JUST(ICE)FICATION PART 1: James Cone’s Doctrine of Justification: Divine Righteousness in Post-Colonial Perspective

Recently, New Testament scholar Scot McKnight of JESUS CREED has been working on a series dealing with, N T Wright, Justification and the New Perspective on Paul . At the center of the debate is the discussion whether or not the Reformers (especially Martin Luther) were correct in understanding the apostle Paul’s doctrine of justification by grace through faith as a response to the early Judaisms’ work righteousness. Tradition tells us that Paul was making a case against the Jews who viewed themselves as following the law and somehow earning their salvation to the next world; but is this view of history accurate? The scholars of the New Perspective on Paul would disagree. It is hard for me to totally concur with the traditional Reformation understanding of justification as well since one cannot say that there was just ONE Judaism in the first and second centuries. I personally think that N T Wright (as a first-rate biblical scholar) wasted his time in addressing John Piper and the hyper-Calvinists’criticism of him and the NPP school. The debate over whether or not this or that Judaism taught salvation as earned or not is completely irrelevant to the pressing issues of today. The point of Paul’s Gospel concerning God’s righteousness is to describe for us God’s action in the continual story in the life of Israel and Jesus the Messiah.


When one looks at history, while there are some objective facts to be retrieved, one cannot help but see history as a mirror reflection of one’s very own story. Martin Luther, for instance, viewed his condemnation of some of the practices of the Roman Catholic Church as part of a tradition of the apostle Paul’s struggle against the Jews’ works righteousness. With this narrative understanding of history, let us take as our example, James Cone, to some known as the father of Black Theology. Cone sees himself (although a Methodist) as sharing a similar plight to Martin Luther and St. Paul; the difference being the historical context, social location, and type of heresy/works righteousness that needed to be confronted. In his work, BLACK THEOLOGY & BLACK POWER, Cone provides a theological doctrine of divine righteousness which seeks to destroy white supremacy both in the white American church and white American society.

Adherence to the Reformation doctrine “Justification by grace through faith” has political implications in the minds of Black Theologians. To accept God’s grace for Cone, means that “that because God has acted for all, all men are free—free to respond creatively to that act. It thus becomes the act of Christian love to proclaim the Good News of freedom by actively fighting against all those powers which hold men captive” (Cone, 52). God does not move out of necessity; God has the free will to choose to act because God is sovereign, and God has done so in a particular way in history. The drama of the biblical narrative reveals God’s just actions. Therefore, Christian doctrine of justification should first begin in the very praxis of Yahweh and his Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. Cone explains:

"It is important to note that God’s righteousness refers not so much to an abstract quality related to his Being in the realm of thought—as commonly found in Greek philosophy—but to his activity in human history, in the historical events of the time and effecting his purpose despite those who oppose it. This is the biblical tradition. Israel as a people initially came to know God through the exodus. It was Yahweh who emancipated her from Egyptian bondage and subsequently established a covenant with her at Sinai, promising: [Exodus 19:4-6]” [….] Divine righteousness means that God will be faithful to his promise, that his purposes for Israel will not be thwarted. Israel, therefore, need not worry about her weakness and powerlessness in a world of mighty military powers, ‘for all of the earth is mine’ (Exodus 19:5). The righteousness of God means that he will protect her from the ungodly menacing of other nations. Righteousness means God is doing justice, that he is putting right what men have made wrong.” (Cone, 44)

In other words, divine righteousness that is disclosed in the story of the Exodus is the fulfillment of God’s promise to protect the defenseless and weak Hebrew children over and against the evil Egyptian empire. Our faithful obedience to God requires our recognition that security and salvation lie with God alone. Cone adds:

“God will unquestionably vindicate the poor. […] If God is to be true to himself, his righteousness must be directed to the helpless and the poor, those who can expect no security from this world. The rich, the secure, the suburbanite can have no part of God’s righteousness because of their trust and dependence on the things of this world. ‘God’s righteousness triumphs when man has no means of triumphing.’ [Barth, Dogmatics] His righteousness is reserved for those who come empty-handed, without any economic, political, or social power. That is why the prophets and Jesus were so critical of the economically secure. Their security gets in the way of absolute faith in God.” (page 45)

