Righteous indignation, also called righteous anger, is anger that is primarily motivated by a perception of injustice or other profound moral lapse. It is distinguished from anger that is prompted by something more personal, like an insult.
In some Christian doctrines, it is considered the only form of anger which is not sinful. According to these doctrines, an example of righteous anger would be when Jesus drove the money lenders out of the temple (Matthew 21, Matthew 21:12–13).
 | This section's factual accuracy is disputed .(August 2014) |
"Righteous" means acting in accord with divine or moral law. "Indignation" is a revolted sense of disapproval. The Standard Dictionary describes indignation as a "feeling involving anger mingled with contempt or disgust". [1]
Aristotle considered righteous indignation [nemesis] as one of the virtues of the mean: "Righteous Indignation hits the mean between Envy and Schadenfreude... someone is righteously indignant when they are distressed at the sight of undeserved good fortune". [2]
Juvenal claimed that moral indignation drove him to write satire. [3]
In Scott's comment on Ephesians 4:26, "Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger", he notes that "...on many occasions, in the management of families, in reproving sin, and even in ordering their temporal concerns", anger is permitted of Christians. Nevertheless, Scott cautions that Christians should aim to "....be very circumspect and vigilant to restrain that dangerous passion within the bounds of reason, meekness, piety, and charity; not being angry without cause, or above cause, or in a proud, selfish, and peevish manner." Scott argues that Christians should not express anger in the "language of vehement indignation".[ citation needed ]
The Forerunner Commentary on Psalms 137:2–6 argues that these psalms are about the "bitterness of exile into which God forced Judah", purportedly with the goal of turning grief into zeal, so that the "anger can be used to scour away sin" by becoming "righteously indignant". [4] In John W. Ritenbaugh's comments on Proverbs 15:18 in How to Survive Exile, he argues that it "is alright for us to be righteously indignant as long as we do not sin." [4]
In James McCosh's book Motive Powers, he notes that "We may be angry and sin not; but this disposition may become sinful, and this in the highest degree. It is so when it is excessive, when it is rage, and makes us lose control of ourselves. It is so, and may become a vice, when it leads us to wish evil to those who have offended us. It is resentment when it prompts us to meet and repay evil by evil. It is vengeance when it impels us to crush those who have injured us. It is vindictiveness when it is seeking out ingeniously and laboriously means and instruments to give pain to those who have thwarted us. Already sin has entered."[ This quote needs a citation ]
In Exodus 4:14, God was indignant at Moses' work. Moses betrayed the faith of God and he disobeyed God's will. He ordered the people of God to go to fight the Pharaoh of Egypt. The people of God obeyed His commands, and they were gone forever. In Exodus 22:21–24, helpless people, strangers, widows, and orphans suffered persecution. God was indignant when he witnessed such cruel acts. In Exodus 32:10, God was indignant when he learned that his people no longer believed and worshiped him, but turned to idolatry.
Daniel Whitby argues that "anger is not always sinful", in that it is found among non-sinners. For example, Jesus was "angry with the Pharisees for the hardness of their hearts; yet He had no desire to revenge this sin upon them, but had a great compassion for them". [5]
St. Thomas Aquinas, in the question on anger of his Summa Theologiae, quotes the Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum, "he that is angry without cause, shall be in danger; but he that is angry with cause, shall not be in danger: for without anger, teaching will be useless, judgments unstable, crimes unchecked," and concludes saying that "to be angry is therefore not always an evil."[ This quote needs a citation ]
Original sin in Christian theology refers to the condition of sinfulness that all humans share, which is inherited from Adam and Eve due to the Fall, involving the loss of original righteousness and the distortion of the Image of God. The biblical basis for the belief is generally found in Genesis 3, and in texts such as Psalm 51:5 and Romans 5:12–21.
In a religious context, sin is a transgression against divine law or a law of the deities. Each culture has its own interpretation of what it means to commit a sin. While sins are generally considered actions, any thought, word, or act considered immoral, selfish, shameful, harmful, or alienating might be termed "sinful".
In the philosophy of religion, a theodicy is an argument that attempts to resolve the problem of evil that arises when all power and all goodness are simultaneously ascribed to God.
Propitiation is the act of appeasing or making well-disposed a deity, thus incurring divine favor or avoiding divine retribution. It is related to the idea of atonement and sometime mistakenly conflated with expiation. The discussion here encompasses usage only in the Christian tradition.
The seven deadlysins, also known as the capitalvices or cardinal sins, function as a grouping and classification of major vices within the teachings in Christianity and Islam. According to the standard list, the seven deadly sins in Christianity are pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth.
Anger, also known as wrath or rage, is an intense emotional state involving a strong uncomfortable and non-cooperative response to a perceived provocation, hurt, or threat.
