ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF ROMANS IX. 5. by Ezra Abbott
[From the Journal of the
Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis for 1881.]
We shall understand better
the passage to be discussed, if we consider its relation to what precedes and
follows and the circumstances under which it was written.
In the first eight chapters
of the Epistle to the Romans, the Apostle has set forth the need and the value
of the gospel as "the power of God unto salvation to every one that
believeth; to the Jews first, and also to the Greek." In view of the present
blessings and the glorious hopes of the Christian believer, he closes this part
of the Epistle with an exultant song of triumph.
But the doctrine of Paul
was in direct opposition to the strongest prejudices of the Jews and their most
cherished expectations. It placed them on a level, as to the conditions of
salvation, with the despised and hated Gentiles. The true Messiah, the king of
How could these things be?
How was this gospel of Paul to be reconciled with the promises of God to the
"holy nation"? how with his justice, wisdom and goodness" Had
God cast off his people, "
The unbelieving Jews
regarded the Apostle as an apostate from the true religion and as an enemy of
their race. Five times already he had received from them forty stripes save
one; he had been "in perils from his own countrymen" at Damascus, at
Antioch in Pisidia, at Iconium and Lystra, at Thessalonica, Beroea, and
Corinth, - often in peril of his life. By a great part of the believing Jews,
he was regarded with distrust and aversion. (See Acts xxi. 20, 21) His
doctrines were indeed revolutionary. Though he was about to go to Jerusalem to
carry a liberal contribution from the churches in Macedonia and Achaia to the
poor Christians in that city, he expresses in this Epistle great anxiety about
the reception he should meet with (anxiety fully justified by the result), and
begs the prayers of the brethren at Rome in his behalf (Rom. xv. 30-32). As the
Jews hated Paul, they naturally believed that he hated them.
These circumstances explain
the exceedingly strong asseveration of his affection for his countrymen and of
his deep sorrow for their estrangement from God, with which this introduction
begins. So far from being an enemy of his people, he could make any sacrifice
to win them to Christ. They were his brethren, his kinsmen, as to the flesh. He
gloried in sharing with them the proud name of Israelite. He delights to
enumerate the magnificent privileges by which God had distinguished them from
all other nations, - "the adoption, and the glory, and the giving of the
Law, the covenants, the temple service, and the promises." Theirs were the
fathers; and, from among them, as the crowning distinction of all, the Messiah
was born, the supreme gift of God's love and mercy not to the Jews alone, but
to all mankind. All God's dealings with his chosen people were designed to
prepare the way, and had prepared the way, for this grand consummation. How
natural that, when, in his rapid recital of their historic glories, the Apostle
reaches this highest distinction of the Jews and greatest blessing of God's mercy
to men, he should express his overflowing gratitude to God as the Ruler over
all; that he should "thank God for his unspeakable gift"! I believe
that he has done so, and that the fifth verse of the passage that we are
considering should be translated, "whose are the fathers and from whom is
the Messiah as to the flesh: he who is over all, God, be blessed forever.
Amen," or "he who is God over all be blessed forever. Amen." The
doxology springs from the same feeling and the same view of the gracious providence
of God which prompted the fuller outburst at the end of the eleventh chapter,
where, on completing the treatment of the subject which he here introduces, the
Apostle exclaims: "O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of
God! How unsearchable are his judgments and untraceable his ways!...For from
him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to him be (or is) the glory
forever. Amen."
I believe there are no
objections to this construction of the passage which do not betray their
weakness when critically examined; and that the objections against most of the
other constructions which have been proposed are fatal.
The passage is remarkable
for the different ways in which it has been and may be punctuated, and for the
consequent variety of constructions which have been given it. The Greek is as
follows:-
KAI EX WN O CRISTOS TO KATA SARKA O WN EPI PANTWN QEOS EULOGHTOS EIS TOUS
AIWNAS AMHN.
It grammatically admits of
being punctuated and construed in at least seven different ways
1. Placing the comma after SARKA, and also after QEOS, we may translate the
last clause, "who (or he who) is God over all, blessed forever."
2. Putting the second comma after PANTWN instead of QEOS, "who (or he who)
is over all, God, blessed for ever."
3. With a comma after PANTWN and also after QEOS, "who (or he who) is over
all, God, blessed forever."
4. Placing a comma after O WN, and also after QEOS,-"He who is, God over
all, blessed forever." See Wordsworth's note, which, however, is not
consistent throughout; and observe the mistranslation at the end of his
quotation from Athanasius (Orat. cont. Arianos, i./ 24, p. 338).
[ftn., Perhaps I ought to
add here as a curiosity a construction proposed in the Record newspaper, in an
article copied in Christian Opinion and Revisionist for March 22, 1882, p. 222.
The writer would translate, "Of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came,
who is over all, God. Blessed be he forever! Amen."]
5. Placing a comma after
SARKA and a colon after PANTWN, the last part of the verse may be rendered:
"amd from whom is the Messiah as to the flesh, who (or he who) is over
all: God be blessed for ever. Amen.
6. Placing the comma after SARKA, QEOS may be taken as predicate, thus:
"he is who over all is God, blessed for ever"; so Professor B. H.
Kennedy, D.D., Canon of Ely; or thus, "he who was over all being
(literally, was) God, blessed for ever." So Andrews Norton.
7. With a colon after SARKA, O WN EPI PANTWN QEOS may be taken as the subject,
and EULOGHTOS as predicatem with the ellipses if EIH or ESTIN, making the last
part of the verse a doxology, thus: "he whois over all, God, be blessed
(or is to be praised) for ever"; or "God, who is over all, be blessed
(or is to be praised) for ever."
I pass over other varieties of translation and interpretation,
depending on the question whether PANTWN is to be taken as masculine or neuter,
and on the wider or narrower application of the word in either case.
In Nos. 1-4 inclusive, it will be seen that the O WN, with all
that follows, including the designation QEOS, is referred to CRISTOS; in Nos. 6
and 7, O WN introduces an independent sentence, and QEOS denotes God, the
Father. No. 5 refers the first part of the sentence in debate to O CRISTOS, the
last part to god.
The question of chief interest is whether in this passage the
Apostle has called Christ God. Among those who hold that he has done so, the
great majority adopt one of the other of the constructions numbered 1 and 2;
and it is to these, and especially to No. 2, followed both in King James's
version and the Revised Version (text), that I shall give special attention.
Among those who refer the last part of the sentence to God, and not Christ, the
great majority of scholars adopt either No. 5 or No. 7. I have already expressed
my preference for the latter construction, and it is generally preferred by
those who find here a doxology to God.
I. We will first
consider the objections that have been urged against the construction which
makes the last part of the sentence, beginning with O WN, introduce a doxology
to God. I shall then state the arguments which seem to me to favor this
construction, and at the same time to render the constructions numbered 1 to 4
each and all untenable. Other views of the passage will be briefly noticed.
Some remarks will be added on the history of its interpretation, though no full
account of this will be attempted.
1. It is objected that a doxology here is wholly out of place; that the
Apostle is overwhelmed with grief at the Jewish rejection of the Messiah and
its consequences, and "an elegy or funeral discourse cannot be changed
abruptly into a hymn." He is, indeed, deeply grieved at the unbelief and
blindness of the great majority of his countrymen; but his sorrow is not
hopeless. He knows all the while that "the word of God hath not
failed," that "God hath not cast off his people whom he
foreknew," that at last "all Israel shall be saved"; and nothing
seems to me more natural than the play of mingled feelings which the passage
presents, - grief for the present temporary alienation of his countrymen from
Christ, joy and thanksgiving at the thought of the priceless blessings of which
Christ was the minister to man and in which his countrymen should ultimately
share.
Flatt, Stuart, and others put the objection in a very pointed form. They
represent a doxology as making Paul say, in effect: "The special
privileges of the Jews have contributed greatly to enhance the guilt and
punishment of the Jewish nation; God be thanked that he has given them such
privileges!" But they simply read into the passage what is not there.
There is nothing in the context to suggest that the Apostle is taking this view
of the favor which God has shown the Jewish nation. He is not denouncing his
countrymen for their guilt in rejecting the Messiah, and telling them that this
guilt and its punishment are aggravated by the privileges they have abused. So
tender is he of their feelings that he does not even name the cause of his
grief, but leaves it to be inferred. He is assuring his countrymen. who
regarded him as their enemy, of the sincerity and strength of his love for
them. They are his brethren: the very name "Israelite" is to him a
title of honor; [see ch. xi. I; 2 Cor. xi.22] and he recounts in detail, certainly
not in the manner of one touching a painful subject, the glorious distinctions
which their nation had enjoyed the favor of God. Calvin, who so often in his
commentaries admirable traces the connection of thought, here hits the nail on
the head: "Haec dignitatis elogia testimonia sunt amoris. Non enim solemus
adeo benigne loqui, nisi de iis quos amamus."
[ftn., The view which I
have taken accords with that of Dr. Hodge. He says: "The object of the
Apostle in the introduction to this chapter, contained in the first five
verses, is to assure the Jews of his love and of his respect for their peculiar
privileges." Comm. on the Ep. to the Romans, new ed. (1864), note on ix.
4, p. 469; see also p. 463.]
At the risk of being
tedious, I will take some notice of Dr. Gifford's remarks in his recent and
valuable Commentary to the Romans.
[ftn., With the paragraphs
which follow compare the additional comments in Essay XVII., p.
He says: "Paul's
anguish is deepened by the memory of their privileges, most of all by the thought
that their race gave birth to the Divine Saviour, whom they have
rejected." But in Paul's enumeration of the privileges of the Jews he has
in view not merely their persent condition, but their whole past history,
illuminated as it had been by light from heaven. Will it be seriously
maintained that Paul did not regard the peculiar privileges which the Jewish
nation had enjoyed for so many ages as gifts of God's goodness for which
eternal gratitude was due? But "his anguish is deepened most of all the
thought that their race gave birth to the Divine Saviour whom they have
rejected"!
[ftn., The last four words
were added by Dr. Abbot subsequently, for reasons apparent, p.415]
Paul's grief for his
unbelieving countrymen, then, had extinguished his his gratitude for the
inestimable blessings which he personally owed to Christ: it had extinguished
his gratitude for the fact that the God who rules over all had sent his Son to
be Saviour of the world! The dark cloud which hid the light just then from the mass
of countrymen, but which he believed was soon to pass away, had blotted the sun
from the heavens. The advent of Christ was no cause for thanksgiving: he could
only bow his head in anguish, deepened most of all by the thought that the
Messiah had sprung from the race to which he himself belonged.
"His anguish is deepened by the memory of their privileges."
Paul does not say this; and Dr. Gifford quite sure that this way in which these
privileges presented themselves to his mind? May we not as naturally suppose
that the thought of God's favor to his people in the past, whom he had so often
recalled from their wanderings, afforded some ground for the hope that they had
not stumbled so as to fall and perish, but that their present alienation from
Christ, contributing, as it had done, in the over-ruling providence of God, to
the wider and more rapid spread of the gospel among the Gentiles, was only
temporary? If we let Paul be his own interpreter instead of reading unnatural
thoughts between the lines, we shall take this view. "God hath not cast
off HIS PEOPLE, whom he foreknew," "whose is the adoption, and the
glory, and the covenants, and the promises." "A hardening in part
hath befallen
[ftn., This appreciative
recapitulation of the distinctions of the Jewish people would also serve to
check the tendency of the Gentile Christians to self-conceit, and would lead
them to recognize the important part of the despised Hebrews in the drama of
the world's history. It would virtually say to them, "Glory not over the
branches; but if thou gloriest, thou bearest not the root, but the root
thee." (Rom. xi. 18)
Can we, then,
reasonably say that, when, in his grand historic survey and enumeration of the
distinctive privileges of the Jews, the Apostle reaches the culminating point
in the advent of the Messiah, sprung from that race, a devout thanksgiving to
God as the beneficent ruler over all is wholly out of place? Might we not
rather ask, How could it be repressed?
We may then, I
conceive, dismiss the psychological objection to the doxology, on which many
have laid great stress, as founded on a narrow and superficial view of what we
may reasonably suppose to have been in the Apostles mind. And I am happy to see
that so fair-minded and clear-sighted a scholar as Professor Dwight takes
essentially the same view of the matter. (See Journ. Soc. Bibl. Lit., etc., as
above, p. 41)
This argument
is rarely adduced, and I should hardly have thought it worthy of notice, were
it not that Dr. Dwight seems to attach some weight to it, thought apparently
not much. (See as above, p.
The first five
verses of the chapter, as we have seen, are a conciliatory introduction to the
treatment of a delicate and many-sided subject. This treatment begins with the
sixth verse, which is introduced by the participle DE, "but." Whether
the last part of verse 5 is a doxology to God, or simply the climax of the
privileges of the Jews, the DE cannot refer to what immediately precedes. In
either case, it refers to what is implied in verses 2 and 3, and meets the most
prominent objection to the doctrine set forth by the Apostle in the preceding
part of the Epistle. The thought is, The present condition of the great mass of
my countrymen is indeed a sad one, and not the Jews as a nation, but
Christians, are true people of God; but it is not as if the promises of God
have failed. (Comp. iii.3,4) This simple statement of the connection of verse 6
with what precedes seems to me all that is needed to meet the objection. The
argument that a doxology is inconsistent with the Apostle's state of mind has
already been answered.
I cannot regard this
objection as having any force. It is quite in accordance with the habit of Paul
thus to turn aside suddenly to give expression to his feelings of adoration and
gratitude toward God. See Rom. i. 25; vii. 25 (where the genuineness of DE is
very doubtful); 2 Cor. ix. 15, where note the omission of DE in the genuine
text; 1 Tim. i. 17, where the doxology is suggested by the mention of Christ.
The doxology xi. 36, as has already been noticed (p. 334) is completely
parallel in thought. Far more abrupt is the doxology 2 Cor. xi. 31, O QEOS KAI
PATHR TOU KURIOU IHSOU OIDEN O WN EULOGHTOS EIS TOUS AIWNAS OTI OU YEUDOMAI,
where the ascription of praise is interposed between OIDEN and OTI in an
extraordinary manner.
It is very strange
that it should be urged as an argument against the doxology that God is not
mentioned in the preceding context. The name does not occur, but almost every
word in verses 4 and 5 suggest the thought of God. So, to a Jew, the very name
"Israelites"; so "the adoption and the glory and the giving of
the Law and the covenants and the service and the promises"; and so, above
all O CRISTOS, the Anointed of God, the Messiah: as to the flesh, sprung from
the Jews; but, as to his holy spirit, the Son of God, the messenger of God's
love and mercy, not to the Jews alone, but to all the nations of the earth.
That the mention of
Christ in such a connection as this should bring vividly to the mind of the
Apostle the thought of GOD and his goodness, and thus lead to a doxology, is
simply in accordance with the conception of the relation of Christ to God which
appears everywhere in the Epistle, and in all his Epistles. While Christ, DI OU
TA PANTA, is the medium of communication of our spiritual blessings, Paul
constantly views them in relation to God, EX OU TA PANTA, as the original
Author and Source. The gospel is "the Gospel of God," "a power
of God unto salvation"; the righteousness which it reveals is "a
righteousness which is of God"; it is God who has set forth Christ as
ILASTHRION, who "commendeth his love toward us in that, while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us," who "spared not his own Son, but freely
gave him for us all"; it is "God who raised him from the dead";
"what the Law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God,
sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and on account of
sin," has done; the glory to which Christians are destined, as sons and
heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, is "the glory of God"; in
short, "all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself through
Jesus Christ," and "nothing shall separate us from the love of God,
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Though no one
can doubt that Paul was full of love and gratitude to Christ, so that we might
expect frequent ascriptions to him of praise and glory, it is a remarkable fact
that there is no doxology or thanksgiving to Christ in any of his Epistles
except those to Timothy, the genuineness of which has been questioned by many
modern scholars. These Epistles, at any rate, present marked peculiarities of
style and language, and, if written by Paul, were probably written near the
close of his life. And in them there is but one doxology to Christ, and that
not absolutely certain, on account of the ambiguity of the word KURIOS (2 Tim.
iv. 18); while the thanksgiving is a simple expression of thankfulness (1 Tim.
i. 12), CARIN ECW, gratias habco (not ago). One reason for this general absence
of such ascriptions of Christ on the part of the Apostle seems to have
been that habit of mind of which I have just spoken, and which makes it a
priori more probable that the doxology in Rom. ix. 5 belongs to God. But this
is a matter which will be more appropriately treated in another place.
As to the DE,
which Schultz insists would be necessary, one needs only to look fairlay at the
passage to see that it would be wholly out of place; that a doxology to God
involves no antithetic contrast between God and Christ, as Schultz and some
others strangely imagine. Now does DE, as a particle of transition, seem
natural here, much less required. It would make the doxology too formal.
4. It is urged that
"O WN, grammatically considered, is more easily and naturally construed in
connection with CRISTOS than as the subject of a new and doxological
clause." (See Dr. Dwight's article, as above, pp. 24, 25.)
Much stronger
language that this is often used. Dr. Hodge, for example, assuming that O WN
must be equivalent to OS ESTI, says the interpretation which refers the words
to Christ in the only one "which can, with the least regard to the rules
of construction, be maintained." (Comm. in loc., p. 472.)
