Paul proved his essential Jewishness when in his letters he quoted so extensively from the Tanak, the law and the prophets and writings of Jewish scripture, and those quotations are at their most concentrated in his letter to the Romans. It is not essential nor even important to know the contingent circumstances behind the writing of Romans to understand Paul's argument there but it seems obvious that he was addressing other Jews. It is not just the explicit quotations but the resonances, the echoes of words unsaid, that are meant to spark off memories of other texts familiar to learned Jews.Footnote ¹ It is surely obvious that recent gentile converts would have just not understood Romans.Footnote ²

It is only quite recently that Pauline scholars have latched on to Paul as an interpreter of scripture in the way he builds his arguments. The first general breakthrough came with Richard Hays's impressive Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (Yale University Press, 1989), supplemented more recently by Francis Watson's heavyweight Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith (London: Continuum, 2004) which broadens the debate to include Jewish commentators on scripture other than Paul. Hays focuses on how Paul used scriptural allusions to indicate the overarching narrative underpinning the Jewish Bible, while Watson takes Paul's use of ‘the law’ to mean the Torah, specifically the first five books of the Bible, and looks particularly at quotations from Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy and how Paul and other Jewish contemporaries interpreted them. This article takes a different line of approach by looking at what Paul may have gained linguistically and theologically from the Psalms and how he developed this in his theology of ‘justification by faith’, or, as I shall prefer to name it, ‘righteousness through faithfulness’.

Paul's use of the Psalms

Any discussion of Paul's use of scriptural quotations is bound to focus on Romans. Estimates of numbers vary a little because of different views of what counts as a citation but Earle Ellis's catalogue of these quotations suggests that there are eighty-nine such quotations in Paul's letters (excluding six from Ephesians and the Pastoral Letters) and fifty-three of these are to be found in Romans. Of these fifty-three, thirteen are from the Psalms but, as Ellis only counts those quotations that are explicitly set out as quotations (e.g. ‘as it is written . . .’) that number can be increased to twenty-four if we also look for matching words.Footnote ³ There are only seven other quotations from the Psalms in the rest of Paul's letters, according to Ellis's list, and within Romans the number of citations from the Psalms is only just exceeded by those from Isaiah. This suggests that there is a strong correlation between the Psalms and Romans, between the language of the Psalms and the central ideas of Romans: righteousness, faith and law. In general the influence of the Psalms on Paul has not been not much commented on, though Richard Hays incorporates a discussion of some of these in his second chapter ‘Intertextual Echo in Romans’ with comments on Psalms 97 (LXX)/98 (MT), 43/44, 50/51, 142/143 and 42/43 in particular. Commentators usually prefer to focus on the more obvious lines from Genesis and Habakkuk, Isaiah and Deuteronomy.Footnote ⁴

It looks as though Paul knew huge chunks of scripture, probably by heart, in the Greek version, the Septuagint.Footnote ⁵ Nor would this be a surprise as the Psalms were the backbone of the piety of those who attended synagogue and continue to be so in much Christian worship. The words of the Psalms would have resonated within him and he must have expected something of the same in at least some of his readers in Rome. Few modern readers would be able to respond with the same intensity. Although Paul usually follows the Septuagint text, sometimes there are variations. Some citations he may have altered deliberately to suit his argument but some may have been faulty remembrances or free paraphrases. These variations need not imply that Paul was playing fast and loose with the text (which, anyway, had not then been canonised) because he may not have had the text in front of him. He can hardly have carried a copy of the Septuagint around with him as we might carry a pocket Bible; he must have consulted scrolls in local synagogues or churches and relied on his memory. The issue of whether Paul deliberately altered a quotation to suit his argument, suffered from faulty memory, or used a non-standard text can be illustrated by examining how he quoted Psalm 142:2 (LXX) in Galatians 2:16 and Romans 3:20. The Psalm runs, ‘Do not enter into judgment with your servant, because not a living thing [no person] will be justified [will be counted righteous] before you’; in Greek ou dikaiōthēsetai enōpion sou pas zōn. In Galatians 2:16 it becomes ou dikaiōthēsetai pasa sarx. In Romans 3:20 the Psalm quotation is extended to ou dikaiōthēsetai pasa sarx enōpion autou where autou is a stylistic change and where pasa sarx may be false memory or a deliberate change for theological emphasis.Footnote ⁶ At any rate Paul was imbued with a detailed knowledge of the Psalms that came from private reading and their constant use in Jewish worship.

