Denny Burk on the “Righteousness of God”

In the latest issue of JSNT, Denny Burk has a stimulating discussion of the “righteousness of God” in Romans. The abstract reads:

This article proposes to narrow the range of possible meanings for the phrase dikaiosyne theou. Because dikaiosyne is the nominalization of an attribute, we have to rule out of bounds any notion of dikaiosyne theou as a subjective or objective genitive. Once these two options are eliminated, the remaining possibilities for understanding the genitive are significantly narrowed. The article also suggests that Käsemann’s interpretation is still possible even when rendering the phrase as a simple possessive genitive—God’s own righteousness (though the genitive of source is still within the range of possible meanings as well). When interpreted as a possessive genitive, righteousness at its root is an attribute of the divine nature that can stand metonymically for God’s redemptive work through Christ. The article closes with a brief sketch of how this understanding would inform the exegesis of Rom. 1.17 and 3.21-26.

I’m not convinced by Denny’s attempt to smuggle in a genitive of origin at the end of the article (i.e., a righteousness from God), but he does give some good grammatical considerations to ponder, and he nobly attempts to split the dichotomy between a subjective or objective genitive by a Kasemannesque union of divine attribute and divine action.