Dr. Dwight,
whose article is in general so admirable for the fairness, clearness, and
moderation of its statements, has expressed himself here in such a way that I
cannot feel perfectly sure of his meaning. He says, speaking of the connection
of O WN with O CRISTOS, "This construction of O WN, in cases similar to
that which is here presented, is the almost universal one, both in the New
Testament and in other Greek." If "cases similar to that which is
here presented" means cases which in which O WN (or any participle with
the article) is preceded by a noun to which it may easily be joined, while it
also admits of being regarded as the subject of an independent sentence, and it
is affirmed that, in such grammatically ambiguous cases, it almost invariably
does refer to the preceding subject, - the argument is weighty, if the
assertion is true. But not even one such case has ever, to my knowledge, been
pointed out. Till such a case, or, rather, a sufficient number of such cases to
serve as the basis of a reasonable induction, shall be produced, I am compelled
to consider the statement as resting on no evidence whatever. Yet that this is
what is meant by "similar cases" seems necessarily to follow from
what is said further on (l.c., p. 24) about "the peculiarity of Rom. ix.
5." Cases in which O WN, grammatically considered, can only refer to a
preceding subject are certainly not "similar cases to that which is here
presented," in which, as Dr. Dwight admits, "there is, at the most,
only a presumption in favor of this construction of the clause against the other"
(l.c., p. 25).
But, if Dr.
Dwight's statement means, or is intended to imply, that O WN with its adjuncts,
or, in general, the participle with the article, almost universally forms a
descriptive or a limiting clause referring to a preceding subject, while its
use as the independent subject of a sentence is rare, the assertion is fatally
incorrect. The latter use is not only very common, but in the New Testament, at
least, is more frequent than the former. We have (a) O WN, or OI ONTES, in the
nominative, as the subject of an independent sentence, Matt. xii. 30; Mark
xiii. 16 (text. rec.); Luke vi. 3 (t.r., Tisch.); xi. 23; John iii. 31; vi. 46;
viii. 47; ix. 40; Acts xxii. 9; Rom. viii. 5, 8. Contra (b), referring to a
preceding subject, and forming, as I understand it, an appositional clause,
John i. 18; iii. 13 (text. rec.); (Acts v. 17); 2 Cor. xi. 31; Rev. v.5 (t.r.);
a limiting clause, John xi. 31; xii. 17; Acts xi. 1. To these may be added 2
Cor. v. 4, Eph. ii. 13, where the clause is in apposition with or describes
HMEIS or UMEIS, exrpessed or understood; and perhaps John xviii. 37 (PAS O WN,
K.T.L.).
[The examples of O WN and
other participles with PAS belong, perhaps, quite as properly under (a).
Without PAS, the O WN, K.T.L. is the subject of the sentence, and the meaning
is the same; PAS only strengthens the O WN. See Kruger, Gr. Sprachlehre, 5te
Aufl. (1875), / 50, 4, Anm. 1.]
It is
uncertain whether Col. iv. 11 belongs under (a) or (b). See Meyer in loc. For
the examples of WN, I have relied on Bruder's Concordance, p. 255, No. VI. But
as there is nothing peculiar in the use of this particular participle with the
article so far as the present question is concerned, I have, with the aid of
Bruder, examined the occurrences of the participle in general, in the
nominative, with the article, in the Gospel of Matthew, the Epistle to the
Romans, and the First Epistle to the Corinthians. I find in Matthew eighty-six
examples of its use (a) as the subject, or in very few cases (nine) as the predicate,
of a verb expressed or understood, and only thirty-eight of its use (b) in a
descriptive or limiting clause, annexed to a preceding subject; in the Epistle
to the Romans, twenty-eight examples of the former kind against twelve of the
latter, one of these being a false reading.
[In this reckoning, to
prevent any cavil, I have included under (b) all the examples of PAS O or
PANTES OI, of which there are eight in Matthew, two in Romans, and one in 1
Cor.; also, the cases of the article and participle with OU or UMEIS as the
subject of the verb, expressed or understood, of which there are four in
Matthew and seven in Romans. I have not counted on either side Rom. viii. 33,
34, and ix. 33: the first two, translated according to the text of the Revised
Version, belong under (a), according to its margin, under (b); Rom. ix. 33, if
we omit PAS, with all the critical editors, would also belong under (a).]
In general, it
is clear that the use of the participle with the article as the subject of an
independent sentence, instead of being exceptional in the New Testament, is far
more common that its use as an attributive. Nor is this strange; for O WN
properly signifies not "who is," but "he who is." The force
of the article is not lost.
["Participles take the
article only when some relation already known or especially noteworthy (is qui,
quippe qui) is indicated, and consequently the idea expressed by the participle
is to be made more prominent."-Winer, Gram. 7te Aufl., /20, 1, b. a. c. p.
134, Thayer).]
While in some of its uses
it may seem interchangeable with OS ESTI, it differs in this: that it is
generally employed either in appositional or in limiting clauses; while OS with
the finite verb is appropriate for the latter. For examples of the former, see John
i. 18, xii. 17; of the latter, Rom. v. 14; 2 Cor. iv. 4. To illustrate the
difference by the passage before us: if O WN here refers to O CRISTOS, the
clause would be more exactly translated as appositional, not "who
is," etc., but "he who is God over all, blessed forever,"
implying that he was well known to the readers of the Epistle as God, or at
least marking this predicate with special emphasis; while OS ESTIN would be
more appropriate if it were simply the purpose of the Apostle to predicate
deity of Christ, and would also be perfectly unambiguous.
There is
nothing, then, either in proper meaning of O WN or in its usage which makes it
more easy and natural to refer it to O CRISTOS than to take it as introducing
an independent sentence. It is next to be observed that there are circumstances
which make the latter construction easy, and which distinguish the passage from
nearly all others in which O WN, or a participle with the article, is used as
an attributive. In all other instances in the New Testament of this use of O WN
or OI ONTES in the nominative, with the single exception of the parenthetic
insertion in 2 Cor. xi. 31 (see above, page 341), it immediately follows the
subject to which it relates. The same is generally true of other examples of
the participle with the article. (The strongest cases of exception which I have
noticed are John vii. 50 and 2 John 7.) But here O WN is separated from O
CRISTOS by TO KATA SARKA, which in reading must be followed by a pause, - a
pause which is lengthened by the special emphasis given to the KATA SARKA by
the TO; and the sentence which precedes is complete in itself grammatically,
and requires nothing further logically; for it was only as to the flesh that
Christ was from the Jews.
[If O CRISTOS were placed
after KATA SARKA, the ambiguity would not, indeed, be wholly removed, but it
would be much more natural to refer the O WN to Christ than it is now. Perhaps
the feeling of this led Cyril of Alexandria to make this transposition as he
does in quoting the passage against the Emperor Julian, who maintained that
"neither Paul dared to call Christ God, nor Matthew nor Luke nor Mark, ALL
O CRHSTOS IWANNHS." (See Cyril cont. Julian. lib. x. Opp. v. pars ii. b.
pp.
On the other hand, as we
have seen above, the enumeration of blessings which of the advent of Christ,
naturally suggests an ascription or praise and thanksgiving to God as the Being
who rules over all; while a doxology is also suggested by the AMHN at the end
of the sentence.
[In fifteen out of the
eighteen instances in the N.T., besides the present, in which AMHN at the end
of a sentence is probably genuine, it follows a doxology; namely, Rom. i. 25,
xi. 36, xvi. 27; Gal. i. 5; Eph. iii. 21; Phil. iv. 20; 1 Tim. i. 17, vi. 16; 2
Tim. iv. 18; Heb. xiii. 21; 1 Pet. iv. 11, v. 11 (2 Pet. iii. 18); Jude 25;
Rev. i. 6, vii. 12. Contra, Rom. xv. 33; Gal. vi. 18 (Rev. i. 7).]
From every point of view,
therefore, the doxological construction seems easy and natural. The ellipsis of
the verb ESTI or EIH in such cases is simply according to rule. The
construction numbered 6 above is also perfectly easy and natural grammatically
(see 2 Cor. I. 21, v. 5; Heb. iii.4).
The
naturalness of a pause after SARKA is further indicated by the fact that we
find a point after this word in all our oldest MSS. that testify in the case, -
A,B,C,L,- and in at least eight cursives, though the cursives have been rarely
examined with reference to their punctuation.
[The MSS. Aleph, D, F, G,
cannot be counted one side or the other; respecting K, we have no information.
For a fuller statement of the facts in the case, see Note A at the end of the
essay.]
It has been
urged, that, if the writer did not intend that O WN should be referred to
Christ, he would have adopted another construction for his sentence, which
would be exposed to no such misapprehension. But this argument is a boomerang.
Mr. Beet in his recent Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (2d ed., p.
"Had Paul thought fit to deviate from his
otherwise unvarying custom, and to speak of Christ as God, he must have done so
with a serious and set purpose of asserting the divinity of Christ. And, if so,
he would have used words which no one could understand. In a similar case, John
i. 1, we find language which excludes all doubt. And in this case the words OS
ESTIN, as in i. 25, would have given equal certainty....Moreover, here Paul has
in hand an altogether different subject, the present position of the Jews. And
it seems to me much more likely that he would deviate from his common
mode of expression, and write once "God be blessed" instead of
"to God be glory," than that, in a passage which does not specially
refer to the nature of Christ, he would assert it in language which may either
mean this or something quite different."
Many writers,
like Dr. Gifford, speak of that construction which refers O WN, etc., to Christ
as "the natural and simple" one, "which every Greek scholar
would adopt without hesitation, if no doctrine were involved." It might be
said in reply, that the natural and simple construction of words considered
apart from the doctrine it involves, and with reference to merely lexical and
grammatical considerations, is by no means always the true one. For example,
according to the natural construction of the words UMEIS EK TOU PATROS TOU
DIABOLOU ESTE (John viii. 44), their meaning is, "you are from the father
of the devil"; and probably no Greek scholar would think of putting any
other meaning on them, if no question of doctrine were involved. Again, in Luke
11. 38, "she gave thanks unto God, and spake of him to all of them that
were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem." How unnatural, it may be
said, to refer the "him" to any subject but "God," there
being no possible antecedent mentioned in this or the three preceding verses.
But I do not make or need to make this reply. We have already considered the
grammatical side of the question, and have seen, I trust, that the construction
which makes O WN, etc., the subject of a new sentence is perfectly simple and
easy. I only add here that the meaning of words often depends on the way they
are read, - on the pauses, and tones of voice. (If we could only have heard
Paul dictate this passage to Tertius!) And it is a matter of course that, when
a person has long been accustomed, from whatever cause, to read and understand
a passage in a particular way, any other mode of reading it will seem to him
unnatural. But this impression will often be delusive. And it does not follow
that a mode of understanding the passage which was easy and natural in the
third and fourth centuries, or even earlier, when it had become common to apply
the name QEOS to Christ, would have seemed the most easy and natural to the
first readers of the Epistle. I waive here all considerations of doctrine and
call attention only to the use of language. When we observe that everywhere
else in this Epistle the Apostle has used the word QEOS of the Father in
distinction from Christ, so that it is virtually a proper name, that this is
also true of the Epistles previously written - those to the Thessalonians,
Galatians, Corinthians, how can we reasonably doubt that, if the verbal ambiguity
here occasioned a momentary hesitation as to the meaning, a primitive reader of
the Epistle would naturally suppose that the word QEOS designated the being
everywhere else denoted by this name in the Apostle's writings, and would give
the passage the construction thus suggested?
[It is used in the first
eight chapters about eighty-seven times, and so in the verse which immediately
follows the one under discussion.]
But this is a point which
will be considered more fully in another place.
The objection
that, if we make the last clause a doxology to God, "the participle WN is
superfluous and awkward," will be noticed below under No. 6.
5. It is further urged that TO KATA SARKA requires an antithesis,
which is supposed to be supplied by what follows. Some even say that KATA SARKA
must mean "according to his human nature," and therefore requires as
an antithesis the mention of the divine nature of Christ. But the proper
antithesis to KATA SARKA is KATA PNEUMA, not KATA THN QEOTHTA, which there is
nothing in the phrase itself to suggest: KATA SARKA, as will at once appear on
examining the cases of its use in the New Testament, does not refer to a
distinction of natures, but often denotes a physical relation, such, for
example, as depends on birth or other outward circumstances, in contrast with a
spiritual relation. We need only to refer to the third verse of this very
chapter, which certainly does not imply that Paul or his "kinsmen KATA
SARKA" had a divine nature also. The phrase KATA SARKA undoubtably implies
an antithesis" "as to the flesh," by his natural birth and in
his merely outward relations, the Messiah, the Son of David, was from
the Jews, and in this they might glory; but as Son of God, and in his higher,
spiritual relations, he belonged to all mankind. It was not to the Apostles
purpose to describe what he was KATA PNEUMA, as he was speaking to the peculiar
distinctions of the Jews. Indeed, the antithesis to KATA SARKA is very often
not expressed (see, for example, Rom. iv. 1, ix. 3; 1 Cor. i. 26, x. 18; 2 Cor.
v. 16; Eph. vi. 5; Col. iii. 22), so that Alford judiciously says: "I do
not reckon among the objections the want of any antithesis to KATA SARKA,
because that might well have been left to the readers to supply." We have
an example strikingly parallel to the present in the Epistle of Clement of Rome
to the Corinthians (c. 32), first adduced, so far as I know, by Dr. Whitby, in
his Last Thoughts, which at least demonstrates that, in a case like this, the
expression of an antithesis is not required. Speaking of the high distinctions
of the patriarch Jacob, Clement says: "For from him were all the priests
and Levites that ministered to the altar of God; from him was the Lord Jesus as
to the flesh (TO KATA SARKA); from him were kings and rulers and leaders in the
line of Judah." See also Iren. Haer. iv. 4 / 1: EX AUTWN GAP TO KATA SARKA
O CRISTOS EKARPOFORHQH, KAI OI APOSTOLOI (mistranslated in the Ante-Nicene
Christian Library); and Frag. xvii. ed. Stieren, p. 836: EK DE TOU LEVI KAI TOU
IOUDA TO KATA SARKA, WS BASILEUS KAI IEPEUS, EGENNHQH [O CRISTOS].
The eminent
Dutch commentator, Van Hengel, maintains in an elaborate note on this passage,
citing many examples, that the form of the restrictive phrase used here, TO
KATA SARKA, with the neuter article prefixed, absolutely requires a pause after
SARKA, and does not admit, according to Greek usage, of the expression of an
antithesis after it, so that the following part of the verse must be referred
to God. (Comp. Rom. i. 15; xii. 18.) He represents his view as supported by the
authority of the very distinguished Professor C. G. Cobet of Leyden. who as a
master of the Greek language has perhaps no superior among European scholars.
[See Van Hengel, Interp.
Ep. Pauli ad Rom., tom. ii. (1859), pp. 348-353, and pp. 804-813. Speaking of
his citations, he says (p. 350), "Allatorum unum alteremque mecum
communicavit COBETIUS noster, se multo plura, quibus interpretatio mea
confirmaretur, suppeditare posse dicens." {See p. 432 sq.}]
It may be true
that Greek usage in respect to such restrictive expressions, when TO or TA is
prefixed, accords with the statement of Van Hengel, indorsed by Cobet. In my
limited research I have found no exception. The two passages cited by Meyer in
opposition (Xen. Cyr. 5, 4, 11; Plat. Min.
We may say, however, and it
is a remark of some importance, that the TO before KATA SARKA, laying stress on
the restriction, and suggesting an antithesis which therefore did not need to
be expressed, indicates that the writer has done with that point, and makes a
pause natural. It makes it easy to take the O WN as introducing an independent
sentence, though it does not, as I believe, make it necessary to do so.
I admit, further, that, if
we assume that the conception of Christ as God was familiar to the readers of
the Epistle, and especially, if we suppose that they had often heard him called
so by the early preachers of Christianity, the application of the O WN, etc.,
to Christ here would be
natural, and also very suitable to the object of the Apostle in this passage. I
am obliged to say, however, that this is assuming what is not favored by Paul's
use of language or by the record of the apostolic preaching in the Book of
Acts.
On the other hand, there
was not need of such an appendage to O CRISTOS. We have only to consider the
glory and dignity with which the name of the Messiah was invested in the mind
of a Jew, and the still higher glory and dignity associated with O CRISTOS in
the mind of a Christian, and especially in the mind of Paul.
6. It is further objected
that, in sentences which begin with a doxology or an ascription of blessing,
EULOGHTOS (or EULOGHMENOS) always precedes the subject; and that "the
laws" or "rules of grammar" (Stuart, Alford) require that it
should do so here to justify the construction proposed. Luke i. 68, 2 Cor. i.
3, Eph. i. 3, 1 Pet. i. 3; and so EULOGHTOS and EULOGHMENOS precede in a
multitude of places in the Septuagint. (See Trommius's
Concordance and Wahl's Clavis librorum Vet. Test. apocryphorum.)
Great stress has been laid
on this objection by many; but I believe that a critical examination will show
that it has no real weight.
We will begin by
considering a misconception of the meaning of O WN EPI PANTWN QEOS which has
led to untenable objections against the doxological construction, and has
prevented the reason for the position of EULOGHTOS from being clearly seen. It
has been assumed by many that the phrase is simply equivalent to "the
Supreme God" (so Wahl, s.v. EPI, omnibus superior,
omnium summus), as if the Apostle was contrasting God with Christ in respect to
dignity, instead of simply describing God as the being who rules over all.
[Wahl gives a more correct
view of the use of EPI in his Clavis libr. Vet. Test. apocr. (1853), p. 218,
col.