It is understood with the study of Romans that the language of ‘justification’ is forensic and corresponds with the language of the law courts. While this much is true, we are further encouraged to accept that Paul actually took his language from the courts for his discussion of ‘law’, which we in turn have tended to understand as a juridical code, perhaps under the influence of Psalm 119. But for the moment let us drop this assumption that Paul derived the dikaiosunē language from the courts. Furthermore, law might not in this case mean a juridical code, secular or religious, it might mean Torah in the broad sense that Watson suggests. The language of justification for Paul might well not come from the courts but from scripture. This would be to agree with Francis Watson, who has recently proposed that Paul's doctrine of righteousness by faith is an exercise in scriptural interpretation.Footnote ⁷ There is surely no coincidence that (i) Paul's citations from scripture are concentrated in Romans, that (ii) a significant proportion of these quotations are from Psalms and that (iii) his theology of ‘justification by faith’ is to be found only in this letter and in Galatians, with a passing mention in Philippians.

It is entirely plausible that there was a historical link between these three factors – Romans, Psalms, justification – and that Paul could have developed his understanding of justification out of his knowledge of the Psalms and from his spiritual formation in the Psalms. It is certainly the case that the book of Psalms in the Greek version provides all the concepts and vocabulary that Paul needed to develop the first phase of his theology of justification: righteousness/justification, trust/faith/faithfulness, sin, wrath, law, redemption. Ellis confirms this in a general way, not focused on the Psalms, ‘It was only natural that Paul, retaining in his mind Hebrew concepts and thought-forms, should frame his Greek on the analogy of the existing theological vocabulary of the LXX.’Footnote ⁸ It is then surprising that scarcely anyone has so far looked at the connection between the Septuagint Psalms and righteousness/justification in Romans. Hays has examined the contribution of the Psalms to the narrative of salvation that structures Paul's thought in Romans. He even writes that ‘rare is the critic who even considers the possibility of interpreting Paul's “righteousness of God” language against the backdrop of the LXX’, without himself making a specific connection with the Psalms in this context. He adds, ‘Learned scholars have argued bitterly whether dikaiosunē theou was a technical term in Jewish apocalyptic thought, as attested especially in the Qumran texts, or whether it was a new creation of Paul's theological genius, without ever observing that the very Old Testament texts quoted by Paul in Romans 3 already introduce the idea of God's righteousness’, and yet he still fails to mention the Psalms among those Old Testament texts.Footnote ⁹ So what do we discover in the book of Psalms about ‘righteousness’ and those other related concepts?

The doctrine of righteousness in Psalms

In the Septuagint dikaiosunē, with its associated word-forms, is a theme that turns up all over the place in the Psalms in contexts where it should normally be translated ‘righteousness’. The priority of the Psalmist is to affirm the righteousness of God: ‘For the Lord is righteous and loves righteousness’ (Ps. 10/11:8 and 128/129:4; 144/145:17). God as a judge is righteous: ‘he judges the world in righteousness, and the people in uprightness’ (97/98:9). Sometimes the context is explicitly forensic: ‘Judge me, Lord, according to your righteousness, O Lord my God, and let them not rejoice against me’ (34/35:24). Righteousness is partly a matter of status: God is righteous because he is the judge over the world, regardless of the nature of his judgments (49/50:6), but elsewhere his character as a just judge emerges when ‘righteousness’ is linked with other qualities: mercy (114/116:5), love (145/146:8), and truth (83/84:11; 88/89; and most notably in 84/85:10–13):

This righteousness will endure for ever (111/112:3, 7, 9). Psalm 110/111 is a meditation on several aspects of God's righteousness and this psalm relates it to the covenant, the centre of which is the election of Israel as a people destined to become righteous, first by virtue of the status that comes from election and then by showing the moral characteristics of God's own righteousness. Because of this, righteousness is devolved first to the king (71/72), then to the priests (131/132:9) and finally to the whole people.