While Cone does not explicitly discuss the Resurrection at length, the implication of his doctrine of justification is that the Resurrection vindicates God’s Elect Savior whose life and ministry is forever justified (1st Timothy 3:16 ). The emancipatory mission of Jesus of Nazareth has been approved by the One True God, the God of Israel for all eternity. The Son of Man came to judge the Roman Empire by taking the side of the oppressed, healing the lame and the blind, and opposing the religious and political authorities of his day. Not one human being is able to accuse Jesus the Messiah of any wrongdoing. As the apostle Paul asks, “Who will bring any charge against God’s Elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us” (Romans 8:33-34). We as sinful human beings are unable to bring any charges against God’s Son because he lives a perfect and blames life; and it is only by Jesus’s death and resurrection that God “makes a way out of no way” in which the Church can participate in his holy life.
I will let Cone have the last word:

“Radical obedience to Christ means that reward cannot be the motive for action. It is a denial of faith to insist on the relevance of reward. Is this not what St. Paul had in mind when he spoke of justification? When Paul uses the term ‘justification’ in reference to Christ he mean that sinful man, through complete trust alone, is accepted by God and is declared an treated as a righteous man. He is emphasizing man’s inability to make himself righteous. All human strivings are nil; man cannot earn God’s acceptance (Romans 3:20; Gal. 3:22). Salvation is by the free grace of God. There is no place for the conceit that men can save themselves by their own efforts, if they try hard enough.” (Cone, 125)

EDIT: THIS IS THE FIRST IN A SERIES OF POSTS EXAMINING JUSTIFICATION FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF THEOLOGIES FROM THE MARGINS.


Works Cited
Cone, James H. Black Theology and Black Power An Original Seabury Paperback, Sp 59. New York,: Seabury Press, 1969.

The Mass X-odus to Word Press.... and me an X-egete?

I have a few friends who have left either just begun blogging or who have made a switch to Wordpress.com. No worries, I am not leaving Blogspot.com anytime soon. It has been good to me;

I have known Richard since my days as a religious studies major at Texas Christian University. He is into Biblical studies and hermeneutics.

I met Rob on the Theology Rocks Facebook group. Ah, those were the days. Now, he is at Dallas Seminary mastering the Hebrew Bible.

I recently encountered Mike a few months ago on the biblioblogosphere. His interests are the New Testament and Christian origins.

On a personal note, it seems so funny that recently I have been seriously considering a change in my career path. Rather than working in the field of systematic and constructive theologies or theological ethics, it has been recommended to me that I should look into becoming a biblical studies person. You know, those people, that study all those weird sounding languages, in addition to Greek and Hebrew, like Aramaic or Uggaritic, or ancient Georgian. I really have run out of excuses as to why I am not. It is not like I could not do biblical studies, ethics and theology all at the same time; these are all interrelated, obviously. Imagining if I did change, I may pursue something to do with the 1)Gospel of Matthew, 2) the Letter to the Hebrews, 3) the Son of Man tradition 4) the Priestly Messiah in the second Temple Judaism. I do like what I read from the New Perspective on Paul folk, like N.T. Wright and James D.G. Dunn. I guess I will have to keep praying over this. What do you all think?

Don't Worry, Be Happy!: the Death of Christianity?

Beginning in the 1960's, religious scholars note many so called experts who proclaimed the "death of god," or at least the deconstruction of the Enlightenment construction of the divinity as we knew him. Today, a new group of experts are cheering on the death of the evangelical wing of the American church.

Al Mohler

Michael Spencer

Jon Meacham


(btw: does death have to be the prevailing metaphor when it comes to the reform of religious institution? does that mean that Americans suffer from a narcissism grounded in a fear of death, the unknown, non-being?) It is funny that we used to see the church/synagogue/mosque/religious institution as the lone moral authority to direct public policy and social norms. Now, we have gossip columnists telling us how we should debate states' rights and how we should practice religious and civil rites.