This misunderstanding of
the expression occasioned the chief difficulty felt by De Wette in adopting the
construction which places a colon or a period after SARKA. It seemed to him
like "throwing Christ right into the shade," without any special
reason, when we should rather expect something said in antithesis to TO KATA
SARKA, to set forth his dignity; though he admits that
this objection is removed, if we accept Fritzsche's explanation of the passage.
[De Wette, Kurze Erklarung
des Briefes and die Romer, 4te Aufl. (1847), p. 130.]
On this false view is
founded Schultz's notion (see above) that DE would be needed here to indicate
the antithesis. On it is also grounded the objection of Alford, Farrar, and
others, that the WN is "perfectly superfluous," as, indeed, it would
be, if that were simply the meaning intended. To express the idea of "the
God over all," "the Supreme God," in contrast with a being to
whom the term "God" might indeed be implied, but only in a lower
sense, we should need only O EPI PANTWN QEOS, - a phrase which is thus used numberless
times in the writings of the Christian Fathers; see, for examples, Wetstein's
note on Rom. ix. 5. But, as I understand the passage, the WN is by no means
superfluous. It not only gives an impressive fulness of to the expression, but
converts what would otherwise be a mere epithet of God into a substantive
designation of him, equivalent to "the Ruler over All," on which the
mind rests for a moment by itself, before it reaches the QEOS qualified by it;
of QEOS may be regarded as added by way of apposition or more precise definition.
The position of this substantive designation of QEOS, between the article and
its noun, gives it special prominence. Comp. 1 Cor. iii. 7, OUTE O FUTEUWN
ESTIN TI OUTE O POTIZWN ALL O AUXANWN QEOS; Addit. ad Esth. viii. 1. 39, O TA
PANTA DUNASTEUWN QEOS, cf., 11. 8, 35, Tisch.; O PANTWN DESPOZWN QEOS, Justin
Mart. Apol. i. 15; O POIHTHS TOUDE TOU PANTOS QEOS, ibid. i.
[If this account is
correct, it follows that neither of the renderings which I have suggested above
as expressing my view of the meaning represents the original perfectly. Nor do
I perceive that the English idiom admits a perfect translation. If we render
"he who is over all, God, be blessed for ever," we make the word
"God" stand in simple apposition to "he who is over all,"
which I do not suppose to be the grammatical construction. If, on the other
hand, we translate, "he who is God over all be blessed for ever," we
lose in a great measure the effect of the position of the WN EPI PANTWN before
QEOS.]
Let us now look for a
moment at the connection of thought in the passage before us, and we shall see
this distinction is important. The Apostle is speaking of the favored nation to
which it is his pride to belong. Its grand religious history of some two
thousand years passes rapidly before his mind, as in a panorama. Their
ancestors were the patriarchs, - Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Theirs were
"the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the
Law, and the temple service, and the promises." But God's choice and
training his "peculiar people," and the privileges conferred upon
them, were all a providential preparation for the advent of the Messiah, whose
birth from among the Jews was their highest national distinction and glory;
while his mission as the founder of a spiritual and universal religion was the
crowning manifestation of God's love and mercy to mankind. How could this
survey of the ages of promise and preparation, and the great fulfilment in
Christ, fail to bring vividly before the mind of the Apostle the thought of God
as the Being who presides over all things, who cares for all men and controls
all events?
[Erasmus has well presented
the thought of the Apostle: "Ut enim haec omaia quae commemorat de
adoptione, gloria, testamentis, legislatione, cultibus, ac promissis, deque
patribus, ex quibus Christus juxta carnem ortus est, declaret non fortuito
facta, sed admirabili Dei providentia, qui tot modis procuravit salutem humani
generis, non simpliciter dicit Deus, sed is qui rebus omnibus pracest, omnia
suo divino consilio dispensans moderansque, cui dicit deberi laudem in omne
aevum, ob insignem erga nos charitatem, cui maledicebant Judaei, dum Filium
unicum blasphemiis impeterent." Note in loc., in his Opp. vi. (Lugd Bat.
1705), col. 611.
So Westcott and Hort, in their note on this passage in vol ii. of
their Greek Testament, remarking on the punctuation which places a colon after
SARKA as "an expression of the interpretation which implies that special
force was intended to be thrown on EPI PANTWN by the interposition of WN"
observe: "This emphatic sense of EPI PANTWN (cf. i. 16; ii.
Because this conception is
prominent in his mind, he places the O WN EPI PANTWN first in the sentence. A
recognition of this fact removes all the difficulty about the position of
EULOGHTOS. There is no "law of grammar" bearing on the matter, except
the law that the predicate, when it is more prominent in the mind of the
writer, precedes the subject. In simply exclamatory doxologies, the EULOGHTOS,
or EULOGHMENOS comes first, because the feeling that prompts its use is
predominant, and can be expressed in a single word. But here, where the thought
of the overruling providence of God
is prominent, the O WN EPI PANTWN must stand first in the sentence, to express
that prominence; and the position of EULOGHTOS after it is required by the very
same law of the Greek language which governs all the examples that have been
alleged against the doxological construction of the passage. This thought of
God as the Ruler of All reappears in the doxology at the end of the eleventh
chapter (xi. 36), where the Apostle concludes his grand Theodicy: "For
from him and through him and to him are ALL THINGS: to him is the glory forever!
Amen." Compare also Eph. i. 11, cited by Mr. Beet: "foreordained
according to the purpose of him who worketh ALL THINGS after the counsel of his
will"; and so in another doxology (1 Tim. i. 17) suggested by the mention
of Christ, the ascription is, TW BASILEI TWN AIWNWN,-"to the King OF THE
AGES."
[This seems to me the true
rendering rather than "to the King eternal," though eternity is
implied. Comp. Rev. xv. 3, Westcott and Hort; Sir. xxxvi. 22 (al. xxxiii. 19);
Tob. xiii. 6, 10; Ps. cxliv. (cxlv) 13; Clem. Rom. Ep. ad. Cor. cc. 35, 3; 55,
6; 61, 2; Const. Apost. vii. 34; Lit. S. Jac. c. 13. So Ex. xv. 18, KURIOS
BASILEUWN TWN AIWNWN, as cited by Philo, De Plant. Noe, c. 12, bis (Opp. i.
336, 337, ed. Mang.), De Mundo, c. 7 (Opp. ii. 608), and read in many cursives
MSS.; Joseph. Ant. i. 18, / 7, DESPOTA PANTOS AIWNOS. Contra, Test. xii. Patr.,
Ruben, c. 6.]
I prefer on
the whole, to take PANTWN as neuter; but much might be said in favor fo the
view of Fritzsche, whose note on this passage is especially valuable. He, with
many other scholars, regards it as masculine: "Qui omnibus pracest
hominibus (i.e. qui et Judaeis et gentilibus consulit Deus, der ueber allen
Menschen waltende Gott) sit celebratus perpetuo, amen." (C.F.A. Fritzsche,
Pauli ad Rom. Epist. tom. ii. {1839} p. 272.) He refers for the PANTWN to Rom.
x. 12, xi. 32, iii. 29.
We may note
here that, while the Apostle says WN OI PATERES, he does not say WN, but EX WN
O CRISTOS. He could not forget the thought which pervades the Epistle, that the
Messiah was for all men alike. Nor does he forget that, while by natural
descent, KATA SARKA, Christ was "from the Jews," he was KATA PNEUMA,
and in all that constituted him the Messiah, "from GOD," who anointed
him with the Holy Spirit and with power," who "made him both Lord and
Christ," who marked him out as his "Son" by raising him from the
dead (Acts xiii. 33; Rom. i. 4), and setting him at his right hand in the
heavenly places, and giving him to be the head over all things to the Church
(Eph. i. 20-22), - that Church in which there is no distinction of "Greek
and Jew," "but Christ is all in all."
That such
words as EULOGHTOS, EULOGHMENOS, MAKARIOS, and EPIKATARATOS should usually
stand first in the sentence in expressions of benediction, macarism, and
malediction, is natural in Greek for the same reason that it is natural in
English to give the first place to such words as "blessed,"
"happy," "cursed." It makes no difference, as a study of
the examples will show, whether the expressions be optative, as is usually the
case with EULOGHTOS, ESTI being understood.
[I believe that EULOGHTOS
in doxologies is distinguished from EULOGHMENOS as laudandus from laudatus; and
the doxology in Rom. ix. 5 is therefore strictly a declarative, not an optative
one. The most literal and exact rendering into latin would be something like
this:
"Ille qui est super omnia Deus laudandus (est) in aeternum!" Where
the verb is expressed with EULOGHTOS (as very often in the formula EULOGHTOS
EI), it is always, I believe, in the indicative. Here I must express my
surprise that Canon Farrar (The Expositor, vol. ix. p. 402; vol. x. p. 238)
should deny that Rom. 1. 25 and 2 Cor. xi. 31 are "doxologies." What
is a doxology but a pious ascription of glory or praise? If OS ESTIN EULOGHTOS
EIS TOUS AIWNAS, AMHN, Rom. i. 25, is "not a doxology at all" on
account of the ESTIN, then Matt. vi. 13 (text rec.) and 1 Pet. iv. 11 are, for
the same reason, not doxologies.]
The ellipsis of the
substantive verb gives rapidity and force to the expression, indicating a
certain glow of feeling. But in Greek as in English, if the subject is more
prominent in the mind of the writer, and is not overweighted with descriptive
appendages, there is nothing to hinder a change of order, but the genius of the
language rather requires it.
The example
commonly adduced of this variation in the case of EULOGHTOS is Ps. lxvii. (Heb.
lxviii.) 20, KURIOS O QEOS EULOGHTOS, EULOGHTOS KURIOS HMERAN KAQ HMERAN, where
we find EULOGHTOS in both positions. This peculiarity is the result of a
misconstruction and perhaps also of a false reading (Meyer) of the Hebrew. The
example shows that the position of EULOGHTOS after the subject violates no law
of the Greek language; but, on account of the repetition of EULOGHTOS, I do not
urge it as a parallel of Rom. ix. 5. (See Dr. Dwight as above, p.
AINETOS KURIOS EN TOIS KRIMASIN AUTON EN STOMATI OSIWN, KAI SU EULOGHMENOS,
ISRAHL UPO TON AIWNA.
[See O.F. Fritzsche, Libri
apoc. V.T. Gr. (1871), p. 579, Hilgenfeld, Messias Judaeorum (1869), p. 14.]
Here in the
first line, AINETOS precedes, because the predicate is emphatic; but in the
second, the subject. SU, precedes, becuase it is meant to receive emphasis. I
perceive no antithesis or studied chiasmus here. The sentence is no more a
"double" or "compound" one than Gen. xiv. 19, 20; 1 Sam.
xxv. 23, 33; Ps. lxxi. (lxxii) 18, 19; Tob. xi. 13, 16 (Sin.); Judith xiii. 18;
Orat. Azar.. 2; and I see no reason why the fact that the clauses are connected
by KAI should affect the position of EULOGHTOS here more than in those
passages, - no reason why it should affect it at all.
Another
example in which the subject precedes EPIKATARATOS and EULOGHMENOS in an
optative or possibly a predictive sentence is Gen. xxvii. 29, O KATARWMENOS SE
EPIKATARATOS, O DE EULOGWN SE EULOGHMENOS. Here the Greek follows the order of
the Hebrew, and the reason for the unusual position in both I suppose to be the
fact that the contrast between O KATARWMENOS and O EULOGWN naturally brought
the subjects into the foreground. It is true that in Rom. ix. 5, as I
understand the passage (though others take a different view), there is not
antithesis, as there is here; but the example shows, that, when for any reason
the writer wishes to make the subject prominent, there is no law of the Greek
language which imprisons such a predicate as EULOGHMENOS at the beginning of
the sentence.
Another
example, in a declarative sentence, but not the less pertinent on that account
(the verb not being expressed), is Gen. xxvi. 29), according to what I believe
to the true reading, KAI NUN SU EULOGHTOS UPO KURION, where the SU being
emphatic, as is shown in the corresponding order in Hebrew, stands before
EULOGHTOS. Contrast Gen. iii. 14; iv. 11; Josh. ix. 29 (al. 23). This reading
is supported by all the uncial MSS. that contain the passage, - namely, I. Cod.
Cotton. (cent. v.), III. Alex. (v.), X. Coislin. (vii.), and Bodl. (viii. or
ix.) ed. Tisch. Mon. Sacr. Ined., vol. ii. (1857), p. 234, with at least
twenty-five cursives, and the Alpine edition, also by all the ancient versions
except the Aethiopic, and the Latin, which translates freely, against the KAI
NUN EULOGHMENOS SU of the Roman edition, which has very little authority here.
[The statement above about
the reading of the ancient versions in Gen. xxvi. 29 lacks precision. The
versions made already from the Hebrew, of course, do not come under
consideration. Of those made from the Septuagint, the Armenian, the Georgian,
and the Old Slavic (Cod. Ostrog.) support SU EULOG.; the Aethiopic, EULOG, SU;
the Old Latin has perished; and the Coptic, As I am informed by Professor T.O.
Paine, omits the last clause of the verse.]
Still another
case where in a declarative sentence the usual order of subject and predicate
is reversed, both in the Greek and the Hebrew, is 1 Kings ii. 45 (al. 46), KAI
O BASILEUS SALWMWN EULOGHMENOS, the ellipsis being probably ESTAI. Here I
suppose the reason for the exceptional order to be the contrast between Solomon
and Shimei (ver. 44).
It is a
curious fact that MAKARISTOS, a word perfectly analoguos to EULOGHTOS, and
which would naturally stand first in the predicate, happens to follow the
subject in the only instances of its use in the Septuagint which come into
comparison here, - namely, Prov. xiv. 21; xvi. 20; xxix. 18. The reason seems
to be the same as in the case we have just considered: there is a constrast of
subjects. For the same reason EPIKATARATOS follows the subject in Wisd. xiv. 8
(comp. ver. 7).
These examples
go to confirm Winer's statement in respect to contrasted subjects. And I must
here remark, in respect to certain passages which have been alleged in
opposition (see Dr. Dwight as above, p. 36), that I can perceive no contrast of
subjects in Gen. xiv. 19, 20; 1 Sam. xxv. 32, 33; or in Ps. lxxxviii. (lxxxix.)
53, where the doxology appears to have no relation to what precedes, but to be
rather the formal doxology, appended by the compiler, which concludes the Third
Book of the Psalms (comp. Ps. xl. (xli.) 14).
It may be said
that none of the examples we have been considering is precisely similar to Rom.
ix. 5. But they all illustrate the fact that there is nothing to hinder a Greek
writer from changing the ordinary position of EULOGHTOS and kindred words, when
from any cause the subject is naturally more prominent in his mind. They show
the principle of the rule which governs the position may authorize or require a
deviation from the common order. I must further agree with Meyer and Ellicott
on Eph. i. 3, and Fritzsche on Rom. ix.
I will give
one example of the fallacy of merely empirical rules respecting the position of
words. Looking at Young's Analytical Concordance, there are, if i have counted
right, one hundred and thirty-eight instances in which, in sentences like
"Blessed be God," "Blessed are the meek," the word "blessed"
precedes the subject in the common English Bible. There is no exception to this
usage in the Old Testament or the New. "Here," exclaims the empiric,
"is the law of the language. To say 'God be blessed' is not English."
But, if we look into the Apocrypha, we find that our translators have said it,
- namely, in Tobit xi. 17; and so it stands also in the Genevan version, though
the Greek reads EULOGHTOS O QEOS. Why the translators changed the order must be
a matter of conjecture. Perhaps it was to make a contrast with the last clause
of the sentence.
There is a
homely but important maxim which has been forgotten in many discussions of the
passages before us, that "circumstances alter cases." I have
carefully examined all the examples of doxology or benediction in the New Testament
and the Septuagint, and in other ancient writings, as the Liturgies, in which
EULOGHTOS or EULOGHMENOS precedes the subject; and there is not one among them
which, so far as I can judge, justifies the assumption that, because EULOGHTOS
precedes the subject there, it would probably have done so here, had it been
the purpose of Paul to introduce a doxology. The cases in which a doxology
begins without a previous enumeration of blessings, but in which the thought of
the blessing prompts an exclamation of praise or thanksgiving, - "Blessed
be God, who" or "for he" has done this or that, - are evidently
not parallel. All the New Testament doxologies with EULOGHTOS, and most of
those in the Septuagint, are of this character.
[See Luke i. 68; 2 Cor. i.
23; Eph. i. 3; 1 Pet. i. 3. Gen xiv. 20, xxiv. 27; Ex. xviii. 10; Ruth iv. 14;
1 Sam. xxv. 32, 39; 2 Sam. xviii. 28; 1 Kings i. 48, v. 7, viii. 15, 56; 2
Chron. ii. 12, vi. 4; Ezra vii. 27; Ps. xxvii (Sept.) 6, xxx. 22, lxv. 20,
lxxi. 18, cxxiii. 6, cxliii 1, Dan. iii. 28 Theodot., 95 Sept.]
In these cases, we perceive
at once that any order would be strange. The expression of the feeling, which
requires but one word, naturally precedes the mention of the ground of the
feeling, which often requires very many. But there is a difference between
EULOGHTOS and EULOGHTOS EIS TOUS AIWNAS. Where it would be natural for the
former to precede the subject, it might be more natural for the latter to follow.
In the example adduced by Dr. Dwight in his criticism of Winer (see as above,
pp. 36, 37), it is evident that EULOGHTOS more naturally stands first in the
sentence; at the end, it would be abrupt and unrhythmical. But I cannot think
that a Greek scholar would find hard or unnatural in the sentence if it read, O
DIATHRHSAS TON EAUTOU TOPON AMIANTON EULOGHTOS EIS TOUS AIWNAS, AMHN.
