared righteous actually is righteous.   In Paul, both the Septuagintal usage are employed AND the classical Greek usage.   We may best express the classical usage with the following glosses, "to do justice for", "to satisfy justice", or "to have justice done".

 

example1: Negative sentences:  "by the customary deeds there shall no flesh be justified in his sight" make sense in both senses, 1. not acquitted, 2. not satisfy [divine] justice.

 

example2: Positive sentences, "Being justified freely by his grace" are totally wrong, since the Christian reader will mentally put "made righteous" or "declared righteous" into the sense or "acquitted".  In these cases we must resort to the classical, and translate, "Having justice done freely by his grace" or more with a functional equivalent, "Having justice done for us freely by His grace" (Rom. 3:24).

 

comment6: For additional examples see the actual translations used in this commentary.

Daniel's Literal Translation and Commentary: (http://www.torahtimes.org/translation/dikaiow.html)