In Romans 3:20 (and Galatians 2:16) Paul quotes Psalm 142/143:2 to support the view that no one can be regarded as righteous in God's sight. But that is not the general tenor of the Psalms. The one who will dwell with God is:

Of course Paul would argue that no one can reach those standards in practice, but both he and the Psalmist would agree that:

Dikaiosunē is a central theme of Psalms but the dominant issue is whether God will prove his righteousness by vindicating his righteous ones in times of persecution and suffering. The question raised by the Psalmist is, ‘How long O Lord, will you turn away for ever?’ (88/89:46). His prayer is ‘In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me, incline your ear to me and save me’ (70/71:2). His accusation is ‘They that rewarded evil for good slandered me, because I followed righteousness’ (37/38:20). His plea is ‘Awake O Lord and attend to my judgment . . . judge me O Lord according to your righteousness . . . and let them not rejoice against me’ (34/35:23–4). Repeatedly the Psalmist asks for God's mercy (50/51) and, because he places his trust in God, he is confident of his eventual vindication. The basis for his hopes lies in history and, in Psalms 77/78, 104/105 and 105/106 in particular, the Psalmist summarises the ‘grand narrative’ that underpins Jewish history from Abraham to the settlement in the land by way of Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, the exodus and the wilderness experience.

The subsequent confidence of the Psalmist in God's vindication also involves the destruction of those sinners who have been persecuting him:

Psalm 93/94 shows that the Psalmist has no sympathy for the fate of the sinner who has ‘killed the widow and fatherless, and murdered the stranger’, which leads us to the concept of God's wrath (orgē) against sinners, the unrighteous, that is a preoccupation of Romans 1–2, though words other than orgē (mainly thumos) are often used in the Septuagint Psalms. The unrighteous are usually said to be gentiles but they can be Israelites too,

However, lest it be thought that the Psalmist knows only of a wrathful God, it should be pointed out that he often tempers his language of wrath with that of mercy, as in 102/103:6–14:

How are we to gain this mercy and avoid the wrath that is the fate of the unrighteous? The answer of Psalms is: through faithfulness. Faithfulness to God, of course, the primary condition of which is to be in the covenant and to stay in it. Being a member of the covenant-community is first a matter of one's status before God. The mark of faithfulness to that covenant is to avoid idolatry and to keep God's law. This is a matter of observance. For his part, God shows his faithfulness by maintaining the covenant from his side: the Israelites might have been punished ‘but he remembered his covenant’ (105/106:45).

So a person's righteousness is shown by remaining faithful to the God of the covenant, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and keeping clear of idolatry (80/81:8ff.; 81/82). The example given here in the Psalms is the admirable Phineas (105/106:30–1, echoing Numbers 25) who ran an unnamed Israelite and his Midianite woman through with his spear for idolatry ‘and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’ according to the Psalm, the exact same words used in the Septuagint of Abraham for his fidelity to God (Gen. 15:6) and cited by Paul in Romans 4:3. So Paul found the words ‘it was reckoned to him as righteousness’ in the Psalms as well as in Genesis but preferred to use in his letter the more salubrious example of Abraham, with his trust in God's promises, than the viciousness of Phineas.

So God is righteous and remains faithful to the promises of his covenant; the Israelites are counted righteous by virtue of their inclusion in the covenant and must remain faithful by sticking with the God of the covenant and no other. Forensic language is used in the Psalms (and elsewhere) as God preserves the status of the Israelites by judging in favour of his righteous ones (dikaioi).

