the Third Week of Advent
Click here to join the effort!
Bible Dictionaries
Good
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or The adj. ‘good’ (ἀγαθός, καλός) may be used of any quality, physical as well as moral, thing, or person that may be approved as useful, fit, admirable, right. In the moral sense it connotes in the NT not only righteousness but kindness, helpfulness, love. For Jesus, God alone was “nod without limitation or qualification (Mark 10:18, Luke 18:19); and while His own moral discipline on earth was going on, He disclaimed that epithet for Himself (cf. Matthew 19:17, with its attempt to escape the apparent difficulty of the disclaimer). This Divine perfection is shown in an impartial, universal beneficence (Matthew 5:45), which men are to imitate (Matthew 5:48). The same conviction of what God is, and what man, therefore, should be, is found in St. Paul’s counsels (Ephesians 4:31-32; Ephesians 5:1-2). Jesus Himself is the expression and activity of this Divine perfection, and so it is characteristic of Him to go about ‘doing good’ (Acts 10:38), as He Himself indicates in His reply to the Baptist (Matthew 11:4-5); and this, too, He enjoin as the practice of His disciples (Luke 6:27; cf. Matthew 25:31 ff., Mark 14:7, Luke 19:8-9). St. Paul echoes the teaching of Jesus when he bids the Romans ‘overcome evil with good’ (Romans 12:21), and assures them that such conduct will have its reward (Romans 2:10). The distinction St. Paul makes between ‘a righteous man ‘and ‘the good man’ (Romans 5:7) deserves special attention. Just as God because He is righteous reckons righteous (Romans 3:26), so it is because God is good in Himself that He is ever showing His goodness to all men, especially in Christ and His Cross (Romans 5:8, Ephesians 4:32) and calling all men to be the imitators of His goodness (1 Corinthians 13).
Although the following article is dealing with the Christian moral ideal as ‘goodness,’ this brief statement in introducing the subject of ‘the good’ as man’s ‘chief end’ has been made for two reasons. (a) In the Christian view, God Himself is man’s chief good, for in His fellowship alone is man’s perfection, glory, and blessedness, and it is God’s goodness that man enjoys for ever; and (b) it is because of this goodness-this self-giving of God’s perfection as love-that the chief good is given to man. It is in Christ that man so possesses God, and it is through Christ that God so communicates Himself to man. The total impression of the apostolic writings is that Christ Himself is the Good, for in Him and through Him alone man has God as Love.
We must note, however, that the chief good is presented to us in three distinctive phrases in the different types of teaching in the NT. In the Synoptics, on the lips of Jesus Himself, it is ‘the kingdom of God’ (Matthew 6:33); in the Fourth Gospel it is ‘eternal life’ (John 20:30-31), although we also find the second representation in Matthew 19:16, Mark 10:17, Luke 18:18, and the first in John 3:5; in the Pauline Epistles it is ‘the righteousness of God’ or ‘of faith’ (Philippians 3:9), or, more generally, salvation (Romans 1:18; Romans 1:17).
The idea of the good combines character and condition; it includes Tightness and happiness, holiness and blessedness, or, as the Shorter Catechism puts it: ‘man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever.’ Man, by claiming God’s goodness, enjoying and praising it, and by showing a like goodness, glorifies God: that is, sets forth the honour, worth, beauty, and majesty of God’s moral perfection (Romans 15:6; Romans 15:9, 1 Corinthians 6:20, 2 Corinthians 9:13; cf. Colossians 3:17, 1 Peter 4:10-11). As God is grace, God’s claim on man is for faith: and this is his supreme duty (Hebrews 11:8). Thus the two aspects of the good pass into one another: man fulfils his obligation to God by making fully his own the salvation God offers in Christ. We need not then further pursue the idea of the good as duty, but may confine ourselves to it as boon.
(1) For Plato and Aristotle the good necessarily included both well-being (εὐδαιμονία) and also well-doing; a man must have health, wealth, beauty, and intellect as well as the virtues to attain fully the good. Here the first great distinction of the Christian view emerges. A man’s good is independent of his outward circumstances. As Jesus taught His disciples not to be anxious about food or raiment, but to leave all to the care and bounty of the Heavenly Father, who would add all these things to those who first sought His Kingdom and righteousness (Matthew 6:19-34), so St. Paul assures Christian believers that even the very worst circumstances imaginable cannot really injure them, for ‘all things work together for good to them that love God’ (Romans 8:28). The declaration has some affinity with Stoic thought; but the difference lies in this, that for Stoic self-sufficiency there is substituted the possession of the love of God in Christ as the satisfying portion of the soul (Romans 8:39). While there is this independence of outward circumstances, there is no cynic-like contempt for bodily needs, and the labour that meets these (1 Thessalonians 4:11, 2 Thessalonians 3:10, Romans 12:11; Romans 12:17). Private property even may become part of the Christian’s good, as affording the opportunity for the generosity which is so highly recommended as a Christian grace (Romans 12:8; Romans 12:13; 2 Corinthians 8:1-15).
(2) A second feature of the Christian view that distinguishes it from the Greek is that the good is not the result of fortune or the reward of merit, but the gift of Gods grace (Romans 5:21; Romans 6:23). It does include a duty to be done, but it is primarily a boon to be claimed. Hence the pre-eminence of faith as the primary, if not the supreme, grace of the Christian life. For human self-sufficiency there is substituted dependence upon God (2 Corinthians 2:16; 2 Corinthians 3:5-6; 2 Corinthians 12:9).
