ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF ROMANS 9:5 by Ezra Abbot 1881

 
ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF ROMANS IX. 5. by Ezra Abbot

[From the Journal of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis for 1881.]

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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 Israel, the spiritual king of men, had come; but the rulers of their nation had crucified the Lord of glory, and the great mass of the people had rejected him. They had thus set themselves in direct opposition to God. They had become ANAQEMA APO TOU CRISTOU, outcasts from the Messiah and his kingdom. Christians, a large majority of them Gentiles by birth, were now the true Israel. No rite of circumcision, no observance of the Jewish Law, was required, as the condition of acceptance with God and the enjoyment of the Messianic blessings; no sacrifice but self-sacrifice; the only condition was faith, as Paul uses the term, - a practical belief and trust in Christ, and thus in God revealed in his paternal character; a faith that carried with it the affections and will PISTIS DI AGAPHS ENERGOUMENH.

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, "Israel his servant, Jacob his chosen, the seed of Abraham his friend"? These are the great questions which the Apostle answers in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters of this Epistle. The first five verses are to be regarded as conciliatory introduction to his treatment of this subject, on which he had so much to say that was not only hard for the unbelieving Jews, but for Jewish Christians, to understand and accept.

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. 415f.]

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 Israel," but only "until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in; and so (or then) all Israel shall be saved."  It is not for nothing that "theirs are the fathers"; that they had such ancestors as Abraham, "the friend of God," and Isaac, and Jacob. "As touching the gospel, they are enemies for the sake of the Gentiles, but as touching the election," as chosen people of God, "they are beloved for the father's sake." "If the first fruit is holy, so is the lump; and, if the root is holy, so are the branches." "God doth not repent of his of his calling and his gifts." "God hath shut up all [Jews and Gentiles] unto disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all." For the ancient prophecy is now fulfilled: the Deliverer hath come out of Zion; and "he shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob." "O the depth of riches," etc. Such were the thoughts which the past privileges of the Jews, in connection with the advent of Christ, as we see from the eleventh chapter of this Epistle, actually suggested to the mind of Paul.

[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)

   2. A second objection to a doxology here is founded on the relation of the first five verses of the chapter to what follows. A doxology, it is thought, unnaturally breaks the connection between the sixth and what precedes.

   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. 41 f.)

   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.

  3. A third objection, urged by many, is founded on the alleged abruptness of the doxology and the absence of any mention of God in what precedes. Some also think that a doxology here would need to be introduced by the participle DE.

  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. 118 a, 148 e; though he usually follows the order of the present Greek text.]

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. 271 f.) well says, on the other hand:- 

     "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. 320 C.) seem to me wholly irrelevant: the former, because we have MEN with the TO EP EMOI, which of course requires an antithetic cluase with DE; the latter, because the essential element in the case, the TO or TA, does not stand before KATA TO ASTU. But I must agree with Dr. Dwight (l.c. p. 28) that Van Hengel's argument is not conclusive. On the supposition that O WN, etc., refers to Christ, we have not a formal antithesis. such as would be excluded by Van Hengel's rule, but simply an appositional, descriptive clause, setting forth the exalted dignity of him who as to the flesh sprang from the Jews. I cannot believe that there is any law of the Greek language which forbids this.

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. 1, C. b., where EIMI EPI with the genetive is defined, praesum alieni rei, moderor s. administro aliquam rem. Comp. Grimm's Lexicon Gr.-Lat. in libros N.T., ed. 2da, s.v. EPI, A. i. 1. d. p. 160, col. 2; Rost and Palm's Passow, vol. 1. p. 1035, col. 1, 3; and the references given by Meyer and Van Hengel in loc. See Acts viii. 27; Gen. xliv. 1; Judith xiv. 13, EIPAN TW ONTI EPI PANTWN AUTOU; 1 Macc. x. 69, TON ONTA EPI KOILHS SURIAS.]

