Romans 1:18 – Wrath: personal or impersonal?

This entry is part 73 of 102 in the series: Tough texts
- Genesis 1:26 – Why a plural name for God?
- Genesis 3 – traditional and revisionist readings
- Genesis 3:16b – ‘Your desire shall be for your husband’
- Genesis 5 – the ages of the antedeluvians
- Genesis 6:1f – ‘The sons of God’
- Genesis 6-8 – A worldwide flood?
- Genesis 12:3 – ‘I will bless those who bless you’
- Genesis 22 – “Abraham, kill your son”
- Exodus – Who hardened Pharaoh’s heart?
- Exodus 12:37 – How many Israelites left Egypt?
- Leviticus 19:18 “Love your neighbour as yourself”
- Joshua 6 – the fall of Jericho
- Joshua 10 – Joshua’s ‘long day’
- Judges 19:11-28 – The priest and the concubine
- 1 Samuel 16:14 – ‘An evil spirit from the Lord’
- 2 Sam 24:1, 1 Chron 21:1 – Who incited David?
- 1 Kings 20:30 – ‘The wall collapsed on 27,000 of them’
- Psalm 105:15 – ‘Touch not my anointed’
- Psalm 137:8f – ‘Happy is he who dashes your infants against the rocks’
- Isaiah 7:14/Matthew 1:23 – “The virgin will conceive”
- Daniel 7:13 – ‘Coming with the clouds of heaven’
- Jonah – history or fiction?
- Mt 1:1-17 and Lk 3:23-38 – the genealogies of Jesus
- Matthew 2:1 – ‘Magi from the east’
- Matthew 2:2 – The star of Bethlehem
- Matthew 2:8f – Can God speak through astrology?
- Matthew 2:23 – ‘Jesus would be called a Nazarene’
- Matthew 5:21f – Did Jesus reject the Old Testament?
- Matthew 7:16,20 – ‘You will recognise them by their fruit’
- Matthew 8:5/Luke 7:3 – Who asked Jesus to help?
- Matthew 8:5/Luke 7:7 – son? servant? male lover?
- Matthew 8:28 – Gadara or Gerasa?
- Matthew 10:23 – ‘Before the Son of Man comes’
- Matthew 11:12 – Forceful entry, or violent opposition, to the kingdom?
- Matthew 12:40 – Three days and three nights
- The Parable of the Sower – return from exile?
- Mt 15:21-28/Mk 7:24-30 – Jesus and the Canaanite woman
- Matthew 18:10 – What about ‘guardian angels’?
- Matthew 18:20 – ‘Where two or three are gathered…’
- Matthew 16:18 – Peter the rock?
- Matthew 21:7 – One animal or two?
- Mt 24:34/Mk 13:30 – ‘This generation will not pass away’
- Matthew 25:40 – ‘These brothers of mine’
- Matthew 27:46/Mark 15:34 – Jesus’ cry of dereliction
- Matthew 27:52f – Many bodies raised?
- Mark 1:41 – ‘Compassion’, or ‘anger/indignation’?
- Mark 2:25f – ‘When Abiathar was high priest’
- Mark 3:29; Luke 12:10 – The unpardonable sin
- Mark 4:31 – ‘The smallest of all the seeds’?
- Mark 6:45 – ‘To Bethsaida’
- Mark 12:41-44/Luke 21:1-4 – ‘The widow’s mite’
- Luke 2:1f – Quirinius and ‘the first registration’
- Luke 2 – Was Joseph from Nazareth, or Bethlehem?
- Luke 2:7 – ‘No room at the inn’
- Luke 2:8 – Shepherds: a despised class?
- Luke 4:16-19 – An incomplete quotation?
- Luke 7:2 – ‘Highly valued servant’ or ‘gay lover’?
- John 1:1 – ‘The Word was God’
- John 2:6 – symbol or history?
- John 2:12 – Did Mary bear other children?
- When did Jesus cleanse the Temple?
- John 3:16f – What is meant by ‘the world’?
- John 4:44 – ‘His own country’
- John 7:40-44 – Did John know about Jesus’ birthplace?
- John 7:53-8:11 – The woman caught in adultery
- John 14:6 – “No one comes to the Father except through me”
- John 14:12 – ‘Greater deeds’
- John 20:21 – “Just as the Father has sent me, I also send you.”
- John 21:11 – One hundred and fifty three fish
- Acts 5:1-11 – Ananias and Sapphira
- Acts 5:34-37 – a (minor) historical inaccuracy?
- Romans 1:5 – ‘The obedience of faith’
- Romans 1:18 – Wrath: personal or impersonal?
- Rom 3:22; Gal 2:16 – faith in, or faithfulness of Christ?
- Romans 5:18 – ‘Life for all?’