(3) A third characteristic is the emphasis on sin in the Christian view as the evil from which there must be escape. The good includes deliverance from sin in the two-fold sense, corresponding to the two-fold reference of sin in relation to God, and in relation to a man’s own nature. There is forgiveness of sin, reconciliation with God, the peace of God (Romans 3:22-26; Romans 5:10; Romans 1:7; Romans 2:10, etc.); a man is set in right relation with God, so that God’s approval and not His displeasure rests upon him, and he does not distrust, or feel estranged from, God, but is at borne with God as a child with a father. There is also the breaking of the power of sin, and the banishment of the love of sin, by a new motive and a new strength (Romans 6:1-11; Romans 7:25, 2 Corinthians 5:14, Philippians 4:13). There is a present conquest of evil, and victory over the world. This is a present good claimed more or less, according to the measure of faith; but as Christians are not merely owners of the present but also heirs of the future good (Romans 8:17; Titus 3:7, 1 Peter 1:4; cf. Hebrews 11:9), hope as well as faith is necessary to claim the full salvation (Romans 8:24, 1 Thessalonians 5:8, 1 Peter 1:3).
(4) Into the contents of the Christian hope, the details of the apostolic Eschatology (q.v. [Note: quod vide, which see.] ), it is beyond the scope of this article to enter; but one feature, because of its distinction from, or even opposition to, the Greek view, may here he mentioned. The Greek thinker, if he did hope for a future life, looked for the release of the soul from its imprisonment in the body-for a disembodied immortality; but the Christian good includes not merely the survival of the soul in death, but resurrection-the restoration of the entire personality (Romans 8:23, 2 Corinthians 5:1-4, Philippians 3:21). This does not involve the absurdity of a material identity of the body buried and the body raised, for St. Paul expressly distinguishes the one from the other as the natural and the spiritual (1 Corinthians 15:42-44), but only the conviction that the future life will be a completely human one.
(5) As we may surely reckon as an dement in the Christian good the fellowship of believers, the membership of the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12-31, Ephesians 1:23), the κοινωνία of the Spirit (2 Corinthians 13:14 : the common life of the Church in the Spirit), so the Christian life is not individual but universal; it is the subjection of all things to Christ, the destruction of all evil, the cessation of all pain and grief, the victory of the saints, and God all and in all. No such wider hope inspired the Greek thinkers. It is true that the expectation of an immediate return of Christ in power and glory precludes our interpreting this universal good as a historical evolution of mankind in manners, morals, laws, institutions, and pieties to so glorious and blessed a consummation, and we are left uncertain as to the mode in which the process is to be conceived. But the hope is a fact of apostolic life.
(6) There is one feature in the Christian good peculiar to St. Paul. As a Pharisee he had felt the burden and the bondage of the Law, and groaned under its judgment, but he had discovered its impotence, and so for him the Christian good included the end of the Law (Galatians 4:21-31; Galatians 5:1), for Christian morality is not legal-the observance of the letter-but spiritual-the expression of the new life found in Christ (2 Corinthians 3:1-11). It may be doubted, however, whether even all believers in the Apostolic Age were morally mature enough to be released from all outward restraints, and to be left only to inward constraint; and St. Paul’s counsels and commands even in his letters show that this end of the Law was ideal rather than actual. It is certain that the Christian Church in the course of its history generally has been legal rather than spiritual in its morality, and so this part of the Christian good has been unrealized.
(7) In the apostolic view of the Christian good there are two features which may he regarded as of temporary and local rather than of permanent and universal significance for Christian faith: (a) the expectation of the speedy Second Advent of Christ in power and glory to usher in the Last Things, which faded out of the Christian consciousness, with from time to time futile attempts to revive it, as the course of human history contradicted it; and (b) the belief which became more prominent in subsequent centuries than it was in the Apostolic Age, that the evil to be overcome and destroyed was embodied in personal evil principles and powers, over whom Christ gained the victory, and from whom He effected deliverance for the believer (Romans 8:38-39, 1 Corinthians 15:24, Ephesians 1:21, Colossians 2:15). For the details on both these subjects the relevant articles must be consulted, as all that is here necessary is merely the mention of them for the completeness of the treatment of the present topic.
Such is the Christian good; is it regarded as destined to be universal? Does the NT otter us a theodicy? It has been already indicated that the Christian hope does include the victory of Christ over all His foes, and the subjection of all things to Him, and at last of Himself to God (1 Corinthians 15:24-28); but these confident predictions do not clearly or fully answer the question whether all men will at last be saved-that is, become sharers of the good. While there are a few passages pointing towards universal restoration, there are others indicating eternal punishment, and some even on which has been based a theory of conditional immortality. This problem seems insoluble even with the data not only of the Scriptures, but also of human experience; and accordingly, whatever Christian wishes and hopes may be, we cannot affirm that the Christian good presents the final destiny of the race in cloudless sunshine without any shadow; and thus the believer must walk not by sight, but by faith, in the belief that whatever the Heavenly Father does is wisest, kindest, best. As has been shown in the article Evil, the Christian attitude is neither optimism nor pessimism, but meliorism-the belief that the world not only needs redemption, but is being redeemed in Christ.
Literature.-W. Beyschlag, NT Theology, Eng. translation , 1895. bk. i. ch. viii., bk. ii. ch. v., bk. iv. chs. vi. ix., bk. v. ch. v.; G. B. Stevens, The Theology of the NT, 1899, pt. i. chs. iii. xii., pt. ii. chs. vi. vii., pt. iv. chs. v. viii. xii., pt. vi. ch. v., pt. vii. ch. iv.; T. von Haering, The Christian Faith, Eng. translation , 1913, ii. 800-926; A. M. Fairbairn, The Philosophy of the Christian Religion, 1902, pp. 94-168; O. Pfleiderer, The Philosophy of Religion2, Eng. translation , 1886-88, vol. iv. ch. iv.
Alfred E. Garvie.
These files are public domain.
Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com. Used by Permission.
Hastings, James. Entry for 'Good'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/g/good.html. 1906-1918.
