Does Romans 9:5 Call Jesus God? by Anthony Buzzard

Romans 9:5

From the Doctrine of the Trinity – Christianity’s Self-Inflicted Wound
pp 281-283

Some Trinitarians offer Romans 9:5 as conclusive proof that Jesus is “God over all” and therefore part of the Godhead. It depends which translation one reads, because there are some seven different ways of punctuating the verse in which either Christ or the Father is called “God blessed forever.”[1] The issue is: Should we read “of whom, according to the flesh, is Christ, who is over all. God be blessed forever,” or “of whom, according to the flesh is Christ, who being God over all, is blessed forever”? Among older commentators Erasmus, though a Trinitarian, was cautious about using this verse as a proof text:

Those who contend that in this text Christ is clearly termed God, either place little confidence in other passages of Scripture, deny all understanding to the Arians, or pay scarcely any attention to the style of the Apostle. A similar passage occurs in Second Corinthians 11:31: “The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed forever”; the latter clause being undeniably restricted to the Father.[2]

Using the principle of comparison of text with text, it is most likely that Paul describes the Father as “God over all.” Paul uniformly makes a distinction between God and the Lord Jesus. In the same book Paul blesses the Creator and there is no reason to doubt that the Father is meant (Rom. 1:25). In another passage he speaks of “God our Father, to whom be the glory forevermore. Amen” (Gal. 1:4, 5). Romans 9:5 is an obvious parallel. It should not be forgotten that the word theos, God, occurs more than 500 times in Paul’s letters and there is not a single unambiguous instance in which it applies to Christ. A number of well-known textual critics (Lachmann, Tischendorf) place a period after the word “flesh,” allowing the rest of the sentence to be a doxology of the Father.
Ancient Greek manuscripts do not generally contain punctuation, but the Codex Ephraemi of the fifth century has a period after “flesh.” More remarkable is the fact that during the whole Arian controversy, this verse was not used by Trinitarians against the unitarians. It clearly did not attest to Jesus as the second member of the Godhead.

...

When the detail of grammatical nuance has been fully explored, balances of probability will be weighed in different ways. It is incredible to imagine that the Christian creed should depend on fine points of language about which many could not reasonably be asked to make a judgment and experts disagree. The plain language of Paul’s and Jesus’ creed is open to every student of the Bible:
“There is no God except one…There is for us [Christians] one God, the Father” (1 Cor. 8:4, 6).

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


[1] For a full examination of the various possibilities,
see the essays in the Journal of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, 1883.
[2] Works, ed. Jean Leclerc, 10 vols. (Leiden, 1703-1706), 6:610, 611.


The above article was taken from
Romans 9:5

Does the New Testament Call Jesus God? by Anthony Buzzard

Does the New Testament Call Jesus God?

From the Doctrine of the Trinity – Christianity’s Self-Inflicted Wound
pp 279-281
Titus 2:13; 2 Peter 1:1

A number of contemporary discussions advance the so-called “Granville Sharp’s rule” to support their claim that Jesus is called “the great God and Savior” in Titus 2:13. Sharp contended that when the Greek word kai (and) joins two nouns of the same case, and the first noun has the definite article and the second does not, the two nouns refer to one subject. Hence the disputed verse should read “…our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,” and not as the King James Version has it, “...the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ.” The rule about the omission of the article, however, cannot be relied on to settle the matter. As Nigel Turner (who writes as a Trinitarian) says:

Unfortunately, at this period of Greek we cannot be sure that such a rule is really decisive. Sometimes the definite article is not repeated even where there is clearly a separation in idea. “The repetition of the article was not strictly necessary to ensure that the items be considered separately”
(Moulton-Howard-Turner, Grammar, Vol. III, p. 181. The reference is to Titus 2:13).[1]

Since the absence of a second article is not decisive, it is natural to see here the appearing of God’s glory as it is displayed in His Son at the Second Coming. There is an obvious parallel with Matthew’s description of the arrival of Jesus in power: “For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of his Father with his holy angels” (Matt. 16:27 ). Since the Father confers His glory upon the Son (as He will also share it with the saints), it is most appropriate that Father and Son should be closely linked. Paul had only a few verses earlier spoken of “God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior” (Titus 1:4 ).

A wide range of grammarians and biblical scholars have recognized that the absence of the definite article before “our Savior Jesus Christ” is quite inadequate to establish the Trinitarian claim that Jesus is here called “the great God.” At best, the argument is “dubious.”[2] ...

The same grammatical problem faces expositors in 2 Peter 1:1. Henry Alford is one of many Trinitarians who argue that Jesus is not called “God” in this verse. For him the absence of the article is outweighed here, as in Titus 2:13, by the much more significant fact that both Peter and Paul normally distinguish clearly between God and Jesus Christ. The writer of the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges agreed that “the rule that the one article indicates the one subject… [cannot] be too strongly relied upon as decisive.”[4] 

A Trinitarian writer of the last century was much less generous to those who sought proof of the Deity of Christ in the omission of the article: “Some eminently pious and learned scholars…have so far overstretched the argument founded on the presence or absence of the article, as to have run it into a fallacious sophistry, and, in the intensity of their zeal to maintain the ‘honor of the Son,’ were not aware that they were rather engaged in ‘dishonoring the Father.’”[5]

The last statement may in fact be true of the whole effort of orthodoxy to make Jesus equal in every sense to the Father.

[1] Grammatical Insights into the New Testament (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1965), 16. An unfortunate misprint occurs in Nigel Turner’s statement. The word “not” is omitted before “repeated,” reversing Turner’s intention to point out that the article does not have to be repeated to separate two distinct subjects. We had ample opportunity to discuss this matter with the late Dr. Turner.

[2] See Raymond Brown, Jesus, God and Man, 15-18.

[4] A.E. Humphreys, The Epistles to Timothy & Titus (Cambridge University Press, 1895), 225.

[5] Granville Penn, Supplemental Annotations to the New Covenant, 146, cited in Wilson,Unitarian Principles Confirmed by Trinitarian Testimonies, 431.

The above article was taken from
Does the New Testament Call Jesus God?