17

Charles B. Williams’s
contribution to the Doctrine of Justification
in English Bible Translation:
“justification” as “right standing” 1

© Richard K. Moore
Murdoch University, Western Australia

1 INTRODUCTION
Charles Bray Williams (1869–1952) spent most of his career teaching various aspects of
the New Testament in Southern Baptist institutions in the USA.
Of the dozen or so books he wrote, most were student texts related to his areas of
teaching. While these had the limited life textbooks are wont to have, in 1937, at the age of
sixty-eight, Williams published a translation of the New Testament on which he had been
working for some twenty years. His translation continued in print after his death in 1952. In
1986 it was re-issued in a jubilee edition published by Holman Bible Publishers and in 2000 a
millennium edition was published privately by his daughter, Mrs Charlotte Sprawls.
The feature of Williams’s translation which has most frequently received commendation
is the sensitivity with which he brought the verb tenses of the original Greek over into
English. It is not the intention of this paper to address that issue, but rather to draw attention
to another feature of Williams’s translation which, to my knowledge, has not previously been
noticed.
It concerns the way that Williams handled the family of words lying at the heart of Paul’s
doctrine of justification, viz., dikaiosu/nh and cognates (hereafter the d-family or d-words).2

1 The initial basis for this research paper was a three-week visit to Southwestern Baptist Theological
Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas, USA, in July, 1994. I take this opportunity of recording my appreciation to the
Seminary for the opportunity of residing there and making use of the library and archives at that time, and to
Mrs Charlotte Sprawls, daughter of Charles B. Williams, of Atlanta, Georgia, for her subsequent hospitality and
assistance in filling out details of her father’s life and career.
2 In the two Pauline letters in which the major focus is on justification by faith, namely, Galatians and
Romans, the apostle makes use of six words of the d-family. The three of them which occur most frequently,
dikaiosu/nh, dikaiouvn, and div/kaioß, are common to Galatians and Romans and may conveniently be
designated the d-GR group; the remaining three, dikaivwma, dikaivwsiß, dikaiokrisi/a, occur only in Romans,
and may be designated the d-R group.
2 R.K. Moore

While traditionally Roman Catholics have understood these words in realist terms (in
justification God makes a person ethically righteous) and the majority of Protestants have
understood then in forensic terms (God, as Judge, declares a person righteous) Williams was
evidently the first English translator of a complete New Testament to express Paul’s meaning
primarily in relational terms, presenting God’s action of justification as one of changing the
status of the ungodly who place their faith in Christ.
The challenge of successfully bringing over into English the meaning Paul intended when
he made use of the d-family has long been recognized. For example, about the time the New
Testament of The New English Bible appeared, the Director of the project, taking up the verb
dikaiouvn, wrote of this issue as follows (Dodd 1960–1961, 274b):

Then how should dikaiouvn be rendered? In many places neither ‘acquit’ nor ‘vindicate’
will do, for reasons I have given. ‘Put in the right’ is very nearly literal, and might satisfy
those who know the Greek, but to the general reader it would convey little meaning - or a
wrong meaning. ‘Get right with God’ again is an unnatural expression, current only in
certain special circles, and it is anyhow misleading, since it confuses justification with
reconciliation. It seems impossible to find a satisfactory English word which will allow for
the various nuances of Pauline thought, and it seems necessary to accept ‘justify,’
‘justification,’ as terms which do indeed belong to current English, but are here used in a
sense which is not current, in fact as technical terms which must either explain themselves
from the context to the attentive reader, or await the commentator.
In other words, we found the problem set by this group of words insoluble, and must end
by confessing failure, at this point, to achieve our aim of rendering the Greek of the New
Testament into genuinely current English speech.

The words of the d-family are at the very heart of Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith.
To fail to bring them over into meaningful English is to fail to hear the apostle on that
doctrine Paul considered to be at the very heart of the Good News (Rom 1.16–17):

16 For I am not ashamed of the good news,

for it is God’s power for the salvation of everyone who trusts,
of the Jew first and then of the Greek.
17 For in the good news God’s Way of man’s right standing with Him is uncovered,
the Way of faith that leads to greater faith,
just as the Scripture says, “The upright man must live by faith.”
[Charles B. Williams translation]

The purpose of this paper is to examine and evaluate the contribution of Charles B.
Williams to rendering the words of the d-family in English translation.

2 METHODOLOGY

The procedure followed is most conveniently set out as a series of steps.

1. As much biographical and bibliographic data as was available on Williams was gathered
and collated to produce a biographical sketch.
 Charles B. Williams and justification in English biblical translations 3

2. From this data a bibliography of Williams’ published and unpublished works was compiled
(Appendix A).
3. Those of Williams’ writings of relevance for his view of justification were then identified
(marked with an asterisk in Appendix A).
4. A bibliography of works referred to by Williams (in any of his writings) which have the
potential to inform us about influences on the formation of his view of justification was then
compiled.
5. These were then set out in the form in which Williams referred to them (Appendix B).
6. Full bibliographical details were then compiled for all but the few works not available to
me (Appendix C). Those not available are marked [n/a] in Appendix B.
7. All available works listed were then examined to determine whether they were likely to
have contributed to the formation of Williams’s view of justification.

3 FINDINGS

3.1 The life and times of Charles B. Williams

Charles Bray Williams was born near the small settlement of Shiloh, near the east coast
of North Carolina. He claimed to be a distant relation of Roger Williams of Rhode Island,
father of religious liberty in North America.
At fifteen years of age he began teaching in a country school. Two years later, aged
seventeen, he was licensed to preach in a Baptist church or in Baptist churches (1886). In
later years he attributed his love for the New Testament to his mother’s influence.3
The following year he entered Wake Forest College, situated some 140 miles [225 km]
(as the crow flies) to the west of his home. He graduated with a BA in 1891 at the age of
twenty-two. During his College years he had been pastoring a church, and was ordained.
After graduation he continued in his vocation as pastor in another church (Winton
Baptist) and as principal of the school associated with it.
At the conclusion of this five year pastorate he entered Crozer Theological Seminary in
Pennsylvania, where he specialized in biblical languages and continued his pastoral vocation.
It was during these seminary years that he married (1899). He graduated from Crozier with a
BD in 1901. In the same year, evidently inspired by the Baptist historian, Henry C. Veddar,
he wrote and published The history of the Baptists in North Carolina (1901). No doubt some
of the motivation for this project also arose from the fact that on his mother’s side he was
related to William Bray, a charter member of Old Shiloh Church, the oldest Baptist Church in
North Carolina, organized in 1727. This was the church in which he grew up.
After graduation, Williams set out for Texas, though for one year he stopped over in
Arkansas to serve as principal of the high school in Locksburg.

3 See the dedication to his Introduction to New Testament literature (1929).

4 R.K. Moore

In Texas he pastored the Olive Street Baptist Church, Texarkana, for one year before
moving to the First Baptist Church of Stephenville, Texas (1902–1904) and Rockdale, Texas
(1904–1905). During this period he conducted revivals, resulting in over 300 professions.
At this point the direction of his life changed dramatically on the initiative of Dr B. H.
Carroll, through whom he was appointed to the Chair of Greek at Baylor University, a Baptist
foundation in Waco, Texas. At this time Dr Carroll was moving towards the establishment of
a separate Baptist theological seminary. Named Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary,
it was founded in March of 1908, and moved to its own campus at Fort Worth, Texas, two
years later (1910).
Not only did Charles Williams teach under Dr Carroll; in both Waco and Fort Worth they
were also neighbours for a decade or so until Carroll’s death in 1914. Williams developed
such a profound respect for his mentor that in the closing years of his own life he composed a
substantial tribute to him— well over thirty years after the latter’s death.4
Meanwhile, Williams’s life had become occupied with intensive study, his summers
being spent at the University of Chicago from where he obtained his MA (1907) and his PhD
in the following year (1908). His dissertation for the latter degree was entitled The participle
in the Book of Acts (published by the University of Chicago Press in March of 1909). At the
University of Chicago, which was a Baptist foundation, he came under the influence of
Professors E. D. Burton, Clyde W. Votau, and Edgar J. Goodspeed.
With the move of the seminary to Fort Worth, Williams was appointed the first librarian.
He catalogued the first 5,000 volumes. He was also the seminary’s financial agent over a
period of eight years, raising $75,000 during summers, and served as Dean from 1913 to
1919.
In 1913 he published The function of teaching in Christianity. Dr Carroll’s death on 11
Nov 1914, as he approached his seventieth birthday, brought to an end the single most
important influence on his vocation as a theological educator.
In his manuscript, B. H. Carroll: the titanic interpreter and teacher of truth, written over
three decades later, Williams listed his sources, then paid him the following tribute:
But more than any other source we mention the ten years of personal contact as
next-door neighbour and a colleague with him in those pioneer days of founding
and starting the Southwestern Seminary. Seeing him live and move and do great
things every day is the primal source of this evolution of his charming character
and supernal personality. This tribute we pay him: Since we left the paternal roof
we met no one who so influenced our thinking as he did in the most critical
period of our public career.

Before his death Carroll had been working on a multi-volume work entitled An
interpretation of the English Bible. After he had passed away, the remaining volumes were

4 B. H. Carroll: the titanic interpreter and teacher of truth. The typescript, held in the Archives of
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas, occupies 177 pages beyond the preliminaries.
 Charles B. Williams and justification in English biblical translations 5

edited by Dr J. B. Cranfill and Rev. J. W. Crowder, Professor of the English Bible at

Southwestern, and were published posthumously. The 13-volume set was completed in 1917.
In 1916, following his Baccalaureate address at Baylor University, Williams received a
DD from that institution. In the following year he published a student textbook for his
introductory courses to the New Testament, New Testament history and literature (1917).5 It
was at about this time that he began to translate the New Testament systematically. (It was
published in 1937).
From 1917 to 1919, in addition to his teaching responsibilities and duties as dean, he
served as managing editor of a revived Southwestern Journal of Theology.6
Williams left Southwestern Seminary in 1919 to become President of Howard College in
Birmingham, Alabama.7
In 1921 he returned to his first love (teaching, research, and writing) teaching New
Testament interpretation at Mercer University, a Baptist foundation, in Macon, GA.
His Introduction to Christian ethics was published in 1925. Following the death of his
first wife on 23 Jan 1925, at the end of that year he re-married. It was not a happy union and
ended in divorce c.1926 or 1927.
During the year he also moved to Union University, Jackson, TN. It was from there that
he eventually retired (in 1938, aged sixty-nine). While he was at Union University he
published The evolution of New Testament Christology in 1928; a revised New Testament
history and literature was published as Introduction to New Testament literature in 1929.
He married for a third time in 1934; a daughter, Charlotte, was born to this marriage in
1935.
In 1937, when he was aged sixty-eight, and one year off retirement from seminary
teaching, a twenty year project reached fruition when he published his own translation of the
New Testament: The New Testament in the language of the people.8 The demanding task of
translation had been accomplished after hours, during the busy life of a university lecturer and
denominational preacher.
Following retirement from university lecturing he moved to Tampa, Florida, and taught
courses at Florida Bible Institute where Billy Graham was a student. He spent the next seven
years pastoring churches in Florida and North Carolina, returning in the latter instance to the
church of his childhood.
When he retired from pastoral work in 1946, aged seventy-seven years, he made his home
in Pierson, Florida, for two years. In 1948 he moved to Lakeland (also in Florida) where he
taught at the Baptist Bible Institute for two or three years.

