Christ: The Supreme God Above All

The following excerpt is taken from the monumental work titled The Incarnate Christ and His Critics: A Biblical Defense, authored by Robert M. Bowman Jr. & J. Ed Komoszewski, published by Kregel Academic, Grand Rapids, MI, in 2024, Part 3: The Name of Jesus: Jesus’ Divine Names, 24. Jesus as "God" in the Rest of the New Testament, pp. 444-448.

In my estimation this is THE best and most comprehensive exposition and defense of the biblical basis for the Deity of Christ. Every serious Trinitarian Christian student of the Holy Bible, apologist, and/or theologian must have this book in the library. All emphasis will be mine.

GOD OVER ALL (ROMANS 9:5)

If Romans 9:5 calls Jesus God, it is the earliest Christian writing to do so. There are no significant textual variants for the Greek text. However, scholars debate how the verse should be punctuated (because the earliest manuscripts generally contained little or no punctuation and no consistent punctuation at Romans 9:5). Consider the following three English versions, representing the three main options for punctuating the verse.⁴

. . . theirs the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, is the Messiah. God who is over all be blessed forever. Amen. (NABRE)

To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen. (ESV)

. . . whose are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen. (NASB)

If we break up the verse into lines and translate it word for word in order without punctuation, it will help us see the main options:

(a) whose [are] the fathers

(b) and from whom [is] the christ according to the flesh

(c) the one who is over all

(d) god blessed unto the ages amen

(1) We can put a period at the end of line (b), with lines (c) and (d) forming a separate sentence, so that the verse does not call Christ “over all” or “God,” like so (e.g., CEV, GNT, NABRE, NEB/REB, RSV, and, not surprisingly, NWT):

Whose [are] the fathers,

And from whom [is] the Christ according to the flesh.

The one who is over all, God, [be] blessed forever! Amen.

(2) We can treat all four lines as part of the same sentence (which in Greek started in verse 3), with lines (c) and (d) as a single clause. This would mean that the verse says that Christ is “God over all,” like so (e.g., CSB, ESV, LEB, NET, NIV, NLT):

Whose [are] the fathers,

And from whom [is] the Christ according to the flesh,

Who is God over all, blessed forever! Amen.

(3) We can treat all four lines as part of the same sentence, with lines (c) and (d) as two clauses describing Christ. This way of punctuating the verse would treat “who is over all” and “God” as two separate descriptions of Christ, like so (e.g., CEB, KJV, NASB, NJB, NKJV, NRSV):

Whose are the fathers,

And from whom is the Christ according to the flesh,

Who is over all, [and is] God, blessed forever! Amen.

Some respected scholars, most notably Gordon Fee, defend the first view, which states that Romans 9:5 does not call Jesus God.⁵ On the other hand, many scholars argue that Romans 9:5 does call Christ “God.” Some favor the second option, “God over all,” others the third option, “who is over all, God,” and some argue simply that the text calls Christ God without choosing one of those options over the other. It is fair to say that in the past half-century or so most commentaries and studies that have discussed the matter in detail have concluded that Romans 9:5 does call Christ God.⁶ 

The main objection to understanding Romans 9:5 to be calling Jesus God is that Paul nowhere else does so. Indeed, scholars who object to this interpretation agree that it would be the most exegetically natural and even compelling conclusion, were it not for their belief that Paul would never have applied the title God to Jesus.⁷ 

The premise that Paul never called Christ God (elsewhere) is incorrect if Paul wrote the epistle to Titus and if Titus 2:13 calls Jesus Christ “our great God and Savior.” Our own view is that Titus 2:13 does indeed call Jesus God, as we shall show later in this chapter. We also regard Paul as the author of the Pastoral Epistles, including Titus, against most non-evangelical scholarship.⁸ However, even if Paul was not the author of the epistle, its author clearly would have been “Pauline” theologically and therefore unlikely to have called Jesus God if doing so was contrary to Paul’s theology. The same point is relevant if one holds, as we think quite likely, that Paul had someone writing the epistle on his behalf whose own distinctive vocabulary and style differed from that of the other Pauline epistles.⁹ If Paul had thought it inappropriate to call Jesus God, he would not have authorized or approved an epistle that did just that.