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. 26. In expressions of this kind, the definite article fulfils, I conceive, a double function; it is connected with the participle or other adjunct which immediately follows it, just as it would be if the substantive at the end were omitted; but, at the same time, it makes that substantive definite, so that the article in effect belongs to the substantive as well as the participle. Thus, O WN EPI PANTWN QEOS is equivalent to O QEOS O WN EPI PANTWN in everything except the difference of prominence given to the different parts of the phrase in the two expressions. In the latter, O QEOS is made prominent by its position: in the former, prominence is given to the particular conception expressed by O WN EPI PANTWN, "the Ruler over All."

[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. 9 f., iii. 29 f.; x. 12; xi. 32, 36) is fully justified if St Paul's purpose  is the suggest that the tragic apostasy of the Jews (vv. 2, 3) is itself part of the dispensations of 'Him who is God over all.' over Jew and Gentile alike, over past present and future alike; so that the ascription of blessing to him is a homage to his divine purpose and power of bringing good out of evil in the course of the ages (xi. 13-16; 25-36)." Dr. Hort remarks that "this punctuation alone seems adequate to account for the whole of the language employed, more especially when it is considered in relation to the context."]

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. 32 f. and cf. Essay XVII. p. 436 below.) On the other hand, the passage cited by Grimm (see as above, p. 34) from the Apocryphal Psalms of Solomon, viii. 41, 42, written probably about 48 B.C., seems to me quite to the purpose: - 

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. 5, in regarding as not altogether irrelevant such passages as Ps. cxii. (cxiii) 2, EIH TO ONOMA KURIOU EULOGHMENON, where, though EIH precedes, as a copula it can have no emphasis; and the position of EULOGHMENON is determined by the fact that the subject rather than the predicate here naturally presents itself first to the mind. The difference between such a sentence and EULOGHMENON TO ONOMA KURIOU is like that in English between "May the name of the Lord be blessed" and "Blessed be the name of the Lord." It is evident, I think, that in the latter sentence the predicate is made more prominent, and in the former the subject; but if a person does not feel this, it cannot be proved. Other examples of this kind are Ruth ii. 19; 1 Kings x. 9; 2 Chron. ix. 8; Job i. 21; Dan. ii. 20; Lit. S. Jac. c. 19; Lit. S. Marci, c. 20, a. (Hammond, pp. 52, 192). In Ps. cxii. (cxiii.) 2 and Job i. 21, the prominence given to the subject is suggested by what precedes.

   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. 148 f.), Lenfant and Beausobre as an alternative interpretation (Le Nouveau Test., note in loc.), Doederlein (Inst. Theol. Christ., ed. 6ta, 1797, / 105, Obs. 4, p. 387), Van der Palm (note in his Dutch translation), Granville Penn (The Book of the New Covenant, London, 1836, and Annotations, 1837, p. 315), and Mr. Darby (Trans. of the N.T., 2nd ed. [1872]).

[* "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. 17 f.]

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. 5, in opposition to a usage of the term which pervades all his writings. The question still forces itself upon us, What was the ground of this usage ? Why has he else-where avoided giving him this title. In answering this question here, wishing to avoid as far as possible all dogmatic discussion and to confine myself to exegetical considerations, I shall not transgress the limits of recognized orthodoxy. The doctrine of the subordination of the Son to the Father, in his divine as well as his human nature, has been held by a very large number, and, if I mistake not, by a majority of professed believers in the deity of Christ. The fourth and last Division or "Section" of Bishop Bull's famous Defensio Fidei Nicaenae is entitled De Subardina~ tione Filii ad Patrem, ut ad sui originem ac principium. He maintains and proves that the Fathers who lived before and many, at least, of those who lived after the Council of Nice unequivocally acknowledged this subordination (though the post-Nicene writers were more guarded in their language), and that on this account, while calling the Son QEOS and QEOS EK QEOU, as begotten from the substance of the Father, they were accustomed to reserve such titles as O QEOS used absolutely, EIS QEOS and O EPI PANTWN or EPI PASI QEOS for the Father alone. The Father alone was "uncaused," "unoriginated," "the fountain of deity" to the Son and Spirit.