But now, a note on the language of Paul and the Septuagint Psalms. Paul, we may suppose, took over the language of dikaios/dikaiosunē from Psalms when he developed his theology of ‘justification (being made righteous) by faith (pistis)’. But pistis occurs hardly more than half a dozen times in all 150 Psalms. God's faithfulness is normally indicated by alētheia (truthfulness), and man's fidelity by elpis and associated word-forms (hope). The Psalmist hopes in God, in the sense of trusting in God. In each case the words have the sense of faithfulness, sticking to it, remaining loyal. The general idea is of being righteous, i.e. having the status of being one of the righteous, through faithfulness. If Paul has taken his vocabulary from Psalms why has he moved away from elpis to pistis? Presumably to remain consistent with the texts he uses in Romans 1:17 from Habakkuk 2:4 (Ho de dikaios ek pisteōs zēsetai) and in Romans 4:9 from Genesis 15:6 about Abraham (Elogisthē to Abraam he pistis eis dikaiosunēn), his two principal citations, which both use forms of pistis.

Righteousness, however, is not just a question of status, which is after all a technical matter. It also involves morality. To remain righteous one must do good things. God has to demonstrate his righteousness and so do his people. At this point you would expect the Psalmist to introduce the Law as a measure of how we can do good. Yet, there are surprisingly few uses of ‘law’ in the Psalms. Most references are to the negative anomia, lawlessness. In terms of a word-count there is little evidence in the Psalms of righteousness/justification through fidelity to the law. What references there are include the promise that ‘Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly . . . His pleasure is in the law of the Lord’ (1:2). While 88/89:31–5 sounds a warning to those who break the law:

However, if the language of nomos is not extensive, Psalm 118/119 more than compensates as a paean to God's law with its repeated admonitions to keep his commandments and ordinances, sayings (logia) and just judgments (dikaiōmata). Here there is certainly a strong sense of being righteous/just by putting God's law into action.

Again we do not find much use of ‘works’ as such but the book of Psalms has a clear sense that God will reward and punish according to one's actions: ‘you will recompense everyone according to his works’ (61/62:12; see also 27/28:4–5). The Psalmist summarises his theology as follows,

At the end of all this it is clear that Paul was able to find the concept of ‘law’ and ‘works’ in Psalms, as well as the language of ‘sin‘, ‘wrath’, ‘righteousness’ and ‘faithfulness’ that he could use to similar, but in the end different, effect in Romans. There is indeed a doctrine of ‘righteousness through faithfulness’ in the Psalms and the markers of that faithfulness are the avoidance of idolatry and observance of the law. Circumcision, it might be added, is not an issue there.

Righteousness in Romans 1:1–3:20

Far from rejecting his Jewish inheritance, what we find in Romans, with one major difference that we shall come to later, is a duplication of the doctrine of righteousness through faithfulness that Paul found in Psalms in the Greek of the Septuagint, in precisely the vocabulary that he adopted for Romans, with the exception of the shift from elpis to pistis.Footnote ¹⁰ In the light of the history of the interpretation of Romans in recent centuries, this is certainly a surprise. Part of the problem is that translations of the New Testament have not paid attention to the possible influence on Paul of the language of the Septuagint or the content of the Psalms. And there has been a tendency, perhaps under the influence of Protestant theology which developed originally at roughly the same time as vernacular translations of the Bible in Europe, to suggest a rather cerebral nature to pistis by rendering it as ‘faith’ (Glaube, foi, etc.). In Psalms pistis has little to do with what goes on in one's head and nothing to do with confessing anything like a creed, apart from spurning idolatry and aligning oneself with the God of Israel. So, in order to preserve the (possible) influence of Psalms, dikaiosunē should be translated as ‘righteousness’, despite it being a rather archaic word. (It is not any less intelligible than ‘justification’, which is hardly a word of everyday conversation.) And wherever English grammar and style allow it, pistis should be translated as ‘faithfulness’, with ‘fidelity’, ‘trust’ and perhaps ‘loyalty’ being acceptable substitutes.Footnote ¹¹ So I suggest we should get out of the habit of thinking of a Pauline theology of ‘justification by faith’ in favour of ‘righteousness through faithfulness’.Footnote ¹²