On the other hand, we really do not need to find another text where Paul called Jesus God in order to be justified in concluding that he did so in Romans 9:5. Everyone agrees that the New Testament authors used the title “God” for Jesus sparingly. As we shall see, the books of Hebrews and 2 Peter call Jesus God once each (Heb. 1:8; 2 Peter 1:1). Even John’s writings call Jesus God no more than four times. Each such reference must be evaluated on its own merits, rather than begging the question by insisting that an author must use the title “God” for Jesus multiple times in order for the evidence for any one reference to be taken seriously.

In this particular instance, several lines of evidence converge in support of the conclusion that Romans 9:5 calls Jesus God.

1. The words “the one who is over all,” grammatically speaking, most naturally modify “the Christ” in the preceding part of the verse: “and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, the one who is over all.” The words “who is” or “the one who is” (ho ōn) agree grammatically with “the Christ” (ho Christos), leading the reader to understand “who is over all” to be continuing to say something about the Christ.

It is true that ho ōn can be used to begin a new sentence without referring back to someone already mentioned, a usage that occurs twice in John’s writings (John 3:31; 8:47). However, in both of these texts, the matter is grammatically unambiguous: it is impossible to take ho ōn in either text as referring back to someone just mentioned. That is clearly not the case in Romans 9:5. Furthermore, neither text in John uses ho ōn to introduce a doxological statement of any kind. These texts, then, do not support the plausibility of construing ho ōn in Romans 9:5 as beginning a new sentence.

2. Paul’s wording in Romans 9:5 closely parallels a similar outburst of praise directed to the Father in another of Paul’s epistles: “The God and Father [ho theos kai patēr] of the Lord Jesus, who is [ho ōn] blessed forever, knows I am not lying” (2 Cor. 11:31 NET). This happens to be the only other place in the Pauline epistles using ho ōn, and it is the same sort of statement and uses much of the same wording as Romans 9:5, “the one who is . . . blessed forever” (ho ōn . . . eulogētos eis tous aiōnas). This striking parallel strongly confirms the natural understanding that ho ōn in Romans 9:5 refers back to its natural grammatical antecedent, which in this case is ho Christos.

3. The position of the word “blessed” (eulogētos), which in Greek follows the word for “God” (theos), is especially strong evidence that the whole statement is about Christ. In biblical doxologies that stand as separate sentences and that use this word, “blessed” (Hebrew barûk, Greek eulogētos) always precedes the divine name or title (God, YHWH, etc.) in the sentence. Here are some typical examples from the Septuagint10 and the New Testament:

Blessed be the Lord . . . (Exod. 18:10; Ruth 4:14; Pss. 27:6 [28:6]; 30:22 [31:21]) Blessed be the Lord forever. (Ps. 88:53 [89:52])

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel . . . (1 Sam. 25:32; Pss. 40:14 [41:13]; 105:48 [106:48]; Luke 1:68)

Blessed be God . . . (Pss. 65:20 [66:20]; 67:36 [68:35])

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ . . . (2 Cor. 1:3; Eph. 1:3; 1 Peter 1:3).

There are over sixty examples of this syntax using eulogētos in doxologies in the Greek Bible, and no clear exceptions. The one debatable exception is Psalm 67:19 LXX, which departs from the Hebrew text and, in the process, doubles the word for “blessed.” Compare the following translations of the Hebrew and Greek texts:

. . . that the Lord God may dwell there. Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears us up . . . (Ps. 68:18b–19a ESV)

. . . to cause them to dwell there. The Lord God is blessed. Blessed is the Lord day by day . . . (Ps. 67:19b–20a LES)

In the Septuagint translation, the word for “blessed” is doubled, appearing in two independent clauses: “The Lord God is blessed” (kyrios ho theos eulogētos), which does not fit the standard pattern, and then “Blessed is the Lord” (eulogētos kyrios), which does fit the pattern. However one accounts for this anomalous irregularity, Psalm 67:19–20 LXX is certainly not precedent for interpreting the single use of eulogētos in Romans 9:5 as departing from the normal pattern. Former Jehovah’s Witness author Greg Stafford is mistaken in citing this anomaly as indicating “that either placement is acceptable.”¹¹