["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, 300 f., 314, 319 f., 365 note, 468; Sandius, Intepretationed Paradoxae (1669), p. 227 ff.; Whitston's Primitive Christianity Reviv'd, vol. iv. p. 100 ff.; LeClerc (Clericus), Ars Critica, Pars. II Sect. 1. c. 111., vol. i. p. 145 ff., 6th ed., 1778; Account of the Writings and Opinions of Clement od Alexandria, by John [Kaye], Bp. of Lincoln, 1835, p. 253; Bretschneider, Handbuch der Dogmatik, 4te Aufl. (1838), i. 596, note 333.]

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. 5 in which the name Jehovah, or Jehovah our righteousness, is said to be given to the Messiah. but the irrelevance of these citations has been repeatedly exposed; see Fritzsche, Ep. ad Rom. ii. 269, note; Weber, ut supra, p. 342. Weber says, "Und wenn Baba bathra 75b gesagt wird, der Messias werde nach dem Namen Jehova's () gennant, so stehen an dieser Stelle in gleicher Beziehung die Gerechten und Jerusalem." Comp. Jer. xxiii. 6 with xxxiii. 16, and on this passsage see Oehler, Theol. des A.T. ii. 263; Rhiem, Messianic Prophecy, p. 262, note 36; Schultz, Alttest. Theol. 2te Aufl. (1878), p. 740. On Isa. ix. 6, see Schultz, p. 727; Hitzig, Vorlesungen uber bibl. Theol., u.s.w. (1880), p. 206 ff., and the commentators, as Gesenius, Knobel, Ewald, Cheyne. That the Memra da Yeya or "Word of Jehovah" is not identified in the Targums with the Messiah is certain. See Smith's Dict. of the Bible, art. "Word," vol. iv. p. 3557b, Am. ed., and Weber, ut supra, p. 339. It is time that the book Zohar, which figures so conspicuously in Schoettgen, Bertholdt, and other writers, but is now proved to be a pseudograph of the thirteenth century, should cease to be quoted as an authority for Jewish opinions in the time of Christ. See Ginsburg, The Kabbala (London, 1865). p. 78 ff., espec.p. 90 ff. One who is disposed to rely on Hengstenberg's Christology in relation to this subject should compare the review of it by Dr. Noyes in the Christian Examiner (Boston) for January, May, and July, 1836.]

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. 79 f.). This is the way, also, in which the old Socinian commentators understood the passage, as Socinus, Crell, Schlichting, Wolzogen. They did not hesitate to give the name "God" to Christ any more than the ancient Arians did, understanding it in a lower sense, and referring especially in justification of this to John x. 34-36, and various passages of the Old Testament. So it appears to have been taken by some of the Ante-Nicene, who referred the last clause of the verse to Christ, as probably by Novatian, who quotes the passage twice as proof that Christ is Deus (De Regula Fidei or De Trin. cc. 13, 30), but who says, "Dominus et Deus constitutus esse reperitur" (c. 20); "hoc ipsum a Patre proprio consecutus, ut omnium et Deus esset et Dominus esset" (c. 22); "omnium Deus, quoniam omnibus illum Deus Pater praeposuit quem genuit" (c. 31). So Hippolytus (Cont. Noet. c. 6) applies the verse to Christ, and justifies the language by quoting Christ's declaration, "All things have been delivered to me by the Father." He cites other passages in the same connection, and says, "If then all things have been subjected unto him with the exception of him who subjected them, he rules over all, but the Father rules over him."]