Does this heuristic strategy help to make sense of Romans? I suggest that it does. After his introduction and the programmatic statement of 1:16ff., Paul warns unbelieving gentiles (if any should read this letter) that their appalling behaviour is going to bring the wrath of God and they will have no excuse because they ought to understand something of the nature of God through creation. This section (1:18–32) supports a natural law morality. Then in chapter 2 Paul warns Jewish readers not to be complacent because being Jewish, being one of the elect people, having the law, being circumcised, is not in itself enough. They must keep the law, for if they flout it, they too will suffer the wrath of God. ‘For it is . . . the doer of the law who will be counted righteous’ (Romans 2:13) is very much the view of Psalm 118/119 and is the view that Paul seems to be adopting at this point in his letter – though there is a transformation still to come. Of course, there has been a long debate over the meaning of these first two chapters, which seem to advocate what has been called a ‘works righteousness’,Footnote ¹³ and their relation to the theme of justification by faith that follows in chapter 3 and beyond. There is still no generally accepted solution to the incongruence between these two sections, but we can avoid some of these apparent contradictions in Paul's position if we see chapters 1–2 as the opening phase of an unfolding argument which is about to undergo a shift after 3:20. We do not have to resort to the ploy of Douglas Campbell who supposes that 1:18–3:20 does not express Paul's position at all but is a distanced summary of his opponent's position, the position that he is about to undermine.Footnote ¹⁴

So who is the speaker in Romans 2? Campbell says it is not Paul but a fictitious non-Christian Jewish teacher expressing his traditional, Torah-bound views to a fictive Christian-Jewish audience. This is a theory that could hold water as far as verse 9a but such a figure (i.e. a non-Christian Jew) would not be likely to introduce the theme of the equality of Jew and Greek before God in verses 9b–11 and would certainly not make reference to Jesus Christ in v. 16. No, chapter 2 looks as though it is Paul himself addressing a fictive Jewish reader, a non-Christian Jew rather than one of the so-called Judaising Christians, and warning him of what is to come by not living up to the expectations that you find in the Psalms, namely that Jews must demonstrate their righteousness, their faithfulness to God's covenant, by keeping the law, a view expressed at great length in Psalm 118/119.Footnote ¹⁵ But this is not the end of Paul's argument.

Romans 3 is the locus classicus of righteousness through faithfulness, as I shall inelegantly call Paul's idea. And ‘faithfulness’ is how the RSV and NRSV in fact translate the variants of pistis in the opening verses of this chapter: ‘What if some [Jews] were unfaithful? Will their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God?’ (Romans 3:3). Of course, there is nothing anti-Jewish in Paul alleging that some Jews have been unfaithful to the covenant. That is an idea that runs through the Tanak and the prophets in particular. But does their unfaithfulness cancel out God's faithfulness? No, their and our lack of righteousness confirms the righteousness of God (3:5) How? Well, the unspoken assumption must be that God will inflict his wrath on us, as indicated in chapter 2, and will demonstrate his righteous judgment by punishing our wickedness, just as he will theirs (i.e. the gentiles of ch.1 and the Jews of ch. 2). So runs the book of Psalms: God is righteous and remains faithful to his covenant; he rewards righteous Jews who show the same faithfulness and he punishes the unrighteous/unfaithful. At this point, however, Paul produces a cluster of quotations from Psalms (with one line from Isaiah) to show that in reality no one is righteous before God. This seems very un-Jewish but Paul is sure that his position is scriptural.Footnote ¹⁶

The Pauline shift in the doctrine of righteousness at Romans 3:21

It is at this point that Paul makes his move away from Psalms by shifting, with a flexibility and arbitrariness that the modern reader may find difficult, from ‘No one will be counted righteous before him’ (Ps 142/143:2) to ‘no one will be counted righteous before him by works of the law’ (Romans 3:20). This is because Paul believes that ‘the righteousness of God has now been revealed apart from the law . . . the righteousness of God through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for all who are themselves faithful’ (3:21–2). Paul has kept the framework of the doctrine of righteousness that he found in Psalms but everything is now christologised. This is his one change to the Psalmist's doctrine of righteousness but it is the change that changes everything.