Another objection to understanding Romans 9:5 as calling Jesus God is that “similar ascriptions of praise by Paul always have God the Father as their object,” citing three Pauline texts using eulogētos (Rom. 1:25; 2 Cor. 11:31; Eph. 1:3; to which we may add 2 Cor. 1:3).¹² However, four uses of a word are simply not enough on which to base a generalization about how an author would or would not use that word. It is clearly not enough data to overcome the evidence for the consistent word order (“Blessed be God,” not “God be blessed”) in doxologies using that same word not only in the two such texts in Paul (2 Cor. 1:3; Eph. 1:3) but in the more than sixty texts throughout the Old and New Testaments. We would also point out that Paul closely associates Christ with God in a doxology of another form at the end of the same epistle (Rom. 16:25–27) and that Christ is the sole divine person praised or glorified in several other doxologies in the New Testament (2 Tim. 4:18; 2 Peter 3:18; Rev. 1:5b–6; 5:12).¹³ It is therefore quite possible for Paul to have applied a word such as eulogētos to Christ in Romans 9:5.

Much more could be said, but the above considerations are sufficient to explain why most Christians historically have understood Romans 9:5 to call Jesus God and why a clear majority of contemporary biblical scholars commenting on the matter agree. Even Bart Ehrman agrees, though he explains that the text calls Jesus God in the sense of an exalted, angelic being.¹⁴ But this won’t work for the very reasons some exegetes and most critics of the orthodox view of Christ have tried so hard to deny that Romans 9:5 calls Jesus God. Whatever else one might say, it is clear that Paul is using language that one would normally expect a faithful Jew to use together only in reference to the God of Israel. If Paul says that Christ is “over all,” “God,” and “blessed forever,” all in one breath, he is clearly speaking of Christ as God in the highest sense!

Romans 9:5 is all the more significant when we consider that it appears in the earliest Christian writing that calls Jesus God (dating to about AD 57, about a quarter-century after Jesus’ death and resurrection). Moreover, in Romans 9:5 we see three of the five elements we are discussing in this book pertaining to the deity of Jesus: he receives the divine honor of eternal praise; he has the divine name “God”; and he shares God’s seat, holding the highest position of ruling over all creation.

4. A fourth option, in which Christ is called “the one who is over all” but not “God,” is not favored in any of the major versions and has few defenders. There are also several other theories of even lesser significance, all driven by the assumption that Paul would not have called Christ “God.

5. Fee, Pauline Christology, 272–77; see also Colin G. Kruse, Paul’s Letter to the Romans, PNTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 373–74.

6. Bruce M. Metzger, “The Punctuation of Romans 9:5,” in Christ and Spirit in the New Testament: Essays in Honour of Charles Francis Digby Moule, ed. Barnabas Lindars and Stephen S. Smalley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 95–112; Harris, Jesus as God, 143–72, favoring option (3); Hans-Christian Kammler, “Die Prädikation Jesu Christi als ‘Gott’ und die paulinische Christologie: Erwägungen zur Exegese von Röm 9,5b,” ZNW 94 (2003): 164–80; George Carraway, Christ Is God Over All: Romans 9:5 in the Context of Romans 9–11, LNTS 489 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013), favoring option (2); Moo, Letter to the Romans, 586–88, favoring option (2).

7. E.g., Fee, Pauline Christology, 273.

8. See above, p. 128 n. 12.

9. So, for example, Ben Witherington III, Letters and Homilies for Hellenized Christians, Volume I: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on Titus, 1–2 Timothy and 1–3 John (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2006), 54–62, who, along with others, suggested Luke as Paul’s literary associate.

10. Psalms references are given here from the LXX and then, in brackets, from the English Bible.

11. Stafford, Jehovah’s Witnesses Defended, 2nd ed., 150.

12. Kruse, Paul’s Letter to the Romans, 373.

13. See above, pp. 127–31.

14. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 267–68. Regrettably, Chris Tilling, a fine Pauline scholar, in the response book to Ehrman dismissively sets aside Romans 9:5 as expressing the deity of Christ: Chris Tilling, “Misreading Paul’s Christology: Problems with Ehrman’s Exegesis,” in How God Became Jesus, by Michael Bird et al., 144–45.

Further Reading

Jesus who is over all, God blessed forever! (Romans 9:5) [Part 1], [Part 2]