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. 453 f.)? or does it mean, “celui qui est elevé sur toutes choses, comme Dieu béni éternellement“ as Gudet translates it (Comm. ii. 256), contending that iwl EPI PANTWN is not to be connected with QEOS, but with WN, though he had before translated, inconsistently it would seem, “lui qui est Dien au-dessus de toutes choses béni éternellement” 

(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. 476 f., viii. 87, ed. Montf.; Hilary, De Trin. xii. 24; cf. Cyril. Alex. Thes. i. 4. So Proclus of Constantinople, Ep. ad Armen. de Fide, c. 14, quoting Rom. ix. 5, says: EIPEN AUTON ONTA, INA ANARCON BRONTHSH, "he spoke of him as being, that he might declare in thunder his existence without beginning.” (Migne, Patrol. Gr. lxv. 872c.)

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. 356 f., in regard to the position of the subject in contrasts.) Gess accordingly dismisses the objection founded on the position of EULOGHTOS, remarking, “die Voranstellung von QEOS batte durch den Gegensatz gegen Christum ein zureichendes Motiv “(ubi supra, p. 206). Still, on the whole, construction No. 7 seems to me much easier and more natural.

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. 371 f.) Those in the second and third centuries who held strongly the doctrine of the inferiority of the Son, and the Arians in the fourth, like the Socinians at a later period, did not hesitate to apply the name “God“ to Christ, and would find little difficulty in a construction of the passage which involved this. They might hesitate about the expression “God over all“; but, as we have seen, though natural, it is not necessary to connect the EPI PANTWN with QEOS.

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. 5 a glorious assertion of the eternal Godhead of CHRIST.”

[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. 391 f), and Caesarius as Pseudo-Caesarius. Among the other illustrious names, we find “6 of the Bishops at the Council of Antioch, A.D. 269.” On looking at the names as they appear in Routh's Rell. Sacrae, ed. alt. (1846), iii. 289, I regret my inability to recall the deeds or the occasion that made them “illustrious,” unless it is the fact that, as members of that Council, about half a century before the Council of Nicaea, they condemned the use of the term hOMOOUSIOS “consubstantial,” which was established by the latter as the test and watchword of orthodoxy. 

Next to the six bishops and “ps.-Dionysius Alex.” in Mr. Burgon's list of the illustrious Fathers “who see in Rom. ix. 5 a glorious assertion of the eternal Godhead of Christ,” we find “ Constt. App.,” that is, the Apostolical Constitutions, with a reference to “vi. c. 26.” He does not quote the passage. It reads as follows : “Some of the heretics imagine the Christ [so Lagarde; or “the Lord,” Cotelier and Ueltzen] to be a mere man. . . ; but others of them suppose that Jesus himself is the God over all, glorifying him as his own Father, supposing him to be Son and Paraclete ; than which doctrines what can be more abominable?“ Compare Const. Apost. iii. 17: “The Father is the God over all, O EPI PANTWN QEOS; Christ is the only-begotten God, the beloved Son, the Lord of glory.” See also vi. 18.

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. 688 f., ed. De Ia Rue. Mattaei remarks: “ Rufini interpretatio, quae parum fidei habet, in epistola ad Romanos, quod quihbet ipse intelligit, non tam pro Origenis opere, quam pro compendio Rufini haberi detet, quod haud dubie alia omisit, alia, sicut in ceteris libris, invito Origene admisit.” —Pauli Epp. ad Thess., etc. (Rigae, 1785), Praefatio, sig. b 2. See more fully to the same purpose Redepenning's Origenses, ii. 189 ff., who speaks of his  "Ausscheidung ganzer Stucke,” and “Umgestaltung des Heterodoxen in der Trinitatslehre.” See also Cave, Hist. Lit, art. “ Origenes.”]

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, 65 a, 66 c, 70 d, 93 c, 104 a, 107 c, d), and a multitude of other places, some of which are quoted in Wetstein's note. The apparent exception, Hist. EccL viii. II, TON EPI PANTWN QEON CRISTON EPIBOWMENOUS (ed. Vales.), is a false reading: Burton, Schwegler, Laemmer, and Dindorf omit CRISTON on the authority of important MSS.; on the other hand Hernichen in his recent edition (1868) omits EPI PANTWN QEON and reads TON CRISTON simply.]

