Justice vs. righteousness

[Mourad Mankarios]

It seems to me that the terms for justice and righteousness are closley linked in the Hebrew and Greek languages. However, in the English language the term justice seems to be strongly coloured by judicial and penal overtones hence not accurately reflecting the meaning of the original text. This therefore seems to be problematic with regards to such English translations as the NKJV which tends to use the term justice and its derivatives quite often where the original occurs. However, other English translations such as the NRSV seem to have leaned more towards using the term righteousness rather than justice where the original occurs, perhaps this is to avoid the strong judicial overtones in the latter. Furthermore, it would seem that such a trend would be more amiable to the Orthodox mindset.

[Andreas Moran]

An interesting point. 'Justice' is Latin and 'righteousness' is Old English, and so 'justice' came to be more associated with the law than the OE word 'righteousness'. The word 'justice' is not used in the KJV NT. In Matthew 12:18 and Luke 11:42, the Greek word 'krisin' is rendered as 'judgment' which I would have thought was a better word than 'justice' (NKJV and RSV) in those contexts. The Greek word 'dikaiosene' is rendered as 'righteousness' (in Matthew 5:6, 5:20) in all these translations.

In English, according to Chambers' dictionary, 'justice' and 'righteousness' have very closely similar meanings though the latter does have some resonance of 'wise', 'prudent'. Perhaps the Greek scholars here can tell us if there is much difference between 'krisis', and 'diki' and 'dikaiosene'. It does seem that 'righteousness' may often be more apt than 'justice' but 'justice' is not necessarily better than 'judgment'.

Popularly, 'justice' does tend to be associated with the criminal law but not in the minds of lawyers. Law is overwhelmingly civil law, and in the common law world (England & Wales, the USA, Canada, Australia, etc.) 'equity' is a more appropriate term than 'justice'.