A rhetorical approach to the christological crux in Romans 9:5

In Romans 9:4-5 Paul lists the several prerogatives of his own people, the Jews, the last being that from them is “the messiah according to the flesh.” Then comes this clause: “the one being over all God blessed forever, amen.”

Here we have the christological crux.

Do we put a period after “according to the flesh” and punctuate this as an independent benediction or doxology, keeping messiah and God apart?

…the messiah according to the flesh. The one being over all, God, (be) blessed forever, amen.

Or does the benediction apply to “the messiah,” appositionally or as a predicate, who is therefore said to be in some sense divine?

…the messiah according to the flesh, the one being over all, God, blessed forever, amen.

Technically, there are other options—putting the period after “the one being over all,” for example. But in practice this is the basic choice. There’s no point in over-complicating matters.

Roughly speaking, grammatical considerations favour the second reading. For example, “the one being” is naturally read as a relative cause modifying what has just preceded; and benedictions such as this are formulaic and the subject—typically God—nearly always follows eulogētos.1

On the other side, it has been argued that the flow of thought makes the high christological reading improbable. If Jesus died, was raised, is now the Son seated at the right hand of God (8:32-34), if he is the messiah who is, according to the flesh, one of God’s gifts to Israel, and “Son of God in power” only by virtue of his resurrection from the dead (1:3-4), why would Paul make the unprecedented and very un-Jewish claim that this messiah is not just divine but the God who is blessed forever? I think that Christ is very certainly not called God in Titus 2:13.

What I want to suggest here is that some important rhetorical aspects have been overlooked in the mainstream debate. At the heart of this is the observation that there is a rather conspicuous parallelism at work between the narrative about the Greeks in Romans 1:24-25 and the narrative about the Jews in 9:4-5.

For this reason God gave them up, in the desires of their hearts, to uncleanness in order to dishonour their bodies among themselves, such as exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshipped and served the created thing rather than the creator, who is blessed forever, amen. (1:24-25)

For I was wishing myself to be anathematised from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh, such as are Israelites, of whom the adoption and the glory and the covenant[s] and the giving-of-the-Law and the worship and the promises, of whom the fathers and from whom the messiah according to the flesh, the one being over all God blessed forever, amen. (9:4-5)

1. Two present communities—not ethno-religious abstractions—are alienated from God: the Greeks and Paul’s brothers, his kinsmen, in the synagogues. The respective fates of these communities is central to the argument about the righteousness of God in Romans. Paul’s message about the lordship of Christ is

the power of God for salvation to all who believe, to the Jew first and to the Greek; for the righteousness of God in it is unveiled from faith for faith… (1:16-17*).

In the parallel passage, the Greeks are characterised in a hoitines clause negatively: “such as (hoitines) exchanged the truth of God for the lie.” But the statement includes the positive recognition that there was some knowledge of God among the Greeks.

The Jews are characterised positively with respect to their heritage: “such as are Israelites,” in possession of the covenant benefits—all the things that the Greeks don’t have. They are, however, implicitly “anathematised from Christ,” as Paul wished for himself for the sake of his brothers.

So in their different histories, in their different ways, both the Greeks and the Jews have known God but have forfeited the benefits of that knowledge. They have consequently been given over to the wrath of God.

The creator God, whose truth has been rejected by the Greeks, is “blessed forever, amen.” The God of Israel, who is “over all” (epi pantōn), is “blessed forever, amen.”

2. Syntactically, the benedictions do not connect with the narratives in the same way. In Romans 1:25 we have a relative clause directly and unambiguously attached to “the creator,” which is why the subject of the blessing does not come after eulogētos as in the standard formula. In 9:5 we have a participial clause (“the one being…”), which either stands alone or qualifies “the messiah according to the flesh.” The question then is whether the parallelism makes it more or less likely that “the messiah” is assimilated to the benediction.

The grammatical form that the benediction takes in 1:25 would then explain the aberration in 9:5. In order to preserve the form of the decisive concluding expression “blessed forever, amen” (eulogētos eis tous aiōnas, amen) the subject has been brought forward. This would be the “rhetorical payoff,” to quote from a recent comment on the matter.

3. There are three other doxological/liturgical passages in the letter where Paul adds a closing “(forever,) amen.” In each case, it is God who is the subject:

Because from him and through him and to him (are) all things; to him the glory forever, amen. (11:36*)

The God of peace (be) with all of you, amen. (15:33*)

…to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom the glory forever, amen (16:27*)

The last one is text-critically uncertain, but I have assumed in any case that the only wise God receives the glory through the agency of Jesus the messiah (cf. Phil. 2:11).

The pattern reinforces the view that the benediction in this distinctive form (“blessed forever, amen”) applies to God alone, not to the messiah as God.

4. There is another Pauline benediction that may have a bearing on how the syntax in Romans 9:5 is assessed. The paragraph 9:1-5 opens with the statement “I speak truth in Christ, I am not lying (ou pseudomai)” and ends with “the one being over all God blessed forever, amen.” We have a condensed version of this argument in 2 Corinthians 11:31*:

The God and Father of the Lord Jesus has known—the one being (ho ōn) blessed forever—that I am not lying (ou pseudomai). (2 Cor. 11:31*)

Perhaps, then, Paul was in the habit of blessing God in this way (ho ōn eulogētos eis tous aiōnas) whenever he avowed, perhaps contentiously, that he was not lying. In this passage, the “one being” is identified as “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”—differentiated relationally from the messiah of Israel; and Paul in his suffering identifies himself with the messiah, whose servant he is and whose suffering he emulates (11:16-12:10). This is how Paul consistently thinks about these relations.

5. As an afterthought, we may wonder whether ho ōn in these benedictions is meant to recall Exodus 3:14*:2

And God said to Moses, “I am the one being (ho ōn)”; and he said, “Thus you will say to the sons of Israel, ‘The one being (ho ōn) has sent me to you.’”

In this case, “the one being over all” in Romans 9:5 may allude to the God of Israel, who is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who entered into the covenant relationship with his people, whose prerogatives are itemised in these verses. Again, the odd grammatical form of the benediction is accounted for by the rhetorical undercurrents.

So to conclude, I suggest that the grammatical objections to reading “the one being over all, God, blessed forever, amen” as an independent and theologically conventional benediction are overruled here by the rhetorical intention.

As in Romans 1:25, the benediction terminates a narrative of religious failure, and the memory has preserved the formula “blessed forever, amen,” reinforced by other doxological/liturgical affirmations in the letter which conclude with “amen.” In the case of the Jews, who are alienated from the messiah according to the Spirit, it is specifically the God of the covenant—ho ōn—who is above all and blessed forever, amen.

I don’t think trinitarianism makes sense on Jewish or Jewish-Christian terms, but it was a fitting way for the Greek church to model relations between the transcendent “persons” of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit once the apocalyptic narrative had been abandoned. But, of course, the story continues….

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  The one exception is Ps. 67:19-20 LXX*: “The Lord God (be) blessed; blessed (be) the Lord day by day.” The first benediction is not in the Hebrew text. The translator appears to have understood the subject of “encamp” to be disobedient Israel rather than YHWH and to have made yh ʾelohim (“the Lord God”) at the end of verse 19 in the Hebrew text the subject of barakh (“blessed”) at the beginning of verse 20. It may or may not be significant that the Pauline tradition uses this passage christologically (Eph. 4:9-10).

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  Cf. Philo, Creation 172; Worse 160; Unchangeable 110; Names 11; Dreams 1 231; Abraham 121; Moses 1 75.