 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 125 f.) take the above view of this passage of Irenaeus. For the use of the designation “God over all,” see Iren. Haer. ii. 5 § 4; 6. (al.5.) § § 2, 3; 11. (al. 12.) § 1, bis; 13. (al. 18.)/8; 24. (al. 41.)/2; 28. (al. 49.)/8; iii. 8. /3; iv. 5. (al. 10.)/ 1; v. 18. § 1, and many other passages. (Cf. iv. 1. § 1.)

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. 339,” that is to the Philosophumena or Ref omit. Haer. x. 34, ad fin. But O KATA PANTWN QEOS there should not, I think, be alleged as a quotation of Rom. ix. 5 applied to Christ. Bunsen's easy emendation of the passage (Anal. Ante-Nic. i. 392 ; comp. his Hippolytus, 2d ed., i. 413) seems to me the true reading, and is suppported by x. 33, ad init. (p. 334), where OUTOS MONOS KAI KATA PANTWN QEOS is distinguished from the Logos. Hippolytus could hardly have called Christ “the God over all.” (See p. 378, note)

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. 5 in the Antiochene Epistle to Paul of Samosata (see above, p. 388) it is probable that the six bishops make a slight pause at PANTWN. The subordination of the Son is very strongly expressed in the Epistle. Among other things it is said, “To think that the God of the universe is called a messenger (AQQELON) is impious; but the Son is the messenger of the Father, being himself Lord and God.” (Routh, ut supra, p. 294.)

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, 1858, in which Dr. John ProudfIt (anonymously), the Rev. Joseph P. Thompson (the editor), Dr. Z. S. Barstow, and K A. took part.

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, 600 a; cf. ii. 377 f.; John Crell, in loc. Opp. i. 147 ; also Respons. ad Grotium, Opp. iv. 230 b; De Uno Deo Patre, p. 23 a; De Deo ejusque Attrib. p. 35 b; Eth. Christ. p. 348 a; Schlichting (Lat. Slichtingius), Comm. post. i. 254; Wolzogen, Opp. i. 710, 712 ; ii. 301 ; iii. 5 ; Sam. Przipcovius or Przpkowsky in loc, p. 51. So also the Racovian Catechism, §§159, 160.

[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. 236 f.) regards this reference as probable, though not certain; somewhat more doubtful is C. F. Schmid (2d ed., 1859, p. 540 f., or p. 475 f. Eng. trans.). Dorner in his recent work, System der Christi. Glaubenslehre (1879), i. 345, only ventures to say that the reference to Christ is “the most natural.” Schott, August Hahn, De Wette, Reuss, Ritschl, are sometimes cited as supporting this construction; but later they all went over to the other side. See below, under No. 7.

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. 610 f. ; ix. 1002 f., 1045 f.]

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. 209 f. He has a pretty full discussion of the passage (pp. 195-218). So by G. L Bauer, Bibl. Theol. des N. T.:, Bd. iv. (1802), pp. 10-14, and by C. F. Ammon ; for though in his Bibl. Theol., 2te Ausg. (1801), pp. 220-222, he does not decide between constructions No. 5 and No. 7, he favors the former in his note on the passage in the third edition of Koppe on Romans (1824). J. J. Stolz adopts it in the fourth edition of his Uebersetzung des NT. (1804), and the third edition of his Erlauterungen (1808), iii. 170-191. He gives there an interesting extract from Semler’s Hist. u. krit. Sammlungen uber die sogennanten Beweisstellen in der Dogmatik, St. ii. pp. 284-287. So De Wette in the text of the third edition of his German translation of the Bible (1839), though he gives constructions Nos. 1 and 7 as alternative renderings; in the note in the fourth and last edition of his commentary on the Epistle (1847), though undecided, he seems on the whole rather inclined to No. 7. This construction (No. 5) is supported also by Baumgarten-Crusius, a scholar to be spoken of with high respect, in his Comm. on the Epistle (Jena, 1844), comp. his Grundzuge der bibl. Theol. (1828), p. 385 f., and his Exeget Schriften zum N.T. II. i. (Jena, 1844) p. 266, the latter cited by Ernesti. So by Schumann in his Christus (1852), ii. 545, note; H. Fr. Th. L. Ernesti, Vom Ursprunge d. Sunde nach paulin. Lehrgehalte, i. (1855) pp. 197-204 ; Märcker (cited by Meyer), whose work I have not seen; and Reuss, Les Epitres Pauliniennes (1878), ii. 88. 