To make the
argument from usage a rational one, examples sufficient in number to form the
basis of an induction should be produced in which, in passages like the
present, EULOGHTOS precedes the subject. Suppose we should read here, EULOGHTOS
O WN EPI PANTWN QEOS hEIS TOUS AIWNAS, we instantly see that the reference of
hEIS TOUS AIWNAS becomes, to say the least, ambiguous, the "for ever"
grammatically connecting itself with the phrase "he who is God over
all" rather than with "blessed." If, to avoid this, we read
EULOGHTOS hEIS TOUS AIWNAS O WN EPI PANTWN QEOS, we have a sentence made
unnaturally heavy and clumsy by the interposition of hEIS TOUS AIWNAS before
the subject, - a sentence to which I believe no parallel can be produced in the
whole range of extant doxologies. Wherever EUOLOGHTOS precedes, the subject
directly follows. These objections to the transposition appear to me in
themselves a sufficient reason why the Apostle should have preferred the
present order. But we must also consider that any other arrangement would have
failed to make the particular conception of God, which the context suggests, as
the Ruler over All. If, then, the blessings mentioned by the Apostle suggested
in his mind the thought of God as EULOGHTOS hEIS TOUS AIWNAS, in view of that
overruling Providence which sees the end from the beginning, which brings good
out of evil, and cares for all men alike, I must agree with Winer that
"the present position of the words is not only altogether suitable, but
even necessary." (Gram., 7te Aufl., /61. 3. e.p. 513; p. 551 Thayer, p.
690 Moulton.) Olshausen, though he understands the passage as relating to Christ,
well says: "Ruckert's remark that EULOGHTOS when applied to God, must,
according to the idiom of the Old and New Testament, always precede the noun,
is of no weight. Kollner rightly observes that the position of words is
altogether [everywhere] not a mechanical thing, but determined, in each
particular conjuncture, by the connexion and by the prupose of the
speaker."
[Olfhausen, Bibl. Comm. on
the N.T., vol. iv., p. 83, note, Kendrick's trans. The remark cited from
Ruckert belongs to the first edition of his Commentary (1831), Ruckert changed
his view of the passage, and adopted the construction which makes the last part
of the verse a doxology to God.]
7. The
argument founded on the notion that the Apostle here had in mind Ps. lxvii.
(lxviii.) 20, and was thereby led to describe Christ as QEOS EULOGHTOS hEIS
TOUS AIWNAS, is one which, so far as I know, never occurred to any commentator,
ancient or modern, before the ingenious Dr. Lange. Its weakness has been so
fully exposed by Dr. Dwight (as above, p. 33, note) that any further notice of
it is unnecessary.
8. The
argument for the reference of the O WN, etc., to Christ, founded on supposed
patristic authority, will be considered under IV., in connection with the
history of the interpretation of the passage.
II. I have thus
endeavored to show that the construction of the last part of the verse as a
doxology suits the context, and that the principal objections urged against it
have little or no weight.
But the
construction followed in the common version is also grammatically
unobjectionable; and if we assume that the Apostle and those whom he addressed
believed Christ to be God, this construction likewise suits the context.
How then shall
we decide the question? If it was an ambiguous sentence in Plato or Aristotle,
our first step would be to see what light was thrown on the probabilities of
the case by the writer's use of language elsewhere. Looking then at the
question from this point of view, I find three reasons for preferring the construction
which refers the last part of the verse to God.
1. The use of the word
EULOGHTOS, "blessed," which never occurs in the New Testament in
reference to Christ. If we refer EULOGHTOS to God, our passage accords with the
doxologies Rom. i. 25; 2 Cor. i.3; xi. 31; and Eph. i.3. In Rom. i.25, we have
EULOGHTOS hEIS TOUS AIWNAS, as here; and 2 Cor. xi. 31, "The God and
Father (or God, the Father) of the Lord Jesus knows - he who is blessed for
ever! - that I lie not," strongly favors the reference of the EULOGHTOS to
God.
[For the way in which the
Rabbinical writers are accustomed to introduce doxologies into the middle of a
sentence, see Schoettgen's Horae Hebraicae on 2 Cor. xi. 31.]
It alone seems almost
decisive. The word EULOGHTOS is elsewhere in the New Testament used in
doxologies to God (Luke i. 68; 1 Pet. i. 3); and in Mark xiv. 61, O EULOGHTOS,
"the Blessed One," is a special designation of the Supreme Being, in
accordance with the language of the later Jews, in whose writings God is often
spoken of as "the Holy One, blessed be He!"
I have already
spoken (see above) of the rarity of doxologies to Christ in the writings of
Paul, the only instance being 2 Tim. iv. 18, though here Fritzsche (Ep. ad Rom.
ii. 268) and Canon Kennedy (Ely Lectures, p. 87) refer the KURIOS to God.
Doxologies and thanksgivings to God are, on the other hand, very frequent in
his Epistles. Those with EULOGHTOS are given above; for those with DOXA, see
Rom. xi. 36, xvi. 27; Gal. i. 5; Eph. iii. 21; Phil. iv. 20; 1 Tim. vi. 16.
(Comp. DOXAZW, Rom, xv. 6, 9.) Thanksgivings, with CARIS first, Rom. vi. 17,
vii. 25 (Lachm., Tisch., Treg., WH.); 2 Cor. ii. 14; EUCAPISTW, Rom. i. 8; 1
Cor. i. 4 (14), xiv. 18; Eph. i. 16; Phil. i. 3; Col. i. 3, 12; 1 Thess. i. 2,
ii. 13; 2 Thess. i. 3, ii. 13; Philem. 4. Note especially the direction,
"giving thanks always for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ
to God, even the Father," Eph. v. 20; comp. Col. iii. 17, "do all in
the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him."
These facts appear to me to strengthen the presumption founded in the usage of
EULOGHTOS, that in this passage of ambiguous construction the doxological words
should be referred to God rather than through Christ.
It may be of
some interest to observe that, in the Epistle of Clement of Rome to the
Christians, - probably the earliest Christian writing that has come down to us
outside the New Testament, - there are eight doxologies to God; namely, cc. 32,
38, 43, 45, 58, 61, 64, 65, and none that clearly belong to Christ. Two are
ambiguous; namely cc. 20, 50, like Heb. xiii. 21, 1 Pet. iv. 11, which a
majority of the best commentaries refer to God as the leading subject; see Dr.
Dwight as above, p. 46. The clear cases of doxologies to Christ in the New
Testament are Rev. i. 6; 2 Pet. iii. 18 (a book of doubtful genuineness), and
Rev. v. 13, "to Him that sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb";
comp. vii. 10. But our concern is chiefly with the usage of Paul.
The argument
from the exclusive use of the word EULOGHTOS in reference to God has been
answered by saying that EULOGHTOS also applied to man; and Deut. vii. 14, Ruth
ii. 20, and 1 Sam. xv. 13 are cited as examples of this by Dr. Gifford. But he
overlooks the fact that EULOGHTOS is there used in a totally different sense;
namely, "favored" or "blessed" by God, or to pray that he
may be so, and to address a doxology to him, are very different things. [See
Essay XVII. p. 437.]
Note further
that EULOGHMENOS O ERCOMENOS EN ONOMATI KURION, Ps. cxvii. (cxviii.) 26,
applied to Christ in Matt. xxi. 9 and the parallel passages, is not a doxology.
Comp. Mark xi. 10; Luke i. 28, 42.
On the
distinction between EULOGHTOS and EULOGHMENOS, see Note B, at the end of this
article.
2. The most
striking parallel to O WN EPI PANTWN in the writings of Paul is in Eph. iv. 5,
6, where Christians are said to have "one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
one God and Father of all, who is over all (O EPI PANTWN), and through all, and
in all." Here it is used of the one God, expressly distinguished from
Christ.
3. The
Apostle's use of the word QEOS, "God," throughout his Epistles. This
word occurs in the Pauline Epistles, not including that to the Hebrews, more
than five hundred times; and there is not a single clear instance in which it
is applied to Christ. Alford, and many other Trinitarian commentators of the
highest character, find no instance except the present. Now, in a case of
ambiguous construction, ought not this uniform usage of the Apostle in respect
to one of the most common words to have great weight? To me it is absolutely
decisive.
It may be
said, however, that Paul has nowhere said that Christ is not God; and that,
even if he has not happened to give him this title in any other passage, he
must have believed him to be God, and therefore might have so designated him,
if occasion required.
[See Dr. Dwight's Essay, as
above, pp. 25, 30, 43.]
As to the
statement that Paul has nowhere expressly affirmed that Christ was not God, it
does not appear that, supposing him to have believed this, he ever had occasion
to say it. It is certainly a remarkable fact that, whatever may have been the
teaching of Paul concerning the nature of Christ and the mode of his union with
God, it appears, so far as we can judge from his writings, to have raised no
question as to whether he was or was not God, jealous as the Jews were of the
divine unity and disposed as the Gentiles were to recognize many gods besides
the Supreme.
It is
important to observe, in general, that in respect to the application to Christ
of the name "God" there is a very wide difference between the usage
not only of Paul, but of all the New Testament writers, and that which we find
in Christian writers of the second and later centuries. There is no clear
instance in which any New Testament writer speaking in his own person, has
called Christ God. In John i. 18, the text is doubtful; and, in 1 John v. 20,
the hOUTOS more naturally refers to the leading subject in what precedes, - namely,
TON ALEQINON, - and is so understood by the best grammarians, as Winer and
Buttman, and by many eminent Trinitarian commentators. [See Essay XVIII. Note
C. sub fin.] In John i. 1, QEOS is the predicate not of the historical Christ,
but of the antemundane Logos. The passages which have been alleged from the
writings of Paul will be noticed presently.
[On John xx. 28 and Heb. i,
8,9, which do not belong to the category we are now considering, I simply refer
for the sake of brevity, to Norton's Statement of Reasons, etc., new edition
(1856), p. 300 ff., and the note of E.A., or to the note of Lucke on the former
passage, and of Professor Stuart on the latter. On 2 Peter i. 1, see Huther.]
But it may be
said that, even if there is not other passage in which Paul has called Christ
God, there are many in which the works and attributes of God are ascribed to
him, and in which he is recognized as the object of divine worship; so that we
ought to find no difficulty in supposing that he is here declared to be "God
blessed for ever." It may be said in reply, that the passages referred do
not authorize the inference which has been drawn from them; and that, if they
are regarded as doing so, the unity of God would seem to be infringed. A
discussion of this subject would lead us out of the field of exegesis into the
tangled thicket of dogmatic theology: we should have to consider the questions
of consubstantiality, eternal generation, the hypostatic union, and the
kenosis. Such a discussion would here be out of place. But it is certainly
proper to look at the passages where Paul has used the clearest and strongest
language concerning the dignity of Christ and his relation to the Father, and
ask ourselves whether they allow us to regard it as probable that he has here spoken
of him as "God over all, blessed for ever," or even as "over
all, God blessed for ever."
In the
Epistles which purport to be written by Paul there is only one passage beside
the present that in which any considerable number of respectable scholars now
suppose that he has actually called Christ God; namely Titus ii. 13. Here the
new Revised Version, in the text, makes him speak of "our great God and
Saviour Jesus Christ." But the uncertainty of this translation is
indicated by the marginal rendering, "the great God and our Saviour";
and, in another paper, I have stated my reasons for believing the latter
construction was preferred by a large majority of the American Company of
Revisers, and it has the support of many other eminent Trinitarian scholars.
Surely, so doubtful a passage cannot serve to render it probable that Christ is
called "God blessed for ever" in Rom. ix. 5.
Acts xx. 28
has also been cited, where, according to the textus receptus, Paul, in his
address to the Ephesian elders, is represented as speaking of "the Church
of God, which he purchased with his own blood." This reading is adopted by
the English Revisers in their text, and also by Scrivener, Alford, and Westcott
and Hort; but its doubtfulness indicated by the marginal note against the word
"God," in which the Revisers say, "Many ancient authorities read
*the Lord*." Here, again, the marginal reading is preferred by the
American Revisers, as also by Lachmann, Tregelles, Green, Davidson, and
Tischendorf. I have given my reasons for beleiving this is the true reading in
an article in the Bibliotheca Sacra for April, 1876 [see Essay XV.]. And,
although Westcott and Hort adopt the reading *God,* Dr. hort well remarks that
"the supposition that by the precise designation TOU QEOU, standing alone
as it does here, with the article and without any adjunct, St. Paul (or St.
Luke) meant Christ is unsupported by any analogies of language." Calling
attention to the fact that the true text has the remarkable form, DIA TOU
AIMATOS TOU IDIOU, he would understand the passage, "on the supposition
that the text is incorrupt," as speaking of the Church of God which he
purchased "'through the blood of his own,' i.e., as being his
Son's.""This conception," he remarks, "of the death of
Christ as a price paid by the Father is in strict accordance with St. Paul's
own language elsewhere (Rom. v. 8; viii. 32). It finds related expression in
the Apostolic Constitutions in language evidently founded on this passage (ii.
57. 13; 61. 4; vii. 26. 1; viii. [11. 2] 12.18; 41. 4)." On the
supposition that QEOU is the true reading, the passage has been understood in a
similar manner not merely by Socinian interpreters, as Wolzogen and Enjedinus,
but by Erasmus (in his Paraphrase), Pellican*, Limborch (though he prefers the
reading KURION), Milton (De Doctrina Christiana, Pars 1. c. v. p. 86, or Eng.
trans. p.
[* "Erga
congregationem dei quae vobis oscitanter curanda non est, ut quam deus adeo
charam habuit, ut unigenite sui sanguine eam paraverit." Comm. in loc.,
Tiguri, 1537, fol.]
Dr. Hort, however, is
disposed to conjecture that UIOU dropped out after TOUIDIOU "at some very
early transcription, affecting all existing documents." Granville Penn had
before made the same suggestion. It is obvious that no argument in support of
any particular construction of Rom. ix. 5 can be prudently drawn from such a
passage as this.
A few other
passages, in which some scholars still suppose that the name God is given to
Christ by Paul, have been examined in the paper on Titus ii. 13 (see Essay
XVIII notes to pp. 440, 447; also Dr. Dwight, as above, p. 44).
Let us now
look at the passages in which Paul has used the most exalted language
respecting the person and dignity of Christ, and ask ourselves how far they
afford a presumption that he might here describe him as "God blessed for
ever."
The passage in
this Epistle most similar to the present is ch. i. vv. 3, 4, where Christ is
said to be " born of the seed of David as to the flesh," but
"declared to be the Son of God with power as to the spirit of holiness by
his resurrection from the dead," or, more exactly, "by the
resurrection of the dead." Here the antithesis to KATA SARKA is supplied.
It is not, however, KATA THN QESTHTA, or KATA QEIAN FUSIN but KATA PNEUMA
AGIWSUNHS, "as to his holy spirit,"- his higher spiritual nature,
distinguished especially by the characteristic of holiness. There are many nice
and difficult questions connected with this passage which need not be here
discussed; I will only say that I see no ground for finding in it a presumption
that the Apostle would designate Christ as "God blessed for ever."
Some, however, suppose that the title "Son of God" is essentially
equivalent to QEOS, and that the resurrection of Christ as an act of his own
divine power is adduced here as a proof of his deity. I do not find the first
supposition supported by the use of the term in the Old Testament or in the New
(see John x. 36); and, as to the second, it may be enough to say that it
contradicts the uniform representation of the Apostle Paul on the subject, who
everywhere refers his resurrection to the power of "God the Father."
See Gal. i. 1; Eph. i. 19,20; Rom. iv. 24, vi. 4; viii 11, x.9; 1 Cor. vi. 14,
xv. 15; 2 Cor. iv. 14, xiii. 4; 1 Thess. i 10; Acts xiii. 30-37, xvii. 31.
Another striking
passage is Phil. ii. 6-11, where the Apostle says that Christ, "existing
in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God* a thing to
be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in
the likeness of men."
[Or, as the Rev. Dr. B. H.
Kennedy, Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Cambridge, translates
it, "the being like God"; compare Whitby's note on the use of ISA.
See Kennedy's Occasional Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge,
London, 1877, p. 62, or Ely Lectures (1882), p.
Without entering into any
detailed discussion of this passage, it may be enough to remark that being in
the form of God, as Paul uses the expression here, is a very different thing
from being God; that the MORFH cannot denote the nature or essence of Christ,
because it is something of which he is represented as emptying or divesting
himself. The same is true of the TO EINAI ISA QEW, "the being on an
equality with God," or "like God," which is spoken of as
something which he was not eager to seize, according to one way of
understanding hARPAGMON, or not eager to retain, according to another
interpretation.
[See Grimm's Lexicon Novi
Testamenti, ed. 2da (1879), s.v. MORFH, for one view; for another, Weiss's
Biblische Theol. des N.T. /103 c,p. 432 ff., 3te Aufl. (1880)]
The Apostle goes on to say
that, on account of this self-abnegation and his obedience even unto death,
"GOD highly exalted him and gave him the name which is above every name;
that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow . . . and that every tongue
should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
I cannot think that this passage, distinguishing Christ as it does so clearly
from God, and representing his present exaltation as a reward bestowed upon him
by God, renders it at all likely that Paul would call him " God blessed
for ever."
