Romans 9:5

by Anthony Buzzard
From the Doctrine of the Trinity Christianitys Self-Inflicted Wound pp 281-283

Some Trinitarians offer Romans 9:5 as conclusive proof that Jesus is God over all and therefore part
of the Godhead. It depends which translation one reads, because there are some seven different ways of
punctuating the verse in which either Christ or the Father is called God blessed forever. 1 The issue is:
Should we read of whom, according to the flesh, is Christ, who is over all. God be blessed forever, or of
whom, according to the flesh is Christ, who being God over all, is blessed forever? Among older
commentators Erasmus, though a Trinitarian, was cautious about using this verse as a proof text:
Those who contend that in this text Christ is clearly termed God, either place little confidence in
other passages of Scripture, deny all understanding to the Arians, or pay scarcely any attention to
the style of the Apostle. A similar passage occurs in Second Corinthians 11:31: The God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed forever; the latter clause being undeniably
restricted to the Father. 2
Using the principle of comparison of text with text, it is most likely that Paul describes the Father as
God over all. Paul uniformly makes a distinction between God and the Lord Jesus. In the same book Paul
blesses the Creator and there is no reason to doubt that the Father is meant (Rom. 1:25). In another passage
he speaks of God our Father, to whom be the glory forevermore. Amen (Gal. 1:4, 5). Romans 9:5 is an
obvious parallel. It should not be forgotten that the word theos, God, occurs more than 500 times in Pauls
letters and there is not a single unambiguous instance in which it applies to Christ. A number of well-known
textual critics (Lachmann, Tischendorf) place a period after the word flesh, allowing the rest of the
sentence to be a doxology of the Father. Ancient Greek manuscripts do not generally contain punctuation,
but the Codex Ephraemi of the fifth century has a period after flesh. More remarkable is the fact that
during the whole Arian controversy, this verse was not used by Trinitarians against the unitarians. It clearly
did not attest to Jesus as the second member of the Godhead.
In modern times Raymond Brown finds that at most one may claim a certain probability that this
passage refers to Jesus as God. 3 In the conservative Tyndale Commentary on Romans, F.F. Bruce warns
against charging those who treat the words as applicable to the Father with Christological unorthodoxy. 4
It is proper to add that even if Jesus is exceptionally called God, the title may be used in its secondary,
Messianic sense of one who reflects the divine majesty of the One God, his Father.
When the detail of grammatical nuance has been fully explored, balances of probability will be weighed
in different ways. It is incredible to imagine that the Christian creed should depend on fine points of
language about which many could not reasonably be asked to make a judgment and experts disagree. The
plain language of Pauls and Jesus creed is open to every student of the Bible: There is no God except
oneThere is for us [Christians] one God, the Father (1 Cor. 8:4, 6).
1 For a full examination of the various possibilities, see the essays in the Journal of the Society of Biblical Literature
and Exegesis, 1883.
2 Works, ed. Jean Leclerc, 10 vols. (Leiden, 1703-1706), 6:610, 611.
3 Jesus, God and Man, 22.
4 Romans, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), 176.

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That one God is as distinguished in Pauls mind from the one Lord Jesus Messiah as He is from
the many gods of paganism. The category of one God belongs exclusively to the Father, that of Lord
Messiah exclusively to Jesus. Jesus himself had provided the basis of Pauls simple understanding of the
phrase one God. Both master and disciple shared the creed of Israel who believed in God as one, unique
person.

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