Righteousness, or rectitude, is the quality or state of being morally correct and justifiable. It can be considered synonymous with "rightness" or being "upright" or to-the-light and visible. It can be found in Indian, Chinese and Abrahamic religions and traditions, among others, as a theological concept. For example, from various perspectives in Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism it is considered an attribute that implies that a person's actions are justified, and can have the connotation that the person has been "judged" or "reckoned" as leading a life that is pleasing to God.
In Christianity, salvation is the saving of human beings from sin and its consequences—which include death and separation from God—by Christ's death and resurrection, and the justification entailed by this salvation.
Pesher, from the Hebrew root meaning "interpretation," is a group of interpretive commentaries on scripture. The pesharim commentaries became known from the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The pesharim give a theory of scriptural interpretation of a number of biblical texts from the Hebrew Bible, such as Habakkuk and Psalms.
Matthew 5:22 is the twenty-second verse of the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament and is part of the Sermon on the Mount. It is the first of what have traditionally been known as the 6 Antitheses. In this one, Jesus compares the current interpretation of "You shall not murder" from the Ten Commandments with his own interpretation.
Human nature comprises the fundamental dispositions and characteristics—including ways of thinking, feeling, and acting—that humans are said to have naturally. The term is often used to denote the essence of humankind, or what it 'means' to be human. This usage has proven to be controversial in that there is dispute as to whether or not such an essence actually exists.
Free will in theology is an important part of the debate on free will in general. Religions vary greatly in their response to the standard argument against free will and thus might appeal to any number of responses to the paradox of free will, the claim that omniscience and free will are incompatible.
The theology of Martin Luther was instrumental in influencing the Protestant Reformation, specifically topics dealing with justification by faith, the relationship between the Law and Gospel, and various other theological ideas. Although Luther never wrote a systematic theology or a "summa" in the style of St. Thomas Aquinas, many of his ideas were systematized in the Lutheran Confessions.
Indignation is a complex and discrete emotion that is triggered by social emotions and social environments. Feelings of anger and disgust are some emotions that constitute indignation.
Thou shalt not kill, You shall not murder or Do not murder (CSB), is a moral imperative included as one of the Ten Commandments in the Torah.
"Thou shalt not covet" is the most common translation of one of the Ten Commandments or Decalogue, which are widely understood as moral imperatives by legal scholars, Jewish scholars, Catholic scholars, and Protestant scholars. The Book of Exodus and the Book of Deuteronomy both describe the Ten Commandments as having been spoken by God, inscribed on two stone tablets by the finger of God, and, after Moses broke the original tablets, rewritten by God on replacements. On rewriting, the word covet changed to ‘desire’ (תתאוה).
Psalm 78 is the 78th psalm of the Book of Psalms, beginning in English in the King James Version: "Give ear, O my people, to my law". In the slightly different numbering system used in the Greek Septuagint and Latin Vulgate translations of the Bible, this psalm is Psalm 77. In Latin, it is known as "Adtendite populus meus legem meam". It is one of the 12 Psalms of Asaph and is described as a "maskil" or "contemplation". It is the second-longest Psalm, with 72 verses, and the first of the three great history psalms. The New American Bible, Revised Edition entitles it "a new beginning in Zion and David".
Psalm 85 is the 85th psalm of the Book of Psalms, one of a series of psalms attributed to the sons of Korah. In the English of the King James Version, this psalm begins: "LORD, thou hast been favourable unto thy land". In the slightly different numbering system used in the Greek Septuagint and Latin Vulgate translations of the Bible, this psalm is Psalm 84. In Latin, it is known as "Benedixisti Domine terram tuam". In Judaism, it is called "a psalm of returned exiles". The Jerusalem Bible describes it as a "prayer for peace".
The Augustinian theodicy, named for the 4th- and 5th-century theologian and philosopher Augustine of Hippo, is a type of Christian theodicy that developed in response to the evidential problem of evil. As such, it attempts to explain the probability of an omnipotent (all-powerful) and omnibenevolent (all-loving) God amid evidence of evil in the world. A number of variations of this kind of theodicy have been proposed throughout history; their similarities were first described by the 20th-century philosopher John Hick, who classified them as "Augustinian". They typically assert that God is perfectly (ideally) good, that he created the world out of nothing, and that evil is the result of humanity's original sin. The entry of evil into the world is generally explained as consequence of original sin and its continued presence due to humans' misuse of free will and concupiscence. God's goodness and benevolence, according to the Augustinian theodicy, remain perfect and without responsibility for evil or suffering.
Relating theodicy and the Bible is crucial to understanding Abrahamic theodicy because the Bible "has been, both in theory and in fact, the dominant influence upon ideas about God and evil in the Western world". Theodicy, in its most common form, is the attempt to answer the question of why a good God permits the manifestation of evil. Theodicy attempts to resolve the evidential problem of evil by reconciling the traditional divine characteristics of omnibenevolence and omnipotence, in either their absolute or relative form, with the occurrence of evil or suffering in the world.