We find a
still more remarkable passage in the Epistle to the Colossians, I i. 15-20,
where it is affirmed concerning the Son that "he is the image of the
invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him were all things
created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or
principalities or powers; all things have been created through him and unto
him; and he is before all things, and in him all things consist [or hold
together]. And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning,
the first-born from the dead; that in all things he might have the pre-eminence
[more literally, become first]. For it was the good pleasure [of the Father]
that in him should all the fulness dwell; and through him to reconcile all
things unto himself." In this passage, and in Col. ii. 9, 10, where the
Apostle says of Christ "in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead
bodily, and in him ye are made full, who is the head of all principality and
power," we find, I believe, the strongest language which Paul has anywhere
used concerning Christ's position in the universe and his relation to the
Church. I waive all question of the genuineness of the Epistle. Does, then, the
language here employed render it probable that Paul, would, on occasion, designate
Christ as "over all, God blessed for ever"?
Here,
certainly, if anywhere, we might expect that he would call him God; but he has
not only not done so, but has carefully distinguished him from the being
for whom he seems to reserve that name. He does not call him God, but "the
image of the invisible God" (Comp. 2 Cor. iv. 4, and 1 Cor. ix. 7). His
agency in the work of creation is also restricted and made secondary by the use
of the prepositions EN and DIA, clearly indicating that the conception in the
mind of the Apostle is the same which appears in the Epistle to the Hebrews, i.
3; that he is not the primary source of the power exerted in creation, but the
being "through whom God made the worlds, "DI OU APOIHSEN TOUS AIWNAS;
comp. also 1 Cor. viii. 6, Eph. iii. 9 (though here DIA IHSOU CRISTOU is not
genuine), and the well-known language of Philo concerning the Logos.
[Philo calls the Logos the
"Son of God," "the eldest son," "the
first-begotten," and his representation of his agency in creation is very
similar to that which Paul here attributes to "the Son of God's love"
(ver. 13). He describes the Logos as the "image of God, through whom the
world was framed," EIKWN QEOU, DI OU, K.T.L. (De Monarch, ii. 5, Opp. ii.
225 ed. Mangey); "the instrument, through which [or whom] the world was
built." ORGANON DI OU K.T.L. (De Cherub. c. 35, Opp. i. 162, where note
Philo's distinction between TO UF OU, TO EX OU, TO DI OU, and TI DI O);
"the shadow of God, using whom as an instrument he made the world" (Legg.
Alleg. iii. 31, Opp. i. 106). In two or three passages he exceptionally applies
the term QEOS to the Logos, professedly using it in a lower sense (EN KATA
CRHSEI). and making a distinction between QEOS, without the article, "a
divine being," and hO QEOS, "the Divine Being." (See De Somn. i.
38, Opp. i. 655, and comp. Legg. Alleg. iii. 73, Opp. i. 128, 1. 43.) In a
fragment preserved by Eusebius (Praep. Evang. vii. 13, or Philonis Opp. ii.
625) he names the Logos hO DEUTEROS QEOS, "the second [or inferior]
God," distinguished from "the Most High and Father of the
universe," "the God who is before [or above, PRO] the Logos." So
he applies the term to Moses (comp. Ex. vii. 1), and says that it may be
used of one who "procures good (TO AGAQON) for others," and is
"wise." De Mut. Nom. c. 22, Opp. i. 597, 598; see also De Mos. i. 28,
Opp. ii. 105 [misprinted 108], where Moses is called OLOU TOU EQNOUS QEOS KAI
BASILEUS; Quad det. pot. insid. c. 44, Opp. i. 222; De Migr. Abr. c. 15, Opp.
i. 449; Legg. Alleg. i. 13, Opp. i. 151; Quod omn. prob. liber., c. 7. Opp. ii.
452; De Decem. Orac., c. 23, Opp. ii. 201. But, though he speaks of the Logos
in language as exalted as Paul uses concerning the Son, he would never have
dreamed of calling him O WN EPI PANTWN QEOS EIS
TOUS AIWNAS.]
Neither Paul or any other
New Testament writer uses the preposition UPO, "by," in speaking of
the agency of the Son or Logos in creation. The designation "first-born of
all creation" seems also a very strange one to be applied to Christ
conceived of as God. Some of the most orthodox Fathers of the fourth and fifth
centuries, as Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodore of
Mopsuestia, and Augustine, were so perplexed by it that they understood the
Apostle to be speaking here of the new spiritual creation*; and the passage has
been explained as relating to this by some eminent modern interpreters, as
Grotius, Wetstein, Ernesti, Noesselt, Heinrichs, Scleiermacher,
Baumgarten-Crusius, Norton, - though, I believe, erroneously.
[See Lightfoot, St. Paul's
Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, p. 214 ff. {p. 148 ff. 7th ed.}]
But I shall not here
discuss the meaning of PRWTOTOKOS PASHS KTISEWS. I would only call attention to
the way in which the Apostle speaks of the good pleasure of God, the Father, as
the source of Christ's fulness of gifts and powers. "For it was the good
pleasure [of God] that in him should all the fulness dwell" (ver. 19).
[hO QEOS or hO PATHR must
be supplied as the subject of EUDOKHSEN; comp. ver. 20, and Lightfoot's note.
So Meyer, De Wette, Alford, Eadie, and the great majority of expositors.]
This declaration explains
also Col. ii. 9; comp. Eph. iii. 19, iv. 13, John i. 16. See also John xiv. 10,
iii. 34 (?).
It thus
appears, I think, first, that there is no satisfactory evidence that Paul has
elsewhere called Christ GOD; and, secondly, that in the passages in which he
speaks of his dignity and power in the most exalted language he not only seems
studiously to avoid giving him this appellation, but represents him as deriving
his dignity and power from the being to whom, in distinction from Christ, he
everywhere gives that name, - the "one God, the Father."
We have
considered the strongest passages which have been adduced to justify the supposition
that Paul might apply this title to Christ. I have already intimated that they
do not seem to me to authorize this supposition. But, admitting for the sake of
argument that we must infer from these and other passages that he really held
the doctrine of the consubstantiality and co-eternity of the Son with the
Father, and that on this account he would have been justified in calling him
God, this does not remove the great probability that he has so designated him,
incidentally, in Rom. ix.
["The ancient doctors
of the church," as Bishop Pearson remarks, "have no stuck to call the
Father 'the origin, the cause, the author, the root, the fountain, and the head
of the Son,' or the whole Divinity." Exposition of the Creed, chap. i. p.
38, Nichol's ed.]
Now the word QEOS was often
used by the Fathers of the second and later centuries not as a proper, but as a
common name; angels, and even Christians, especially in their beatified state,
might be and were called QEOI. It had also a metaphorical and rhetorical use,
quite foreign from the style of the New
Testament.
[For proof and illustration
of what has been stated, see Norton's Genuineness of the Gospels, 2d ed., vol
iii. Addit. Note D, "On the Use of the Words QEOS and deus";
Statement of Reasons, 12th ed., pp. 113, 114 note , 120 note,
All this made it easy and
natural, especially for the Fathers who were converts from heathenism, to apply
the title in a relative, not absolute, sense to the Son, notwithstanding the pre-eminence
which they ascribed to the Father. We find traces of this loose use of the name
in Philo, as I have observed (see p. 369, note). But there is no trace of such
a use in the writings of Paul. The points, then, which I would make are these :
that, even granting that he believed in the deity of the Son as set forth in
the Nicene Creed, he yet held the doctrine of the subordination of the Son so
strongly in connection with it that we cannot wonder if on this account he
reserved the title QEOS
exclusively for the Father; and that the way in which he has expressed this
subordination, and the way in which he has used this title, render it
incredible that he should in this single instance (Rom. ix. 5) have suddenly
transferred it to Christ, with the addition of another designation,
"blessed for ever," elsewhere used by him of the Father alone.
I do not see how any
one can read the Epistles of Paul without perceiving that, in speaking of the
objects of Christian faith, he constantly uses QEOS as a proper name, as the
designation of the Father in distinction from Christ. See, for example, Rom. i.
1-3, "the gospel of God, which he had
before promised . . . concerning his Son"; ver. 7, "God our Father,
and the Lord Jesus Christ"; ver. 8, "I thank my God, through Jesus
Christ"; ver. 9, "God is my witness, whom I serve in my spirit in the
gospel of his Son"; and so all through the Epistle; 2 Cor. v. i8, 19,
"All things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and
gave unto us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ
reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their
trespasses"; Eph, v. 20, "giving thanks always for all things, in the
name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to God, even the Father"; though among the
heathen there are gods many and lords many (1 Cor. viii. 6), "to us there
is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we unto him; and one
Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him"; Eph.
iv. 5, 6, There is "one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father
of all, who is over all, and through all, and in you all"; "For there
is one God, one mediator also between God and men, [himself] a man, Christ
Jesus"; v. 21, "I charge thee before God, and Christ Jesus, and the elect
angels"; Titus iii. 4-6, "God our Saviour" poured out upon us
the Holy Spirit "through Jesus Christ our Saviour." Observe how
strongly the subordination of the Son is expressed in passages where his
dignity and lordship are described in the loftiest strain: Eph. i. 16-23,
"- in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of
glory, may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of
him;...that ye may know what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward
who believe, according to the working of the strength of his might which he
wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and made him to sit at his
right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule, and authority, and
power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but
also in that which is to come: And he put all things in subjection under his
feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the Church"; 1 Cor.
iii. 22, 23, "all things are yours and ye are Christ's; and Christ is
God's"; xi. 3, "the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the
woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God"; xv. 24, "Then
cometh the end, when he shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the
Father"; vv. 27, 28, "But when he saith, All things are put in
subjection, it is evident that He is excepted who did subject all things unto
him. And when all things have been subjected unto him, THEN shall the Son also
himself be subjected to him that did subject all things unto him, that God may
be all in all."
Can we believe that he who
has throughout his writings placed Christ in such a relation of subordination
to the Father, and has habitually used the name GOD as the peculiar designation
of the Father in distinction from Christ, who also calls the Father the one
God, the only wise God (Rom. xvi. 27), the only God (1 Tim. i. 17), and the God
of Christ, has here, in opposition to the usage elsewhere uniform of a word
occurring five hundred times, suddenly designated Christ as "over all, God
blessed for ever"? At least, should not the great improbability of this
turn the scale, in a passage of doubtful construction?
4. There is another consideration which seems to me to render it very
improbable that Paul has here deviated from his habitual restriction of the
name God to "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." If he has
spoken of Christ in this passage as "God blessed for ever," he has
done it obiter, as if those whom he addressed were familiar with such a
conception and designation of him. But can this have been the case with the
Roman Church at so early a stage in the development of Christian doctrine?
It is the view of many Trinitarians that the doctrine that Christ is God was
not explicitly taught in the early preaching of the Apostles. We find no trace
of such teaching in the discourses of Peter or of Stephen in the Book of Acts,
and none in those of the Apostle Paul (the passage Acts xx. 28 has already been
examined), as we find none in the Synoptic Gospels, which represent the instruction
concerning Christ given by the Apostles and their companions to their converts.
["There is nothing in
St. Peter's sermon upon the Pentecost which would not, in all probability, have
been acknowledged by every Ebionite Christian down to the time when they
finally disappear from history. Yet upon such a statement of doctrine,
miserably insufficient as all orthodox would now call it, three thousand Jews
and proselytes were, without delay, admitted to the Sacrament of Baptism....We
must carefully bear in mind what was St. Peter's object. It was to convince the
Jews that Jesus Christ was the great appointed Teacher whom God had sent, - the
true spiritual Prince whom they were to obey. The Apostle felt that, if they
acknowledged these great truths, everything else would follow in due
time." T. W. Mossman, B.A., Rector of Torrington. A history of the
Catholic Church of Jesus Christ, etc., London 1873, pp. 192, 190. (Gess naively
asks, "Wie durfte man von dem galilaischen Fischer, welcher der Wortfuhrer
der junger Gemeinde war, eine befriedigende Dogmatik erwarten?" Christi
Person und Werk, II i. 13. See also Dr. John Pye Smith's Scripture Testimony to
the Messiah, Book III. Chap. V. (vol. ii. p. 151 ff, 5th ed.).]
Nor does it appear in the
so called Apostles' Creed. When we consider further the fact already mentioned
above (see p. 364), that Christ is nowhere called God in any unambiguous
passage by any writer of the New Testament and that it is nowhere recorded that
he ever claimed this title, we cannot reasonably regard this abstinence from
the use of the term as accidental.
[I speak of the historical
Christ, which is the subject of Rom. ix. 5. The unique prologue of John's
Gospel, in which the Logos or Word is once called QEOS (i. 1, comp. v.18
in the text of Tregelles and Westcott and Hort), cannot reasonably be regarded
as parallel to the present passage. This is candidly admitted by Schultz, who
has most elaborately defended the construction which refers the last part of
Rom. ix. 5 to Christ. He says, "Nach unseren Pramissen versteht sich
von selbst, das wir nicht etwa daraus, das der LOGOS QEOS gennant wird, Beweise
ziehen wollen fur die Zulassigkeit des Namens QEOS fur den verklarten
Jesus." (Jahrbucker fur deutsche Theol., 1868, xiii. 491.) I of course do
not enter here into the difficult questions as to what was precisely John's
conception of the Logos, and in what sense he says "the Word became
flesh," language which no one understands literally. We must consider also
the late date of the Gospel of John as compared with the Epistle to the
Romans.]
In reference to the early
apostolic preaching in particular, many of the Christian Fathers, and later
Trinitarian writers, have recognized a prudent reserve in the communication of
a doctrine concerning Christ and the application of a title to him which would
have provoked vehement opposition on the part of the unbelieving Jews, which
would have been particularly liable to be misunderstood by the Gentiles, and
must have required much careful explanation to reconcile it with the unity of
God and the humanity of Christ.
[For superabundant
quotations from the Christian Fathers confirming the statement made above,
notwithstanding a few mistakes, see Priestley's History of Early Opinions
concerning Jesus Christ, Book III. Chap. IV.-VII. (vol. p. 86 ff., ed. of
1786). Or see Chrysostom's Homilies on the Acts, passim. How this
doctrine would have struck a Jew may be seen from Justin Martyr's Dialogue
with Trypho.]
We nowhere find either in
the Acts or the Epistles any trace of the controversy and questionings which
the direct announcement of such a doctrine must have excited. The one aim of
the early apostolic preaching was to convince first the Jews, and then the Gentiles,
that Jesus, whose life and teaching were so wonderful, whom God had raised from
the dead, was the Messiah, exalted by God to be a Prince and a Saviour.
To acknowledge Jesus as the Christ, or Jesus as Lord, which is essentially the
same thing, was the one fundamental article of the Christian faith.
[See Neander, History of
the Planting and Training of the Christian Church by the Apostles, Book I.
Chap. II. Comp. Matt. xvi. 16; Mark viii. 29; Luke ix. 20; John vi. 9, xx. 31;
Acts ii. 36, v. 42, viii. 5, ix. 20, 22, xvii. 3, xviii. 5, 28; Rom. x. 9, nota
bene; 1 Cor. xii. 3; 2 Cor. iv. 5; 1 John iv. 2, v. 1.]
Much, indeed, was involved
in this confession; but it is now, I suppose, fully established and generally
admitted that the Jews in the time of Christ had no expectation that the coming
Messiah would be an incarnation of Jehovah, and no acquaintance with the
mystery of the Trinity.
[See the art. Messias,
by Oehler, in Herzog's Real-Encyklopadie der prot. Theol. und Kirsche,
ix. 437 ff., or in the new ed., vol. ix. (1881), p. 666 ff.; Ferd. Weber, System
der altsynagogalen palastin. Theol. (1880), p. 146 ff., 339ff. Passages
from the Rabbinical writings are sometimes adduced by commentators on Rom. ix.
Such being the state of the
case, it seems to me that, on the supposition that the Apostles were fully
enlightened in regard to the mystery of the Trinity and the hypostatic union,
the only tenable ground to be taken is that they wisely left these doctrines to
develop themselves gradually in "the Christian consciousness." As Dr.
Pye Smith remarks, "The whole revelation of the Christian system was given
by an advancing process. It cannot therefore, be a matter of surprise that the
doctrine concerning the person of the Messiah was developed gradually, and that
its clear manifestation is to be found in the latest written books of the New
Testament." (Ut Supra, p. 155.) Canon Westcott observes, "The
study of the Synoptics, of the Apocalypse, and of the Gospel of John in
succession enables us to see under what human conditions the full majesty of
Christ was perceived and declared, not all at once, but step by step, and by
the help of the old prophetic teaching." (Introd. to the Gospel of John
in the so-called "Speaker's Commentary," p. lxxxvii.) Canon Kennedy
even says: "I do not think that any apostle, John or Peter or Paul, was so
taught the full MUSTHERION QEOTHTOS as that they were prepared to formulate the
decrees of Nicaea and Constantinople, which after three hundred years and more,
of the Trinitarian exegesis, which was completed after six hundred years or
more. But they, with the other evangelists, guided by the Holy Spirit,
furnished the materials from which those doctrines were developed." (Ely
Lectures, p. xix.)
Taking all the facts into
consideration, is it probable that at this early day the Jewish Christians and
Gentile believers at Rome, who needed so much instruction in the very elements
of Christianity, were already so fully initiated into the mysterious doctrine
of the deity of Christ that the application of the term God to him, found in no
Christian writing that we know of till long after the date of this Epistle,
could have been familiar to them? Accustomed to the representation of him as
being distinct from God, would they not have been startled and amazed beyond
measure by finding him described as "over all, God blessed for ever"?
