Recently, I read a couple of my studies in the Sermon on the Mount, specifically, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. It reminded me of this video of a presentation by Nicholas Wolterstorff.

He is answering a question from the audience (and sometimes fighting an unfortunately placed spotlight) concerning the distinction between Righteousness and Justice. What makes this an issue is that both these words are used to translate the same Greek word, δικαιοσύνη.

I do not want to just repeat what he says, just to emphasize his curiosity over when the English translators, which due to the language’s heritage had a choice between a word based in Latin (justice) or a word based in German (righteousness), how did the translators choose? Of course, context should be taken into consideration. The pattern he saw was that when δικαιοσύνη was used in the context of criminality, they chose justice; but when in the context of social matters, righteousness. He sees that as curious and forced by issues not related to language or theology.