Psalm 14:3, Psalm 53:3, and Paul quoting them at Romans 3:12 say absolutely no one does good — not one. Ecclesiastes 7:20 and Isaiah 64:6 ("all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags") double down. Then John 5:29 talks about "those who have done good" rising to the resurrection of life, 2 Corinthians 5:10 has Christ judging each according to what he did "whether good or bad," and 3 John 11 distinguishes "he who does good" from "he who does evil." The New Testament cannot decide if doing good is impossible or required.
Proposed answers
People have answered this in several ways; GEBible presents them as equal peers.
No.
There is none that doeth good, no not one. Psalm 14:3, 53:3,
Romans 3:12
For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not. Ecclesiastes 7:20
We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. Isaiah 64:6
6For we have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteousness is like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life. John 5:29
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according
to what he has done, whether good or bad. 2 Corinthians 5:10
He that doeth good is of God: but he that doeth evil hath not seen God. 3 John 11
10For we must all be revealed before the judgment seat of Christ that each one may receive the things in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad.
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement— a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Genuinely disputed among scholars
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
The contradiction is real but partly an artifact of reading the whole New Testament through a post-Augustinian Pauline lens. The negative pole originates in Psalm 14:1-3 (= Psalm 53:1-3), where the universal indictment — "there is none that does good, no, not one" — functions within the psalm as hyperbolic lament about the wicked, immediately qualified by reference to "the generation of the righteous" (Ps 14:5) and to God's people. Ecclesiastes 7:20 makes a sober wisdom observation that no one is sinlessly righteous, and Isaiah 64:6's "filthy rags" (Hebrew beged 'iddim, menstrual cloths) is a corporate confession of national guilt, not a metaphysical anthropology. Paul, in Romans 3:10-18, lifts Psalm 14 and welds it to fragments of Psalms 5, 140, 10, 36 and Isaiah 59 into a catena — what Fitzmyer calls a Pauline florilegium — to clinch the argument that Jew and Gentile alike stand under sin (Rom 3:9). The function is rhetorical and forensic: no one is justified by works of the law. It is not the claim that humans are incapable of any beneficial act.
The positive pole is broad. John 5:29 sorts the resurrected into "those who have done good" (hoi ta agatha poiēsantes) and "those who have done evil," with eschatological consequences; 2 Corinthians 5:10 has each judged for deeds done in the body, "whether good or bad"; 3 John 11 distinguishes the doer of good (who is of God) from the doer of evil. Matthew 19:17 has Jesus tell the rich man, "if you want to enter life, keep the commandments" — presupposing the commandments can be kept. The sharpest internal datum is that Paul himself, one chapter before his catena, writes in Romans 2:6-13 that God "will render to each according to his works" and that "the doers of the law will be justified."
The apologetic harmonization (Moo, Schreiner, Carson) is genuinely strong and turns on a soteriological/moral distinction: Romans 3 denies that anyone achieves the saving righteousness that satisfies God's holiness apart from Christ, whereas the judgment texts describe morally good works that flow from grace (and, in the Reformed reading, Romans 2 describes either a hypothetical standard no one meets or the Spirit-wrought obedience of the regenerate). This distinction is centuries old and internally coherent; the New Testament does plainly affirm both human moral incapacity-for-self-salvation and a real judgment by works.
The critical objection, advanced since E. P. Sanders, is that the harmonization works only if one reads Paul through Augustine and the Reformers. Sanders argued that Second Temple Judaism was not a religion of works-righteousness, so Paul's target was not human moral incapacity in general but the boundary-marking function of the law for Gentile inclusion. Stendahl showed that the "introspective conscience of the West" projected Luther's anguish onto Paul. Dunn's New Perspective reads Romans 2 as Paul's own affirmation that doers of the law will be justified — not a hypothetical foil. On these readings the Synoptic, Johannine, and Jacobean traditions never shared Paul's total-depravity framework to begin with; James 2:14-26 explicitly insists works justify. The contradiction, then, is not one voice contradicting itself so much as the canon preserving distinct anthropologies that later systematics flattened.
Where the critical reading lands: partially harmonizable — the soteriological/moral distinction relieves much of the tension, but the relief depends on an Augustinian-Reformation reading that critical scholarship contests, and Romans 2 vs Romans 3 leaves a genuine intra-Pauline strain.