But if so, if this was a doctrine and a use of language with which they not
familiar, it is to me wholly incredible that the Apostle should have introduced
it abruptly in this incidental manner, and have left it without remark or
explanation.
Dr. Hermann Schultz, whose
elaborate dissertation on Rom. ix.5 has already been referred to. admits that
if EPI PANTWN QEOS was used here to designate the LOGOS, the eternal Son of
God,-in other words, if QEOS was used here in reference to the nature of
Christ,-"the strict monotheism of Paul would certainly require an
intimation that the honor due to God alone was not trenched upon"
(beeintrachtigt).
[Schultz, Jahrbucker f.
deutsche Theol., 1868, xiii. 484]
The expression he
maintains, describes "the dignity conferred on him by God" : the QEOS
here is essentially equivalent to KURIOS. "The predicate QEOS must be
perfectly covered by the subject CRISTOS, i.e. the Messianic human King of
Israel."
[This view of Schultz
appears to be that of Hofmann (Der Schriftbeweis, 2te Aufl, 1857 i 143) and
Weiss (Bibl. Theol. d. N.T., 3te Aufl. 1880, p. 283, note 5), as it was
formerly of Ritschl (Die Entstchung der Alkath Kirche, 2te Aufl., 1857, p.
But these concessions of
Schultz seem to me fatal to his construction of the passage. If QEOS, used in
the metaphysical sense, describing the nature of Christ, would confessedly need
explanation, to guard against an apparent infringement of the divine unity,
would not Paul's readers need to be cautioned against taking it in this sense,
- the sense which it has everywhere else in his writings? Again, if Paul by
QEOS here meant only KURIOS, why did he not say KURIOS, this being his constant
designation of the glorified Christ (comp. Phil. ii. 9-11)?
This leads me to notice further
the important passage, 1 Cor. viii. 6, already quoted (see above, p. 373). It
has often been said that the mention here of the Father as the "one
God" of Christians no more excludes Christ from being God and from
receiving this name.
[See, e.g., Chrys. De
incomprehens. Dei nat. Hom. v. c. I, Opp. i. 48I f. (509), ed. Montf.: EI GAP
TO ENA LEGESQAI QEON TON PATERA EKBALLEI TON UION THS QEOTHTOS, KAI, TO ENA
LEGESQAI KURION TON UION EKBALLEI TON PATERA THS KURIOTHTOS.]
But, in making this
statement, some important considerations are overlooked. In the first place,
the title "god" is unquestionably of far higher dignity than the
title "lord"; and because godship includes lordship, with all the
titles that belong to it, it by no means follows that lordship includes
godship, and has a right to its titles; in other words, that one who is
properly called a lord (KURIOS), as having servants or subjects or possessions,
may therefore be properly called a god (QEOS). In the second place, the
lordship of Christ is everywhere represented not as belonging to him by nature,
but as conferred upon him by the one God and Father of all. This lordship is
frequently denoted by the figurative expression, "sitting on the right
hand of God."
[See Knapp, De Jesu Christo
ad dextram Dei sedente, in his Scripta varii Argumenti, ed, 2da (1823), i.
39-76.]
The expression is borrowed
from Ps. cx., so often cited in the New Testament as applicable to Christ, and
particularly by Peter in his discourse on the day of Pentecost, who after
quoting the words, "The Lord [Jehovah] said unto my Lord [Adoni],
'Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thy foes thy footstool,'" goes on
to say, "Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God
hath MADE him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified" (Acts
ii. 35, 36). It is he to whom "all authority was given in heaven and on
earth," whom "God exaltedwith his right hand to be a Prince
and a Saviour"; "the God of our Lord Jesus Christ...put all things
in subjection under his feet and gave him to be head over all things
to the Church"; "gave unto him the name which is above every
name,...that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to
the glory of God, the Father." Such being Paul's conception of the
relation of Christ to God, is it not the plain meaning of the passage that,
while the heathen worship and serve many beings whom they call "gods"
and "lords," to Christians there is but one God, the Father, - one
being to whom they give that name, "from whom are all things" and who
is the object of supreme worship; and one being "through whom are all
things," through whom especially flow our spiritual blessings, whom
"God hath made both Lord and Christ," and whom Christians therefore
habitually call "the Lord"? The fact that this appellation of Christ,
under such circumstances, does not debar the Supreme Being from receiving the
name "Lord" obviously affords no countenance to the notion that Paul
would not hesitate to give to Christ the name "God." As a matter of
fact, "the Lord" is the common designation of Christ in the writings
of Paul, and is seldom used of God, except in quotation from, or references to
the language of the Old Testament.
["On the meaning of
KYRIOS in the New Testament, particularly on the manner in which this word is
employed by Paul in his Epistles," see the valuable article of Professor
Stuart in the Biblical Repository (Andover) for October, 1831, i. 733-776. His
view is that the KURIOTHS which Christ as the Messiah is a designated
dominion.]
There, in the Septuagint,
KURIOS is used of God sometimes as a proper name, taking the place of Jehovah
(Yahweh) on account of a Jewish superstition, amd sometimes as an appellative.
Glancing back now for a
moment over the field we have traversed, we mat reasonably say, it seems to me,
first, that the use of EULOGHTOS, elsewhere in the New Testament restricted to
God, the Father, - in connection with the exceeding rarity, if not absence, of
ascriptions of praise and thanksgiving to Christ in the writings of Paul and
their frequency in reference to God, - affords a pretty strong presumption in
favor of that construction of this ambiguous passage which makes the last
clause a doxology to the Father; secondly that some additional
confirmation is given to this reference by the EIS QEOS KAI PANTWN, O EPI
PANTWN in Eph. iv. 6; and, thirdly, that the at first view overwhelming
presumption in favor of the construction, founded on the uniform restriction of
the designation QEOS, occurring more than five hundred times, to God, the
Father, in the writings of Paul, is not weakened, but rather strengthened, by
our examination of the language which he elsewhere uses respecting the dignity
of Christ and his relation to God. And, though our sources of information are
imperfect, we have seen that there are very grave reasons for doubting whether
the use of QEOS as a designation of Christ belonged to the language of
Christians anywhere at so early a period as the date of this Epistle (cir. A.D.
58).
Beyond a doubt, all the
writers of the New Testament and the early preachers of Christianity believed
that God was united with the man Jesus Christ in a way unique and
peculiar, distinguishing him from all other beings; that his teaching and works
and character were divine; that God had raised him from the dead, and exalted
him to be a Prince and a Saviour; that he came, as the messenger of God's love
and mercy, to redeem men from sin, and make them truly sons of God; that
"God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself." But no New
Testament writer has defined the mode of this union with God. How much
light has been thrown upon the subject by the councils of Nicaea and
Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon, and the so-called Athanasian creed, is a
question on which there may be differences of opinion. The authority of
councils is another question. But it has been no part of my object, in
discussing the construction of the passage before us, to argue against the
doctrine of the Nicene Creed. My point is simply the use of language at
the time when this Epistle was written. The questions of doctrine and language
are, of course, closely connected, but are not identical. It seems to me that a
believer in the deity of Christ, admitting the fact that we have no clear
evidence that the "mediator between God and men" was ever called
"God" by any New Testament writer, or an very early preacher of
Christianity, may recognize therein a wise Providence which saved the nascent
Church from controversies and discussions for which ot was not then prepared.
III. We will now consider
some other constructions of the passage before us. (See above, p. 335.)
1. I refrain from
discussing in detail the comparative merits of Nos. 1 and 2. The advocates of
No. 1 observe correctly that it describes Christ as only EPI PANTWN QEOS, which
they say would identify him with the Father. But if the Father is "God
over all," and Christ is also "God over all," the question
naturally arises how the Father can be "the God over all," unless
the term "God" as applied to Christ is used in a lower sense. The
answers to this question would lead us beyond the sphere of exegesis, and I
pass it by. Meyer thinks that, if we refer the O WN to Christ, this is the most
natural construction of the words; and it seems to have been adopted by most of
the ancient Fathers who have cited the passage, at least after the Council of
Nicaea, and in nearly all the generally received modern translations, from
Luther and Tyndale downwards.
2. Construction No. 2 aims
to escape the difficulty presented by No. 1, but involves some ambiguities.
Does the sentence mean, “who is over all (Jews as well as Gentiles), and
who is also God blessed for ever“ (so Hofmann, Kahnis, Die Luth. Dogm. i.
(pp. 248, 254). Lange finds in the last clause “a quotation from the
synagogical liturgy,” together with “a strong Pauline
breviloquence,” the ellipsis in which he supplies in a manner that must always
hold a high Place among the curiosities of exegesis. He says, however, that
“every exposition is attended with great difficulties.” I cannot
discover that "God blessed for ever,” as a kind of compound name of
the Supreme Being, occurs in Jewish liturgies or anywhere else.
3. Construction No. 3 is
defended particularly by Gess, who maintains, in opposition to Schultz and
others, that QEOS here “nicht Christi Machtstellung sondern seine
Wesenheit bezeichnet.” (Christi Person und Werk 207.) But on this
supposition he admits that the connecting of QEOS with O WN EPI PANTWN would
present a serious difficulty. “The care with which Paul elsewhere chooses
his expressions in such a way that the supreme majesty of the Father shines
forth would be given up.” Meyer thinks that the punctuation adopted by
Morus and Gess makes “die Rede“ “noch zerstuckter, ja
kurzathmiger,” than construction No. 5. But this is rather a matter of
taste and feeling. The objections which seem to me fatal to all the
constructions which refer the name QEOS here to Christ have been set forth
above, and need not be repeated. If the view of Westcott and Hort is correct,
the construction of this passage adopted by Hippolytus (Cont. Noet. c. 6)
agrees with that of Gess in finding three distinct affirmations in the clause
beginning with O WN, in opposition to those who would read it MONOKWLWS. But
the passage in Hippolytus is obscure. See below under IV.
4. Under No. 4 I have
noticed a possible construction, for which, as regards the essential point, I
have referred to Wordsworth's note in his N. T. in Greek, new ed., vol. ii.
(1864). He translates in his note on ver. 5: “He that is existing above
all, God Blessed for ever,” and remarks:
"There is a special emphasis on O WN. He that is; He Who is the being One;
JEHOVAH. See John i. i8; Rev. i. 4,8; iv. 8; xi. 17; xvi. 5, compared with
Exod. iii. 14, EGO EIMI O WN. And compare on Gal. iii. 20." He Who came of
the Jews, according to the flesh, is no other than O WN, the BEING ONE,
JEHOVAH.” We have an assertion of “His Existence from Everlasting
in O WN.” He mistranslates the last part of Athanasius, Orat. cont.
Arian. i. § 24, p. 338, thus: "Paul asserts that He is the splendour of
His Father's Glory, and is the Being One, over all, God Blessed for
ever.” In his note on vv. 4, 5, on the other hand, he translates the
present passage: “ Christ came, Who is over all, God Blessed for
ever.”
There is some confusion
here. The verb EIMI may denote simple existence; it may (in contrasts) denote
real in distinction from seeming existence; it may be, and commonly is, used as
a mere copula, connecting the subject with the predicate. As applied to the
Supreme Being in Exod. iii. 14 (Sept.), Wisd. Sol. xiii. I, etc., O WN,
“He who Is,” describes him as possessing not on1y real, but
independent and hence eternal existence. This latter use is altogether
peculiar. To find it where WN is used as a copula, or to suppose that the two
uses can be combined, is purely fanciful and arbitrary. It was not too fanciful
and arbitrary, however, for some of the Christian Fathers, who argue Christ's
eternal existence from the use of WN or O WN (or qui est) in such passages as
John i. 18; iii. 13 (T.R.); vi. 46: Rom. ix. 5; Heb. i. 3. So Athanasius, as
above ; Epiphanius, Ancorat. C. 5; Gregory of Nyssa, Adv. Eunom. lib. x., Opp.
(1638) ii. 680-4582; Pseudo-Basi1, Adv. Ennom. iv. 2, Opp. i. 282 (399);
Chrysostom, Opp. i.
5. The construction,
“from whom is the Messiah as to the flesh, he who is over all: God be
blessed for ever!“ has found favor with some eminent scholars (see below
under IV.), and deserves consideration. If adopted, I think we should
understand O WN EPI PANTWN not as meaning “he who is superior to all the
patriarchs" (Justi and others), which is tame, and would hardly be
expressed in this way; nor “he who is over all things,” which,
without qualification, seems too absolute for Paul; but rather, "who is
Lord of all” (Jews and Gentiles alike), comp. Acts x. 36 ; Rom. x. 12,
xi. 32; who, though he sprang from the Jews, is yet, as the Messiah, the ruler
of a kingdom which embraces all men. (See Wetstein's note, near the end.) The
natural contrast suggested by the mention of Christ's relation to the Jews KATA
SARKA may justify us in assuming this reference of PANTWN, which also accords
with the central thought of the Epistle. The doxology, however, seems
exceedingly abrupt and curt; and we should expect O QEOS instead of QEOS as the
subject of the sentence, though in a few cases the word stands in the
nominative without the article. Grimm compares QEOS MARTUS, I Thess. ii. 5,
with MARTUS O QEOS, Rom. i. 9; also 2 Cor. v. 19; Gal. ii. 6, vi. 7; Luke xx.
38(?). We should also rather expect EULOGHTOS to stand first in the doxology;
but the position of words in Greek is so largely subjective, depending on the
feeling of the writer, that we cannot urge this objection very strongly. The
thought, so frequent in Paul, of God as the source, in contrast with, or rather
in distinction from, Christ as the medium of the Messianic blessings, may have
given the word QEOS prominence. (See above, p.
6. The construction
numbered 6 was, I believe, first proposed by Professor Andrews Norton, in his
review of Professor Stuart's Letters to Dr. Channing. This was published in the
Christian Disciple (Boston) for 1819, new series, vol. i. p. 370 ff.; on Rom.
ix. 5, see p. 418 ff. The passage is discussed more fully in his Statement of
Reasons, etc. (Cambridge and Boston), 1833, p. 147 ff.; new ed. (ster. 1856),
r. 203 ff., 470 ff., in which some notes were added by the writer of the
present essay. There, after giving as the literal rendering, “He who was
over all was God, blessed for ever,” Mr. Norton remarks : “He who
was over all,' that is, over all which has just been mentioned by the
Apostle.” “Among the privileges and distinctions of the Jews, it
could not be forgotten by the Apostle, that God had presided over all their
concerns in a particular manner.”
There is no grammatical
objection to this construction of the passage. (See above, p. 346, 1st paragr.)
Mr. Norton, in translating vv. 4 and 5, uses the past tense in supplying the
ellipsis of the substantive verb. This is done by other translators; e.g.,
Conybeare and Howson. It may be questioned, however, whether this is fully
justified here. Canon Kennedy uses the present tense, but seems to take the
same general view of the bearing of the passage as Mr. Norton. See his
Occasional Sermons, pp. 64, 65, and Ely Lecturcs, pp. 88, 89.
As regards this view of the
passage, I will only say here that the thought presented in Mr. Norton's
translation did not need to be expressed, as it is fully implied in the nature
of the privileges and distinctions enumerated. (See above, p. 341.) Taking
Professor Kennedy's rendering, I doubt whether the Apostle would have used this
language in respect to the relation existing between God and the Jewish people
at the time when he was writing. The Jews gloried in God as their God in a
special sense (Rom. ii. 17); but, in Paul's view, it was Christians, now, who
rightfully gloried in God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. v. 11; comp. iii.
29).
7. I add a single remark,
which might more properly have been made before. I have rendered O CRISTOS here
not “Christ,” as a mere proper name, but “the Messiah.”
Not only the use of the article, but the context, seems to me to require this.
Westcott and Hort observe in regard to the word CRISTOS “We doubt whether
the appellative force, with its various associations and implications, is ever
entirely lost in the New Testament, and are convinced that the number of
passages is small in which Messiahship, of course in the enlarged apostolic
sense, is not the principal intention of the word.” (The N.T. in Greek,
vol. ii., Introd., p. 317.)
IV. We will now take notice
of some points connected with the history of the interpretation of Rom. ix. 5.
The fullest account of this is perhaps that given by Schultz in the article
already repeatedly referred to; but he is neither very thorough nor very
accurate.
The application of the passage by the Christian Fathers will naturally come
first under consideration.
The fact that the great majority of the Fathers whose writings have come down
to us understood the last part of the verse to relate to Christ has been
regarded by many as a very weighty argument in favor of that construction. I
have had occasion to consider the value of this argument in connection with
another passage. (See Essay XVIII., p. 445.) The remarks there made apply
equally to the present case. The fact that the Fathers, in quoting a passage grammatically
ambiguous, have given it a construction which suited their theology, does not
help us much in determining the true construction. We must remember, also, the
looser use of the term QEOS which prevailed in the latter part of the second
century and later. (See above, p.
The specimen of patristic
exegesis in the construction given to 2 Cor. iv. 4, where so many of the
Fathers make the genitive TOU AIWNOS depend not on O QEOS, but TWN APISTWN (see
Essay XVIII., u.s.), will be sufficient for most persons who wish to form an
estimate of their authority in a case like the present. I will only ask
further, taking the first examples that occur to me, how much weight is to be
attributed to the judgment of Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, Chrysostom,
Theodoret, Isidore of Pelusium, Gennadius, Theodorus Monachus, Joannes
Damascenus(?), Photius, Ecumenius (or what passes under his name), and
Theophylact, when, in their zeal for the freedom of the will, they explain
PROQESIS in Rom. viii. 28 (TOIS KATA PROQESIN KLHTOIS), not as denoting the
Divine purpose, but the purpose or choice of the subjects of the call? (Cyril
of Alexandria gives the words both meanings at the same time.) What is the
value of the opinion of Chrysostom, Joannes Damascenus, Ecumenius, and
Theophylact, that DIA IHSOU CRISTOU in Rom. xvi. 27 is to be construed with
STHRIZAI in ver. 25? Shall we accept the exegesis of Chrysostom and Theophylact
when they tell us that in the injunction of Christ in Matt. v. 39 not to resist
TW PONHRW TW PONHRW means the devil?