5 There has been preserved [in the Archives of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary], in cyclostyled
form, a copy of the lectures Williams gave there for New Testament English in 1909, while it was still located at
Waco. They cover the four Gospels. Unfortunately, it appears that no equivalent for the Pauline literature has
been preserved.
6 It was discontinued from 1924.
7 Now Samford University.
8 It was first published by Bruce Humphries of New York.
6 R.K. Moore

In his closing years, as noted earlier, he wrote an extensive appreciation of B. H. Carroll

and worked on A commentary on the Pauline Epistles which he completed only shortly before
his death on 4 May 1952 at eighty-three years. His last work was published posthumously by
Moody Press in the following year (1953).

3.2 Williams’ view of the doctrine of justification

(a) 1917
The first clear indication we have of the distinctive view of justification held by Williams
appears in his New Testament history and literature (1917). In his ‘Foreword’ the author
states the original purpose of this book and the wider hopes he held for it (Williams 1917, 6):

It was originally prepared as a text-book for use in our Seminary, and it has also been
adopted as a text-book for the correspondence department of the institution. It is the hope of
the author that teachers of Bible classes in colleges and other literary schools will find it
adapted to their purposes, and that progressive pastors who have advanced classes of young
men or young women in their churches, who desire to study the Bible systematically, may
adopt it as a text-book.

Most of the thirty-three chapters in this work deal with a specific New Testament
Scripture or Scriptures; the others provide background or offer general surveys (e.g., ‘Chapter
16: Second Missionary Journey’).
A feature incorporated only in the Epistles and the Apocalypse is paraphrasing,
something Williams believed to be a feature unique to his book (Williams 1917, 6).
In the paraphrase of Galatians, signalled by the standard heading ‘The Line of Thought in
Modern English,’ Williams writes in the first person as he sums up Paul’s thought. In his
treatment of the passage with which Galatians 2 closes, he has Paul say (Williams 1917, 165–
167):
... the head apostle in Jerusalem did not contribute anything to my gospel, the gospel of
freedom, which maintains that men do not attain right standing with God by their own good
deeds but by childlike trust in Jesus Christ.

This leads on to the statement that ‘my gospel centers around the method of man’s
attaining right standing with God.’
This approach to paraphrasing the d-family at Gal 2.16–17, 21 is sustained until the
opening statements of Galatians 5.
In majoring on the phrase ‘right standing’ to characterize Paul’s doctrine of justification,
Williams portrayed the essence of God’s action of dikaiouvn as one in which the Christian
experiences a change of status. In Galatians his paraphrasing technique results in a
considerable abbreviation of the letter; nevertheless, he employs ‘right standing’ no less than
ten times, whereas Paul’s tally of all occurrences of words of the d-family in the full letter is
only thirteen.
 Charles B. Williams and justification in English biblical translations 7

At this stage there is a tendency for Williams’s use of ‘right standing’ to be mildly
anthropocentric. This comes about through his frequent reference to ‘men’ attaining (or
obtaining) right standing with God.
The other noteworthy feature is that he speaks of right standing as a divine method or
plan (as, indeed, he depicts the law as another method); cf. Williams’s treatment of the early
part of Galatians 5:
If any one is circumcised he must keep the whole law, if he would possess right standing
with God. Whoever seeks thus to attain right standing with God has no chance at the
method of grace in Christ.

Williams’s paraphrase of Romans (‘The Line of Thought in Modern English’) proceeds

along similar lines to those adopted for Galatians (Williams 1917, 195–204). While in the
page and a half devoted to a ‘General Outline’ of Romans Williams retained the traditional
language of ‘righteousness,’ ‘justification,’ ‘to justify,’ ‘justified man,’ in the paraphrase
‘right standing from/with God’ is preferred (Williams 1917, 194–195).
Although ‘attain’ is used with ‘right standing’ in several places, the Romans presentation
tends to be less anthropocentric than that for Galatians, especially through the use of ‘to
bestow’/‘to bring’ in the active (of God) or ‘to bring’ in the passive or ‘to receive’/‘to come’
in the active (of humankind):
... in it [the good news] is disclosed the disposition of God to bestow right standing upon all
men who trust in Christ (Williams 1917, 196).
... men receive right standing from God as a free gift ... (Williams 1917, 197).
... Abraham...came into this right standing with God while uncircumcised ... (Williams
1917, 198).
... to bring men into right standing with God ... (Williams 1917, 200.

In addition to the phrase ‘right standing’, however, in Romans Williams also employs
‘right relation/s’ (Williams 1917, 198 [twice], 200).
‘Right relation’ is also the form used to paraphrase dikaiosu/nh at Php 3.9:
Although I might have gloried in my natural privileges and achievements, my pure Hebrew
blood, and my being as loyal a Pharisee as ever lived, I despised these advantages as refuse
beneath my feet, to win the excellent experimental knowledge of Christ, that I might come
into right relation with God.
8 R.K. Moore

(b) 1929
In 1929 Williams’s An introduction to the New Testament literature was published. An
examination of the table of contents, the text, and even the Foreword,9 reveals that this is
essentially a revision of his 1917 work. The two works were produced by same publisher.
The main differences relate to the way the material was organized in each. As is clear
from the Table of Contents, some of the content was re-arranged and the Scriptures of the
New Testament are no longer named (as in 1917) but only alluded to. For example, Romans
is treated under the chapter heading ‘His Sixth Epistle — the Gospel of Freedom
Elaborated.’10
Instead of the brief (half-page) bibliography provided at the end of the 1917 edition, in
the 1929 version there is a brief bibliography at the conclusion of each chapter. As was
customary even in many scholarly works of this period, Williams supplies only limited
bibliographical data. Frequently he omits even such details as the initials of the author, the
title of the work, the publication date.
For Galatians the same paraphrase is used, and again it appears under the heading ‘The
Line of Thought in Modern English,’ although the formatting adopted makes the heading less
prominent than it is in the 1917 version.
An appreciation of how slight the degree of revision was, may be gained from the
following examples from Galatians, in which the text given is that of 1929 with distinctive
features italicized and their 1917 equivalents shown in square brackets:
...the head apostle did not contribute anything to my message [gospel], the message
[gospel] of freedom, which maintains that men do not attain to right standing with God by
their own good deeds but by personal [childlike] trust in Jesus Christ (Williams 1929, 119).

Indeed my message centers around the Divine [— ] method of man’s attaining to [—] right
standing with God (Williams 1929, 119).

Whoever seeks thus to attain to [—] right standing with God is completely cut off from [has
no chance at] the method of grace by trusting in Christ.

Wherever ‘state’ occurred in the 1917 version, it was replaced by ‘status’ in the 1929
version.11
In discussing the ‘General Characteristics’ of Romans (paragraph 6) Williams
characterizes justification as ‘justification by grace through faith,’ and under its ‘Main
Teachings’ (paragraph 8) he ‘defines’ justification as ‘right standing with God,’ adding
(consonant with the usual Protestant position) that it is ‘the initial stage of the saving
process.’

9 The overlap in wording between the two Forewords is very high indeed.
10 In the view of the present writer this approach was a retrograde step, especially when the purpose of the
book is taken into account. It makes it quite difficult to use, until Williams’s views of the order of composition
have been absorbed, and his code for each epistle has been cracked. A better approach would surely have been
to combine the two sets of chapter headings.
11 Four examples will be found in Williams 1929, 120.
 Charles B. Williams and justification in English biblical translations 9

In the paraphrase for Romans changes relating to the expression of justification are even
less in evidence than is the case for Galatians. At Romans 5 (where there is a high
concentration of d-words) Williams did see fit to add a reference to right standing. As above,
the 1929 text is given, its distinctive wording being shown in italics, while the equivalent text
of 1917 is shown in square brackets:
But the contrast between the two states is more marked than the parallel. The condemnation
of the old race came from one act of sin. The right standing of the new race comes from
millions of sins. By the fall [falling] of Adam, death became the master [monarch] of man,
but in union with [—] Christ, the believers themselves reign [new race itself reigns] in
eternal fellowship with God.

The brief treatment of right standing at Php 3.9 remains unchanged.

(c) 1937
Williams’s translation of the New Testament, The New Testament in the language of the
people, first made its appearance in 1937. In the American scene at that time the ‘official’
English translation was the American Standard Version of 1901, although it never surpassed
the King James Version in popular usage. Of the several private translations available, that of
Edgar J. Goodspeed (1923) was by far the most popular.
As far as the words of the d-family are concerned, there can be no doubt that the
paraphrases Williams had provided, first in his 1917 publication, then in the form they
appeared in the 1929 version, served as a basis for his translation of the New Testament. It
was about the time that New Testament history and literature was published in 1917 that
Williams commenced work on his translation proper.12
A study of how Williams translated four passages vital to the development of Paul’s
doctrine of justification provide a fair sampling of his approach. They are: Gal 2.15–17; Rom
1.16–17; 3.21–26; 4.4–5 (Appendix D).
The features which characterize Williams’s handling of the words of the d-family,
especially the majority group common to Galatians and Romans (viz., dikaiosu/nh,
dikaiouvn, di/kaioß) may be summed up as follows:
1. On the whole, he represents the single Greek word-family which is at the heart of Paul’s
doctrine of justification, viz., the d-family, by a single English word-family (instead of the
usual two: ‘righteousness’ and cognates, ‘justify’ and cognates).
2. The English word-family he utilizes is the R-family (in the form of ‘right’ and cognates).
3. Whenever he considered it necessary for conveying Paul’s meaning adequately, he did not
hesitate to represent a single Greek word by a number of English words.
4. By his choice of the R-family and his stress on (personal) relations, Williams did not
follow the stance of many Protestant commentators, including the majority of his
contemporaries, in maintaining a forensic interpretation of the doctrine of justification.

12 As reported by Betty Jo McLeod Sunday Morning Ledger [Lakeland, FL] (1 Jan 1950).
10 R.K. Moore

5. Instead, his preference for the phrase ‘right standing’ conveys the concept of a change of
status (a word he employs in his own theological explanations of justification). For him it
provided the key to the action God takes in justification.
While, as we have seen, some of Williams’s earlier paraphrasing had tended towards
anthropocentricity, when he came to translate rather than paraphrase Williams expressed the
verbal action involved either as a neutral coming into right standing with God or as God’s
action of bringing ‘men’ into right standing with himself or considering them right with
himself.
As already noted, between 1917 and 1929 he had consciously moved from expressing
what is involved in justification as a change of state to speaking of it as a change of status.
One further change in his mode of expression is undoubtedly to be traced to the influence
of Goodspeed’s translation (1923). In rendering the phrase dikaiosu/nh qeouv into English,
Goodspeed was the first to utilize ‘way’ (‘God’s way of uprightness’).13 In the paraphrases in
his 1917 and 1929 works, Williams had frequently made use of ‘method’ in this connection
(as had Sanday and Headlam, whose work he commended to his students).14 However, for his
1937 translation he utilized ‘way of right standing’ in these places, strongly suggesting the
influence of Goodspeed, whose translation had been published in 1923.