Sources for this reading
Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Anchor Bible 33; Doubleday, 1993) pp. 330-339on Romans 3:10-18Romans 3:10-18
E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Fortress, 1977) pp. 491-523on the framework behind Romans 3:12Romans 3:12
Krister Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles, and Other Essays (Fortress, 1976) pp. 78-96on Romans 3:12Romans 3:12
James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1-8 (WBC 38A; Word Books, 1988) pp. 149-153on Romans 2:6-13Romans 2:6-13
Robert Jewett, Romans: A Commentary (Hermeneia; Fortress, 2007) pp. 254-264on Romans 3:10-18Romans 3:10-18
Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (NICNT; Eerdmans, 1996) pp. 200-210on Romans 2:6-13 and 3:12Romans 2:6-13, Romans 3:12
Examining the tension
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement — a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Genuinely disputed among scholars
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
The contradiction is real but partly an artifact of reading the whole New Testament through a post-Augustinian Pauline lens. The negative pole originates in Psalm 14:1-3 (= Psalm 53:1-3), where the universal indictment — "there is none that does good, no, not one" — functions within the psalm as hyperbolic lament about the wicked, immediately qualified by reference to "the generation of the righteous" (Ps 14:5) and to God's people. Ecclesiastes 7:20 makes a sober wisdom observation that no one is sinlessly righteous, and Isaiah 64:6's "filthy rags" (Hebrew beged 'iddim, menstrual cloths) is a corporate confession of national guilt, not a metaphysical anthropology. Paul, in Romans 3:10-18, lifts Psalm 14 and welds it to fragments of Psalms 5, 140, 10, 36 and Isaiah 59 into a catena — what Fitzmyer calls a Pauline florilegium — to clinch the argument that Jew and Gentile alike stand under sin (Rom 3:9). The function is rhetorical and forensic: no one is justified by works of the law. It is not the claim that humans are incapable of any beneficial act.
The positive pole is broad. John 5:29 sorts the resurrected into "those who have done good" (hoi ta agatha poiēsantes) and "those who have done evil," with eschatological consequences; 2 Corinthians 5:10 has each judged for deeds done in the body, "whether good or bad"; 3 John 11 distinguishes the doer of good (who is of God) from the doer of evil. Matthew 19:17 has Jesus tell the rich man, "if you want to enter life, keep the commandments" — presupposing the commandments can be kept. The sharpest internal datum is that Paul himself, one chapter before his catena, writes in Romans 2:6-13 that God "will render to each according to his works" and that "the doers of the law will be justified."
The apologetic harmonization (Moo, Schreiner, Carson) is genuinely strong and turns on a soteriological/moral distinction: Romans 3 denies that anyone achieves the saving righteousness that satisfies God's holiness apart from Christ, whereas the judgment texts describe morally good works that flow from grace (and, in the Reformed reading, Romans 2 describes either a hypothetical standard no one meets or the Spirit-wrought obedience of the regenerate). This distinction is centuries old and internally coherent; the New Testament does plainly affirm both human moral incapacity-for-self-salvation and a real judgment by works.
The critical objection, advanced since E. P. Sanders, is that the harmonization works only if one reads Paul through Augustine and the Reformers. Sanders argued that Second Temple Judaism was not a religion of works-righteousness, so Paul's target was not human moral incapacity in general but the boundary-marking function of the law for Gentile inclusion. Stendahl showed that the "introspective conscience of the West" projected Luther's anguish onto Paul. Dunn's New Perspective reads Romans 2 as Paul's own affirmation that doers of the law will be justified — not a hypothetical foil. On these readings the Synoptic, Johannine, and Jacobean traditions never shared Paul's total-depravity framework to begin with; James 2:14-26 explicitly insists works justify. The contradiction, then, is not one voice contradicting itself so much as the canon preserving distinct anthropologies that later systematics flattened.
Where the critical reading lands: partially harmonizable — the soteriological/moral distinction relieves much of the tension, but the relief depends on an Augustinian-Reformation reading that critical scholarship contests, and Romans 2 vs Romans 3 leaves a genuine intra-Pauline strain.
Sources for this reading