In her learned commentary on Romans, Beverly Roberts Gaventa translates Romans 9:5 this way: “Theirs are the fathers, and from them is the Christ, physically speaking, the one who is over all—God be blessed forever. Amen!” Her translation shows the extent to which Paul’s personal oath in 9:1 (“I am not lying”) is anchored—indeed, “saturated,” to use Gaventa’s language—by doxology: “God be blessed forever.”
In what ways, then, does doxology articulate doctrinal truth? That Paul begins Romans 9 with doxology and ends Romans 11 with doxology is significant. It is significant because doxology is not only the telos of holy teaching but relevant to how that teaching is communicated and passed along to others.
In 9:4-5, Paul describes Israel as a theological and only then a biological reality. It is impossible for Paul to talk about Israel without recourse to God’s promises. As Gaventa notes, Romans 9-11 “abounds with impossibilities.” Think, for example, of Romans 9:9, of Sarah’s impossible birth of a son.
Paul’s praise of God—or of Christ as God, to use a different translation than Gaventa’s—in 9:5 is no mere rhetorical flourish. Paul reminds his readers that Israel is from beginning to end a work of God, the very creation of God. Israel’s principle is indeed the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Appeal to God and his promises for understanding Israel is key, but such appeals are contextualized by praise. Praise is not only something that follows Paul’s discussion of Israel as divinely made, sustained, and perfected. Doctrine—in this case, Israel’s place in God’s dealings—has a doxological frame from the start. Paul only knows how to talk about his “kindred” in a way that assumes and is undergirded by praise.
What might we learn here? The presentation of Christian truth must be attentive to the mode of presentation. So, for example, do we “explain” the holy mystery of the Trinity on Trinity Sunday? Or do we exhort the congregation to remember that the God who writes and speaks through sacred Scripture is irreducibly triune, not a puzzle to be solved but one to be cherished? Do we discuss the church’s faith in intellectual terms or rather in terms that explicitly show how confession of the church’s faith is an act of discipleship, both spiritual and intellectual?
Moreover, do we communicate the biblical character of doctrinal truth? Paul has more appeals to Scripture in Romans 9-11 than anywhere else in his letters. Perhaps it is not an accident that copious appeals to Scripture within a doxological frame constitute teaching on Israel, its place in God’s purposes, and its expansion in Jesus to include Gentiles.
Regardless, “the riches” of God’s glory summarize what is at stake (9:23). Paul champions enlightened zeal. Look at what we learn about God—“the impossible greatness of God’s mercy” (Gaventa)—as Paul leads us through his dealings with his beloved people. In this, there is a valuable lesson for both academic theologians and those with a vocation to the ministry of Word and Sacrament. Are “the riches of his glory” preeminent in our thought and speech (9:23)? Do we gesture toward theological truth in a way that reflects Augustine’s prayer—“In your mercies, Lord God, tell me what you are to me” (Confessions, I.v)? Paul wants to know what God is to his people, even as God hardens his people for a time so that Gentiles might be brought into the household.
Romans 9-11 reads, at times, like Augustine’s Confessions. Or perhaps it’s the other way around. By that, I simply mean Paul is trying to situate the Israelites in light of what God has shown to be true about himself. In Confessions, Augustine locates his life in relation to God. In a similar way, Paul, as an act of discipleship, shows how “the riches of his glory,” reflected along scriptural lines, make sense of Israel’s tripping over the stumbling stone.
As I enter my 21st year of teaching theology full time, I can honestly say that it does not grow any easier. But I am at peace with that reality because ease is not the point of this ministry. The matter at hand is not only what I say but, equally, how I say it. In “The Holy Spirit, the Church, and the Sacraments,” a course I will soon teach, I ask: Do I communicate something of these precious doctrines in a way akin to Paul in Romans 9-11? That is, do I bless God (and encourage others to do the same) as Paul does, pointing patiently to the Old Testament Scriptures, with a view to how considering these doctrines assume “the riches of his glory” and lead to a deeper inhabiting of them?
Put differently, genre and tone matter for communicating theological truth. Paul’s personal anguish is not a rhetorical device. Instead, “speaking the truth in Christ” as he does means that his prose is maximally transparent to “the word of Christ” and reflective of his prayers for Israel’s salvation (9:1; 10:17). Doxologically personal language is appropriate for communicating holy teaching. Augustine’s Confessions, though obviously reading very differently than The Trinity, is not less relevant to enriching our knowledge and love of God.
In fact, one could argue that Confessions as a genre is just as relevant to understanding God’s unity and triunity because both Confessions and The Trinity proceed, as does Paul in Romans 9-11, with prayer and, in a sense, as prayers. Similarly, the tone in The Trinity, like Confessions, is akin to Paul in Romans 9-11. There is plenty of Scripture, and the Scripture is transparent “to the riches of his glory” (9:23). Both Paul and Augustine know that the problem we face, Jew and Gentile, is unbelief. Accordingly, the only solution is “the word of Christ” (10:17).
My challenge, then, to myself and others, is to communicate the church’s doctrinal inheritance in a manner that naturally takes its cues from Romans 9:5 to Romans 11:36. We seek understanding so that we may bless God, and once blessing him for answering something of our heart’s desire, we give him “the glory forever,” recognizing that our knowledge of theological truth is only ever “from him and through him and to him” (11:36). In such doxology, then, we conclude rightly, Amen.
The Rev. Christopher Holmes, PhD is professor of Systematic Theology in the Theology Programme at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand.