(d) 1953
At the time of his death in 1952 at eighty-three years, some fifteen years had passed since
Williams’s translation of the New Testament first appeared. Just prior to his death he had
completed a book entitled A commentary on the Pauline Epistles, published posthumously in
1953. The views he expressed in this volume are consistent with the general perspective he
had developed no later than 1917, and help to amplify it. For this work Williams made use of
his 1937 translation rather than the earlier device of paraphrase.
For the four occurrences of dikaiouvn in Gal 2.16–17, Williams explains the meaning as
‘coming into right standing with Go.’ (Williams 1953, 63). Here, as throughout this work, he
blends the traditional language of justification15 with his relational approach based on the
right standing God grants. His explanation of why this is able to operate successfully relates
to the Christian’s union with Christ (Williams 1953, 63):
The faith of a trusting sinner unites him with Christ, and because Christ is righteous, this
union with Christ permits God to regard the sinner thus trusting Christ as righteous or
justified.

13 Rom 1.17; 3.21–22 in Goodspeed’s translation.

14 In the NT of another Baptist translator, the English headmaster, Richard F. Weymouth, whose version
was published posthumously in 1903, a footnote on ‘righteousness’ at Rom 10.3 offers the alternative translation
‘method of righteousness’ [emphasis mine]. It is highly likely that it was known to Williams, and that during the
years which were crucial for the formation of his view of justification.
15 Cf. the heading for Gal 2.15–21: JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH, THE CORE OF PAUL’S GOSPEL [Williams 1953)
63].
 Charles B. Williams and justification in English biblical translations 11

Williams holds that justification by faith is the central theme of Galatians, and that it is
the initial stage of the process of salvation which involves regeneration, sanctification,
perfection at the parousia and the resurrection of the righteous. Defining justification more
closely, he states (Williams 1953, 64):

Justification denotes the state into which the believer comes when he trusts Christ as
Saviour and Lord. He was not in right standing with God before he trusted in Christ. Now
he is.

For him Gal 2.20 illustrates ‘the wholly personal relation between a believer and God.
The human spirit and the Divine Spirit are in direct union with each other’ (Williams 1953,
64).
He explains the word ‘redeemed’ [ejxagora/zein] at Gal 3.13 as follows (Williams 1953,
67):
... Christ pays the ransom price and buys them out of prison, or from under the curse of the
broken law. He does this by Himself becoming a curse for them or in their place. He bears
the death penalty and thus pays the ransom price.

In responding to the question as to how the law was intended to function if it had no part
in saving humankind, he explains that although it was not ‘“against the promises of God”’
(Gal 3.21), it was not in God’s plan for it ‘“to make alive” or to bring men “into right
standing with God” ’ (Williams 1953, 69).
In explaining Gal 4.24–25 he draws a contrast between ‘the law system and the faith
system’ (Williams 1953, 70).
Commenting on Gal 4.26 he explains that the Christian is able to enjoy ‘a higher status,
that of divine sonship’ as a consequence of trust in Christ as Saviour,’ adding: ‘Faith in Christ
is the human condition on which the Spirit makes us children of God by a new birth’
(Williams 1953, 70).
At 2 Cor 5.21 his 1937 translation reads:
He made Him who personally knew nothing of sin to be a sin-offering for us, so that
through union with Him we might come into right standing with God.

Commenting on Paul’s use of dikaiosu/nh there, Williams wrote (1953, 191):

Righteousness in verse 21, as an antithesis to sin-offering, must not be translated literally;
but as right standing with God.

In contrast to the definiteness of this statement, when he came to comment on the same
phrase dikaiosu/nh qeouv at Rom 1.17, Williams seems to have been very much more
tentative (1953, 232):
Verse 17. “God’s way of right standing ... is uncovered.” Here the word translated in the
Authorized Version righteousness likely means God’s method of bringing men into right
standing with Himself. See Sanday, Commentary on Romans.
12 R.K. Moore

Noteworthy is his specific reference to Sanday and Headlam’s commentary on Romans in

support of his contention that dikaiosu/nh here refers to ‘God’s method of bringing men into
right standing with Himself.’
His further comment (Williams 1953, 232), ‘Also God’s attribute of righteousness is also
revealed in the good news’ indicates that he envisaged dikaiosu/nh here as serving a dual
semantic function, pointing both to God’s method of right standing and to his attribute of
righteousness, even though his translation points only to the former and does not lend itself to
expressing righteousness as a divine attribute as well. Williams expands on his views in his
comments on Rom 3.21–22, where Paul uses the identical phrase dikaiosu/nh qeouv again
(Williams 1953, 244):
The phrase righteousness of God in these verses has a peculiar meaning. It includes God’s
attribute of righteousness but means also the way, or method, God has provided for giving
sinful men right standing with Himself. It is the righteous attribute of God moved by His
attribute of love (5:9) reaching down to sinful men to lift them up to Him, not as sinners but
as righteous.

Early in the following decade James Barr (1961) was to provide compelling arguments
against the likelihood of such a dual focus being in the mind of a writer of Scripture for any
given occurrence of a word.
At Rom 3.24–25 he takes up the word iJlasth/rion, giving its meaning as ‘propitiatory
offering’ and goes on to explain that it ‘expresses the purpose of paying the ransom, to make
atonement for sins and satisfy God’s law’ (Williams 1953, 245).
 Charles B. Williams and justification in English biblical translations 13

For Paul’s two uses of dikaiosu/nh aujtouv in Rom 3.25–26 he argues that
‘Righteousness of God here is his attribute of justice’ (Williams 1953, 246). He offers further
explanation of the purpose of Christ’s death (Williams 1953, 246):
The prime purpose of Christ’s death was to demonstrate the justice of God. In past
centuries He, in forbearance, had passed over any outburst of His wrath in punishing
sinners. So now it is necessary to convince the transgressing world that He is just and does
punish transgressors. The ultimata purpose (eis to einai)16 was to show that God can
maintain His righteous character and at the same time, according to His method of grace
(unmerited favor), grant right standing with Himself to every lost man who trusts in Christ
as his ransoming Saviour. This is what Paul means when he says “justified ... by his grace”
(A.V.).17

Abraham’s experience, as described by Paul in Romans 4, is explained in terms of ‘right

standing with God’ (standing for the ‘righteousness’ of the KJV) (Williams 1953, 248). Later
he gave this in abbreviated form: ‘He was right with God because he put his trust in Him’
(Williams 1953, 248).
In the later part of Romans 4 and the early part of Romans 5 we have further examples of
the phenomenon noted earlier, that Williams, while placing before the reader his preferred
translation, nevertheless often retains the more traditional language (Williams 1953, 250,
251):
... God accepted His [Christ’s] death as the propitiatory offering through which we receive
justification, or right standing with God.

[5.1] The participle dikaiothentes, being justified, is causal, meaning since or because,
giving the reason of the blessed state of the believer. Because he is in right standing with
God he has the following blessings ...18

Williams suggests that in Rom 5.18–21 Paul provides what is essentially a résumé (1953,
256:
One man’s fall led to condemnation of all. So Christ’s one righteous act (dying) leads to
right standing with God and life for all believers. This result is based on (gar, for) the fact
that by Adam’s disobedience many (all) were made sinners, and by Christ’s obedience
many will be made righteous—first brought into right standing with God and in life
ethically righteous through the indwelling of the living Christ.

Both in the 1937 translation incorporated in his commentary on the Pauline letters and in
the commentary itself, Williams frequently translated ca/riß as ‘unmerited favor’ (1953: 246,
249, 257).
Consistent with his practice elsewhere he translated Rom 8.10, which includes
dikaiosu/nh, as ‘because of being in right standing with God’ (Williams 1953, 271).19 The

16 Sic! The phrase in brackets should read: eis to einai [ei˙ß to\ ei•nai].
17 It is of interest that, writing in the American scene, Williams uses ‘A.V.’ rather than ‘K.J.V.’
18 For further examples of traditional language or of the blend of traditional and relational language, see pp.
247, 253, 255.
19 Italics mine.
14 R.K. Moore

words shown in italics are present in the translation offered in his commentary (Williams
1953, 269–270), but not in the 1937 translation which heads that section.
In his discussion of dikaiosu/nh in Romans 9 & 10 (where Paul uses this word no less
than eleven times in the relatively brief passage, Rom 9.30–10.10) Williams several times
speaks of ‘God’s way of righteousness.’ In case the reader should be in doubt, however, at
several points in his discussion he clarifies what the phrase means for him (Williams 1953:
288, 289):
Verses 30–33 present the different attitudes of the two, Jews and Gentiles, toward God’s
way of righteousness, of right standing with Himself.

Undoubtedly the word righteousness in these verses [10.2–4] mean (sic!) “God’s way of
bringing men into right standing with Himself” not His attribute of justice.

Referring to the two contrasting systems of which Paul speaks here, Williams most
frequently uses ‘way’ (‘way of righteousness’, ‘law-way’, ‘faith-way’, ‘God’s way of
bringing men into right standing with himself’) (1953: 288–289), occasionally ‘method’
(‘law-method’ [1953, 288], ‘faith-method’ [1953, 290]), the word he had formerly employed
in such situations.
Commenting on Rom 10.5–10 Williams states:
By the same method he knew that a sinner who trusts in Christ as his Saviour and Lord is
brought into right standing with God; is saved.

