I've contended that the "righteousness of God" is a rich and layered phrase denoting more than one aspect of God's activity. It incorporates God's redemptive actions in both creation (establishing justice throughout all the earth), in the covenant (being faithful to Israel), and in the future (the apocalyptic revelation in the gospel). I was chuffed to see someone saying much the same thing about two hundred years ago:
Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893) wrote: "And so the expression ‘righteousness of God,’ instead of being confined to one abstract point of view or meaning, seems to swell out into several: the attribute of God, embodied in Christ, manifested in the world, revealed in the Gospel, communicated to the individual soul; the righteousness not of law, but of faith" (cited from Baird, History of New Testament Research, 1.357).
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Not aware of Jowett, I searched his name and found a short little bio, with this comment, which sounds all too familiar. It says, "He argues that since St. Paul's thoughts transcended his power of expression, his meaning must be determined by the context rather than from a strictly grammatical and syntactical analysis of the words, a position which offended not only the more conservative theologians but also the leading philologists of the age."
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