"Righteousness" carries the overtones both of "justice"-the Creator's passion to put things right-and of "faithfulness"-YHwx's faithfulness to the covenant which he established so that through it he might indeed put all things right.

a "low" ecclesiology, a mere individualism with saved individuals getting together from time to time for mutual benefit, were to turn out to be a denial of some of the key elements of Paul's missionary theology?

It would have been taken for granted that "God's righteousness" referred to the great, deep plans which the God of the Old Testament had always cherished, the through-Israel-for-the-world plans, plans to rescue and restore his wonderful creation itself, and, more especially, to God's faithfulness to those great plans.

The whole point of Abraham in Romans 4, as I have said before in relation to Galatians 3, is not that he is an "illustration" or an "example," as though the saving plan consisted of the simplistic narrative, "Humans sin; God rescues; all is well (and, by the way, God has done this here and there in the past as well)." No: the single plan began with

He says it all sincerely. This is God's single plan, through Torah-equipped Israel, for the world.

It is as though Paul cannot get tired of saying it: if you want to know who we are, we are people in whom God is at work, because of and according to the pattern of the Messiah, for the benefit of you and of the wider world.

And here, in the middle of the passage, Paul quotes a line whose immediate sequel, if I am right, simply repeats the exact meaning of 2 Corinthians 5:21b: I have given you as a covenant to the people. Or, in Paul's language, "That we might, in him, become the righteousness of God."

Paul is not primarily talking here about the salvation of "the Jew."

Romans 2:1-16 must take its place, not as an odd aside which doesn't fit with what Paul says everywhere else, but as a central statement of something he normally took for granted.