The Saviour and in the phrase ‘Saviour and Lord’ goes beyond Paul, who refers only to
Christ’s lordship here, and the apostle makes no reference at this point to the forgiveness of
sins,20 but on the whole both Williams’s translation and his commentary are incredibly free of
the jargon which characterizes some forms of Christianity in North America.21
Williams’s treatment of dikaiosu/nh at Php 3.9 provides a further illustration of his
practice of intertwining traditional language and the relational or status terminology he had
developed for justification, most frequently characterized by the phrase ‘right standing’
Williams 1953, 342).
Williams’s 1953 commentary conveys the impression of someone writing to meet
Christians where many of them are at, locked into the traditional language of justification
(‘righteousness’, ‘justify’, etc.) yet doing so in order to encourage them to understand Paul
and find him meaningful through the insights he had developed by using a relational or status
approach to justification. Occasionally a note of insistence comes through strongly in favour
of the relational language, but frequently it is simply offered as an alternative, an insight to be
taken up if it is found to be helpful. At one point, although a vital one (Rom 1.17) the
argument is presented in a somewhat tentative fashion. Is it possible that the translator who
had given his insights to the English-speaking public, after fifteen years, felt a tinge of

20 In all of Romans specific reference to the forgiveness of sins is made only at Rom 4.7.
21 Contrast, for example, the approach adopted for The Living Bible (Moore 2002, 3: 266–270).
 Charles B. Williams and justification in English biblical translations 15

disappointment that what excited him as the key to the apostle’s doctrine and the obvious way
of understanding Paul, had not found wider acceptance? Was Williams disappointed that one
of his former tutors, in discussing how a number of other translators had approached the
problem of expressing dikaiouvn at Rom 3.28 in current English, failed to take into account
his 1937 translation?22
3.3 Sources which may have influenced
Williams’s view of justification
The systematic search for sources which may have influenced Williams in the
development of his view of justification first met in his book of 1917 (by which time it was
already in a stable and well articulated form) is able to draw on a wide range of materials.
They include: (1) Greek grammars and lexicons; (2) encyclopedic works; (3) New Testament
introductions; (4) works concerned with the apostle Paul; (5) commentaries (especially those
treating Galatians and Romans) which deal with the key passages; and (6) English
translations.
Before considering these, however, in view of the very high regard in which Williams
held B. H. Carroll, founder of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, it is appropriate to
investigate whether Carroll’s writings were the source for Williams’s view of justification. In
1916 Carroll published An interpretation of the English Bible in 13 volumes. An investigation
into the relevant volume (containing, inter alia, Galatians, Romans, and Philippians) proves
negative. It indicates clearly that Carroll took a very traditional Protestant view of
justification, retaining the usual language, and employing the standard theological
terminology of justification such as we find in his statement ‘Christ’s death avails
meritoriously’.23 For Carroll the ‘great question’ involving justification was: ‘How shall a
fallen, depraved, sinful and condemned man be made just before God?’24

(1) Grammars, lexicons, and other works on Greek or New Testament Greek

The majority of the grammars referred to by Williams, with which—on the basis of such
reference—we may be confident that he was familiar, deal only with the Greek of the
Classical period (Babbitt; Hadley & Allen; John Thompson). A search of them yields no
suggestion that they had any influence on Williams’s insight that words of the d-family are
best expressed in terms of right standing. Some of the works, particularly the journal articles
to which he refers in the published form of his doctoral thesis (1909), indicate that he was
very much aware of the transformation taking place around the turn of the twentieth century

22 I refer to Edgar Johnson Goodspeed (1871–1962) Problems of New Testament translation (Chicago:
University of Chicago, 1945) 143–146. It will be noted that Williams’s work had been available for eight years
when Goodspeed’s study was published. Goodspeed’s own recommendation for Rom 3.28 logizo/meqa gàr
dikaiouvsqai pi/stei a¡nqrwpon was ‘a man is made upright by faith’ [p.146]; cf. Williams: ‘For we hold that
a man is brought into right standing by faith’.
23 Benajah Harvey Carroll (1843-1914) An interpretation of the English Bible 13 vols: [volume on
Galatians, Romans, Philippians, Philemon] (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1916) 141.
24An interpretation of the English Bible [volume on Galatians, Romans, Philippians, Philemon] 23.
16 R.K. Moore

in the understanding by New Testament scholars of the everyday nature of the vocabulary
employed by the majority of the New Testament writers. The discovery of large quantities of
non-literary papyri and its assessment, particularly through the labours of Adolf Deissmann
and Moulton and Milligan, made the world of New Testament scholarship aware that New
Testament Greek is a form of koinh/ (‘common’) Greek and conforms more to the vocabulary
and syntax of that form than it does to the Greek of the classical period. Yet the only grammar
to address this issue was that of James Hope Moulton, and for the period with which we are
concerned only volume 1 of what many decades later was to be completed as a four-volume
work had appeared (1906). It was entitled ‘Prolegomena’ and took no special notice of the d-
family as some of the later volumes were to do.
The Winer-Moulton grammar, first published in 1882, appeared too early to take into
account the new papyrus finds and their significance (Winer 1893)
The New Testament lexicon to which Williams makes most frequent reference is that of
Thayer (Thayer 1901, an expanded English translation of Wilke-Grimm Clavi Novi
Testamenti). Compared with the ‘standard’ lexicon of the present day, Baur-Arndt-Gingrich-
Danker [BDAG], Thayer’s treatment of the d-family is refreshing and surprisingly helpful. Its
editors were more prepared than BDAG to take into account the creative use of the common
words of the d-family, notably by Paul. Further, in the nature of the case, progress in our
understanding of what Paul meant by these words is more likely to come by looking more
closely at Paul rather than by pinning our hopes on usage in the non-literary (and non-
theological!) papyri. However, the fact is that the work of Grimm-Thayer also was carried out
too early to take into account any fruits of the discoveries of the non-literary papyri.25
While Grimm-Thayer has a number of helpful comments on the d-family, there is nothing
there to suggest the English vocabulary which Williams adopted. In their treatment of
di/kaioß they do speak of rectification of heart or life, and for 1.d. offer the meaning
‘approved of God, acceptable to God.’ In their treatment of dikaiosu/nh they frequently
illustrate the usage by simply drawing on the Greek word rather than by supplying its English
equivalent. However, referring to the Pauline usage they write (Thayer :
... Paul proclaims the love of God, in that by giving up Christ, his Son, to die as an
expiatory sacrifice for the sins of men he has attested his grace and good-will to mankind,
so that they can hope for salvation as if they had not sinned. But the way to obtain this
hope, he teaches, is only through faith ... by which a man appropriates that grace of God
revealed and pledged in Christ; and this faith is reckoned by God to the man as
dikaiosu/nh; that is to say, d. denotes the state acceptable to God which becomes a
sinner’s possession through that faith by which he embraces the grace of God offered him
in the expiatory death of Jesus Christ ... .26

25 Thayer himself was well aware of their significance [see his article ‘Language of the New Testament’ in
HDB 3:36-43], but the Grimm-Thayer lexicon does not seem to have been revised in the light of these
discoveries.
26 Grimm-Thayer, 149, col.2.
 Charles B. Williams and justification in English biblical translations 17

Again, as in the case of di/kaioß, this does not advance us beyond the notion of ‘the state
acceptable to God.’ The combination dikaiosu/nh/qeouv is explained in similar terms as ‘a
pregnant use, equivalent to that divine arrangement by which God leads men to a state
acceptable to him ...’ (Thayer 1901).
For dikaiouvn they give the following explanation (3.b): ‘with the positive idea
predominant, to judge, declare, pronounce, righteous and therefore acceptable.’27 Their
treatment of Luke 18.14 provides a good example of the tendency simply to use the Greek
word rather than give an English equivalent:
Lk xviii.14 teaches that a man dikaiouvtai by deep sorrow for his sins, which so humbles
him that he hopes for salvation only from divine grace.28

We conclude that while Grimm-Thayer’s treatment of the d-family is at most only mildly
forensic and provides some data that is compatible with the view developed by Williams, it
clearly is not the source for that view. Its central and most consistent concept is that of divine
acceptance.
Williams gives no evidence of familiarity with another German lexicon which had also
been translated into English in the later part of the nineteenth century, that of Hermann
Cremer (Cremer 1878).
The less structured works addressing the Greek of the New Testament (those of
Deissmann, Hatch, Kennedy, Simeon) likewise offer no light on the d-family, such as may
have assisted Williams to reach his particular view.

(2) Reference works, such as Bible dictionaries and encyclopedias

Williams refers to three multi-volume reference works: the Bible dictionary of William
Smith; Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible; and the International Standard Bible Encyclopædia
(to which he was a contributor).29 The latter, published in 1930, was too late to be a formative
influence on the view of justification Williams had developed no later than 1917. Williams’s
purpose in referring to these multi-volume works was primarily for the introductory
information they provided for the New Testament writings (matters of authorship, date,
provenance, etc.). However, there were articles on relevant topics in some of them, any on
‘justification’ and ‘righteousness’ being of special interest for our inquiry. Their presence in a
four or five volume set should not, of course, lead us to assume that Williams was necessarily
familiar with them.
One such article, by David Worthington Simon on ‘justification,’ which appeared in
Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible, is of particular interest (HDB 2:826–829). Simon’s

27 Grimm-Thayer, 150, col.2.

28 Grimm-Thayer, 151, col.1.
29 As well as other (unsigned) articles, Williams contributed the following to ISBE: ‘Sacrifice in the NT’;
‘Satan (Synagogue of)’; ‘Tradition’; ‘Uncleanness’.
18 R.K. Moore

explanation of justification is primarily in terms of personal relations. Here is his general

definition (HDB 2:286, cols 1–2):
To ‘justify’ means to set right, or to put on a right footing, one whose relation, either in
consequence of misunderstanding or misrepresentation, or because of misconduct, has been
what it should not be. Where there has been no real wrong-doing, ‘justification’ is simply
vindication or declaration of innocence or rectitude; where there has been real wrong-
doing, it pre-supposes the fulfilment of some condition by which the wrong-doing is made
good or expiated. In both cases a relation more or less abnormal is changed into one that is
normal—in the one by means of more light, in the other by means of more right.

Simon goes on to make the following claim for the underlying words in the original Old
and New Testament languages (HDB 2:826, col. 2):

Neither the Heb. qdx (Pi. and Hiph.) nor the Gr. dikaiouvn mean to make righteous, but
simply to put in a right relation. It is a question primarily of relationship, not of character or
conduct; though the relationship is conceived as conditioning both character and conduct.

A little later Simon provides a concise statement of his viewpoint( HDB 1:826, col 2):
Put into a sentence, the point of view of this article may be stated as follows:—God has
ever been seeking to establish right relations between Himself and sinful men; and so far as
men have responded to the divine movement, as befitted that movement, on the one hand,
and the stage of their personal and moral development in which the movement
accommodated itself, on the other, such a normal relation was established. That relation
was justification. The first step was thus taken to God’s being to man that without which
man could not be to God, still less to himself, what he was designed to be.

And towards the end of the article (HDB 2:829, col. 1):
... what is it but ... ‘justification,’ that is, a rectified relation, a being put on a right footing,
in a right relation? The Christian believer is related rightly to God; accordingly law ceases
to be mere law, and sacrifice ceases to be a means of purchasing grace; and though he may
fall into sin, he can still look up to God as one whose relation has once for all been made
right in and through Christ.

For him there is no inconsistency in regarding the action Paul describes in justification as
a forensic act (HDB 2:826, col.2):
... in Pauline usage dikaiouvn denotes the judicial act of God whereby those who put faith
in Christ are declared righteous in His eyes, free from guilt and punishment, Ro 45, Gal 216
et passim.

... dikaiouvn is used always, or almost always, in the forensic sense ... its proper meaning is
to pronounce righteous.

