== '''Definition''' ==

The word justification is used three times in the book of Romans. The word group is defined in the following manner: ''dike'' (root word of the group, meaning right or just), ''dikaios'' (meaning righteously or justly), ''dikaiosune'' (meaning righteousness or justice), ''dikaiosis'' (meaning “the act of pronouncing righteous” or acquittal), ''dikaioma'' (meaning an ordinance, a sentence of acquittal or condemnation, a righteous deed), ''dikaio'' (meaning “to show to be righteous” or “to declare righteous”), and ''dikastase'' (meaning “to judge” or “a judge”). It appears that the word group, when taken as a whole, can convey both a sense of righteousness and justice (as a legal declaration).

== '''Basis''' ==

So, in Romans 5:16, when St. Paul says, “And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto [dikaioma] justification,” the eastern Christian and patristic scholar would be completely comfortable with justification defined as a “righteousness mercifully imparted by God that restores man to a state that was originally intended.” As the fall of Adam condemned the cosmos, and therefore mankind, to a world of sin and corruption, the death and resurrection is able to “make righteous” that creation which previously existed in a fallen state subjected to death.

== '''Means''' ==

Viewing the word group holistically, we can turn to the rest of scripture for a more complete understanding of the ''dike'' word group and its implications on St. Paul’s use of ''dikaiosune'' et. al.

== '''Permanancy''' ==

Since the righteousness is offered and imparted to the Christian in love, the Orthodox Christian believes that man is, likewise, free to reject Christ’s righteousness and offer of salvation. For there is no love apart from freedom – coercion and slavery are characteristics that are incompatible with a perfect love. There are assurances in scripture that God will hold close to himself those who are of his fold, and the Christian can rest confidently in this fact. But, we are just as free to reject God and his love as we are to embrace him.

== '''Western v. Eastern Concepts - Implications''' ==

While the western approach to theology seems to help our western minds, so used to a scientific model of reasoning, “understand God,” the Eastern approach seems to organically synthesize the multi-faceted nature of theological truth. Eastern Theology is far from systematic, but it takes into account and embraces all that has been handed down to us from Christ, to his apostles through the Church via the Holy Spirit.

== '''Some Helpful Quotations''' ==

''In summary, it is not an antagonistic attitude that causes the eastern Christian and patristic scholar to recoil at some notions of western and Protestant theology, it is simply that the approach employed by many western scholars (inherited from the likes of Augustine, Anselm and Luther) seems at odds with what eastern Christians believe has been safeguarded since the foundation of the Church at Pentecost. The traditional Orthodox mind is immediately suspicious of biblical interpretations that have little or no root in the early life and theology of the Church; this is true in spades of particularly the forensic notion of justification, and of its consequent bifurcation of faith and works. … This of course does not mean that the Orthodox do not believe that each generation of Christians may receive new insights into Scripture, especially insights relevant in a given cultural context. However, it does mean that the new insights must remain consistent with earlier ones, and that one or two Pauline passages (and one specific interpretation of those passages) are not considered theologically normative – particularly as a foundation for a soteriological dogma – unless the early and continuing tradition of the Church show them consistently to have been viewed as such. … Because of its less juridical exegesis of Pauline soteriological statements, Eastern Christianity has never had anything approaching the kind of faith v. works controversies that have enveloped and (for both good and ill) theologically shaped the Christian West, whether one considers the late fourth-/early fifth-century Pelagian controversy or the 16th-century Protestant Reformation begun by Martin Luther. Rather, the East has maintained a somewhat distant and even puzzled attitude toward the theological polemics which have raged over justification in terms of faith or works.'' - Valerie Karras