It must remain speculative, but it is quite possible that the trigger for the shift in Paul's argument was meditating on the line ‘The salvation of the righteous is from the Lord’ (Sōtēria de tōn dikaiōn para kyriou, Ps 36/37:39) where for Paul the Lord is Jesus Christ. And perhaps also from a christological understanding of ‘The Lord is righteous’ (Dikaios Kyriou, 10/11:8; 144/145:17).Footnote ¹⁷ The model of faithfulness is the righteous one, the Lord, Jesus Christ, who remained faithful to the end and who was raised from the dead as a reward for him and a proof for us. The resurrection is the ultimate vindication of God's righteousness. This is why the resurrection is at the centre of that to which we must hold fast: righteousness ‘will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and raised so we could be counted righteous’ (Romans 4:24–5). Before the coming of Christ, Jews showed their righteousness by remaining faithful to God and keeping his law; now all people – Jews and gentiles, men and women, slaves and free (Gal 3:27–8) – show their righteousness by holding fast to the God who raised Christ from the dead. We no longer attempt to ascend into heaven to find God or descend into Hades, he is here in front of us in Christ, the risen one (Romans 10:6–9).

Later in the letter when Paul agonises over the unbelief of his fellow Jews, he says that they have the law but they are not righteous (9:4–5). Here Paul is certainly commenting on their status rather than their moral character. Why are they not righteous? Because they lack faithfulness, for faithfulness is not now demonstrated by holding to God's law but by holding to Christ. It is not that the law is bad, though it is described in very negative terms in Galatians – less so in Romans – but that it has been superseded as a mark of righteousness. The problem with the law is that its ownership is tribal/national and excludes non-Jews, or at least sets up a considerable cultural barrier for non-Jews. We might note that in Psalms righteousness is very much the preserve of the Jews and quite a number of the Psalms emphasise the enmity of the gentiles and rejoice in the nasty fate that awaits ‘the nations’ (2, 9, 58/59, 78/79, 82/83, 109/110, 136/137, 149). Holding to Christ, even though his identity remains Jewish (Romans 9:5), is open to all people. In chapter 9 Paul contrasts the righteousness of faith/faithfulness to Christ with Israel's righteousness of law,

At this point, the law that Paul casts aside cannot just be ritual law, so-called ‘identity markers’, as Dunn and Wright have suggested, because Paul never makes the distinction, not explicitly at least, between ritual law and moral law.Footnote ¹⁸ He seems to mean the whole law as ‘law apart from Christ’.

Consider Galatians 2:16, which supports this line of interpretation, provided the reader does not follow the NRSV translation which runs as follows:

First, ‘justified’ should become ‘counted righteous’. Second, ‘faith’ should become ‘faithfulness’. Third, ean mē should be given its usual meaning of ‘unless’. And fourth, to be consistent with the evidence of righteousness through faithfulness that we have found in Psalms and now in a christologised sense in Romans, Iēsou Christou should be seen as a subjective genitive.Footnote ¹⁹ So we now have the following English translation which reduces the opposition between law and faith, so beloved of Lutheran theology, and reduces the cerebral character of ‘faith’ suggested by modern translations to something more existential. It is a translation that suggests there is not a problem with keeping the law as such, but with keeping the law as though that was what now ensured righteousness, keeping the law without mirroring in ourselves that faithfulness that Jesus demonstrated in his own life.