His discussion proceeds with frequent use of such phrases as ‘a right relation,’ ‘set right
with God.’
He describes humanity’s attempts to restore relations with God by ‘works of law’ or by
sacrifices and offerings or by other religious services as ‘self-rectification’ (HDB 2:827,
col.2) and later speaks of God’s action as one of ‘the restoration of man’s relation to Himself’
culminating in Christ (HDB 2:829, col.1).
 Charles B. Williams and justification in English biblical translations 19

Here, then, is a writer whose ideas, in many respects, anticipate those developed by
Williams, although no use is made of the phrase ‘right standing’ or reference made to a
change of status. Yet although Simon writes in a dictionary to which Williams refers,
Williams does not refer specifically to Simon’s article, or name Simon anywhere, even
though one of Simon’s monographs makes use of terminology similar to that which he
employs in his HDB article (Simon 1898).

(3) New Testament introductions

The chief New Testament introductions referred to by Williams are those by Hayes,
Moffatt, Peake, Bernhard Weiss, and Zahn. In most cases the writers of the relevant articles
of introduction to Galatians and Romans concern themselves more with the standard
introductory questions than with the theological interpretation of Paul. None of them has
material which would suggest that they had a part in shaping Williams’s view of justification.

(4) Works on Paul the apostle

These include works by Conybeare and Howson, Iverach, Ramsay, and Stalker. (I have
not been able to locate those by Hayes and Gilbert.)
In these writings the focus is upon biographical data relating to Paul’s life. The apostle’s
ideas are either ignored or given only limited treatment.
Sabatier, who does deal with Paul’s doctrine, approaches his topic Pauline letter by
Pauline letter. However, when he deals with the key letters for justification (Galatians and
Romans) he makes use of language which is entirely traditional (Sabatier 1896).

(5) Commentaries

Williams makes reference to both individual commentaries and commentary series.

All too often the commentators to whom reference is made are content simply to repeat
traditional views, using the standard jargon for justification. In reality they explain nothing.
They fail to come to grips with how the traditional English vocabulary employed in English
biblical translations could be made meaningful in the light of Paul’s exposition in Greek,
even if the English vocabulary were to be regarded as technical theological terminology.
In spite of his competence in the Greek language, J. B. Lightfoot devotes very little space
in his commentary on Galatians to a consideration of what the Pauline terminology for
justification, in particular the d-family, means.
Another commentator on Galatians, to whom Williams does refer, is E. D. Burton. (He
was a professor at the University of Chicago when Williams was doing his doctoral studies
there). In the appendix to his commentary Burton devotes a considerable section to the words
of the d-family (15 pages). He is thoroughly committed to the notion that these words are
forensic, although he never defines precisely what he means by ‘forensic,’ and his use of the
word does not seem to conform to any recognized sense. The essence of the matter for him is
20 R.K. Moore

acceptance, being accepted by God. He speaks of the d-words as being ‘ethical-forensic’ or

‘moral-forensic.’
There are, however, two significant exceptions.
The older work, by H. A. W. Meyer (1800-1873), was translated from the German
original (Meyer 1884). Meyer’s commentary on Romans is a detailed work, tightly argued,
incisive, with encyclopedic references to contemporary commentators.
Addressing the meaning of dikaiosu/nh qeouv at Rom 1.17, he argues (Meyer 1884, 68):
That this does not denote, as in iii. 5, an attribute of God, is plain from the passage cited in
proof from Hab.ii. 4, where, by necessity of the connection, ojJ di/kaioß must denote the
person who is in the state of the dikaiosu/nh qeouv . Comp. iii. 21 ff. It must therefore be
an ethical relation of man that is meant; and the genitive Qeouv must (otherwise in Jas. i.
20) be rendered as the genitive of emanation from , consequently: rightness which proceeds
from God, the relation of being right into which man is put by God (i.e. by an act of God
declaring him righteous).

The terminology in the English translation which is of particular interest for our inquiry is
‘rightness’ [unlike ‘righteousness’ this does not necessarily bear a moral connotation] and
‘the relation of being right into which man is put by God.’
Clearly Meyer understands the action God takes in justification to be a forensic one, as he
makes explicit shortly afterwards (Meyer 1884, 69)30:
... the expressions dikaiouvsqai ejnw/pion Qeouv (iii. 20), and parà qewˆv/ (Gal. iii. 11) ...
represent a special form under which the relation is conceived, expressing more precisely
the judicial nature of the matter.

He explains more fully (Meyer 1884, 69–70):

If therefore man was to enter into the relation of a righteous person and thereby of a future
participator in the Messianic blessedness, it was necessary that this should be done by
means of an extraordinary divine arrangement, through which grace and reconciliation
should be imparted to the object of wrath, and he should be put forward for the judgment of
God as righteous. This arrangement has been effected through the sending of His Son and
His being given up to his bloody death as that of a guiltless sacrifice; whereby God’s
counsel of redemption, formed from eternity, has been accomplished,—objectively for all,
subjectively to be appropriated on the part of individuals through faith ... .

30 See further: Meyer 1884,70, n.1.

 Charles B. Williams and justification in English biblical translations 21

He explained Rom 3.21 as follows (Meyer 1994, 163–164):

The mode of the pefane/rwtai however consists in the dikaios. Qeou having become
actual, having passed into historical reality, and having been made apparent, which has
been accomplished without mixing up the law as a co-operative factor in the matter.

Here again the emphasis upon right relationships is something Williams would later
adopt, although Meyer’s insistence on the forensic character of God’s justifying action in
dikaiouvn does not appear to have been shared by Williams.
The second commentary originated in an English-speaking context and came out in 1895,
during Williams’s early days as a pastor and prior to his undertaking higher studies. It was by
the British scholars, William Sanday and Arthur Cayley Headlam. Although Williams had
referred to this work in his 1917 volume, and again in his 1929 work, in his posthumous 1953
work he specifically links his understanding of Rom 1.17 with that of the ICC commentators.
Under the general sub-heading Key words and phrases, Williams writes on Rom 1.17 (1953,
232):
Verse 17. “God’s way of right standing ... is uncovered.” Here the word translated in the
Authorized Version righteousness likely means God’s method of bringing men into right
standing with Himself. See Sanday, Commentary on Romans.

What in the Sanday-Headlam commentary did Williams have in mind as vindicating his
own stance on justification?
In fact, like the works of Simon and of Meyer already considered, much of the work of
Sanday and Headlam is devoted to expounding an explicitly forensic view of justification
(Sanday 1895, 29–31).
However, in discussing the word di/kaioß and its cognates,31 they discuss the general
Jewish view of righteousness, then Jesus’ role in the light of it. They go on (Sanday 1895,
30):
So the Master; and then came the disciple [i.e., Paul] ... The later disciple saw that, if there
was to be a real reformation, the first thing to be done was to give it a personal ground, to
base it on a personal relationship. And therefore he lays down that the righteousness of the
Christian is to be a ‘righteousness of faith.’

Having made the point concerning personal relationship strongly enough here (and, in
reality, only here!) later in the same paragraph they revert to the forensic explanation (Sanday
1895, 30):
The specially Pauline feature in the conception expressed in this passage is that the
‘declaration of righteousness’ on the part of God, the Divine verdict of acquittal, runs in
advance of the actual practice of righteousness, and comes forth at once on the sincere
embracing of Christianity.

Treating dikaiouvn, they assert (Sanday 1895, 30):

31 One wonders why they should opt for di/vkaioß, which occurs only seven times in Romans, against the
thirty-four occurrences of dikaiosu/nh and the fifteen of dikaiouvn!
22 R.K. Moore

... when such words [those ending in -ow] are derived from adjectives of moral meaning ...
they do by usage and must from the nature of things signify to deem, to account, to prove,
or to treat as worthy, holy, righteous.

Shortly afterwards they claim that their assertion that dikaiouvn means ‘to pronounce
righteous’ rather than ‘to make righteous’ is shown from ‘the constant usage of the LXX (O.T.
and Apocr.); there the word occurs some forty-five times, always or almost always with the
forensic or judicial sense’ (Sanday 1895, 31).
Finally (Sanday 1895, 31):
(vi) The meaning is brought out in full in ch. iv. 5 twˆ◊ de« mh\ e˙rgazome÷nwˆ pisteu/onti de«
e˙pi« to\n dikaiouvnta to\n aÓsebhv logi÷zetai hJ pi÷stiß aujtouv ei˙ß dikaiosu/nhn:
Here it is expressly stated that the person justified has nothing to show in the way of
meritorious acts; his one asset (so to speak) is faith, and this faith is taken as an ‘equivalent
for righteousness.’

In treating ‘The Righteousness of God’ they conclude that:

The essence of it ... consists not in making men actually righteous but in ‘justifying’ or
treating them as if they were righteous (Sanday 1895, 35).

We have seen that a process of transference or conversion takes place; that the
righteousness of which Paul speaks, though it issues forth from God, ends in a state or
condition of man (Sanday 1895, 36).

The full phrase is dikaiouvsqai ejk pi/stewß: which means that the believer, by virtue of
his faith, is ‘accounted or treated as if he were righteous’ in the sight of God. More than
this: the person so ‘accounted righteous’ may be, indeed is assumed to be, not actually
righteous, but ajsebhß (Rom iv. 5), an offender against God.
There is something sufficiently startling in this. The Christian life is made to have its
beginning in a fiction (Sanday 1895, 36).

... dikaiouvn, dikaiouvsqai ... are rightly said to be ‘forensic’... they have reference to a
judicial verdict, and to nothing beyond. ... the state described is (if we are pressed) a fiction,
that God is regarded as dealing with men rather by the ideal standard of what they may be
than by the actual standard of what they are.

... the doctrine belongs strictly speaking only to the beginning of the Christian’s career. It
marks the initial stage, the entrance upon the way of life (Sanday 1895, 37; cf. Williams
1953, 64).

As Williams was to do later, Sanday and Headlam use the term ‘method’ of the divine
activity involved in ‘justification.’32 For example, they use it when paraphrasing Rom 3.21–
22. ‘Method’ also features in their continuing exposition, in which they frequently speak of
God ‘accepting as righteous’ the loyal follower of Jesus, the righteousness of God as a
condition bestowed upon man, ‘a ... more effective method ... the method of attachment to a
divine person.’ Again, commenting on Romans 10, they speak of two contrasting methods of
righteousness (Sanday 1895, 383), or two modes, of obtaining dikaiosu/nh (Sanday 1895,
285).

32 Cf. Williams 1917: 165, 167; 1929: 119; 1953: 232, 244, 288, 290.
 Charles B. Williams and justification in English biblical translations 23

Commenting on di/kaion kai dikaiouvnta (Rom 3.26) as the key-phrase connecting

dikaiosu/nh qeouv and the dikaiosu/nh ejk pistewß they write (Sanday 1895, 91):
It is not that ‘God is righteous and yet declares righteous the believer in Jesus,’ but that ‘He
is righteous and also, we might almost say and therefore, declares righteous the believer.’
The words indicate no opposition between justice and mercy. Rather that which seems to us
and which really is an act of mercy is the direct outcome of the ‘righteousness’ which is a
wider and more adequate name than justice. It is the essential righteousness of God which
impels Him to set in motion that sequence of events in the sphere above and in the sphere
below which leads to the free forgiveness of the believer and starts him on his way with a
clean page to his record.

