Rom 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth by their unrighteousness, 1:19 because what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.

In his commentary on Romans, C.H. Dodd famously contended that Paul speaks of ‘the wrath’ ‘in a curiously impersonal way’.  He writes:

‘Paul retains the concept of “the wrath of God” not to describe the attitude of God to man but to describe the inevitable process of cause and effect in a moral universe.’

More recently, writers such as Greg Boyd, Brad Jersak and Derek Flood (Healing the Gospel) have 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 (Rom 1:24), shameful lusts (Rom 1:26), and a depraved mind (Rom 1:28). In this way, Paul says, people “received in themselves the due penalty for their error” (Rom 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.’

I 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.

I 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.”‘

It is true, then, to a large extent that:

‘The history of the world is the judgement of the world.’ (Friedrich Schiller)

Brad Jersak (A More Christlike God) adopts a view similar to that of Flood.  He appeals to Rom 6:23 –

“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (NASB)

Jersak argues that ‘the wrath’ is ‘the wages of sin’, death.

‘Wrath then, is not the punishment of God but our experience of the intrinsic and fatal consequences of sin—of rejecting God’s mercy.’

In the parable of the Prodigal Son:

‘Yes, the pigpen was the punishment, the wrath, the consequences. Of what? Of the prodigal son’s own selfish choices. And in love, yes, the Father consents and gives him over—gives us over until we are done. Then when we’re done, we come back like the prodigal son and get what? Punishment? No. Wrath? No. When we come back, God welcomes us and gives us a free gift: eternal life!’

The following passages also refer to ‘wrath’ without specifying ‘God’s wrath’.

Rom 5:9 ‘Much more then, because we have now been declared righteous by his blood, we will be saved through him from God’s wrath.’ (So most translations, but the original simply refers to ‘the wrath’).

1 Thess 1:10 – ‘Jesus, our deliverer from the coming wrath.’

1 Thess 2:16 – ‘wrath has caught up with them at last.’

1 Thess 5:9 – ‘For God has not appointed us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.’

Referring to Rom 5:9, Bill Mounce comments:

‘Personally, I see no reason to add “of God” since none of the parallels actually say it. Paul didn’t feel the need, and to my ears it changes the message a little. Of course it is God’s wrath, but the emphasis is not on the cause of the wrath but on the event itself.’ (My emphasis)

This idea that ‘the wrath’ is impersonal, and refers only to the outworking of the consequences of our sin, is seriously undermined by other statements of Paul, where the reference is unambiguously to God’s wrath.  These include:

Rom 1:18 ‘For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth by their unrighteousness.’

Romans 2:5 ‘But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourselves in the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment is revealed!’

Romans 9:22 ‘But what if God, willing to demonstrate his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the objects of wrath prepared for destruction?’

Rom 12:19 ‘Do not avenge yourselves, dear friends, but give place to God’s wrath, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” says the Lord.’

Kruse reviews the references to God’s wrath in the LXX and the NT, and concludes that:

‘It is evident…that it denotes his personal indignation towards human sinfulness. This is now recognized widely by modern interpreters of Paul so that the older liberal view championed by C. H. Dodd according to which God’s wrath was reduced to ‘an inevitable process of cause and effect in a moral universe’ is generally rejected.’

Kruse quotes Käsemann:

‘There is not the slightest reason, for fear of anthropomorphism, to make of this an objective principle (Dodd) or impersonal process (Hanson) or even to relate wrath to the sufferings of vv 3f. What is meant is the consuming power of the World-Judge which according to Rom 1:18ff. has already announced itself in hidden form in earthly history’.

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.

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.