text from Romans, 1.17, itself sheltering a Tanakh quotation from Habbakuk 2.4: ‘the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith, as it is written “he who through faith is righteous shall live”’. In this sentence, the words ‘righteousness/righteous’ were in the Vulgate’s Latin ‘justitia/justus’: hence the word justification.7 In Latin that literally means making someone righteous, but in Luther’s understanding – in a literally crucial difference – it rather meant declaring someone to be righteous.