Dean Burgon, in his article
on “New Testament Revision“ in the Quart. Rev. for Jan., 1882,* has
given (p. 54 if.) perhaps the fullest enumeration yet presented of ancient
Christian writers who have referred the O WN, K.T.L. in Rom. ix. 5 to Christ.
He counts up “55 illustrious names,” forty of Greek writers, from
Irenaeus in the latter part of the second century to John of Damascus in the
eighth, and fifteen of Latin writers, from Tertullian at the beginning of the
third century to Facundus in the sixth, “who all see in Rom. ix.
[Reprinted in The Revision
Revised (London, 1883); see p. 212.]
An examination of his list
will show that it needs some sifting. Most of the Latin writers whom he
mentions, as Augustine, knew little or nothing of Greek, and their authority
cannot be very weighty in determining the construction of an ambiguous Greek
sentence. Of his illustrious names, six are unfortunately unknown, being
writers “of whom,” as Mr. Burgon mildly puts it, “ 3 have
been mistaken for Athanasius, and 3 for Chrysostom.” Another is the
illustrious forger of the Answers to Ten Questions of Paul of Samosata,
fathered upon Dionysius of Alexandria, “certainly spurious,”
according to Cardinal Newman and the best scholars generally, and marked as
pseudonymous by Mr. Burgon himself. Methodius should also have been cited as
Pseudo-Methodius (see p.
Next to the six bishops and “ps.-Dionysius Alex.” in Mr. Burgon's
list of the illustrious Fathers “who see in Rom. ix.
One is surprised, after
this, to find that Mr. Burgon did not cite for the same purpose Pseudo-Ignatius
ad Tars. cc. 2, 5, and ad Philip. c. 7, where it is denied emphatically that
Christ is O EPI PANTWN QEOS; and also Origen, Cont. Cels. viii. 14, who says:
“Grant that there are some among the multtitude of believers, with their
differences of opinion, who rashly suppose that the Saviour is the Most High
God over all; yet certainly we do not, for we believe him when he said, The
Father who sent me is greater than I.” The very strong language which
Origen uses in many other places, respecting the inferiority of the Son,
renders it unlikely that he applied the last part of this verse to Christ. See,
e.g., Cont. Cels. viii. 15; De Princip. i. 3. §5; In Ioan. tom. ii. cc. 2, 3,
6; vi. 23 ; xiii. 25. Rufinus's Latin version of Origen's Commentary on Romans,
which is the only authority for ascribing to Origen the common interpretation
of this passage, is no authority at all. He, according to his own account of
his work, had so transformed it by omissions, additions, and alterations, that
his friends thought he ought to claim it as his own.
[See his Peroratio at the
end of the Epistle; Origenis Opp. iv.
It was in accordance with
his professed principles to omit or alter in the works which he translated
whatever he regarded as dangerous, particularly whatever did not conform to his
standard of orthodoxy. His falsification of other writings of Origen is
notorious. Westcott and Hort remark that in the Rufino-Origenian commentary on
this verse “there is not a trace of Origenian language, and this is one
of the places in which Rufinus would not fail to indulge his habit of altering
an interpretation which he disapproved on doctrinal grounds.“ They also
remark, “It is difficult to impute Origen's silence to accident in the
many places in which quotation would have been natural had he followed the
common interpretation.”
Origen should therefore be
henceforth excluded from the list of Fathers cited in support of the common
punctuation. It is even “probable,” as Westcott and Hort maintain,
though “not certain,” that he and Eusebius gave the passage a
different construction.
[I have represented the
eminent scholars named above as regarding it as “probable though not
certain” that these Fathers understood the last clause as relating to
God. Their note does imply that they are inclined to this view; but subsequent
examination leads me to suppose that the words quoted were intended to apply to
the Apostolic Constitutions and the Pseudo-Ignatius. Westcott and Hort also
refer, for the application of the phrase O EPI PANTWN QEOS to the Father in
distinction from Christ, to “Melito p. 413 Otto,” i.e., to his
Apol. fragm. 2; comp. Routh, 1. 118, ed. alt.]
As regards Eusebius, the
presumption is perhaps even stronger than in the case of Origen. He has nowhere
quoted the passage; but in very numerous places in his writings he uses O EPI
PANTWN QEOS as a title exclusively belonging to the Father, and insists upon this
against the Sabellians.
[See, for example, De EccL
Theol. i. 3, 7, 8, 11, 20; ii. i, 4, 5 (pp. 63 c,
I admit that these
consideratiohs are not decisive; he and Origen may have given the passage an
interpretation similar to that of Hippolytus; but, if they understood it to
relate to Christ, it is certainly strange that they have nowhere quoted it in
their numerous writings.
The assumption that
Irenaeus referred the last part of this verse to Christ must be regarded as
doubtful. The only place where he has quoted it is Haer. iii. i6. (al. i8.)
§ 3, where his text is preserved only in the Old Latin version, which of course
cannot determine the construction which Irenaeus put upon the Greek. He does
not quote it to prove that Christ is QEOS, - the Gnostics gave the name QEOS to
their AEons, and also to the Demiurgus,— but to prove the unity of the
Christ with the man Jesus, in opposition to the Gnostics who maintained that
the AEon Christ did not descend upon Jesus till his baptism. He had just before
(~2) quoted Matt. i. 18 for this purpose (reading TOU DE CRISTOU); he now quotes
Rom. 1. 3, 4; ix. 5; and Gal. iv. 4, 5, for the same purpose. His argument
rests on the EX WN O CRISTOS TO KATA SARKA, and not on the last part of the
verse, on which he makes no remark. Throughout his work against Heresies, and
very often, Irenaeus uses the title “the God over all“ as the
exclusive designation of the Father.
[Semler (Ep ad
Griesbachium, 1770, p. 77 ff.; Antwort, etc. 1770, p. 45) and Whitby (Disq
modestae, p
The passage in which
Hippolytus quotes Rom. ix. 5 (Cont. Noet. c. 6) has already been noticed. (See
above, pp. 378, 383.) The Noetians and Patripassians, according to him, quoted
the text to prove the identity of Christ with the Father. (Ibid cc. 2, 3.) He
complains that they treat the words MONOKWLWS (or ,MONOKWLA); comp. Epiph. Haer
lvii. 2. Westcott and Hort understand this to mean that they read all the words
from KAI EX WN to AIWNOS “as a single clause.” Semler once took
nearly the same view (Hist. Einl. zu S. J. Baumgarten's Unters. theol.
Streitigkeiten, 1762, i. 217, n. 205), but was afterwards doubtful about it
(ibid p. 236, n. 235). Fabricius in his note on the passage, and Salmond in his
translation of Hippolytus in the Ante-Nicene Christ. Library, ix. 53, give a
very different explanation. To discuss the matter here would require too much
space, but it seemed well to mention it. Possibly in Cont. Noet. c. 6 EULOGHTOS
is misplaced through the mistake of a scribe, and should stand before EIS TOUS
AIWNOS.
Dean Burgon refers also to “Phil.
I note in passing that
Tischendorf cites incorrectly for the reference of the O WN, etc., to Christ
“Meth. conviv 805 (Gall 3).” The passage referred to is not from
the Convivium, but from the discourse of the Pseudo-Methodius De Simeone ct
Anna, c. 1, ad fin., where we have the mere expression THS ASTEKTOU DOWHS TOU
EPI PANTWN QEOU SUGKATABASIN. This is also one of Dean Burgon's authorities;
but, as the writer explains himself (c. 2, ad fin.), he seems to mean by
“the glory of the God over all“ not the glory of the Son considered
by himself, but the glory of the whole Trinity. There is no quotation of Rom.
ix. 5 here.
The passage of Amphilochius
(Gallandi vi. 409, or Migne xxxix. 101) which Tischendorf adduces, with a
videtur; as a reference of Rom. ix. 5 to the Father, seems analogous to the
above, and hardly proves anything on one side or the other.
In the quotation of Rom.
ix.
The Emperor Julian has
already been referred to. (See above, p. 346, note.) He was as good a judge of
the construction of a Greek sentence as Cyril of Alexandria, or any other of
the Fathers, and quite as likely to interpret impartially. Well acquainted with
the writings of the Christians, he could hardly have overlooked passages so
frequently quoted in the controversies on the nature of Christ as Rom. ix. 5
and Tit. ii. 13. But he did not find the title QEOS given to Christ in these or
any other places (e.g., I Tim. iii. 16) in the writings of Paul.
Among the orthodox Greek
Fathers, Diodorus (of Antioch and Tarsus) and Photius appear to have understood
the O WN, etc., to refer to God. The comment of Diodorus on this passage is
preserved in the important Catena on the Epistle to the Romans published by
Cramer from a MS. in the Bodleian Library (Cramer's Catenae in N.T., vol. iv.,
Oxon. 1844). The essential part of it reads : KAI TO MENISTON, EX WN O CRISTOS,
TO KATA SARKA. EX AUTWN, FHSIN, O CRISTOS. QEOS DE OU MONWN AUTWN, ALLA KOINH
EPI PANTWN ESTI QEOS. (p. 162.) This appears to mean, “From them, he
says, is the Messiah. But GOD belongs not to them alone, but is God over all
men alike.” Meyer, Tholuck, Philippi, and Schultz understand it as
relating to the Father. I do not perceive that this reference is affected by
the fact that Theodore of Mopsuestia, a pupil of Diodorus, who has borrowed
much of the language of this comment, gives the last part a different turn: KAI
TO DH MENISTON, EX AUTWN KAI O CRISTOS TO KATA SARKA, OS ESTI QEOS OU MONON
AUTWN, ALLA KOINH PANTWN. (Migne, Patrol Cr. lxvi. 833.) Had it been the
purpose of Diodorus to express this meaning, he would probably have inserted ESTIN
after QEOS DE or have written OS ESTIN. The omission of the article before QEOS
creates no difficulty in taking QEOS as the subject of the sentence. It is
often omitted in such a case by these later Greek writers.
Diodorus, it will be
remembered, was the founder of a comparatively rational, grammatico-historical,
and logical school of interpretation, in opposition to the arbitrary exegesis
of Scripture which had prevailed among the Fathers.
The passage in Photius
(Cont. Manich. iii. 14) appears to be unequivocal: “He cries with a loud
voice, whose are the covenants, and the laws (AI NOMOQESIAI), and the promises,
and the holy serviccs (AI LATREIAI); and showing most clearly whence these
things are and on whose providence they have depended [he adds] O WN EPI PANTWN
QEOS EULOGHTOS EIS TOUS AIWNOS. AMHN."
“So the laws and the holy services and the promises, in the observance of
which the fathers pleased God, and from whom as to his humanity sprang the
Messiah, are from the God over all, TOU EPI PANTWN QEOU.” (Migne, Patrol.
Gr. cii. i57.)
Schultz, in the essay so often referred to (p. 480, note 2), says that
Theodulus in loc. seems to refer the last part of our verse to God. He
misapprehends the meaning of the passage in Theodulus, and does not observe that
it is taken from Ecumenius.
[ See Biblioth. max. vet
Patrum, viii. 605, or the Monumenta S. Patrum Orthodoxographa of Grynaeus, ii
1163.]
The Enarratio in Ep. ad
Romanos, which, in a Latin translation, passes under the name of Theodulus,
does not belong to the presbyter or bishop in Ceole-Syria of that name, who
died A.D. 492, but is a very late Catena. (See Cave.)
A few words now respecting
the Latin Fathers who have quoted Rom. ix. 5.
Tertullian is the first. He
quotes it once as below, and once (Prax. c. 15) with super omnia before deus.
[After remarking that he
never speaks of Gods or Lords, but following the Apostle, when the Father and
Son are to be named together, calls the Father God and Jesus Christ Lord, he
says " Solum autem Christum potero deum dicere, sicut idem apostolus. Ex
quibus Christus, qui est, inquit, deus super omnia benedictus in aevum omne.
Nam et radium solis seorsum solem vocabo; solem aütem nominans, cuius est
radius, non statim et radium solem appellabo." (Prax. C. 13, ed. Oehler.)
This accords with his language elsewhere : "Protulit deus sermonem . . .
sicut radix fruticem, et fons fluvium, et sol radium.” (Prax. c. 8.)
" Cum radius ex sole porrigitur, portio ex summa; sed sol erit in radio .
. . nec separatur substantia, sed extenditur.” (Apologet. C. 21.) "
Pater tota substantia est; filius vero derivatio totius a portio; sicut ipse
profitetur, Quia pater maior me est.” (Prax. c. 9.) “ Sermo deus,
quia ex deo. . . . Quodsi deus dei tanquam substantiva res, non erit ipse deus
(AUTOQEOS), sed hactenus deus, qua ex ipsius substantia, ut portio aliqua
totius.” (Prax. c. 26.)
Cyprian simply cites the passage to prove that Christ is deus (qui est
super omnia deus benedictus in saecula), without remark.. (Testim. ii. 6.)
Novatian has already been spoken of. (See above, p. 378, note.)
I know of no trace of the
reference of the last part of the verse to God among the Latin writers, except
what may be implied in the language of the Pseudo-Ambrosius (Ambrosiaster),
commonly identified with Hilary the deacon, in his commentary on the Epistle.
He remarks : “Si quis autem non putat de Christo dictum, qui est Deus,
det personam de qua dictum est. De patre enim Deo hoc loco mentio facta non
est.” This is repeated in the commentary of Rabanus Maurus (Migne,
Patrol. Lat. cxi. col. 1482). The same in substance appears in the Quaest. Vet.
et Nov. Test, qu. 91, formerly ascribed to Augustine, and printed in the Benedictine
edition of his works, Opp. III. ii. 2915, ed. Bened. alt. : “Sed forte ad
Patris personam pertinere dicatur. Sed
hoc loco nulla est Paterni nominis mentio. Ideoque si de Christo dictum
negatur, persona cui competat detur. “ (This work is generally ascribed
to the Hilary mentioned above.) The writer seems to have heard of those who
interpreted the passage of God; and, relying apparently upon the Latin version,
he meets their interpretation of the Greek with a very unintelligent objection.
The Greek Fathers in Mr.
Burgon’s list who have not already been mentioned are the following :
Athanasius, Basil, Didymus, Gregory of Nyssa, Epiphanius, Theodorus Mops.,
Eustathius, Eulogius, Theophilus Alex. , Nestorius, Theodotus of Ancyra,
Chrysostom, Theodoret, Gelasius Cyz., Anastasius Ant., Leontius Byz., Maximus.
Of the Latins, Ambrose, Hilary, Jerome, Victorinus, the Breviarium, Marius
Mercator, Cassian, Alcimus Avit., Fulgentius, Ferrandus.
"Against such a
torrent of Patristic testimony,” says Mr. Burgon, “"it will
not surely be pretended that the Socinian interpretation, to which our
Revisionists give such prominence, can stand.”
But to what does it all
amount? Simply to the fact that a mass of writers, to the judgrnent of most of
whom an intelligent scholar would attach very little weight in any question of
exegesis, have followed that construction of an ambiguous passage which suited
their theological opinions. Out of the whole list, the two, I suppose, who
would be most generally selected as distinguished from the rest for sobriety
and good sense in interpretation are Chrysostom and Theodoret. Yet both of them
adopted that excessively unnatural, if not impossible, construction of 2 Cor.
iv. 4 of which I have spoken above. (See p. 387.)
The same general
considerations apply to the ancient versions, some of which are ambiguous here,
as Westcott and Hort remark, though the translators probably intended to have
the last part of the verse understood of Christ.
We will now dismiss the
Fathers, and notice some facts belonging to the more recent history of the interpretation
of our passage.
[Literature.- The
older literature is given by Wolf (Curae) and Lilienthal (Biblischer
Archivarius, 1745). For the more recent, see Danz, and especially Schultz
an the article so often referred to; also, among the commentators, Meyer and
Van Hengel. E. F. C. Oertel (Christologie, Hamb. 1792, p. 216 ff.) gives a
brief account of the controversy excited by Semler (1769,71); see also the
works named by Schultz, especially Hirt’s Orient. u. exeg. Bibliothek,
1772, 1773. The name Bremer (Schultz, p. 463, note 2) is a misprint for
Benner.]
I take up the different
constructions in the order in which they are numbered above, p. 335.