It is not that there is anything wrong with the law as such – after all it is a gift from God (9:4), it contains ‘just requirements’ (8:4) – it is just that it has been superseded in this new phase of human history. The law gets pushed into the background and is in some respects – circumcision, food regulations, purification – rendered irrelevant. When Paul says that we have been ‘discharged from the law’ (7:6) we must look back to the preceding verse where he speaks of ‘living in the flesh’ when ‘our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death (i.e. extinction)’. It is not just the law, it is the law–sin–death axis that we have been discharged from to be replaced by the regime of grace–holiness–life. As Paul says, ‘The life I now live in the flesh I live by faithfulness to the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me’ (Gal. 2:20).

The brief references to righteousness in Philippians confirm this line of argument. Paul claims that he is confident of his blamelessness ‘according to the righteousness which is in the law’ (3:6) but it will no longer do to have ‘my own righteousness which is from the law, but one which is through the faithfulness of Christ, the righteousness of God which is founded upon faithfulness’ (3:9).

How do we now become righteous?

Paul, then, has retained the framework and vocabulary of the doctrine of righteousness that he found in Psalms but he has christologised it. The value of the law in itself remains, though its effectiveness to make one holy has been corrupted by sin (Romans 7), and trying to do the law now apart from faithfulness to Jesus Christ is useless. It no longer gets you anywhere. It is the law-apart-from-Christ that Paul criticises. But in this letter righteousness is not the same as salvation, so where does righteousness fit into the broader scheme of things?

Righteousness is still a matter of status for Paul rather than the achieving of moral excellence, though remaining righteous involves not falling back into sin (Romans 6:1–4). When asking who one might die for (5:7–8) he distinguishes, in ascending order, three religious levels of being human: the sinner, the righteous person, the good person. If we track this through the following verses we find that when sin has been left behind (i.e. idolatry, law breaking, etc.) we become righteous. This is a state confirmed by baptism.Footnote ²⁰ This is not the most exalted state but seems in context to be equivalent to ‘reconciliation’, a state we can experience in the present time (5:11). Having been justified/counted righteous and reconciled with God, ‘we will be saved from the wrath of God’ (5:9), which is a promise for the future. For that to happen we must remain faithful, a state characterised as ‘obedience’ (1:5). In remaining faithful we move towards becoming a good person (agathos. 5:7), towards holiness. We become, in Paul's sense, a saint (1:7, 16:2). This is the process of sanctification (6:19) and may well involve suffering (8:17–18). If we remain faithful to the end, it leads to eternal life (5:21, 6:23) and resurrection (6:5). All this amplifies the fourth and fifth stages of Paul's fivefold foreknown–predestined–called–made righteous–glorified of Romans 8:30. It is a scheme in which there is no obvious place for law. The law is good in itself but not something of any great relevance for the new humanity of Jews and gentiles together ‘in Christ’. Augustine was right to say that we should love and do as we wish, because if we remain faithful to Christ and truly love as he did, then we shall find ourselves fulfilling the law, or as much of it as is still relevant in this new age.

An argument such as this can only be suggestive; it is not possible to prove that Paul got his doctrine of righteousness from Psalms, though the congruence between the doctrine of ‘righteousness through faithfulness’ in the Psalms and the first stage of Paul's exposition in Romans 1:18–32 – before christologisation – is striking. So much so that it is remarkable that no one has considered it before. Richard Hays, of course, has a long chapter on Psalms in Echoes but he is not interested in righteousness as such but in a problem of theodicy: how can God still be regarded as righteous – faithful to his promises to Israel – if he offers salvation to the gentiles, as Paul believes is the case? So Hays thinks the problem is: with the inclusion of the gentiles, what happens to Israel? For Hays ‘righteousness by faith’ is consequent on (i.e. Paul's answer to) the calling of the gentiles. But envisage it the other way about: the inclusion of the gentiles is the consequence of a doctrine of righteousness through faithfulness that Paul found in the Psalms and then christologised. In fact the overall interpretation presented here matches that of Hays but comes at it from a different direction.

The other major scriptural influence on Romans is Isaiah. I suggest that Paul used Psalms for his understanding of righteousness through faithfulness and that he used Isaiah for a scriptural justification for God's inclusion of the gentiles into the promises first delivered to Israel.