It will be obvious that while Williams affirmed some, even a good deal, of what is found
in the Sanday and Headlam commentary, there are considerable sections he did not absorb
into his view of justification, particularly the forensic emphasis. While his view was not
incompatible with the notion of ‘acceptance,’ he did not employ the ‘acceptance’ terminology
used by Sanday and Headlam and others, just as they did not use ‘right standing’ or ‘status’ to
provide a possible source for his basic ideas. Indeed, the only aspect of their treatment of
justification that seems to resonate with the view later developed by Williams and
characteristic of his approach is confined to their very brief treatment of justification as
personal relationship (Sanday 1895, 30). Apart from that, while Williams may have derived
the odd concept or word from Sanday and Headlam (e.g., ‘method’), there is no other
evidence to suggest that his view developed out of their treatment of justification.

(6) English translations

One work published several decades before Williams’s 1937 translation included
translations of large sections of Galatians and Romans that did make use of language very
similar to that later employed by Williams in his translation of 1937: Frederick Brooke
Westcott St Paul and Justification, being an exposition of the teaching in the Epistles to Rome
and Galatia (1913). Westcott, of Trinity College, Cambridge, was son of the celebrated New
Testament scholar, Brooke Foss Westcott, although interestingly Westcott senior did not
publish in the area taken up by his son. However, while F. B. Westcott used ‘set right (with
God)’ for the verb, he did not use ‘right standing’ for the noun. I have not found any evidence
for the use of this phrase prior to Williams’s writings and translation.

In our quest for sources which influenced Williams to develop his distinctive translation
style for words of the d-family, we have discovered that the general concept is present in two
of the sources he acknowledges, while a third source is likely to have been familiar to him,
since it appeared in a multi-volume work with which he was certainly familiar. Yet in each of
these three instances Paul’s doctrine of ‘justification’ is presented not only in ‘relational’
terms, but also as a forensic action by God.
Although Williams’s discussions are not extensive, it does seem significant to the present
writer that he nowhere refers to ‘justification’ as forensic. He neither affirms it nor denies it.
24 R.K. Moore

From the evidence it is not unreasonable to deduce that his view fell somewhere in the range
between the two extremes that follow:
(1) ‘Justification’ is forensic, but he did not regard this aspect as especially relevant for
the exposition of Paul’s doctrine.
(2) Justification is not forensic at all. If this was his view, his silence on the issue may
have been motivated by discretion, in deference to the widespread, indeed virtually
unanimous, position held by Protestant commentators and theologians.
At the same time is it arguable that the position he certainly did espouse, that
‘justification’ has primarily to do with a change of status, a change of relationship, is in itself
viable and adequate as an explanation of the Pauline doctrine, satisfying the apostle’s use of
the d-family and his exposition of the doctrine. It is not necessary, indeed it is not desirable,
to view justification in the way that a younger contemporary, a fellow-Baptist, did, as
embracing both a restored relationship and the forensic dimension (Crabtree 1963).
In Williams’s renderings of the Greek word-family crucial to an understanding of Paul’s
doctrine of ‘justification,’ the phrase ‘right standing’ forms the centre-piece. Yet this phrase
does not occur in any of his acknowledged sources or in any works earlier than 1917 (when
we may first document his use of this phrase). The available evidence leads to the conclusion
that it is very probable the phrase ‘right standing’ was coined by Williams himself. It was his
own creative way of expressing in English Paul’s doctrine of ‘justification’ in relational
terms as a change of status.33

33 Cf. ‘good standing’ in current English.

 Charles B. Williams and justification in English biblical translations 25

4 CONCLUSIONS
Of all Williams’s literary works, that most frequently printed, and no doubt the most
widely read, is his translation of the New Testament: The New Testament: a private
translation in the language of the people (1937). Those who speak of the merits of this
version most frequently praise the way Williams brought the Greek verb tenses over into
English. However, the real value of Williams’s version rests on an entirely different
foundation.
To my knowledge, until the present writer’s doctoral thesis of 1978, it had gone
unnoticed that Williams was the first English translator to express Paul’s doctrine of
‘justification’ in relational terms, even though that general approach has been used quite
widely by later translators, e.g., The Amplified Bible [only in their amplifications] (1958); F.
F. Bruce’s paraphrase of the Pauline Epistles (1965); Good News for Modern Man (1966);
William Barclay (1969); The Translator’s Translation (1973); The Holy Bible: New Century
Version (NT 1984).
In the present writer’s view this aspect of Williams’s translation is of considerably more
significance than his handling of the Greek tenses, which not all have praised.34 If there is any
single area in English biblical translation which is desperately in need of being made
intelligible to the average person in the present day, it is the doctrine of justification, or
rectification, as a number now prefer to call it (Moore 1994). It is the doctrine which Paul
evaluated as follows:

For I’m not ashamed of the good news;

After all, it is God’s powerful means of bringing about salvation for every person who has
come to faith,
for the Jew in the first instance, and for the Greek.
For in the good news God’s gift of a right relationship is revealed
as a consequence of faith for a life of faith,
just as it stands on record:
‘It is the person who is in a right relationship
as a consequence of faith, who will live.’35

In presenting Paul’s doctrine to an English reader Williams developed a cluster of

expressions which centred about the phrase ‘right standing’. He saw Paul’s phrase
dikaiosu/nh qeouv (literally, ‘God’s righteousness’) as referring to ‘God’s way of giving
people right standing with himself.’ Whether he was translating the noun or its verb
equivalent he placed ‘right standing’ at the heart of what Paul wished to communicate.
Williams understood the action God took in justification to be that of bringing about a change
of status in the sinner. Not only did he use the word ‘status’ when explaining the doctrine in

34 e.g., Bruce 1978, 179–181; Kubo 1983, 357; Orlinsky 1991, 98–99.
35 My own translation, Under the Southern Cross: The New Testament in Australian English: Moore 2014,
294.
26 R.K. Moore

his own writings, but the word ‘standing’ in the phrase ‘right standing’ also has this
meaning—cf. a bank client being described as in ‘good standing’ today.
What can we learn about the possible influences that may have helped to shape
Williams’s view of justification, in particular, the way he expressed it in English translation?
Together with many of the writers with whom we know he was familiar, Williams no doubt
shared a considerable amount of common ground. A few (and they were only a few) spoke of
justification in terms of right relations and/or a change of status for the ‘justified’ person.
However, without exception, even those who took a relational view of justification still
regarded it as a forensic act, a declaration by God as Judge36 that trusting sinners were now,
because of their faith, ‘righteous.’
There is no evidence that Williams shared this view. He had ample opportunity, not so
much in his translation, but certainly in his introductions to the New Testament Scriptures
and in his expository works, to develop this aspect. Either he did not regard it as important,
or, what to the present writer seems more likely, he did not hold such a view (although he
may have regarded it as politic not to express that fact among the conservative constituency
he served, among whom it was undoubtedly widely embraced).
Williams saw the divine action involved in justification as one of giving sinners right
standing with himself. God was able to do this because they had exercised trust, that is, trust
in Christ. For it was Christ who had given his life as a sacrifice for them to make possible the
removal of sin and the restoration of right standing with God. These ideas are essentially
simple, but strike the present writer as entirely faithful to Paul. There is no need to postulate a
complex theory of penal satisfaction which derives not from Paul, but from later theological
enterprise. Williams, in his faithfulness to the Greek before him, translated insightfully to
render into English more effectively than his predecessors had, the basic ideas Paul wished to
convey.
In a brief article of 1967, a Bible Society translator, Dr Donald Deer, reported how
collations he had made of Williams’s translation with that of Goodspeed produced fourteen
years earlier (1923), showed that the correlation between them was so high as to suggest that
Williams had simply taken over large sections of Goodspeed with little modification.37 Deer
pointed out that the degree of correlation varied in different parts of the New Testament. This
is an area which calls for more extensive collation and more detailed investigation.
What is clear, however, is that in the matter of how he brought Paul’s vital doctrine of
justification over into English, Williams’s approach made the doctrine instantly meaningful,
when compared with the very wooden way Goodspeed had handled it. For although
Goodspeed’s version offered some improvement over the traditional two-family approach
(‘righteousness’ for the noun, ‘to justify’ for the verb) it encompassed a number of difficulties

36 hence ‘forensic’, pertaining to a court of law.

37 Donald S. Deer ‘A revision or a new translation?’ The Bible Translator 18 (1967) 83–85.
 Charles B. Williams and justification in English biblical translations 27

of its own, such as ‘God’s way of uprightness,’ Rom 1.17, (what does that mean?) and ‘make
upright’ (predominantly a Roman Catholic concept of justification).
In the matter of how Williams rendered Paul’s doctrine of justification into English in his
1937 translation, it is not exaggerating to speak of a touch of genius. Many English
translations later, his rendering of Romans 4.5 is still one of the very few that are both
intelligible and faithful to Paul:

Rom 4.4-5
4 Now when a workman gets his pay,
it is not considered from the point of view of a favor, but of an obligation;
5 but the man who does no work,
but simply puts his faith in Him who brings the ungodly into right standing with Himself,
has his faith credited to him as right standing.