- Rom 7:24 – Who is the ‘wretched man’?
- Romans 11:26a – ‘And so all Israel will be saved’
- 1 Corinthians 14:34 – ‘Women should be silent in the churches’
- 1 Corinthians 15:28 – ‘The Son himself will be subjected to [God]’
- 1 Corinthians 15:29 – ‘Baptized for the dead’
- 1 Corinthians 15:44 – ‘Raised a spiritual body’
- 2 Corinthians 5:21 – ‘God made Christ to be sin for us’
- Galatians 3:17 – How much later?
- Galatians 3:28 – ‘Neither male nor female’
- Galatians 6:2 – ‘The law of Christ’
- Galatians 6:16 – The Israel of God
- Ephesians 1:10 – ‘The fullness of the times’
- Philippians 2:10 – ‘The name that is above every name’
- 1 Cor 11:3/Eph 5:23 – ‘Kephale’: ‘head’? ‘source’? ‘foremost’?
- Colossians 1:19f – Universal reconciliation?
- 1 Thessalonians 2:14f – ‘The Jews, who killed Jesus’
- 1 Timothy 2:4 – ‘God wants all people to be saved’
- 1 Timothy 2:11f – ‘I do not allow woman to teach or exercise authority over a man’
- 1 Timothy 2:15 – ‘Saved through child-bearing’
- 1 Timothy 4:10 – ‘The Saviour of all people’
- Hebrews 6:4-6 – Who are these people?
- Hebrews 12:1 – Who are these witnesses?
- 1 Peter 3:18-20 – Christ and the spirits in prison
- 2 Peter 3:9 – ‘The Lord wishes all to come to repentance’
- Jude 7 – ‘Unnatural desire’
- Revelation 7:4 – The 144,000
- Revelation 14:11 – ‘No rest day or night’
C.H. Dodd contended that Paul speaks of ‘the wrath’ ‘in a curiously impersonal way’, Rom 2:5; 9:22; Eph 2:3. More recently, Derek Flood (Healing the Gospel) has argued similarly. Flood says that although Paul takes up the OT idea of the wrath of God, he can at the same time be seen to be moving away from it as being too much focused on a ‘problem’ with God (sin makes him angry) rather than with ourselves.
‘Because of this, I believe it is more helpful today to think of wrath in terms of the impersonal consequence of sin, rather than in terms of God’s anger. Doing so stresses that what we are dealing with is the inevitable consequence for an action. It follows from sin like falling is the consequence of jumping off a cliff.’
Flood appeals to the present passage:-
‘In Romans 1:18-32, the longest discourse on wrath in the New Testament, Paul retains the language of “wrath” from the Old Testament, but now speaks of us being given over to sinful desires (1:24), shameful lusts (1:26), and a depraved mind (1:28). In this way, Paul says, people “received in themselves the due penalty for their error” (1:27). That is, Paul describes how God’s wrath consists in leaving us to the consequence of our actions, rather than in God actively punishing us. The “punishment” is for God to step away and let us do what we want.’
We think that Flood oversimplifies the issue when he contrasts an emotional concept of God’s wrath (‘evoking a picture of self-focussed immaturity’) with this impersonal concept.
We agree that, at least in the present age, divine wrath is revealed in large measure by giving people over to the consequences of their actions, as the present passage teaches. We agree with Stott that ‘When we hear of God’s wrath, we usually think of “thunderbolts from heaven, and earthly cataclysms and flaming majesty,” instead of which his anger goes “quietly and invisibly” to work in handing sinners over to themselves, v24, 26, 28. As John Ziesler writes, it “operates not by God’s intervention but precisely by his not intervening, by letting men and women go their own way.”‘
‘The history of the world is the judgement of the world.’ (Friedrich Schiller)
We also urge that God’s wrath does not suffer from the defects to which our own anger is so prone. It is, in fact, far removed from the fitful anger to which we ourselves are prone, and which is always contains a greater or lesser element of malignity. Yet as human anger leads to the infliction of evil on its object, so does divine wrath. God has a calm and undeviating purpose to secure the connection between sin and misery, and this law has the same degree of consistency and inevitability as any other divine law in the physical or moral realm.
We think that the NT concept of divine wrath is clearly personal, Rom 1:18-22; 2:5-6; 3:5-6; 9:22. Cf. this last ref with 1 Tim 2:4, showing that both wrath and love are personal. And note the following OT refs: Am 3:6; Eze 7:8-9; Isa 63:6; Ho 5:14.
If wrath were impersonal, there could be no hope of divine mercy and forgiveness. Wrath would then be inexorable, and there would be no hope of escape from its consequences. But anger is an attribute of a living, personal God, who enters into personal relationships with us. It is this that makes propitiation, reconciliation and forgiveness possible, cf. Isa 12:1.