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. 385 f.

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. 604 f., adopts the same construction, though in the earlier editions of this work he had referred the QEOS to Christ. He translates : “Der Herr uber alles, Gott, sei gepriesen in Ewigkeit.” In 1839, Professor L. J. Ruckert of Jena, in the second edition of his elaborate and valuable commentary (vol. ii. pp. 13-17), discusses the passage fully, and though in the first edition (1831) he had strenuously contended for the reference of the last part of the verse to Christ, now pronounces the construction which makes it a doxology to God “far more probable.” This year is also signalized in the history of the interpretation of our passage by the publication of vol. ii. of the commentary of Professor C. F. A. Fritzsche of Rostock, who discusses the passage in a masterly manner (ii. 260-275). His translation has been given above, p. 354. In the fourth edition of his Greek Testament with a Latin version, published in 1839, Professor H. A. Schott of Jena adopted the punctuation and construction which make the clause beginning with O WN a doxology to God, though in previous editions he had followed the common construction. In his essay De Invocatione Jesu Christi Partie. I. (1843), p. 8, the highly esteemed commentator Dr, Friedriche Lucke, Professor at Gottingen, refers the last Part of our verse to God. Professor A. L. G. Krehl, of Leipzig, does the same in his Der Brief an die Romer ausgelegt, 

u.s.w. (1845), p. 322, though in an earlier work, Neutest. Handworterbuch (1843), art. Christus, p. 114, he had cited Rorn. ix. 5 in proof that Christ is called God.

Baur, who makes the passage a doxology to God, has some valuable remarks upon it in his Paulus (1845), p. 624 f., 2te Aufl. (1866-67), ii. 263 f. ; comp. his Lehre von der Dreienigkeit (1841), i. 84, note, and Neutest. Theol. (1864), p. 194. Zeller agrees with him (Theol. Jàhrbucher, 1842, p. 55). So J. F. Rabiger, a believer in the divine nature of Christ, in his De Christologia Paulina contra Baurium Commentatio (1852), pp. 26-28.

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. 5. in his Bibl. Dogmatik, 3te Aufl. (1831), 

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. 398 f.) See also his Die Lehre der Bibel von Gott, Bd. iii. (1874), p. 416, n. 3. Professor J. H. Scholten of Leyden, in his Dogmatices Christ. Initia, ed. 2da, Lugd. Bat. 1858, p. 193 f., adopts the same construction. So Athanase Coquerel, Christologie (Paris, 1858), i. 76, note. So the celebrated Dutch commentator, Van Hengel, who in tome ii. of his Interpretatio (1859), pp. 343-360, discusses the passage very fully. He mentions some Dutch scholars that agree with him, as Vissering and Scheffer (Godgel. Bijdragen), whose writings I have not seen. The eminent Danish commentator, Dr. 

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, ~. 209 f. 

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. 63 f. [and 3d ed. (1886), Eng. trans., vol. ii. p. 27 f.], applies it to Christ. He expressly admits, however, as regards the two opposing views, that "sprachlich und logisch sind beide gleichberechtigt."

"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 Edinburgh edition, p. 454.]

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. 353 f.)]

(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.