The first clear statement we have of Williams’s distinctive way of expressing

‘justification’ dates to 1917.38 By then he had been in theological education for twelve years.
Tantalizingly, we have a copy of his introductory notes on the Gospels given at the beginning
of 1909, but there are no corresponding notes for Paul, although presumably he lectured in
that area also.
By 1917 Williams’s ideas on justification were already well developed. He was using the
phrase ‘right standing’ and spoke of ‘God’s righteousness’ (Rom 1.17; 3.21–22) as a method
of giving people right standing with himself. The modifications introduced into the 1929
version of this textbook were only slight, and he retained his distinctive phraseology for
words of the d-family. However for his 1937 translation of the New Testament he followed a
lead given by Goodspeed and adopted ‘way’ rather than ‘method’ for dikaiosu/nh qeouv,
though occasional uses of ‘method’ are still to be found in his last work (published
posthumously in 1953).39
The 1917 work was significant for another reason, however. In it he ‘paraphrased’ Paul’s
letters, providing him with the ideal experience and background for his systematic translation
of the New Testament which he began at about that time. In the matter of justification, the
key phraseology was already to hand in Williams’s paraphrasing. Indeed, with the transition
from paraphrasing to translation Williams overcame a tendency evident in the earlier work to
express God’s action of giving people right standing with himself in man-centred terms and
made them increasingly, and appropriately, God-centred.
Presumably Williams’s understanding of the doctrine of justification drew on existing
sources, a few of which developed some aspects he would personally come to embrace. What
is lacking in all the sources he is known certainly to have used, however, is the key phrase in
his 1937 translation: ‘right standing.’ It has certainly been used since Williams, but I have not

38 C. B. Williams New Testament history and literature (Kansas City, MO: The Western Baptist
Publishing Co., 1917).
39 C. B. Williams A commentary on the Pauline Epistles (Chicago: Moody, 1953).
28 R.K. Moore

been able to trace its use prior to his work of 1917. In the absence of evidence to the contrary,
it seems reasonable to conclude that the phrase ‘right standing’ arose out of his own
creativity.
‘Creativity’ in the sense it is used here requires some qualification. It is certainly not
intended to convey the notion that Williams ‘made up’ a way of expressing Paul’s doctrine in
English merely from within the resources of the English language itself. For undoubtedly
Williams’s single most important source was the New Testament in its original Greek. There
can be no question about his competence to read that source with understanding40 and
therefore to translate it accurately into English for the benefit of others, particularly those
without Greek. In the matter of conveying the concept of justification, Williams used what is
known today as a ‘functional equivalence’ approach.
We have already observed that towards the end of his life Williams wrote an appreciation
of his mentor, friend, and neighbour, Dr B. H. Carroll, who had died over thirty years earlier.
It was never published, but the typed manuscript runs to 177 pages. The opening chapter
discusses what qualities or qualifications entitle a person to be remembered by succeeding
generations. It is an insightful discussion, pointing out how all too often we who live in this
present world get it wrong; we operate with an inadequate and inappropriate sense of values.
What Williams wrote primarily with Carroll in mind, serves as a paradigm for his own
case. The real gold of his life experience is yet to be mined, displayed, and appreciated. It has
to do with his pioneering work on how Paul’s doctrine of ‘justification’ is best expressed in
English biblical translations. Or, to communicate that statement more effectively, as Williams
loved to do, it has to do with the way Williams expressed in his English translation the most
important issue in all the world: how a person comes into right standing with God.

40His appointment to the Chair of Greek, New Testament and Interpretation under Dr B. H. Carroll of
Baylor University in 1905 supports this, as does his piece of doctoral research for the University of Chicago:
The participle in the Book of Acts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1909).
 Charles B. Williams and justification in English biblical translations 29

APPENDIX A:

Bibliography of the works of

Charles Bray Williams
1901 A history of the Baptists in North Carolina (Raleigh: Presses of Edwards &
Broughton).

1908 ‘Paul’s testimony to the doctrine of sin’ Fundamentals 8:4, 49–63.

1909 ‘Lecture No. 1, New Testament English, Winter Term, The Gospels, Delivered by
Dr. C. B. Williams, Teacher in Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary,
Waco, Texas, Jan 2, 1909.’ reported by J. W. Jent. [Unpublished; roneoed copy
held by Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas].

1909 The participle in the Book of Acts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

1909 ‘The Caesarean imprisonment of Paul’ The Biblical World 34: 271–280.

1912 The function of teaching in Christianity (Nashville, TN: Sunday School Board,
Southern Baptist Convention).

1917 New Testament history and literature (Kansas City, MO: The Western Baptist
Publishing Co.).

1919a Citizens of two worlds and other sermons (New York: Fleming H. Revell).

1919b ‘Christian colleges and the re-creation of the world’ [inaugural address of Chas B.
Williams, president of Howard College, 1919] published in Howard College
Bulletin 77:4 (Oct 1919) 2–14 [in Union Theological Seminary Library catalogue,
New York City (1960) 10:676 (Ref.: TU 61/?), in Pitts Theological Library,
Emory University, Atlanta, GA].

1925 Introduction to Christian ethics.

1928 The evolution of New Testament Christology (Boston: Richard G. Badger, the
Gorham Press).

1929 An introduction to New Testament literature (Kansas City, MO: The Western Baptist
Publishing Company).

1930 [contributor of signed and anonymous articles] International Standard Bible

Encyclopedia ed. James Orr, 5 vols, (Chicago: The Howard-Severance Coy).

1932 [co-author] An introduction to religious education.

1937 The New Testament in the language of the people (New York: Bruce Humphries).

194? Yes, the co-operative program is Scriptural (Nashville: Executive Committee).

[Copy in Southern Baptist Seminary, Louisville, KY].
30 R.K. Moore

1953 A commentary on the Pauline Epistles (Chicago: Moody).

Undated

‘B. H. Carroll: the titanic interpreter and teacher of truth’ (Lakeland, Florida: unpublished
manuscript). [Copy held in Archives of Southwestern Baptist Theological
Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas].

New Testament synonyms.

The Galilean [next word illegible].

[co-author] Woodrow Wilson: an estimate by his contemporaries.

Uncertain:

Williams A plea for a reconstruction of St. Paul’s doctrine of justification (1912)41

41 It is not impossible that this work is by Charles Bray Williams. It is referred to by A. T. Robertson ‘Paul
the Apostle’ ISBE 4:2289. Robertson does not appear to mention this work in any of his other writings. Without
the initials it is difficult even to identify the book, as Williams is a relatively frequent surname.
 Charles B. Williams and justification in English biblical translations 31

APPENDIX B:
Bibliography of works relevant to justification
in the form Williams cited them

1 The participle in the Book of Acts (1909)

1.1 Grammars

Winer-Moulton New Testament Grammar. 1882. Based on G. B. Winer Grammatik des

neutestamentlichen Sprachidioms. 1822; 1855.

Hadley and Allen Greek Grammar. 1884; 1889.

Babbitt Greek Grammar. 1902.

John Thompson A Greek Grammar. 1902.

J. H. Moulton Grammar of New Testament Greek Vol. 1: Prolegomena. 1906.

1.2 Miscellaneous

Deissmann New lights on biblical Greek. 1908.42

Ramsay Pauline and other studies, etc. 1907.

Simcox Language of the New Testament, pp. 122-134. 1890.

Hatch Essays in biblical Greek. 1889.

Kennedy Sources of New Testament Greek. 1895.

1.3 Periodicals

Biblical world 1:163–164 (editorial on ‘N.T. grammar’); 19:190–191 (J. H. Moulton ‘New
lights on biblical Greek’).

The Expository Times 9:272–273 [Banks reviews Deissmann’s Bibelstudien and Neue
Bibelstudien]; 17:450–451 [Kennedy reviews Moulton’s Prolegomena].

2 New Testament history and literature (1917)

Zahn Introduction to the New Testament.

42 I have not been able to trace a work by Deissmann with this title; in 1907 he did publish New light on the
New Testament, from records of the Graeco-Roman period, which was reprinted in 1908.
32 R.K. Moore

Sanday-Headlam Commentary on Romans (ICC).

Conybeare and Howson Life and Epistles of St. Paul.

Iverach St. Paul, his life and times.

Gilbert The student’s life of Paul.

Stalker Life of St. Paul.

Lightfoot Commentary on Galatians.

Ramsay Historical commentary on Galatians.

Articles in Bible dictionaries: Smith, Hastings, International Standard Bible Encyclopedia on

... the books of the New Testament.

3 An introduction to New Testament literature (1929)

3.1 For Galatians (page 122):

‘Galatians’ in:

Int.St. Bib. Encyclopedia

HDB
Peake
Moffatt
Zahn
Hayes

Farrar Messages of the Books.

Ramsay Historical Com. on Galatians.
Lightfoot Com. on Galatians.
ECT [sic! = EGT].
ICC
Camb. Bib
Expos.-Bib.

3.2 For Romans

3.2.1 Arts.:
‘Rome, Epis. to’ in: Int. St. Bib. Encyc.
HDB

3.2.2 Introductions:

Weiss
Zahn
Peake
Moffatt
Hayes
 Charles B. Williams and justification in English biblical translations 33

et al.
34 R.K. Moore

3.2.3 Comms.:

Godet
Meyer
Expos. Bib.
EGT
ICC

3.3 For Philippians

Same Bib. Dicts., Introductions and Comms.

Lightfoot Com. on Philippians.

Robertson Paul’s joy in Christ.

 Charles B. Williams and justification in English biblical translations 35

APPENDIX C:
Works relevant to justification cited by Williams:
full bibliographical details

Additional materials investigated,

but not specifically referred to by Williams,
are indicated by an asterisk (*)

Addis, William Edward (1844–1917)

1903 ‘Right, Righteousness’ in Encyclopædia Biblica: a critical dictionary of the
literary political and religious history the archæology geography and
natural history of the Bible ed. Thomas Kelly Cheyne (1841–1915) & J.
Sutherland Black (New York: Macmillan; London: A. & C. Black) 4: cols
4102–4110.
Babbitt, Frank Cole (1867–1935)
1902 A grammar of Attic and Ionic Greek (New York: American Book
Company).
Bacon, Benjamin Wisner
1909 Commentary on the Epistle of Paul to the Galatians (The Bible for home
and school, 44; New York: Macmillan).
Banks, John Shaw
1898 ‘G. Adolf Deissmann’s two treatises: Bibelstudien (Marburg, 1895) and
Neue Bibelstudien (1897)’ ExpTim 9:6 (1898) 272–273.
Biblical World, The ‘Editorial’ 1:3 (1893) 163–167.
Burton, Ernest de Witt (1856–1925)
1921 A critical and exegetical commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (ICC;
Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1921).
Cambridge Bible for schools and colleges, The
1890 ed. John James Stewart Perowne (1823–1904) (Cambridge: CUP, 1890).
Conybeare, William John (1815–1857) and John Saul Howson (1816–1885)
1897 The life and epistles of St. Paul (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons).
Deissmann, Gustav Adolf (1866–1937)
1907 New light on the New Testament, from records of the Graeco-Roman period
(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1907).
Denney, James (1856–1917)
1917 ‘St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans’ in The Expositor’s Greek Testament ed.
W. Robertson Nicoll (New York: Hodder & Stoughton, 1917) 2:555–725.
Dods, Marcus (1834–1909)
1904 ‘Galatians, Epistle to the’ in James Hastings (1852–1922) (ed.) A dictionary
of the Bible: dealing with its language, literature, and contents including
the biblical theology with the assistance of John A. Selbie (New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1904) 2:93–98.
36 R.K. Moore