The three most important recent discussions of the passage outside of the
commentaries, before that of Dr. Dwight, are by Dr Hermann Schultz. in the Jahrbucher
f. deutche Theol., 1868, pp. 462-506, who defends constructions Nos. 1-3,
with a slight preference for No. 1 (p. 483) ; Dr. C. L. Wilibald Grimm, in
Hilgenfeld’s Zeitschr. f. wiss. Theol., 1869, pp. 311-322, who
adopts No. 5; and Pastor Ernst Harmsen, ibid., 1872, pp. 510-521, who adopts
No. 7. There is a brief discussion of the passage by Dr. G. Vance Smith, Canon
Farrar, and Dr. Sanday, in the Expositor for May, 1879, ix. 397-405, and
Septembur, 1879, x. 232-238. There was a more extended debate in the Independent
(New York) for Aug. 12, Oct. 14, 21, 28, and Nov. 18,
1-3. It would be idle to
give a list of the supporters of Nos. 1-3, who refer the clause in question to
Christ. Among the commentators, perhaps the more eminent and best known are
Calvin, Beza, Hammond, LeClerc, Limborch, Bengel, Michaelis, Koppe, Flatt, Tholuck,
Olshausen, Stuart, Hodge, Philippi, Lange (with Schaff and Riddle), Hofmann,
Weiss, Godet, Alford, Vaughan, Sanday (very doubtfully), Gifford. That the
Roman Catholic commentators, as Estius, Klee, Stengel, Reithmayr, Maier,
Beelen, Bisping (not very positively), Jatho, Klofutar (188o), should adopt
this explanation, is almost a matter of course. This construction of the verse
is accepted by all the Fratres Poloni, who did not hesitate to give the name
God to Christ, and to worship him, recognizing of course the supremacy of the
Father, to whom they applied the name God in a higher sense; so
Socinus. Opp. ii. 581, 582,
[Socinus speaks of the
punctuation and construction proposed by Erasmus, a believer in the deity of
Christ, which makes the O WN, etc., a doxology to God, the Father, and says:
"Non est ulla causa, cur haec interpretatio, vel potius lectio et
interpunctio Erasmi rejici posse videatur; nisi una tantum, quam Adversarii non
afferunt; neque enim illam ammadverterunt. Ea est, quod, cum simplex nomen
Benedictus idem significat quod Benedictus sit, semper fere solet anteponi ei,
ad quem refertur, perraro autem postponi."
Some of those who are shocked at what they call "Socinian glosses"
might perhaps learn a lesson of candor and fairness from this heretic.]
With a singular disregard
of these historical facts, Dean Burgon holds up his hands in holy horror at the
marginal renderings of the Revised New Testament at Rorn. ix. 5, ascribed to
“some modern Interpreters,” and stigmatizes them as “the
Socinian gloss”! (Quart. Rev., Jan., 1882, p. 54 [Revision Revised].)
The Italics are his. He seems throughout his article to imagine himself to be
writing for readers who will take an opprobrious epithet for an argument. The
real "Socinian gloss" is adopted, and the arguments for it are
repeated, as we have seen, by the latest prominent defender of the construction
which Mr. Burgon himself maintains. Among English commentators, compare
Macknight on the passage.
A slight qualification or
supplement of the above statement is, however, required. Schlichting, though he
does not object to the common construction, misled by Erasmus, is inclined to suspect
the genuineness of the word QEOS. It is important, in reference to the history
of the interpretation of this passage, to observe that the statement of
Erasmus, in regard to the omission of this word in the quotations by some
Fathers, led many astray; among others, Grotius, who also incorrectly
represents the word God as wanting in the Syriac version. Schoettgen
misrepresented the case still worse, saying, by mistake of course, "Hoc
verbum quamplurimi Codices, quidam etiam ex Patribus, non habent."
Schlichting also suggests,
as what “ venire alicui in mentem posset,” the somewhat famous
conjecture of WN O for O WN, but rejects it. It was taken up afterwards,
however, by a man far inferior in judgment, Samuel Crell (not to be confounded
with the eminent commentator), in the Initium Ev. S. Joannis restitum
(1726), published under the pseudonym of L.M. Artemonius. Its superficial
plausibility seems to have fascinated many; among them Whitby (Last Thoughts),
Jackson of Leicester (Annot. ad Novat p. 341), John Taylor of Norwich, Goadby,
Wakefield (Enquiry), Bishop Edmund Law (Wakefield’s Memoirs, i. 447),
Belsham (Epistles of Paul), John Jones, and David Schulz (so says
Baurngarten-Crusius). Even Doddridge and Harwood speak of it as
“ingenious,” and Olshausen calls it “scharfsinnig.” It
is quite indefensible.
Among the writers on
Biblical Theology, Usteri (Paulin. Lthrbcgit, 5te Ausg., 1834, p. 324 1.)
refers the clause in question to Christ, but strongly expresses his sense of
the great difficulties which this involves. He is influenced especially by
Ruckert (1831), who afterwards changed his mind. Messner (1856, p.
For the most elaborate
defences of the construction we are considering, besides those which have
already been mentioned, one may consult Dr. John Pye Smith’s Scripture
Tcstimony to the Messiah, 5th ed. (1859), vol. ii. pp. 370-377, 401-405, and
the commentaries of Flatt (from whom Professor Stuart has borrowed largely) and
Philippi.
4. Construction No. 4 has
akeady been sufficiently noticed. (See above, p. 383.)
5. The construction which
puts a colon or a period after PANTWN, making the clause beginning with QEOS a
doxology to God, seems to have been first suggested by Erasmus in the
Annotations to his third edition of the Greek Testament
(1522), repeated in the fourth (1527). In his later writings, and in the note
in his last edition (1535), while recognizing the possibility of this
construction, he gave the preference to No. 7.
[Erasmi Opp., Lugd. Bat.
I703 ff., vol. vi.
It was adopted by Locke in
his posthumous Paraphrase, etc. (London, 1705, and often) : “and
of them, as to his fleshly extraction, Christ is come, he who is over all, God
be blessed for ever, Amen.” Locke’s construction was preferred by
Wetstein in the important note on the passage in his Greek Testament, vol. ii.
(1752), and was adopted by Prof. L. J. C. Justi in Paulus’s Memorabilieu,
1791 , St. i. pp. 1-26, treated more fully in his Vèrmischte Abhandlungen, 2te
Samml., 1798, pp. 309-346; also by E. F. C. Oertel, Christologie (1792), p.
The best defence of this view, perhaps, is to be found in the article of Grimm,
referred to above.
6. On construction No. 6,
see above, p.
7. Erasmus in his
translation renders the words of the last part of our verse thus : “et ii,
ex quibus est Christus quantum attinet ad carnem, qui est in omnibus detis
laudandus in secula, amen.” His paraphrase seems a little ambiguous.
[At Christus sic est homo,
ut idem et Deus sit, non huius aut illius gentis peculiaris, sed universorum
Deus, et idem cum patre Deus, qui (Christus? pater? or Pater cum Christo?)
praesidet omnibus, cuiusque inscrutibili consilio geruntur haec omnia, cui soli
. . . debetur iaus,” etc. One suggestion of Erasmus is that the word
“ God “ in the last clause may denote the whole Trinity.]
But in the note in his last
edition (1535), and in his later writings, he clearly indicates his preference
for construction No. 7.
[See especially his Apol.
adv. monachos quosdam Hispanos(written in 1528), Opp. ix. IO43-47 :
“Ego coram Deo Profiteor mihi videri Paulum hoc sensisse, quod modo
significavimus, nec hunc sermonem proprie ad Christum pertinere, sed vel ad
Patrem, vel ad totam Trinitatem”
(col. 1045). Cump. Resp. ad Juvenem Gerontodidascalum (written 1532), col 1002:
"ipsa res loquitor, verba Pauli nullum sensum evidentius reddere quam
hunc: Deus, qui est super omnia, sit benedictus in secula. Cui precationi
accinitur, Amen.” See also above, under No. 5.]
Bucer (or Butzer) in loc.
(1536?), as quoted by Wetstein, suggests this construction as an alternative
rendering. Curcellaeus (Courcelles) in his edition of the Greek Testament
published in 1658 (also 1675, 1685, 1699) notes that “Quidam addunt
punctum post vocem SARKA quia si id quod sequitur cum praecedentibus connecteretur,
potius dicendum videatur OS ESTI, vel OS WN, quam O WN."
Among thosc who have
adopted or favored this construction are Whiston, in his Primitive Christianity
Reviv'd, vol. iv. (1711), p. 13 ff. ; and Dr. Samuel Clarke, in his Scripture
Doctrine of the Trinity, London, 1712, 3d ed., 1732, p. 85 ff. He gives also as
admissible constructions No. 5 and No. 2, but places No. 7 first. He was, as is
well known, one of the best classical scholars of his day, as well as one of
the ablest metaphysicians and theologians. So John Jackson of Leicester, in his
Annot. ad Novatianum (1726), p. 341,
401
though captivated by the specious but worthless conjecture of WN O; Wetstein,
as an alternative rendering, but rather preferring to place the stop after
PANTWN (see the end of his note) ; Semmler, Paraph. Ep. ad Rom. (1769), p. 114
ff., and in many other writings; on the literature of the Semler controversy,
see the references given above, p. 396 n. Semler was not so well acquainted
with the writings of the later as with those of the earlier Fathers, and in
this part of the field of debate his adversaries had the advantage. But he gave
a stimulus to a freer and more impartial treatment of the question. Eckermann
adopted the construction we are now considering in the sccand edition (1795) of
his Theologische Beytrage Bd. I. St. iii. pp. 160-162, though in the first
edition he had opposed it.
Coming now to the present
century, we find this construction adopted by the commentators C. F. Boehme
(Lips. I806), and H. E. G. Paulus, Des Apostels Paulus Lehr-Briefe an die
Galater- und Romer-Christen (Heidelb. 1831), where he translates (p. 102) :
“ Der uber alle (Juden und Heiden) seyende Gott sey gepriesen auf (alle)
die Zeitalter hinaus “by Professor J . F. Winzer of Leipzig in a Programma
on Rom. ix. 1-5 (Lips. 1832), which I have not seen, but find highly praised;
and Karl Schrader, Der Apostel Paulus (1833), p. 75, and Theil iv.
(1835), p. 355. He translates, “ Der uber Allem Seiende (der welcher uber
Allem ist,) Gott, gelobt (sei gelobt) in Ewigkeit ! “ It is adopted in
three commentaries of remarkable independence and ability which appeared in
1834, namely : those of Proffessor J. G. Reiche of Gottingen, whose note (Theil
ii. pp. 268-278) is one of the fullest and best discussions of the passage,
though he makes some mistakes about the Fathers; Professor Eduard Koellner of
Gottingen ; and Dr. Conrad Glockler, whom Professor Stuart calls “a
Nicenian “ as regards his theological position. K. G. Bretschneider, in the
fourth edition of his Handbuch der Dogmatik (1838), i.
u.s.w. (1845), p. 322, though in an earlier work, Neutest. Handworterbuch
(1843), art. Christus, p. 114, he had cited Rorn. ix.
Baur, who makes the passage
a doxology to God, has some valuable remarks upon it in his Paulus (1845), p.
We may notice here the
great commentators De Wette and Meyer. De Wette, not perfectly satisfied with
any view, yet wavers between constructions Nos. 5 and 7 ; see abovc under No.
p. 249, and in the second edition of his translation of the New Testament
(1832), he had taken the name “ God “ here
as a designation of Christ ; but in the third edition of his translation (1839)
he makes it begin a doxology. Meyer in his Das N.T. griechisht mit einer neuen
deutschen Ueberstezung (1829) followed the common construction; but in the
first edition of his Comm. (1836), and all later editions, he makes the passage
a doxology to God. His collaborator, Huther, maintains in his note on Titus ii.
13 that the name QEOS is not given to Christ in any of the New Testament
Epistles.
In 1855 appeared the first
edition of Jowett’s work on four of the Epistles of Paul (2d ed., 1859).
He translates:
“God, who is over all, is blessed for ever. Amen.” So Bishop
Colenso, St Paul’s Ep. to the Romans, etc., London, 1861; Am. ed., New
York, 1863.
Ewald, Die Sendschreiben
des Ap. Paulus, u. s. w. (1857), translates : “der uber allen ist Gott
sei gelobet in die ewigkeiten, Amen ! “ (p. 323 ; comp. p.
H. N. Clausen, Pauli Brev til Romerne fortolket (Copenhagen, i 863), p. 124,
translates : “ Han som er over Alt, Gud, (eller, "Gud, som er
over Alt") vaere priset i Evighed!" He is the author of
Hermeneutik. “ The Germans spell his name Klausen.) Holtzmann, in his
translation of the Epistle in Bunsen’s Bibelwerk (I864), vol. iv., gives
the same construction to the passage ; and so Profess sor Willibald Bcyschlag
of Halic, in his C’Ieristalo,gie des ~v: r., Berlin, i866, ~.
Professor R. A. Lipsius of Jena, in the Protestantentenp-Bibel Neuen
Testamentes (1872-73), p. 572, translates : “ Der da
ist uber Alles, Gott, sei
gelobt in Ewigkeit"; p. 32 : “Der uber Allen seiende Gott sei gelobt
in Ewigkeit!” His comment is (p. 97): "Der Gott, der uber allen
(Volkern) waltet, sei dafur gepriesen, dass er aus Israel den Heiland (fur
Alle) hervorgehen liess." The Rev. John H. Godwin, “Hon. Prof. New
Coll., Lond.," and Congregational Lecturer, translates, “God
who is over all be praised for ever. Amen,” and has a good note. (Ep. to
Rom., London, 1873.) Professor Lewis Campbell, the editor of Sophocles, in the
Contemporary Review for August, 1876, p. 484, adopts the rendering of Professor
Jowett. The Rev. Joseph Agar Beet, Wesleyan Methodist, in a Commentary on the
Epistle to the Romans of very marked ability (London, 1877, 2d ed., 1881),
defends this view in an excellent note (pp. 267-272, 2d ed.). The same
construction is followed in Herm. Bartels’s Exeget Uebersetzung des
Briefes, etc. (Dessau, 1878), which I mention because Professor Woldemar
Schmidt of Leipzig, in a notice of the book (Theol. Literaturzeitung, 1879, No.
22), expresses his approval of this. C. Holsten, in an article in the Jahrbucher
f. prot Theol., 1879, P. 683, translates : “ Der über allen Volkern
waltende Gott (der doch Israels Volk so begnadet hat) sei gepriesen in Ewigkeit
!“
Some of the best recent
translations adopt this construction of the passage ; c.g. Het Nieuwe Testament,
etc. (published by the authority of the General Synod of the Dutch Reformed
Church), Amsterdam, 1868 : “Hij, die over alles is, God, zij geprezen tot
in eenwigheid!“ and the versions by Dr. George R. Noyes (Boston, 1869),
Hugues Oltramare (Genéve, 1872), “Que celui qui gouverne toutes choses,
Dieu, en soit beni éternellement! “ Carl Weizsackcr, Das N.T. uebersetzt,
Tubingen, 1875, and Dr. Samuel Davidson, London, 1875. 2d ed. 1876.
No one who knew the
scholarship and the impartiality of the late Dr. Noyes will wonder that I have
cited him here. A dispassionate, judicial spirit in the examination of such
questions as the one before us is not the exclusive possession of the Dean of
Chichester and of “the Church" in distinction from the "the
Sects," though there are many noble examples of it in the Church of
England.
Among critical editors of
the Greek Testament who have placed a period after SARKA, making the passage a
doxology to God, I may mention Harwood (1776), Lachmann (1831-50) Schott (4th
ed., 1839), Tischendorf (1841-73), Muralt (1846-48), Buttman (1856-67), Aug.
Hahn, assisted by his son G.L. Hahn (1861), Kuenen and Cobet (1861), and
Westcott and Hort (1881) in their margin, representing the judgment of Dr.
Hort.
To these authorities may be
added the names of the grammarians Winer and Wilke. See Winer, Gram., 7te
Aufl., 1867,// 61, 3, e., and 64, 2, b., pp. 513, 545, or 551, 586 Thayer, 690,
733 Moulton; and Wilke, Hermeneutik (1844), ii. 88.
It is worthy of notice that
many scholars who had already in their publications adopted or even
strongly contended for the common construction of this passage, afterwards saw
reason to change their minds. Such was the case with Eckermann, De Wette,
Meyer, Ruckert, Bretschneider, Schott, Krehl, Hahn (perhaps both father and
son); and it is so with Ritschl, as I am assured by a very intelligent student
(the Rev. Alfred Gooding), who took full notes of his exegetical lectures on
Romans in the semester of 1879-80. I know of only one instance of a conversion in
the opposite direction, that of Dr. G. V. Lechler, who, in the first edition of
his Das Apost. u. das nachapost. Zeitalter (1851), pp. 38, 39, made the last
part of the verse a doxology to God, but in the second edition (1857), p.
"The awful blindness
and obstinacy of Arians and Socinians in their perversions of this
passage." says the Scotch commentator Haldane, "more fully manifests
the depravity of human nature, and the rooted enmity of the carnal mind against
God, than the grossest works of the flesh.”
[Exposition of the Ep. to
the Romans, Am. reprint of the fifth
The dishonest
shifts,” says Dean Burgon, “ by which unbelievers seek to evacuate
the record which they are powerless to refute or deny, are paraded by our
Revisionists in the following terms.”
[The Quarterly Review for
January, 1882, p. 54 (see the Revision Revised, p. 211); see also the same for
April, 1882, p. 370 (The Revision Revised, p.
(Here Mr. Burgon quotes the
margin of the Revised Version at Rom. ix. 5, regarding these renderings as
“not entitledi to notice in the margin of the N. T. and their admission
as “a very grave offence.”) SU TIS EI O KRINWN ALLOTRION OIKETHN, O
KATHGWP TWN ADELFWN HMWN. (Rom. xiv. 4; Rev. xii. 10)
In contrast with these
utterances, not addressed to the reason of men, and not adopted to
promote Christian charity or Christian humility, it is refreshing to read
a discussion so calm, so clear, so fair, and so able as that of Professor
Dwight.