If we could perhaps try to escape this metaphor of "reform/revolution as death" and think in particularly Christian terms of resurrection and new life. In a sermon I gave for Brite's Black and Womanist Theologies course a couple of years ago, I said that "Human tradition may die with humanity,but the Resurrected Messiah and his tradition are forever." What exactly did I mean by this? It means that our human construction of what religious institutions may look like or function in society may be subject to change at any given moment in history, but that Jesus of Nazareth, the Firstborn of the New Creation (Colossians 1), remains Master of the Universe in every instant, both now and in eternity.

The apostle Paul encountered our LORD on the road to Damascus. And as he confesses to the assembly in Galatia (Gal 1:11-16), he loved his religious tradition more than people, or even the God who created them. We all have seen the type. Those religious people, like I once was, who closed themselves off to those who think differently than they do. Yet, Paul was transformed by seeing the Resurrected Messiah with his own two eyes; this encounter was life-changing. Paul had seen the new life God was making available for all people groups. No longer is there an us versus them, but a royal WE (Galatians 3:28; Colossians 3:11)! We should rejoice and celebrate that Christianity may be changing because the Empire of God is invading our human space once more that we may experience the life-giving power of the Triune God.

For further reading on why we should not mourn but rejoice, see my friend T.C. Moore's post on Gregory Boyd's assessment of the current "crisis."

Princes Shall Come out of Egypt: Clement of Alexandria

As an evangelical, one would think that in the great history of Christian theology, God stopped speaking in the seventeenth century and had perfectly revealed Godself to the Germans and the French. In terms of the geo-politics within academic settings, it would be suffice to say that up until the the latter half of the twentieth century, from psychology (Freud) to philosophy (Kant, Nietsche), to theology (Barth) to economics and history (Marx) to physics (Einstein), a vast majority of authorities in these fields were either born or educated European schools (many of them German institutions).

The world was not always like this. Before the Muslims conquered Egypt less than midway through the 7th century, Common Era, Alexandria was once the capital of Egypt. Clement of Alexandria was a Christian intellectual who would constantly write in response to the prevailing heresies and immoralities of his day. From the Gnostics to the Carpocratians, Clement was not afraid to confront his opponents in the bluntest of terms. He also struggled with traditions such as the Christian followers who studied Tertullian and who believed that studying Greek philosophy was a waste of time. To these, Clement would answer, "The earth is the LORD's and the fullness thereof, and anyone who seeks to help catechumens, especially if they are Greeks, must not shrink from scholarly study" Strom., VI, 89. In today's world, there are many people in the church who question the need for religious scholarship. This is because they have chosen to divide the spirit from the body, in almost the way Clement's enemies, the Gnostics once did. Let us heed the words of Clement, who argues that the body and the spirit are in mutual need for each other:


***The task of the law is to deliver us from a dissolute life and all disorderly ways. Its purpose is to lead us from unrighteousness to righteousness, so that it would have us self-controlled in marriage, in begetting children, and in general behavior. The LORD is not “come to destroy the law but to fulfil it” (Matt 5:17). “To fulfill” does NOT imply that it was defect, but that by his coming the prophecies of the law are accomplished, since before the law the demand for right conduct was proclaimed by the LOGOS to those also who lived good lives. The multitude who know nothing of continence live for the body, not for the spirit. But the body without spirit is ‘earth and ashes’ (Gen 18:27).***

Clement of Alexandria, On Marriage, Chapter VI, #46.

My 30th Post: Trinitarian Faith and Racial Reconciliation in Galatians 1:1-9

I have achieved a milestone in posting Black Trinitarian Theology blog for the thirtieth time. In commemoration, I made a post that gives a glipse into the kind of work I want to do on this blog as well in my scholarship. Below is my translation and brief commentary on Paul's letter to the Galatians

Trinitarian Faith and Racial Reconciliation in Galatians 1:1-9


*Corrections to Translation (thank you, Rob K.):

A. Verse 4 should read "The one who gave himself up" not giving himself up. The Greek word is in the aorist participle, and aorist always means a past and finished action.

B. Verse 6 should read "changing from the one," and not "changed"; this reflects the urgency of the moment for Paul writing to the Galatians in their historical context.

C. Verse 8 should read "beside the one which was preached to you" and not "the one who"; the relative pronoun and definite articles are in the neuter form and does not refer to a person in the original Greek, but to an object (an event), the Gospel.