Ellicott, Charles John

1883 ‘Galatians, The Epistle to the’ in William Smith (1813-1893) (ed.) Dr
William Smith’s dictionary of the Bible, comprising its antiquities,
biography, geography, and natural history. Revised and edited by Professor
H. B. Hackett, D.D. with the coöperation of Ezra Abbot, LL.D. (Boston:
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1883) 1:856–859.
Encyclopædia Biblica: a critical dictionary of the literary political and religious history the
archæology geography and natural history of the Bible
1903 ed. Thomas Kelly Cheyne (1841–1915) & J. Sutherland Black (New York:
Macmillan; London: A. & C. Black).
Expositor’s Bible, The: a complete exposition of the Bible, in six volumes, with index. ed. W.
Robertson Nicoll
1894 (London: Hodder & Stoughton).
Expositor’s Greek Testament, The
1917 ed. W. Robertson Nicoll (New York: Hodder & Stoughton).
Farrar, Frederic William (1831–1903)
1885 The messages of the Books, being discourses and notes on the books of the
New Testament (New York: E. P. Dutton).
Faulkner, John Alfred
1930 ‘Justification’ in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia ed. James
Orr (Chicago: The Howard-Severance Coy) 3:1782–1788.
Findlay, George Gillanders (1849–1919)
1894 ‘The Epistle to the Galatians’ in The Expositor’s Bible: a complete
exposition of the Bible, in six volumes, with index ed. W. Robertson Nicoll
(London: Hodder & Stoughton) 5:811–925.
1915 ‘Galatians, Epistle to the’ in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
ed. James Orr (Chicago: The Howard-Severance Coy) 2:1155–1163.
1919 ‘Romans’ in Peake, Arthur Samuel (1865–1929) (ed.) A commentary on the
Bible (London: Thomas Nelson) 817–831.
Godet, Frédéric Louis (1812-1900)
1889 Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (Studies on the Epistles;
London: Hodder & Stoughton); r.i. as Studies in Paul’s Epistles (Grand
Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1984).
Hackett, Horatio Balch and Ezra Abbott
1883 ‘Romans, The Epistle to the’ in William Smith (1813-1893) (ed.) Dr
William Smith’s dictionary of the Bible, comprising its antiquities,
biography, geography, and natural history. Revised and edited by Professor
H. B. Hackett, D.D. with the coöperation of Ezra Abbot, LL.D. (Boston:
Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) 4:2744–2749.
Hadley, James (1821–1872)
1860 A Greek grammar for schools and colleges. Revised and in part rewritten
by Frederic de Forest Allen (New York: American Book Company).
Hastings, James (1852–1922) (ed.)
1904 A dictionary of the Bible: dealing with its language, literature, and contents
including the biblical theology with the assistance of John A. Selbie (New
York: Charles Scribner’s sons; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark).
Hatch, Edwin (1835-1889)
1889 Essays in biblical Greek (Oxford: Clarendon).
Holtzmann, H. J. et al.
1891 Hand-Commentar zum Neuen Testament Second edition (Freiburg I.B.: J. C.
B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck]) Bd 2: Die Briefe an die Galater, Römer, Philipper.
 Charles B. Williams and justification in English biblical translations 37

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

1930 ed. James Orr, 5 vols, (Chicago: The Howard-Severance Coy).
[Abbreviated ISBE]
Iverach, James
n.d. St Paul: his life and times (New York: Fleming H. Revell).
Jannaris, Antonius Nicholas (1852–1909)
1897 An historical Greek grammar: chiefly of the Attic dialect as written and
spoken from classical antiquity down to the present time. Founded upon the
ancient texts, inscriptions, papyri and present popular Greek (London:
Macmillan,).
Kennedy, Harry Angus Alexander (b.1866)
1906 ‘Moulton’s New Testament Grammar’ ExpT 17:10 (1906) 450–452.
Lightfoot, Joseph Barber (1828–1889)
1878 St Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians: a revised text with introduction, notes,
and dissertations (London: Macmillan, 11868 41878).
1880 St Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians: a revised text with introduction, notes,
and dissertations (London: Macmillan, 61880).
Macintosh, Robert
1919 ‘Galatians’ in A commentary on the Bible ed. Arthur Samuel Peake (1865–
1929) (London: Thomas Nelson) 857–861.
McConnell, Francis J.
1930 ‘Righteousness’ in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia ed.
James Orr (Chicago: The Howard-Severance Coy).
Meyer, Heinrich August Wilhelm (1800–1873)
1884 Critical and exegetical hand-book to the Epistle to the Romans. Translated
from the fifth edition of the German by John C. Moore and Edwin Johnson,
the translation revised by William P. Dickson. With a preface and
supplementary notes to the American edition by Timothy Dwight. (Critical
and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, 5; New York: Funk
and Wagnalls).
Moffatt, James (1870–1944)
1912 An introduction to the literature of the New Testament (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1911; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark).
Moule, Handley Carr Glyn (1841–1920)
1890 The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, with introduction and notes
(The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, ed. John James Stewart
Perowne [1823-1904]; Cambridge: CUP).
1894 ‘The Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans’ in The Expositor’s Bible: a
complete exposition of the Bible, in six volumes, with index ed. W.
Robertson Nicoll (London: Hodder & Stoughton).
1930 ‘Romans, Epistle to the’ in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
ed. James Orr (Chicago: The Howard-Severance Coy) 4:2614–2618.
Moulton, James Hope (1863–1917)
1902 ‘New lights on biblical Greek’ The Biblical World 19:3 (1902) 190–196.
1906 A grammar of New Testament Greek 1: Prolegomena (Edinburgh: T. & T.
Clark).
Peake, Arthur Samuel (1865–1929) (ed.)
1919 A commentary on the Bible, with the assistance of Alexander James Grieve
(1874–1952). (London: Thomas Nelson).
Perowne, Edward Henry (1826–1906)
38 R.K. Moore

1890 The Epistle to the Galatians, edited with introduction and notes (The
Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, ed. John James Stewart
Perowne [1823–1904]; Cambridge: CUP).
Rainy, Robert (1826–1906)
1894 ‘The Epistle to the Philippians’ in The Expositor’s Bible: a complete
exposition of the Bible, in six volumes, with index. ed. W. Robertson Nicoll
(London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1894) 215–234.
Ramsay, William Mitchell (1851–1939)
1906 Pauline and other studies in early Christian history (London: Hodder &
Stoughton, 21906).
Rendall, Frederic
n.d. ‘The Epistle to the Galatians’ in The Expositor’s Greek Testament ed. W.
Robertson Nicoll (New York: Hodder & Stoughton; Grand Rapids: Baker,
n.d.) 3:121–200.
Robertson, Archibald (1853–1931)
1904 ‘Romans, Epistle to the’ in A dictionary of the Bible: dealing with its
language, literature, and contents including the biblical theology ed. James
Hastings (1852-1922) with the assistance of John A. Selbie. (New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark) 4:295–306.
Robertson, Archibald Thomas (1863–1934)
1917 Paul’s joy in Christ; studies in Philippians (New York: Fleming H. Revell).
1930 ‘Paul the Apostle’ in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia ed.
James Orr (Chicago: The Howard-Severance Coy, 1930) 3:2264–2289.
1931 Word pictures in the New Testament (Nashville: Broadman).
Sabatier, Auguste (1839–1901)
1896 The apostle Paul: a sketch of the development of his doctrine (New York:
James Pott & Co, 31896).
Sanday, William (1843–1920) and Arthur Cayley Headlam (1862–1947)
1895 A critical and exegetical commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (ICC;
Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 51902).
Simcox, William Henry (1843–1889)
1890 The language of the New Testament (New York: Thomas Whittaker).
Simon, David Worthington (1830–1909)
*1898 Reconciliation by incarnation: the reconciliation of God and Man by the
incarnation of the Divine Word (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark).
1899 ‘Justification’ in James Hastings (1852–1922) (ed.) A dictionary of the
Bible, dealing with its language, literature, and contents, including the
biblical theology ed. James Hastings (1852–1922) with the assistance of
John A. Selbie (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark; New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons, 1900) 2:826–829.
Smith, William (1813–1893) (ed.)
1865 A concise Dictionary of the Bible, comprising its antiquities, biography,
geography, and natural history: being a condensation of the larger
dictionary by William Aldis Wright [under the direction and
superintendence of William Smith] (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co.).
1883 Dr William Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, comprising its antiquities,
biography, geography, and natural history. Revised and edited by Professor
H. B. Hackett, D.D. with the coöperation of Ezra Abbot, LL.D. 4 vols
(Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.).
Stalker, James
1888 The life of St. Paul (New York: American Tract Society).
 Charles B. Williams and justification in English biblical translations 39

Stevens, George Barker (1854–1906)

1902 ‘Righteousness in New Testament’ in (ed.) A dictionary of the Bible:
dealing with its language, literature, and contents including the biblical
theology ed. James Hastings (1852–1922) with the assistance of John A.
Selbie. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark)
4:281–284.
Thompson, John
1902 A Greek Grammar: Accidence and Syntax for Schools and Colleges
(London: John Murray).
Weiss, Bernhard (1827–1918)
1886 A manual of introduction to the New Testament (New York: Funk &
Wagnalls).
Winer, Johann Georg Benedikt (1789–1858)
1893 A grammar of the idiom of the New Testament, prepared as a solid basis for
the interpretation of the New Testament. Seventh edition, enlarged and
improved by Dr Gottlieb Lünemann. Revised and authorized translation.
American editor: J. Henry Thayer (Andover: Warren F. Draper).
Zahn, Theodor (1838–1933)
1909 Introduction to the New Testament. Translated from the third German
edition (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1909; r.i. Minneapolis, MN: Klock &
Klock, 1977).
40 R.K. Moore

APPENDIX D:
Sample passages from
The New Testament in the language of the people (1937).
Gal 2.15-17
15 We ourselves are Jews by birth and not heathen sinners, and yet,
16 because we know that a man does not come into right standing with God by doing what
the law commands,
but by simple trust in Christ,
we too have trusted in Christ Jesus,
in order to come into right standing with God by simple trust in Christ and not by doing what
the law commands,
because by doing what the law commands no man can come into right standing with God.
17 Now if, in our efforts to come into right standing with God through union with Christ,
we have proved ourselves to be sinners like the heathen themselves,
does that make Christ a party to our sin? Of course not.

Rom 1.16-17
16 For I am not ashamed of the good news,
for it is God’s power for the salvation of everyone who trusts,
of the Jew first and then of the Greek.
17 For in the good news God’s Way of man’s right standing with Him is uncovered,
the Way of faith that leads to greater faith,
just as the Scripture says, “The upright man must live by faith.”

Rom 3.21-26
21 But now God’s way of giving men right standing with Himself has come to light; a way
without connection with the law,
and yet a way to which the law and the prophets testify.
22 God’s own way of giving men right standing with Himself is through faith in Jesus Christ.
It is for everybody who has faith,
for no distinction at all is made.
23 For everybody has sinned and everybody continues to come short of God’s glory,
24 but anybody may have right standing with God as a free gift of His undeserved favor,
through the ransom provided in Christ Jesus.
25-26 For God once publicly offered Him in His death as a sacrifice of reconciliation through
faith,
to demonstrate His own justice
(for in His forbearance
God had passed over men’s former sins);
yes, to demonstrate His justice at the present time, to prove that
He is right Himself, and that He considers right with Himself the man who has faith in Jesus.

Rom 4.4-5
4 Now when a workman gets his pay,
it is not considered from the point of view of a favor, but of an obligation;
5 but the man who does no work,
but simply puts his faith in Him who brings the ungodly into right standing with Himself,
has his faith credited to him as right standing.